Birthing is Only Half the Fun

by Victor Stone
Posted June 18, 2001

There were many smaller vendors that were eager to do business with the company and capitalize on its large customer base. It was not unusual for Vice President Hank Weiner to arrange for an evaluation of this kind of third party vendor on very short notice, so Tripper wasn't at all surprised when he got the call and was pulled into such a meeting just minutes before it started.

Tripper sat down at the end of the long conference table, put his sandaled feet on the table and lay his cricket bat across his lap. The three representatives from the outside vendor at the opposite end of the table pretended not to notice the bat.

Tripper didn't mind that he was the only attendee representing his company. The visitors were, however, all neatly groomed -- and that made Tripper nervous. A tall, handsome man stood with a clicker in his hand. Tripper assumed this was a marketing pitch man. As soon the man started talking Tripper knew he had been right. There was a woman seated behind a laptop who barely looked up and was probably reading e-mail offline. She was probably from middle management. Tripper turned out to be right on that count as well. The third employee sat erect at the table, arms folded in front of himself and looked directly at Tripper, seemingly filled with a kind of wanting eagerness. Tripper couldn't peg this character as easily. Surprisingly, he turned out to be the software developer of the company's product.

After introductions Tripper admitted to the crew that he didn't know why VP Weiner had asked him to evaluate their software (he didn't use those words) so all questions relating to business or strategy would have to be held for the VP. Tripper was here strictly for technical evaluation purposes. Everyone acknowledged the point and the presentation proceeded.

It didn't take long for Tripper to get lost. The "market-speak" was thick -- but after a few minutes of the presentation, he came to a fundamental understanding of his misgivings.

"So you don't really have anything ready to go. I mean, in production," Tripper said in a leading tone.

The marketing man hesitated as he looked back at Tripper, apparently waiting for the answer to come to him. The engineer, who hadn't spoken up until now, burst into the vacuum.

"Not at this point in the development cycle, but our proposal for an architecture is solid. We are ready to move on it."

He claims to be an engineer, Tripper thought, but speaks like marketing. "What do you mean?" Tripper dug.

"What do you mean, 'what do you mean'?"

"You said 'proposal' for an architecture. That would indicate you don't actually have the architecture, just the proposal for one. I would say that is very early in the development cycle."

"That's right," the engineer said smiling broadly, sitting up even further.

Tripper didn't know what to make of this creature. He seemed excited by the fact that he didn't have an inkling of what the code will look like, let alone a product for Tripper to evaluate.

"Not to split hairs or anything," Tripper said to the group, "but does anybody in this room have any idea what I'm doing here?"

The team did not seem comfortable with this kind of bluntness but that was just fine with Tripper. He took his bat off his lap, laid it on the table in front of himself and leaned forward. The management woman glanced up with her eyes while keeping her head down. The marketing man and the engineer were smiling, but no one broke through the hesitation to answer.

"Hank sent me to do a technical evaluation of your product, you all said OK, but you don't have any technology, so I repeat: what am I doing here?"

"Well," the engineer ventured forward, "speaking for myself, I was hoping that perhaps you could give us some guidance, you know, feedback on the direction we are headed in. The first part of the presentation was just to give some of the marketing background, a context if you will, for what our goals, that is, our technical goals are."

"So there's technical stuff later in the presentation?"

"Well we, I mean, I've heard a lot of good things about you. I mean, your reputation is very, very good. Simon told us..."

"Don't!" snapped the woman from behind the laptop at the engineer.

Tripper was taken aback. "Simon!? What does he have to do with anything?"

The engineer started to say "Well, you see, he used to..." but the middle-management woman's if-looks-could-kill stare silenced him mid-sentence.

The marketing man went into spin mode. "Well, I think this is very productive. I can see we are getting to know each other and I think that's the main thing Hank wanted. We understand your concerns, Trooper, and we will..."

"Its Tripper."

"Oh, sorry, Tripper, hehe, good name! Well, we understand your concerns and of course we are working over-time on making sure that we have the best technology on the market for our consumer base and we're glad you're here to help make it better!"

After the meeting broke up Tripper stopped by the VP's office to report his (non)findings. When he learned the VP wasn't there, he went back to his own office and typed up a post-mortem.

Not one to mince words, Tripper pulled out all the stops. He finished the e-mail with this kicker:

         Hank, I have to tell you: These guys typify what is wrong 
         with the entire software industry today. They are all fluff 
         and have no idea what they are building or how they are going to 
         build it. All they know is that it must be buzzword compliant. 
         To be honest, Hank, I can't even figure what it is you expected 
         me to accomplish at this meeting: I couldn't imagine a bigger 
         bunch of losers. Whatever they are selling, tell them we don't 
         want any.
         
         Tripper.

The VP's response came a few hours later and consisted, in total, of the following:

          thnx
          
          hww

Tripper put the whole thing out of his mind, until Freddie, his pseudo-disciple, came into his office a few days later to ask how the "evaluation" had gone.

"Clowns. Losers," Tripper said, shaking his head. "Why, what's up?"

"I heard we just bought the company."

"No, I don't think that's right. I told Weiner exactly what to say to them: No thanks!"

"Maybe he didn't hear you right because we just bought them for 89 million," Freddie said as he nonchalantly ducked under the table.

Tripper's cricket bat went flying over Freddie's head and put yet another hole into the wall next to the countless others.

Wiping the bits of plaster off his shoulders and back, Freddie straightened up saying "I thought this might be news to you."

Tripper -- red in the face and white in the knuckles -- stormed out of his office toward the VP's.

"Give Hank my love!" Freddie called after him.

Tripper had not stopped at "GO" and had not collected $200 or his emotions when he burst into VP Weiner's office, pointed his bat, and opened his mouth to speak -- only to be cut off before he could even start.

"Tripper! I've got great news!" the VP exclaimed, ignoring Tripper's state.

"What the fuck is going on, Hank?"

"Simon is coming back to the office, ready to work!"

Tripper was now standing over Hank with the bat inches from the VP's forehead. In a quiet but threatening way, Tripper started to speak.

"Hank, you are going to tell me everything that's going on and you're going to tell me straight, no bullshit."

"I thought Simon was your buddy, Tripper. You guys worked together, didn't you?"

"Forget Simon for a minute, we'll come back to that stupidity. In the meantime tell me why you bought that God-forsaken piece-of-shit company of buffoons when I told you they would not be worth the disk space of their slide presentations!?!"

"Oh, that. You see, Tripper, I heard what you said about them but if we want to grow and stay competitive then we need their expertise to expand into their market."

"What market is that, Hank? Expiating souls in purgatory? How could they have a market when they don't have a product? They haven't written a line of code. We don't even know if they are any good at writing code and based on my encounter with their 'engineering staff' I seriously doubt they can. So basically you bought a lame idea from people who couldn't execute on a good one for 89 million!"

"You know, Tripper, I think a lot better when there isn't a club at my head."

"It's not a club. It's a bat -- and I will move it when I'm convinced that you aren't bullshitting me anymore and tell me what the fuck is going on!"

"OK, OK," the VP relented. "I wasn't going to tell you because you're... you're... kind of a... kind of a..."

"Stickler for honesty?"

"Yes, yes, and an idealist and that kind of thing, unchecked, can hurt delicate negotiations."

Tripper was satisfied that he was starting to get closer to the nut so he backed away from Hank and sat down in a surprisingly uncomfortable guest chair.

"As you know, Tripper, Simon has been unavailable for a while --"

"He's been hiding out, you mean."

"OK, 'hiding out' it is. Mainly because he has been, shall we say, in arrears to quite a few people at the company."

"He owes a lot people poker debt, I know, I know."

"Including, I add in the strictest confidence, to me, Tripper. Quite a bit in arrears to me."

"What does this have to do with...?"

"Hold on, I'm getting there," Hank said before taking a sip from a bottle of mineral water. "It seems before we were lucky enough to nab him from this company, he had wracked up quite a little obligation to them as well."

"Wait, are you saying Simon used to work for these losers?"

"Yes."

"And he owes them poker money as well?"

"More than he owes everybody at this company combined -- and then some. It seems he wasn't just, quote-unquote, 'hiding out' from us. He was mainly concerned about being found by them. It seems our friend Simon had loaned himself some of the incubation funds, borrowed on margin against pre-IPO options, and used several other somewhat unsavory techniques to buy his way into their games. The problem was that he never quite got the cards he needed to make all -- or any, for that matter -- restitution."

"This is incredible," Tripper said shaking his head.

"So you see, Tripper, there was no way Simon could pay off his debts at this company -- including, as I said, in the strictest confidence, to me -- until he was freed of his obligations to them."

"Tell me you didn't," Tripper said with frightened revelation.

"So we agreed to buy their company if they agreed to drop the marker on what he owed them."

"He owed them 89 million dollars!?!?!"

"Oh, no," the VP said bemused at the idea. "Wouldn't that be something? No, not 89 million. But after interest and hardship expenses, the VC people and the incubators expected to see some return on their investment. I can't say I blame them. The bottom line is that this deal frees Simon up to pay off all his debts to the individuals here at this company."

"I still don't get it," Tripper said. "It isn't like Simon is left with cash to pay off all you guys."

"That's the good news! Since Simon still had some of the original shares of their company, he gets a windfall from the buy out."

"Well that explains the 89 million. That wasn't so VC investors could make profit, you had to make sure that Simon made enough profit on his shares!"

"OK, that too."

"Is that legal?"

"I don't know. Isn't it? As far as I can tell everybody's happy. Simon's old colleagues get what they want, Simon is in the clear, everybody here is reimbursed, the analysts love to hear that we are reaching into strategic new areas and that makes stockholders happy which in turn makes the board happy. Everybody makes out."

"You mean nobody makes out."

"How can you say that Tripper?" Hank said, revealing a slightly hurt tone in his voice.

"I mean the customers, the people who buy our software, remember them? I could have sworn I worked at a company that made software to sell to customers. Has something changed?"

"This is the big leagues, Tripper. The Show."

"The Bugs and Daffy Show, more like it!"

"Customers will be thrilled when we come out with the new product that this new team is going to build for them."

"What new team?"

"That's just it, you never gave me a chance to tell you. We're making Simon a vice president and he'll be reporting to me. I've been made Senior Vice President, Simon will head a new division and since you already had such a good relationship with him I thought this would be a golden opportunity to get you guys back together."

"Um, what did you imagine that I would do when we got back together?"

"Tell you what, Tripper. Instead of me defining a role for you, why don't you go talk to Jerry. He'll be the new Product Manager for the team, reporting to Simon, so you guys can hash out your role as well as the rest of his team."

Tripper slowly got up and started to walk out of the VP's office. But before he left he turned back around and said "This is not how business is done, Hank," in a plea for sanity.

"This is exactly how business is done, Tripper," Hank said with what was supposed to be a reassuring smile.

Epilogue: A Team is Born

Tripper started the trek across campus to Jerry's office. He took the long way. It wasn't until he was already sitting in Jerry's guest chair that he realized he had left his cricket bat in the VP's office.

Jerry was happy to see Tripper and told him all about the new team and how exciting everything was going to be. The core of the development team would be Tripper as architect, Freddie and Chris as junior members, Sandeep as the "veteran-junior," and Jerry himself doubling as Product Manager and Team Leader pro tem until they could fill the vacancy. Caroline would head up QA, with help from Norwood, and Rob (the same Rob that Tripper had stabbed in the leg with a pen) would head up marketing.

On an encouraging note, Jerry had found the engineer from Simon's old company as vacuous as Tripper had (Jerry used the nicer "specious"), and had decided to move him directly into Program Management, away from any active code base.

When it came to Lead Program Manager however, the news was not so good. Despite initial pushback from many on the team, Jerry had convinced everybody that the perfect man for the job would be none other than George Slimmer.

Tripper was numb. "Sure, why not? Come on down and join the party!"

"Give him a chance, Trip," Jerry said with a little too much intimacy. "I think he could work out with the right management."

"Wait, let me guess: He's an easy mark with deep pockets."

"You're catching on," Jerry-with-the-perfect-hair, said through a smile. "Welcome aboard! The movers will be picking up your stuff and moving you to this side of the campus on the weekend so pack up tonight."

"You know Jerry," Tripper said with mock-curiosity. "I could have sworn that you scoffed at the idea that we would end up working under Hank."

"That was before he made me Product Manager and put 30 actual people, not just the open, unfilled head count, under me."

Tripper roamed the halls for a few days before he ran into Simon in the hallway. Simon was clean-shaven, his hair cropped and he stood erect, as if he had just done a hundred pushups. Simon flashed a confident smile at Tripper.

"Tripper! I've been meaning to look you up! It's great to be on the same team again, isn't it? Check this out!" Simon said as he pulled his shirt out of his pants to reveal his hip.

"Very nice, Simon. Are those nicotine patches?"

"Yup! Gave it all up!"

"Are they supposed to be stacked up on top of each other like that?"

"Hey, whatever works!"

"Right," said Tripper with more than a little resignation. "Whatever works."