Book Excerpt

As a few of you know, I've been working on a book about my experiences at my last place of employment.

I joined when the company consisted of only 30 or so people and over the course of four years or so, watched as it grew in size to almost 300 employees. I hadn't even realized how unique an experience it was, until a contractor who'd come in to do some work suggested I should capture some of what goes on (at least in this case) as a "start up" grows into a full-fledged company.

Here is an excerpt, which details my lowest point, when I was feeling physically nauseated at the prospect of coming in, dreading every moment I was there. For those who know the company's name and/or the individuals (I've changed them all) please keep it to yourself. The book isn't intended to defame the company or any of its employees, it's simply a rembrance of both the good and bad times, and insight into some experiences that (hopefully) few of you will ever have:

At this same time, John was moving forward with his project. Somehow Andrew ended up coming in to help here as well, even though he was still working 100 hours a week on his own project. Oddly, I quickly realized John had no interest in using my code and, in fact, wasn’t really using much of our WidgetFramework at all. He kind of was writing his own thing and most of it very specific to his needs. A year later, during one of the SE meetings, John said:

‘What would you do if we started using your redesign of WidgetFramework on every project?’
‘We can’t. It’s not ready for that. I’d need more time’
‘But what if we couldn’t get that time. How will you make it work?’

He was trying to bait me. The funny thing is, we weren’t even talking about using what he had done for his similar project. No one reused that code. And yet, somehow, by the end of it, John had positioned himself as the great white hope of the software engineering department, as an example of how to do things the ‘right way’.

Andrew summed it up this way:
'He basically did a complete shit job, then wrote a long ‘case study’ about how great a job he did. And everyone on the executive team believed him. They didn’t even have the expertise to know he was full of shit.'

Of course, I only heard about the above much, much later. At the time, a number of us were really excited when there started to be talk about John taking over the group. To most of us, John seemed like a decent guy. He obviously knew a lot about development (or seemed to). We were sure he’d do a great job in representing our concerns and being an advocate in the face of PM and customer pressure. Besides, we were sure we couldn’t do any worse than Matt. How wrong we were.

At the time, it didn’t even occur to me that it was Andrew who was supposed to have come back to lead us. We missed that entirely in complaining about Matt and dreaming about John coming in and fixing all our problems. It was supposed to have been Andrew. At this point, however, there was no reason to distrust John. Andrew and Matt, both of whom had worked with him formerly, hadn’t said anything negative at all. I wouldn’t really expect anything different from Matt, even today. But in light of discussions I had with Andrew years later about that time, I’ve never understood why the hell he didn’t say something at the time. He knew it had been John who’d turned their former company’s culture into one of back-room deals and defaming others behind doors, that it had been John that had played a primary part in sinking that company with his decisions. He didn’t tell us this at that time, though. So, when it was announced John was going to be taking charge of the group, we were all excited. Things are going to get better, we thought!

At first, things did seem to be better. John was actually actively scheduling the SE meeting, something that had only occurred rarely under Matt. And John had an agenda for these meetings and a very commanding way of leading them. He set up one-on-ones with each of us on the team, where he bring the little notebook he always carried with him everywhere, taking notes. He really seemed to have a genuine interest in our work and to be involving himself in our problems.

Of course, if one paused to examine the situation, he’d quickly see that nothing every came of these notes John took. He’d happily listen to our complaints, jot something down now and again, and yet nothing ever changed. We still had to work ridiculous hours, we were still assigned timelines before we knew what the work was, the only difference now was that when we screwed up rather than having a boss who didn’t really even pay attention, we had someone riding us asking us things like ‘What would you have done differently?’. The one thing he did do was make sure that at no point he personally would be accountable for any mistake made by the group.

What’s interesting is, I’m not really sure what John even did at this time. He wasn’t responsible for the resourcing. No, we had resourcing managers who assigned programmers to each of the projects. Oh, well, he must have been involved in high level discussions of the individual projects then? Nope, again wrong. We were pretty much left to fend for our own there as well. Really, John seemed to spend most of his time with other “people of importance” behind closed doors. What he was doing was unclear, but he certainly wasn’t helping make our lives any less painful.
In fact, things were measurably worse because before we at least felt able to stand up for ourselves. Since we had no advocate we had started to be our own advocates, to complain when things were bad, and occasionally (though very rarely) even refuse when the unreasonable was asked of us. But now, that power had been usurped. In his role as our leader, John has subtle affected the distribution of power, centralizing it in his own hands, and marginalizing anyone who disagreed or represented a potential challenge to his power.

As the leaders of the existing SE group, Andrew and I were in treat for special treatment. Andrew was safe for the moment as he was still so embroiled with his loyalty program that he was invisible to the main group, but I was still a fairly central figure. At the weekly SE discussions it became apparent that what once was a forum for open discussion has changed dramatically.

One case, in particular, was illuminating. I can’t remember what the actual point of discussion was, but John had suggested one or another change to how we did things. Having quite a bit of practical experience within the group and on day-to-day project work, I felt the suggestion had some real problems. Not realizing that the ground had shift beneath my feet, I said as much in the meeting. John took me aside after the meeting had concluded to speak with me privately.

'I can’t have you contradict me in front of the others that way'
'I thought it was an open forum for discussion, John. I disagreed with what you were saying.'
'I understand. But there’s a right way to give that feedback and a wrong way. If you have strong feelings about something, you can come to me after to discuss.'

Apparently, open discussion was taboo for John, the idea that he be thought of as anything less than infallible, his ideas less than sacrosanct, seemed to him unacceptable. Of course, with hindsight, it’s obvious why he felt this way. In open discussion, arguments had to be made on their merits, not on who had made them. This was at odds with John’s plans. Any good idea had to come from him. If merit triumphed, John might not be the victor in every discussion. He absolutely had to be on the right again and again, if he was going to centralize the power of the group in his hands. Decisions made in secret, behind closed doors could not be discussed. If you dissented and you simply came to him, he would either tell you that you were wrong or adjust his thinking, hiding your input, hiding that he was anything less than infallible.

Of course, as it was with ideas, so it was with people. John now made a concerted push to elevate those people who he trusted into positions of power. Those who represented a challenge to him, he had to marginalize. Of course, I realized none of this yet. To me our company was still a place where people and ideas triumphed based on their merit.

John didn’t use secrecy only for the purpose off deflecting criticism, of course. More and more often you’d see him behind closed doors talking with the head of the PMs. It was funny in how obvious it was, but perhaps that was John’s power. No one could ever imagine a person to be so devious, so underhanded, so we sort of overlooked these things in the beginning. He had no office, so most often you’d see John and Ed in the conference room on our floor, which was elevated, and had windows to the rest of the floor, the door closed. What they were talking about, I have no idea.

From what transpired later, though, it became pretty clear. I never thought of Ed as a bad guy, he simply was not a particularly competent individual. Though he was in charge of the PM group, he had little management skill and even less technical expertise. Mainly he had succeeded based on joining the company in its early days and having known many of its founders personally. He coasted on his charm and through the hard work of those on his projects, but whenever real work or critical thought were required he was able to contribute almost nothing at tall. He has reached the zenith of his power given his abilities and in John, Ed saw someone with the technical expertise and drive that he lacked. John was his ticket to bigger and better things.

It became clear over the coming months that these co-conspirators were attempting to centralize power and cement their positions in the company. The very same thing that has caused Ed to toss his lot in with John however, presented a major problem for him. Ed was dwarfed both in intelligence, but also in his capacity for duplicity. John, for whatever criticisms I might level at him, was brutally competent. Ed was mostly just a buffoon. That Ed ever entertained the thought of using John was ridiculous. His Faustian bargain would have consequences. John, for his part, I’m sure never saw Ed as someone who could contribute thoughts or work to his plan. He merely viewed him as another puppet, someone else through which his ideas could be proxied, and someone to clap and cheer him as the savior of the company.

It was sometime in November of that year, when I had my first real taste of what John and Ed’s collusion meant for me personally. Alex, who had now moved into a role as sales engineer, popped by my desk early one afternoon.

'There’s a problem on the big holiday website.'
'Crap. What’s wrong?'
'Well, apparently, we accidentally sent over 500 SMSes to the same woman, who hadn’t even registered. She complained, and now our South African SMS provider has shut us down. Completely.'
'Shit. What do we need to do?'
'Well, there like 12 hours off our time zone, so I don’t think there’s really anything we can do right now. I’ve contacted them and hopefully we’ll have something figured out by tomorrow. I wouldn’t worry right now.'

I had a ton of project kick-off meetings that day and knowing only too well that if I missed them, I would miss the only chance I had to curtail scope and set realistic expectations, the sensible thing to do seemed to go to the meetings, wait until Alex got back to me with an update from our South African friends, and worry about it then. Besides, I figured, if it’s a really big deal surely someone other than our sales engineer is going to come bug me: my manager, the PM for the project, maybe even an executive.

The next day I got back with Alex. The South African SMS provider had told us that we had to first give assurances that no one phone number would ever get more than one SMS message, before they reenabled it for us. I immediately started to furiously code up a solution and helped organize the effort to get it QA’d and into production. We fixed the issue by the next morning.

The next day, though, John dropped by my desk.
'Hey, can we meet for a few minutes to talk.'
'Sure John, no problem, let me just finish this email.'

As I started to head to the room. I wondered what the meeting could possibly be about. When I got there, I was surprised to see that it was not just John waiting, but for some bizarre reason, Shane was also sitting at the table. This is weird.

'So, Zac, we need to talk about the holiday website. Can you give me a brief explanation of what happened first?'

I explained everything at which point John just looked at me and said:
'So, what do you think you should have done differently?'

'Nothing', was my reply. 'I did everything I could have given the circumstances'
'Why did you wait until the next day to take action?'
'Um, well, Alex had told me we couldn’t probably even contact the SMS company until the next morning and I had a ton of kick-off meetings that I didn’t want to miss'.
'Having meetings is no excuse for not dealing with the issue. This was a big deal.'

Shane just sat there silently. As I sat there I was engulfed in rage. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself throwing the table out the way, reaching across the table and smashing my fist into John’s little bobble head as he and his little toady sat there with their little stupid smirking expressions.

This was complete and utter bullshit on a level I could not even conceive. John is blaming me for this?!? I had busted ass to fix the goddamn thing. Where had he been in all of this?

'Well, no one ever came to me saying how important it was. You didn’t. Where were you in all of this, John?'
'This isn’t about me'.

Shane still sat there passively looking at the two of us like a deer caught in headlights. I honestly still don’t blame him for what transpired at this meeting. Or rather, let me rephrase, I blame him for nothing more than not standing up to John. He knew what was going on and sat there, empowering him by his silent complicity.

I sat there nearly shaking in rage.

‘Are we done?’
‘Yes’, John replied.