Response to criticism of book excerpt

I got a few positive comments on the last post which contained an excerpt of the book I'm trying to write (when I don't get distracted writing stuff for this blog).

I also, however, got an email from someone essentially saying that he felt the post was so full of anger that it had him looking critically at me. I'm guessing he was trying to evaluate if I was so blinded by my anger that I was no longer objective. He'd hoped for more of an objective, didactic tone, logically examing the reasons for the successes and failures of the company.

It's a fair criticism. I think I may come off poorly based on what I've written, but one really had to be there to understand the feelings we in the group had.

Here was my response:
Okay, so let me preface this by saying that large portions of my time at the company were really horrible, horrible experiences. When you came in to work there I'd already moved over to a new team. I was under a new boss at that point and I really, really respected him, particularly as he was the complete opposite of John: selfless, humble, always willing to discuss his ideas, and someone who, at the end of the day, took responsibility for his actions and work.

In contrast, I really do still see John as a completely amoral individual with borderline psychopathic tendencies. I suppose that may be overstating things a bit, but I honestly saw behaviors from him that I cannot reconcile with any notion of empathy or sympathy for other people. He was a complete narcissist. Ultimately only his own desires and needs mattered to him. Everything else was subservient to his desires. As long as one did not pose a threat to these desires, he could actually seem like a decent guy (I have another anecdote that illustrates this).

You have to understand how truly awful an experience it was to be there during his 'rise to power'. He actively marginalized people like Andrew and I whom he saw as a threat. We had established ourselves, we were his competitors in some sense. He actually *disinvited* Andrew from the team offsite and then made reference to people he called "Devil's Advocates". These were people, John told us, who stood in the way of change and improvement by always offering up reasons things couldn't change. He then told us that someone had been disinvited from the offsite, because he was one of these characters. Since Andrew was the only one not there, it was pretty obvious whom he was referring too. This was just before Andrew was transferred to the 'technology' team, which consisted solely of Matt. I'm fairly certain the whole thing was an attempt at removing Andrew from the group so he'd have no base of power. Matt, I'm sure, was clueless about his complicity.At the time when all the stuff from the excerpt was going on, I literally felt physically nauseated as I drove into work each morning. I was a shell. The stress had always been part of job, of course. That was bad enough. But when John came in and took from us the one thing we did have, which was hope, hope that things could get better, hope that we have *someone* who was sticking up for us, defending us, it was crushing.

Look at the comments on the blog from people who were there. I certainly was not alone in these feelings. In fact, shortly after John took over the group, we had a resume party at Andrew’s house. Every *one* of the SEs--other than those who'd joined *after* John (in my view these were his stooges)--came to update their resumes. Three of us all interviewed with the same company on the same day. Only one person got a job out of it. And the day he turned in his letter of resignation, so did another of the SEs. He was going back to the job he had *before* he started working there, the one he'd left because he was excited about being a programmer rather than just a sysadmin. He went back because he couldn't take it any more.

I honestly had a few weekends where I seriously considered quitting the following Monday. I don't mean toying with the idea, but that I came very close to just walking out. But I didn't. And the day I found out I had been moved over to a new team, and out from under John was the happiest day of my life while there.

So, you have to understand all of these things, when evaluating what I've written. For me, writing the book is as much about catharsis as anything. I and many others still carry around a tremendous amount of resentment about how I was treated. I think this is understandable, though it's not something I'm proud of. If you beat a dog long enough, he *will* turn vicious. It's inevitable. Some people are far more angry than I am. I've learned to largely let go. But the fact that I still find myself writing emails like this, or talking endlessly about my experiences at my last job to my current co-workers, says I've not completely let go. And in writing the book, I really am hoping I can let go of the lingering anger I still feel. In fact, I've quite enjoyed writing it, because while I knew about all the things that angered me, I'd forgotten about many of the great experiences I had while there. I've had to think back and remembering some of those great times has softened my view on the whole experience.

From your email, it sounds like your hope was for me to provide inside into the triumphs and failures of either the company as a whole or my own. I don't know that I have much insight into what the *company* did right or wrong. I have a few thoughts, but certainly nowhere near enough to fill a book. Similarly, I learned a lot during my time there, about what helped me succeed and what hindered my success, but to me again it's more just a journey through time, a view into a young software engineer's eyes as the company he worked for grew and transformed and all the things that occurred along the way. The lessons, well, those largely will have to be inferred by the reader I fear.