Awesome open house!

Henry gave the killer of all killer speeches today. Since we have a hiring gap and the resumes are thin on the ground we decide to have an open house! So I dragged a few close friends in, did not invite everybody since there are only some I want to share the bonanza with when we go IPO!

Henry gave the whole soup-to-nuts of the boom and bust in 1999-2001. It was a great history lesson for me, I had not even started college then. He explained the core values of our employees, shown by the determination to beat off junkies, hookers and debt collectors in those first days in rented loft in SOMA. The pictures looked awesome. Then came the whole twin towers thing and Henry was so depressed that he could not visit NYC for months.

Then he explained how the Republican's will have the answer, they always do in a financial crisis and that the Democrats will mess it up if they win the election in the fall. They don't seem to have a chance, the washed up first wife of a disgraced president and a black guy who's name sounds like he's a terrorist.

He wrapped it up with a rally call that now is the time to put money to work, to invest and make something amazing. The people all stood and gave him a standing ovation, it was awesome.

Lots of great people to talk with but lots of interviewing to do.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 177 lbs

We hiring!

Super cool, news came down that we can hire back the spots vacated by those rats who jumped ship. Thank god for Henry, that's such a smart move. We just can't make our commitments with a bunch less people.

So the hiring machine starts up again, they let most of the recruiting team go in the Rift so its going to be a bunch of hard work for them, but they seem to be hyped up to do it.

I'm having trouble with coming up with a reasonable way to talk about the fact that we rift'ed a bunch of people then a few months later we are hiring again. Its sounds pretty weird. The drop in cash is tough to talk about since they seem to be making offers at the old rate. Sure, we did get extra stock to make up for the pay cut, but like that's not going to pay for the rent dude.

Here's what I have so far

• Henry is awesome, he's like the cool Pop you never had
• We have customers and are making some money
• If the economy turns around, we are going to make a pile of cash fast!
• The pay sucks, but the mission is so worthwhile
  
• You get to work with cool people, even the managers are pretty smart
  

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 177 lbs

New branding strategy!

We've had a bunch of Marketing VPs. Henry seems to have a tough time with people that don't share his vision or who are clearly smarter than he is, especially when it comes to those creative types.

New-Maketing-Veep seem cool, gave his pitch at the company meeting this week in a Hawaii-meets-JCrew-via-Target look. Drives a Subaru so is at least "real", not one of the Porsche "look at me" asses.

The pitch is this. Hank Commerce sounds very grown up and mature, it appeals to large customers in the focus groups they have been doing. One of the questions asked "Would you buy a used car from Hank Commerce?" and 97% of respondents said "Yes". However, for the younger hipper, Web 3.0 savvy crowd, Hank Commerce sounds like some where your parents buy their elasticated pants from.

So we are freshening up, we go from Hank Green (™) to Hank Orange Soda (™) and a new destination site call "ranK". Somebody asked if the script used was Hindi or something, but it looks pretty cool. They showed some mocks on billboards, in the American Airlines in-flight magazine (first class not coach class) and three banners hanging in an airport. That was awesome to see with just with the capitalization showing. Very cool.

They want to launch this new destination site by the middle of the year, trying to target the kids who are replacing the baby boomers and who are web savvy. Its going to be rolled into the "Mega Enterprise" product, its going to be sweet!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 178 lbs

Ethics training!

Wow, its feels so big company that we have ethics training. Apparently some manager was working outside the framework laid down by HR. So to keep us in compliance and to make sure we don't get any complications (e.g. law suits) we have mandatory training.

Turns out that a manager, who they would not name, was coercing his staff in ways which were totally illegal. What an idiot! Why would you put the company at that much risk? Crazy.

So we have to do the self paced web training, answer the questions and we can print a certificate at the end. A waste of my time, could be fixing bugs but if that's what we have to do… It also come with poster on every wall, its a sort of Manga meets Sponge Bob mash up with the slogan "When it doubt, do the right thing". The summary of the poster is that if you see something that you think is wrong then be a whistle blower and tell HR. I can see how this could all go very wrong. The old guys in Ops were playing totally old school hip-hop when they saw the posters, apparently is something to do with some famous movie from the 80's. Weird, I don't remember any Hip-Hop in Flashdance.

Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir has changed up the pager selection process again, we are back to the take-it-in-turns model. Works for me, can book that weekend in Tahoe now! The powder is mega deep at the moment.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 179 lbs

I suck at chili eating!

There's a weird tradition in my team. But its cool as well.

We always have somebody on call from our team, we are the core and fabric of the system so we always need to be there. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir trusts me to do this now, which is awesome.

We used to do it on rotation, everybody got their turn in order, you know where you are from week to week and so could plan. Big Bill, the Database expert in the team, super techie and has the biggest Afro, came up with a cool idea.

Basically at the team meeting each week, we select who's going to have the pager but eating Chili's. Awesome, its like being back at my frat house all over again!

So he lines up three paper cups and lids. He places a pile of chilies in one, and the other two are left empty. He them shuffles them around the table like one of those side walk games. I don't know if you have every seen one of those, but its a complete hoax. They have somebody in the crowd who gets to win, just to get the everybody else interested. Then they shuffle the cards or shells in such a way that you always loose. You would have to be stupid to get suckered into that.

So back to our selection mechanism. Basically you get to choose a cup, if its empty then you don't have to take the pager. Big Bill shuffles for each team member. Weird that I have been selected and then had to eat the chilies three weeks in the row. My bad luck I guess.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs