Oh shit we are dead - part deux!

I'm not sure I believe Henry any more. I came on board and genuinely thought we were going to change the world. And to some extent I think we did. Just after I join we landed a bunch of cash. Sweet, that should see us past the finishing post. In the interview it was all about IPO and killing the market. More money, carefully managed made sense to reach that goal.

Turns out that Henry has been acting all Bernie Madoff. I'm not sure quite how he did it, but he convinced our investors to give him more cash, its some round of funding that nobody has ever heard off, "H", "J" who the f**k knows. Its at the end of the alphabet that only Sesame Street knows about.

Apparently Henry had to give up stock to make the deal happen. Means that we burnt, literally, though all that cash in less than a year. Betcha our income did not balance this out.

Henry's pitch at the company meeting (he was on the phone from New York) was that this is all we need to make the company cash flow positive and make a pile of cash. He's brought Henry on-board, his brother from another father (really, his mother liked the name so much she used it twice) to become Chief something, Cash Operations I think. It confusing with so many Henry's but this one is from American City Bank. Perhaps he has the balls to keep Henry's expense account under control.

So why don't I believe in Henry? I don't know. Its the same old story, the next feature, the next customer is suddenly going to turn the corner for us. That customer or feature, the one we don't have, is going to make the difference. I have heard this all for 18 months and its wearing thin. You know, you read these stories or watch interviews with people who have been abused. Its the same story, you love them so much that you think they will change and tomorrow will be better. In reality each day is ever so slightly worse than the next. Its also tough to make friends and build relationships with people when they are gone in a few months, either because we have another round of lay-offs or they leave for a better place. You start to loose interest in building relationships or product for that matter.

And our investors did not give all the cash we needed, so we had to fire a bunch more people. I survived, at least this round. Another cut in pay and some more worthless options. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir was all gung-ho after. He got the team together to "motivate" them, in his normal fashion he missed the point and instead of listening to our concerns he just talked about himself and Henry and spent no time to understand us. He makes me puke.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 23 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 189 lbs

Office move!

Another office move. I'm not sure that this is a great use of the investors money, but it kind of makes sense. With the trim down last year and the constant departures it no longer makes sense to be on three floors. Stacy put the plan together and we all packed our crates. The floor plan makes no sense, basically its puts our team at an opposite end to Euro-Fools platform team. It may mean we just get more exercise having to walk down there, but it may also mean that we can just ignore those idiots!

Euro-Fool has been under fire, Mega Enterprise is running so late its making the rest of us look great! Truth be told its nothing to do with the code that was written for Mega Enterprise, its all down to getting the product through QA. I think all the directors are relying on Apps to be the long pole so that they can fix up all their code without Constantine knowing anything about it, just blame Apps. Its an easy target but a great target! There also seems to be less Apps QA people as well these days.

So its weird being back in the new old office. I see where I was interviewed, where I sat in those first few formative months when I started, the place where I got my first build to work, the smashed wall where Beam-Me-Up punched a hole with his bare fist and the first time I saw Geek-Babe. Ah those memories.

Since then they have painted in the new corporate look for Mega Enterprise, Hank Orange Soda (tm), its pretty sweet if you don't have a hang over. I did notice that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir now gets in even later, probably working really diligently with Ops I guess.

Seen Stacy, Lonely-James and Cab-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir (aka Three-Amigos) in a bunch of meetings. Weird group to have together, sometimes Zen-Dude is there, sometime not. Not just in the office, but at Una-Mass and at Starbucks. Probably some product planning or something big and important for Hank Commerce.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 7 (I can remember why I drink, but I do)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 188 lbs

Another CFO is fired!

Well that is the big rumor, I don't know for sure. Its kind of weird that Henry would fire his Brother-From-Another-Father after such a short time as CFO, that has to be the shortest time at that position in Hank Commerce's short history!

I spoke to one of Lonely-James' lieutenants and he was told that it was to bust up the coup plotters. Wow! I mean Henry is a bit of a tyrant but you only have coups and mercenaries when you try to overthrow a despot, not Henry. Everybody loves Henry! I love him as well, but only in a fatherly way, not in that Castro way.

It blew my mind that some of the backchat appears to be true, a coup? Wow. Who has the vision of Henry and the ability to execute and grow the company like he has been doing? Who has his Track record? None of H-Staff comes to mind, apart from perhaps Franks-Mom. She could kick some ass in an ass kicking contest. Super fierce!

I'm not so sure its true. I mean, I walk past his office most days and he's never there so an empty office means nothing. And what does Henry have to gain by an empty CFO slot, how can we go IPO like that? The markets would never dig it.

Looks like Stacy, Lonely-James and Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir have been meeting to work out the new office plan, more of that next week. I know that's a tough job, but meeting five hour a day for the last week seems overkill. I'm sure the Three-Amigos will get it right.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 9 (I can remember why I drink, but I do)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 187 lbs

Mega enterprise "de-scoped"!

It was not if but when. We had been trying to grind out a result on Mega Enterprise. The bugs have been burning down far too slowly. QA appear to be going backwards, the rumor is that Franks-Mom has been pulling QA people to work on other projects to make Mega Enterprise look worse.

Henry got the team all together in the board room. He got the design team to pull up each screen one by one and he then shared his knowledge and insights into being successful in this space. Basically he thought it all sucked, he could have done it better himself (if he had the time) and that he can't believe that he has been let down again by his management team (no surprise there). Well at least that's what I heard he said.

He asked the leads to get together with Product Management to come up with a new plan. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir said "I told you so" in his staff meting. He basically told Henry at the start this was a waste of time unless he was leading the effort and when Euro-Fool took over then he was going to make damn sure that it was going to fail.

Henry took Euro-Fool aside after the meeting. They seemed to have a long heart to heart. He looked like he was crying when he left. What a lame ass!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 9 (celebrating Mega Enterprise being postponed)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 187 lbs