Everything delayed!

Well, that's my interpretation. We had a "CEO" update because Henry was in town and I guess wanted to show his new tan. It was 60 minutes of partnership opportunity this, amazing interest that, great conversation with XYZ (i.e. nobody you and I have ever heard of), blah-blah-f'ing-blah.

Right at the end, just before the whole front row fell asleep he said "..and finally...". We all jumped to attention, perhaps it was a Steve Jobs moment and he would pull out our iPhone app after 18 months of waiting. Even better, it would be our IPO papers. No even better than that, our acquisition by American City Bank!

None of those. He produced a long list of all the areas where we have saved money. All from reducing the pencil count, reducing the size of the coffee cups, you name it, it was there. The Asian dude who always falls asleep at the front, woke from his slumber and asked if that included all the people that were rifted.

I have never seen Henry turn that red so quickly. He marched up to the guy and asked him to add his name to the list and "F*k off back to f*ing ***** you f*ing ****" (censored to protect the young and innocent). Iron-Mike was seen marching him out of the office a few minutes later.

The net effect of the cuts? Well, we can't get shit out into production anytime soon. Mega Enterprise is delayed (well Henry said "Rationalized"), there is some project we have to do for American City Bank called "Moonbeam" which Henry says is going to be mega critical to close them as a customer. He also needed it to close a bunch of other New York banks. Sounds like the Shopping Cart all over again. So lets all hold hands, sing "Kum Ba Yar", and almost build and release something before its canned again.

Henry closed the meeting with a "Its been great connecting with you". Sure, now f**k off back to NYC (please).

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 7 (no more official drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 193 lbs

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

My brother from a another father!

Henry loves his stories. So we had a company meeting on a Tuesday this week, weird but we often have them because Henry is here. So he introduces Henry, one of the board members. Most people have seen him around and Henry always describes him as his bother from another father. Its a strange way to talk about somebody, but its clear the love they have for each other. Not in a gay way, just the fact they like to hang out, enjoy fine dining and wines and that type of thing. I'm from the mid-west, we like to go down to the bar and have a few cold ones with our close friends and don't do this fine-dining.

Since I have been here we have had several CFO. I guess their challenge has been in keeping up with all the cash they have to count. It must be a tough job given how Henry is closing business development deals and Arnold his VP of Sales is "killing it" (Henry's words). It must be such a drag to come in each day and count dollar bill after dollar bill.

The last CFO lasted, probably six week at best. He was introduced at one company meeting and then was kicked out by the next. Apparently he wanted to trade in our ERP system for Excel and Microsoft Project because they are "industry standards". Henry was pissed because that was not what a pre-IPO company needed, so Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir told me, they need Oracle or SAP implemented.

So Henry announces that Henry is the new CFO. Wow! That is super big and important news, we must be so close to announcing our IPO. There have been several successful IPOs in the last few months, I can feel we are close too.

He looked a bit nervous, we are a pretty intimidating bunch. There was a Q&A and somebody asked "As a investor, what do you think of Hank's potential".

What followed was a meandering monologue that in simple terms said we are f**ked. Sure, we may make it if the sun is in the right place, wind behind us and there is a zee in the month. But, its super competitive and we have not shown a dime to the investment community in ten years. Perhaps the best outcome is that we become an IT group at American City Bank Lonely-James said afterward. I think we are aiming too low!

Wow! Henry looked like he was going to explode. I'm sure that's not going to be the last we hear of that.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 9 (I don't give a crap, so I drink at my desk)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 183 lbs

OMG!

Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is pissed. Like I mean really pissed. So pissed that he missed his beloved bocce games all week. All of Constantine's staff have been locked up in a meeting room for hours at a time with various graphs and charts being projected. There were in the conference room next to my desk so I got to watch in real time, mega cool.

Constantine did not look happy as Lonely-James waved his sweaty armpits around. I could not understand what the F**k the charts meant and I'm working on Mega Enterprise. After Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir calmed down a little, apparently the QA testing and bug rates are all to shit and there is no way they are going to make the 1-July release date. All the stuff for American City Bank that has priority, Stacy also wants to get the iPhone Server part released and all sorts of other shit. Pity the client is another 6 months out.

So if Mega Enterprise slips, then it slips into September. The release process is a F**king zoo, with just about every other project (or animal in this case) ready to eat your hind.

Apparently the QA team are always "two weeks away" from having an answer to the basic question of what does your plan look like to execute the test plan. Like, dude that's a bit late in the cycle to be working out that shit! I mean, QA they are like a total waste of time, especially in the Applications team. I want to go up to Constantine and just tell him to "Trust Me". We are so part of the team that if the shit does hit that fan, we will be on it like a flash, debugging and hacking away at production to make this beast live!

Apparently, Henry promised this to the board, so he it totally f**ked.

We have a new rule, after 5.26pm you can drink at work, as long as you don't even look at keyboard. If Henry does not like that, then f**k him and his moccasins.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!))
Shots : 6 (I think I'm sacked (again)!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 182 lbs

American City Bank delays again!

This delay is totally our fault. They came to do an audit and it appears that we store some of their data in plain text, I don't know all the details but apparently Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir was supposed to build out some components that only partially got completed. When I say partially, I mean it was a basic pass through.

Long and short if it, he spend many hours with Constantine and Henry this week. I think Constantine is at the end of this rod with him. I also sawhim and Euro-Fool plotting, they always seem to go to another floor and then draw on whiteboards that can't be seen from the outside which are always clean (I checked).

I get the feeling that something big is going to happen again. It upsets me, since we have trying to pull it together since the layoffs. Why does the management team hate Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir? He is the only true leader here.

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

American City Bank does not go live!

Wow. Crazy few weeks. Everybody has been focusing on making the American City Bank launch successful. Lots of late nights, a whole team baby sitting the call each day and managing their issues. Lots of bugs, lots of missing requirements. I have a friend working on the code, sounds like they are writing it as they go along, nobody seems to have a clue how the API contracts should work. They are nailed down in terms of XML, but not the behaviors. I mean, how COBOL is that? They all sound like a bunch of old guys in some brown walled, nondescript office in Delaware. The peons don't work in the high end Manhattan office!

Finally American City Bank called off the launch. Apparently, they have some deal with their staff that they don't launch a product in a month with a Friday 13th, so we have to push out the launch past Feb.

Was looking forward to the mind bending party that Henry had promised. He said he would take "only the engineers" to Gary Danko in SF, this was later downgraded to PF Chang's in Palo Alto, which to be honest I super happy about. Who does not love PF Chang!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 176 lbs

No more drinking!

Henry dropped a bomb shell this week. We will all be in shock for sometime, especially Constantine and the management team. Henry basically said that if anybody drinks on site or has drunk and then connects to a production system they will be marched out, no severance, no anything. It was pretty harsh and I think we all got that he was serious when he said "I'm f**king serious guys, I love you all, but no f**king drinking". Henry has to be one of the biggest drinkers on the exec team, but if he said if he can do it then anybody can. I love that "can-do" spirit.

A couple of us went through the drawers, refrigerators and in the stock room to see the acres of beer, wine, scotch, tequila and Bourbon all being boxed up by the security team.

The rumors has it that it all went down after American City Bank came for a pre-launch visit. They had all the regular glad-handing that goes on, everybody was dressed up (i.e. no holes in jeans) and had showered that day. Nobody had told the Platform team who had a marathon drinking session during the day. Erik, one of the super tech leads on that team, had lost a bet that he could drink a dozen shots of tequila in an hour and keep his lunch down. He looked green, but had kept his Una Mass down, until he made it to the elevator.

The trouble was that he held the elevator for the American City Bank team and Henry. They were going to PK Changs that night in Palo Alto. Henry was trying to ignore Erik, who then said "You're those f**kers from American Shitty Bank" (we was slurring) and then threw up his Una Mass all over them.

The retribution has been pretty horrible. I think Henry thinks we don't work hard enough. No doubt that American City Bank gave him shit as well. So we all will suffer. Thanks Erik!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 188 lbs

Oh shit! We are dead!

OMG we are dead! It was a total Tarantino movie here. Men in suits, blood all over the walls and floors, Uma Thurman kicking butt. I was head down working my own butt off. I've seen all the Directors, VPs and assorted "gods" locked in meetings all week. Sure, they must be planning the next years roadmap for the platform and applications was my thought.

Morning started off great, Geek Babe was looking hot in a short black skirt and pumps. The build was not broken. Three lattes later I was feeling fine, I'd been drinking with friends in the city and had one to many Cosmo's the night before.

Bam! I start seeing people being pulled off their desks and marched one by one towards the stairs. They would come back 20 minutes later with a green Hank folder, like the one I got when I came for interview. Sweet I thought, more options!

Then I saw them take a box and start to pack. A guy over in the site operations team was shouting and swearing and causing a huge ruckus. Then I see Berkeley-kind-of-dude-who's-done-it-all come back. He is throwing things around, Lucy from HR looks kind of scared so I step in. Wow that guy packs a punch, this black eye will take weeks to go.

So what the hell happened? We had a team meeting afterward, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir said that the "coast is clear" and that "this is it". Phew.

Henry explained it all in the company meeting on Friday. Basically its part two of "Nuclear Winter". I did not get the reference, but something to do with when the "dot com bubble burst". I was not even in college then, so like its some sort of ancient history lesson or something. Whatever.

Bottom line is that Henry is here. He's staying. He thinks the future is so bright it scares him. But to make that future happen we need to let go of the weakest to make us stronger. He wanted it to happen before thanksgiving, basically anybody who has left now has the opportunity to change the world in the same way that Henry is doing right now, they just need to do it elsewhere. I had not thought of it like that, but its pretty cool. Never figured Henry for such a humanitarian.

So we lost some people, you know, many had been taking it easy, taking lunch breaks, not working through the night or reading blogs like Tech Crunch thinking they all of a sudden become Web 2.0 savvy by just reading a blog! Everybody knows that you have to live it to really know it.

As Henry said many times, we need to "mourn our fallen comrades" (I thought we was a Republican), but we need to re-focus on the American City Bank launch coming up at the start of the year.

The "mourn of fallen comrades" was really helped by the stock option letter that I got. Sweet, I can share more in Hank's future success and dominance! We will be the next big internet story, despite the rift.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 10 (up 4 from last week)
Shots : 16 (up 12 from last week)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 186 lbs

We got more funding, awesome!

Henry is just so cool. I finally got to hear him at the company meeting. At the beer bash afterward I went up to introduce myself. He then spent 15 minutes one-on-one with me to explain the big picture. I'm just a small cog in his big machine, it blew me away that he would spend that sort of time with me.

He was in town to tell us all the most awesome news. American City Bank of North Carolina have invested in us! He told hows its been living at the Omni hotel in downtown Charlotte and eating at P.F. Chang's (yum yum) every night. He said it was hell, but all worth while to secure further investment in building out the platform.

But boy, he really told us how it all is, how the platform will really sell us and give us a 30x or even a 40x valuation over our revenue. He made some comments to a bald Asian guy in glasses that "I'm not going to talk about revenue, you don't need to know that". But wow, awesome funding to build out this platform. Wow. We are going to be bigger than Google.

The only thing that freaked me out was the brown loafers without socks that Henry was wearing. But, I love this company despite that.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 8 bottles (six up from last week)
Shots : 2 x Tequila (two up from last week)
Dinner : 4 nights (3 x pizza, 1 x Thai, 1 x Una Masa for the funding celebration)
Weight : 161 lbs