The end!

Shocking news for some of you reading this. It had to come to an end some time, especially since I had put on 42lbs and taken 15 years off my life with all the drinking. I got an amazing offer from FaceTwit this week. They are not just talking about writing the next web story they have already written it and have money to prove it. I could not turn down a pay raise after two cuts here and a chance to work in a cool place with smart people, free lunches and dinners and probably less drinking. I mean, Hank Orange Soda (tm) colored walls are cool, but a company making money using the best technology and looking after their staff, its the way to go dude. And the babes are super cute!

You are too good for Hank Commerce, despite what they may tell you in the interview. It took me time to figure that out, but here's the Cliff Notes.

You get to go home sometimes and have an occasional free weekend away from work interruptions and the emergency pager.

The turnover speaks for itself. Ten years worth of code debt that is impossible to change because you are stuck in emergency escalations because of the same code you can't change. The endless two-weekly release cycle that puts you further in debt because you cannot realistically test the product before the customer test it for you. The customers think the product sucks because its always breaking or running "slowly". They are often right.

If you work for the right manager (there is maybe two of them), then it can be rewarding. All the others will teach you is how to play cut throat island (they know who they are). Cut throat island is a game that involves sucking Henry's dick and pretending that you are doing the right thing for the staff and your co-workers and delivering zero. In fact all you care about is yourself. Take one step forward the Three-Amigos.

Come for the politics, leave for a real position with real growth. Alternatively watch from a far and read the gossip on Glassdoor and TechCrunch and laugh along, you don't actually need to be there. Its more fun than the Daily Show.

Henry should prove to the employees and investors that Hank Commerce is not an elaborate ponzi scheme and start showing some return for 10 years of effort and investment. Cash is always a better marker for viability than "vision". As the character Rod Tidwell said in Jerry Maguire, "show me the money". That's what Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir told me and for once he's right about something. There is always a first for anything.

I loved working at Hank Commerce, but I really loved the people I worked with. Glad I have a real job to go to now. Over and out comrades! Viva la revolution! See you on the other side!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 8 (celebrating my job offer!)
Shots : 20 (celebrating my job offer!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 194 lbs

Its almost a New Year!

The last company meeting of the year was lead by the Three-Amigos. I think Franks-Mom had to put them up on a pedestal in order to keep some kind of control over them. They did a round up of what's going on in each of their areas. I know that a bunch of people had to control their mouths as they went through their slides. Basically they slammed Constantine and Euro-Fool for all the architectural flaws, wrong direction on the technical roadmap, over commitment and under delivery. They did not do this by name, just implied it but it was so shallow that any body could see thought it.

And then I thought, what was the point of that. Yes you won, perhaps by means that will not put you in good standing for the rest of your careers, since who the f**k is going to hire you again or recommend you when a VC comes calling. And I thought about it more, at the end of the day its Monday Morning Quarterbacking, something they seemed to have picked up from Henry. Don't say anything at the time, say that you "had to go along with it", don't actually make the effort to get it working and delivered right and then blame everybody else when it does go to shit. You know, a lot of Nazis were rounded up and shot after World War II for that type of behavior, what could the modern day equivalent be? Post your answers in the comments section.

In other news, we had a site outage for three nights (unplanned). Apparently, to add some more capacity to our Kodak SAN, they had to do a firmware upgrade. With our kick ass staff, on the third attempt we got it right. Sweet, we added another 30GB of disk. Yes I did say GB and not TB, our site really does not generate enough transactions to need a 1TB drive from Fry's. Probably cheaper and probably would have worked out of the box.

Why does it have to be so friggin' hard at this place? God, I need a drink. Happy New Year.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 13 (no more official drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 195 lbs

Euro-fool leaves!

Wow. I have never seen Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir so happy. You could see he smile all the way from the East Bay where he lives. I'm super happy about Euro-fool leaving, he was such an arrogant guy, always thought we has better than all of us. So what if he had a cool clothes and a Porsche Cayman.

I went drinking in the city with the "Three-Amigos" to celebrate, they got shit faced. Stacy was so wasted he picked a fight with some Mission hipster (and lost) and that was just after three beers. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir went around hugging everybody in the bar like they were all some long lost friends, Lonely-James drank a Miller Lite by himself at the end of the bar. He can't take his beer either. Had some Indian food after the beers, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir said it was the worst he had, and then phoned up Constantine to say that he was so sorry for the shit he did to him. You could hear the reply of "Go F**k yourself" from across the bar.

It came out that they had forced Euro-fool to quit, they now have Franks-Mom in the right place so that they can continue to enjoy their lives and f**k around and she gets to carry the can. When the next shit hits the fan they will use the same story with Henry, that she is out of touch, does not get it, their passion shows their commitment, staff aren't behind her etc. The key is that they stick together and back each other up, if Henry tries to fire one of them then the others say they will go as well. Its one sweet deal.

I know who is really running this place!

The good news is that I think the Platform team will finally report into us, which makes perfect sense and I know that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir always wanted this.

So things are finally looking up, at least for the Three-Amigos.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 18 (death of euro-fool celebration!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 195 lbs

New VP!

Well f**k me. Franks-mom is made VP. I did not see that one coming. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is pissed, he thinks it should have been him since he had given so much already. He's happy that's its not Euro-fool. We went drinking in the city with him after the announcement and he slurred about how he got one over Euro-fool. He did not make a lot of sense after his seventh Whiskey, but something about the "Three Amigos" and the deal of a lifetime with the devil.

Made me think after I got over the hangover. It was probably something to do with all the closed door meetings I saw him, Stacy and Lonely-James in, and then later with Iron-Mike and Henry. I guess they must have been planning for weeks on how they would get leverage for what they wanted. That's a pretty sweet and balls-to-the-wall move.

Nobody has seen Euro-fool, guess he got f**ked by just about everybody. Shame, but that's what happens here. The old guard back themselves up and have a gun against Henry's head.

Things have not changed much with Franks-Mom, the schedule is still impossible, the every other week release followed by the daily patching. She seems a little more stable than Constantine but she does not code so its going to be tough to see who drives the direction. Sure was can have the Henry-deal-of-the-day-feature or some more shuffling pixels around the screen. What has to change is architecture of the dot-com-era. Stored procedures? No thanks!

Mood is pretty somber around here since Constantine's departure. Hope Franks-Mom can make a difference.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 12 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, but we have a VP now!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 192 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