CEO Decoder ring!

The hangover lasted about a week. I got a bunch of emails, most people asking to meet up for beers (can't face that right now), meet up for dinner (that sounds better) and a couple for advice. I can't recommend people to leave Hank Commerce, they have to follow their own path and make their own mind up. My destiny was on another path.

So I have complied my advice into this handy pocket sized CEO decoder ring. I hope it helps if you are still working at Hank Commerce! Drum roll... and in reverse order...

10. "Dude... if you hate this place so much, why are you here?"

Translates to: I wish I knew your name so that I could get HR to fire your ass.

9. "Imagine if you spent as much time fixing what's not broken as you do complaining, we'd all have Aston Martins"

Translates to: I have an Aston Martin, so f**k you

8. "F**k off"

Translate to: Please come into my office, take a seat, play with my miniature zen garden. Joking, f**k off back to where you came from and close the f**king door and take your pink slip with you as you pass HR.

7. "Whoa asshole, that's a lot of baggage you are carrying"

Translates to: Go f**k yourself, I only work with winners. Winners always buy new at the destination site or the hotel shop. I love those monogrammed shirts, do you? Of course you don't you are are looser. F**k off.

6. "Look like an opportunity to me"

Translates to: Wait there a second, I need to find my tub of Vaseline. Joking, f**k off.

5. "I'm surprised that my Gulfstream G650 has not arrived to take me to Nebraska yet"

Translate to: You think you are so f**king funny, you know I only have a Gulfstream G150. Those mother-f**kers from Google jumped the line.

4. "Yes you are right... certainly we are not perfect, not by any measure, but holy shit, what have you done to fix that today?"

Translates to: I hate f**king engineers. I f**king hate people on Visa. Can't we employ one mother-f**king American here? Does anybody speak mother-f**king English?

3. "The management team are really executing"

Translates to: Every f**king time I ask for something, they all think is a "request". Its a f**king order!

2. "Its kinda cool that the stock is at $18 and we haven't even begun to execute yet!"

Translates to: Mother-f**king VC vultures, they just downgraded us again on that last valuation to get a bigger slice of my pie. Mother-f**kers.

1. "Wow, that must be an awesome burden to carry around all that knowledge... how do you do that?"

Translates to: I'm f**king CEO, shut the f*k up you mother-f**ker. Its my f**king money, and I decide what I spend the VCs money on. Is that clear? If I want an Aston Martin, then I'll buy an Aston Martin. If I want a 300 person engineering team, that's what I will get. If I want to rift them down to 75, I can do because I can. I am THE mother-f**king GOD around here.

Yo! I need cash too!

Ethics are a funny thing, especially in a startup. Its not unusual for a founder to take money out during a round of funding. The basic theory is that they have been paying themselves almost nothing to get the company going and have been putting their hearts and souls into it, company first themselves second. They get funding for the company, they get some cash in their pockets. Not a big problem.

So lets say hypothetically that you get a round of funding. You take out a nice phat pile of cash. Who knows what you spend it on, but that tan sure suits you and that's one sweet ride you have now.

Then lets say 6 month later you have to let a whole bunch of people go because you have over extended yourself. Not a problem, these things happen right. Economic meltdown-blah-blah-blah.

Then lest say your cash position gets tight again, its only been 9 months but you spent too much. So you get another round of funding. During that negotiation you manage to take some more money out again. Its just over a year since you last took money out, but you have such an elegant and extravagant lifestyle that you really need that sort of cash. Oh, you have to cut staff in this round as well. No problem.

You run the numbers just before you fire your CFO and then find that there is not enough headroom for you to take more cash out. So what do you do? Give up on your cash? No, what you do is give your managers a cash figure that they need to cut in addition, covering the cash you want to take out. How do they do that? Well cut the thing that eats the cash... staff.

The moral dilemma. You have to raise funding twice in 18 months. You have two rounds of rifts. You cut extra deep on the second. You take cash out twice.

Is that great leadership? Probably not. Can you claim the morale high ground? Probably not. Have you been managing your cash position well? Probably not. Do you put your staff first? Probably not.

Henry would never do that sort of thing, if he did there would be a riot and everybody would start leaving. His new Aston Martin is rather nice though, kind of a baby blue.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 9 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, we still don't even have a VP)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 193 lbs

That guy was packing!

So its was a super shocking day. They did it a little differently this time. All those being rifted was rounded up by there manager and marched into a room. Sort of Nazi gas chamber moment.

Then Henry, Javier and Iron-Mike (aka Old-Dude-In-HR-That's-Cool) stood up at the front of the room and went over the details. Basically you are all crap and we don't have the cash so you have to go. Not really, they did not say that. They said that their contribution was enormous but the organization needed to move on and without them. I'm sure that everybody though the former. I heard this all from a buddy who was let go. I trust him, so it must have gone down like that.

This time they had a security guard, just in case we had any of the bad shit happen again. I don't know where they found this geezer, but I'm sure he could have been out run by a dead turtle. Yes, he was that old. And even more shocking he was packing! The Ops guys must have been in hog heaven seeing that side-arm.

So, lets say some bad shit went down. First this guy had to pull himself up and get his walker into position. Then move over to where the ruckus was. Then pull his gun and shoot. I saw his shaking in his hands, so probably would shoot the wrong person first so would have to try again.

Its some bad shit when you have to packing heat just to fire people. I'm sure every week, Donald Trump does not need a guy packing "just in case".

There was some rumoor going around that Loney-James and his band of Merchandising gurus were all let go. Somehow, and boy this must have been a deal with the devil, they all got to stay. Not a single person let go. Its funny to see them wash Henry's Aston each morning, but I guess that's what you have to do to stay working here, kiss lots of ass and suck the occasional dick.

Life sucks here, I just drink to make it through each day. Nobody seems to give a shit.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 17 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 190 lbs

Death by twitter part 2!

So New-Marketing-Veep was the next to go. Well how could he stay after his new strategy to attract the 17-35 audience had gone up in smoke after it was leaked on Twitter by his own team. I know what Henry means when he says that you have to love Hank Commerce. Love means that you have to do the right thing by the brand, by the company and by Henry. So another one bites the dust. No tears for this one.

Henry has been hanging at the office more. We had a beer bash this week, not sure why, but he really got into the details. It was a shame that it was not about how we were going to broaden our appeal or get more revenue. But it was super interesting to hear how he thinks its the best time to get a steal on an Aston Martin DBS. He explained it was all about the leverage of cash versus credit in a time where cash is king, demand is low and time is infinite. Not sure about the beige on beige color scheme, seems all a bit Roger Moore.

Demo'ed my ad placement service to Lonely-James and his team this week. I was distracted from the feedback I was being given as I watched the sweat stains grow at a crazy rate. I'll have to see if anybody took notes, I certainly did not.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 7 (beer bash returns!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 178 lbs

Spring is totally evil and must be killed!

Ok, Ok. The title of this weeks post is perhaps overkill. But boy, Spring is totally bogus.

Now you recall that I said Spring was like an Aston Martin, with Spring the Aston knew me, what I liked and ensured that my model girlfriend could not drive. Well it turns out that in fact Spring is some "pansy" scheme.

This is what happens. You take a big messenger bag full of money to the Aston Martin dealer on Van Ness. You hand over the cash and drive home with a huge smile on your face and errr... well you know what else! You park the car in the garage of your cool SOMA or NOHO loft.

Next morning you wake early, you intend to pick up your model girlfriend and then drive down the coast for some lunch at the Moss Beach Distillery. You leave your lovely loft and wake up the the Aston after its snuggly warm sleep in the garage. You make the first stop at your girlfriends condo. You get back in the car, it feels different. You are not sure, perhaps slightly down on power, the turn in a little less sharp. You drive a little further and stop for gas. After jumping back in the car is totally wrong, it has the get up and go of a Prius and some of the interior feels cheap and from a Ford parts bin.

This is Spring. In fact, Spring is worse than that. Instead of opening up the hood to check on the engine with the full complement of tools that you are used to, with Spring you are left with your favorite editor (mine is emacs) and XML to debug the ever changing system.

It was designed by a narcosist, implemented after one too many for the road and used by people who would never normally be left with a sharp instrument within 100ft of them.

I'm not a fan anymore.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 6 (up 6 from last week)
Shots : 6 (same as last week)
Dinner : 5 nights (5 x pizza)
Weight : 182 lbs

Spring is cool!

Its way cool that I'm in an environment with super techies like me. Spent the week learning and using Spring for Dependency Injection. Its so cool I think it could total deal with the whole global warming thing.

If you are not technical, then let me explain. Basically it does this. Say you have a car, lets say its a cool car like an Aston Martin. Carrying you keys around is a pain, it ruins the line and cut of your Giorgio Armani suite or Diesel jeans. What you really want is this. As you get close to the car, the door unlocks and opens and then as you sit down the car starts itself. The car has auto-magically inserted the key since its a dependency for the thing to work correctly for you.

Now lets say you had a super tall model like girlfriend. You want her to open the car, operate the stereo and check out her make-up in the mirror. You are never going to let her drive. So her key is auto-magically inserted but has a different set of dependencies. She can get in but not drive. If some random person shows up at your Aston Martin it locks the doors and kicks the James Bond machine guns into life.

That's the magic of Spring. In my case I get the cool car and super model like girlfriend. The reality is that its a bunch of XML files. My boss, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir showed me around and I think I now have the hang of it.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 4 bottles (down 2 from last week)
Shots : 2 x Bourbon Shots (same as last week)
Dinner : 3 nights (2 x Indian, 1 x Thai)
Weight : 182 lbs