I still love you all!

Wow, its been six months at FaceTwit. Boy I have had to learn so much and had so much to un-learn. I though Hank Commerce had prepared me for the next big internet adventure, but wow, dealing with the scalability issues at FaceTwit... blows my mind. And forget about the reliability and uptime. Phew. It makes my head hurt.

First of all I get to write Java. Lots of it. Then I get to re-write stuff I don't like. My manager says "Sure, go for it. Just make sure the regressions pass". And then I just do it. No HoMo's to get approval, so psycho Ops nazi's to push the code, just peer checked and then roll out with the next iteration. We have continuous deployment during the day, its automatically picks a small set of the farm to deploy to and then, BAM... your code is live and being used and making a difference. Its wonderful. Our customers love us, we don't need surveys, just the every growing user base.

I've bumped into a few old friends from Hank Commerce in Mission bars from time to time. They look older and grayer, as if Henry has leached the last of their life force from them. Those who have left, well, they are smiling, lost a lot of weight and stress and look ready to rock the world again. Its great to see them all re-juvinated. Constantine, Euro-Fool, Stan and the rest of the "ex" all survived. Rock on brothers and sisters.

Back at the mothership, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is still the old thug he always was so I'm told. Can't collaborate, does his own thing and then forces it on everybody else. Its a shame, nice guy, unemployable anywhere else in the valley according to some. Henry is managing to keep up his tan, which is great for him but lousy for the shareholders. Somehow Lonely-James has managed to grow his team just so that an irreverent link based on a tiny data set gets super high prominence on the landing page. I know that will swing the company valuation. What a waste of real estate. Stacy and the iPhone. Sure, its coming in the fall with bells on this time. Got to feel sorry for Franks-Mom, having to keep the pirate ship sailing, if she gets it sailing up and to the right then the true hero will emerge.

Apart from working, what have I been doing? Well, got this freaky phone call. Well it started with an email. I thought it was totally a hoax, but for sure its totally real. There's an agent in L.A., works with all the top names. Wants me to turn my blog into a screenplay. He says that it touches everything in the human condition, the personalities are so hyper vivid that he thinks it could be the first geek-buster movie that will make money. Everybody wants to laugh at geeks, this is going to be the one! He wants me to change a few things, but I'm totally up for the challenge. He wants to keep Can-I-Have-A-Latter-Sir "as is", thinks Ed Norton might be interested in an option, potentially Zooey Deschanel as Geek-Babe if she is available. If nothing else, I've hung out at some cool parties in L.A.

In the short term, I've been editing down the blog into a slim book. A friend asked me for a signed copy, so I put one together and it made me think that it could be a great parting gift for anybody else leaving the hallowed shored of Hank Commerce. I'll post a link when its ready.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : More of a wine man these days
Shots : I've cut down, really I have
Dinner : I cook at home with my girlfriend these days, its all organic and really heathy
Weight : 168 lbs ... lost 31 lbs

CEOs compared!

Wow, I can't believe that its been 3 months since I left Hank Commerce. A bunch of people have asked me how Henry compares to other well-known valley CEOs. Here's my top 10 (to be read in the voice of Henry)...

10. Larry Ellison (Oracle)
Larry is just this guy you know. From storing rows in Databases he now owns every mother-f*king-application that generates revenue. I can't believe how much I have to pay him! That's some total crack dude! Sure SAP makes money, but not in the way Ellison and his kimono wearing staff do. There is just not enough room at the Emerald Empire to store that amount of cash, its totally obscene! Another plate of otoro sushi anybody? Sure, pass it my way.

9. Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Just plain evil, but you know that. No way is my management team that evil (well apart from Iron-Mike maybe, but he's ex-Microsoft). The Blue-Screen-Of-Death aka the Hank Commerce site outage page have nothing in common, apart from their frequency. My PC is totally reliable, I have no idea what those Mac TV spots are about. Our customers love us just as much as Microsoft. Trust me, the recent American City Bank survey proved that.

8. Larry Page / Sergey Brin (Google)
Sure they are sooooo evil, I mean making money because we can't find shit on the web. How evil is that? They must be the chief evil-doers. Free food for staff? You must be joking, only a total idiot would think that buys loyalty from those scum sucking engineers. Those two even have a bigger plane than Larry Ellison and me! Total evil. Can I have a job please?

7. Elon Musk (eBay, Space-X, Tesla)
This guy is too cool be really be on this list. Making money on the web, check. Making money with rocket scientists, check. Making money with cool sports cars, check. Don't bother with the comparison, Elon kicks my and your butt. You love Elon, really you do. Have another glass of single malt and it will become clear.

6. Mark Zuckerber (Facebook)
Come on, give me a f**king break! So what has the pimpled-one done? Instant Messenger over the web? Cool, I have a f**king AOL client and I'm happy. He could not even get Platform As A Service right, you want to own the cpu cycles that get burnt each time that Joanne from some crap hole in the Mid-West uploads her grand kids pictures. I mean, games? Is that the best you have got? Lack of vision, totally. Wastes too much of my staff's time as well!

5. Marc Benioff (Salesforce)
He invented Software as a Service, he is GOD! So what if it took a bunch of time and effort to make it work and the UI is as ugly as hell, he is my spiritual platform, he is my leader. HE IS GOD. Shit, can't tell my staff that I stole his idea after that night we got hammered at the Redwood Bar...

4. Gregg Brockway (Tripit)
Here is an idea. Build a social web about traveling, allow people to track each other with an opt-in policy and then make money from advertising. How completely revolutionary is that? I tip my hat to you sir. You must have overheard me that night when I was on a rager with Benioff and Ellison back in 2001...

3. Jeremy Stoppelman (Yelp)
It will (hear my words), never catch on. Why would I plan a business dinner at a restaurant recommended by people I don't know? That's like totally bogus. Book a table based on those reviews? You are crazy mother-f**ker. I much prefer to pay premiums for outdated and totally old school publications like Zagat to get real content that has been peer reviewed. I love my dinner companions too much to do anything else, don't you?

2. Steve Jobs (Apple)
Too cool. I mean, if only the Mega Enterprise project had that same radius on the curved edge of the home page that that iPhone 3GS had, then we would have made millions, no joke. Instead we got an accordion that was so totally 2007, that was the best they could come up with. Who wants that ugly shit on your product? My napkin design was better and they know it. Jobs would have fired their asses, but I don't have the balls. If only we were as cool as the turtle-something.

1. Henry (Hank Commerce)
I mean, I have to be #1. A ton of vision, very little execution (not my fault, its the management team). What is more important for a valley CEO, making a dirty big pile of cash or having a nice tan and a New York life-style paid for by VCs? Its totally door #2, Bob. Everybody loves a winner, nobody loves a looser. So why does nobody stick around at Hank Commerce? Stupid, its the not the CEO, its the management team! I need to get Iron-Mike to sack there asses again.

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.

They love me not!

Wow. Had my exit interview this week. I had thought that Iron-Mike was one of the good guys, but I now know why he's got that name and why he's one of Henry's favorite henchmen.

So he goes through the normal stuff, why are you leaving, what's your feedback. He gets all close and empathic with me. Hey, he's my friend and he wants to know how I feel so that he can make the company better. I get that vibe.

He gives me my final check, it looks low but I'm trying to read the info about hours worked as he talks. Its tough, he talks a lot. He then slides a form towards me, I need to sign this, I have no choice. I read the check, its missing my vacation pay. So I ask, "dude what gives".

I get the answer, if I sign this for, then I can get the missing vacation pay. What the fuck! I read the form, basically its a gun against my head if I even admit I worked here. I say I need to read this, he tries to strong arm me, the offer only stands right now, if I want the money then sign. I kind of say that I don't think they can do that and make my way back to my desk.

I get home. One of my room mates is a lawyer at some non-profit. She scans the document, always looking super cute in her glasses. She basically says "No f*king way can they do that". Cool. I get into the office the next day, I have three double expressos in 15 minutes.

I get to Iron-Mikes office. He waves me in and closes the door behind me. So I say, "Like dude, you have to give me the money and you can't make me sign that". He then gets super mad, lawyer-this-lawyer-that. I keep on saying that he needs to get me my check. He get more mad. I try to keep calm, but the expresso is working against me.

I say "Like, I can't leave here until you give me the check, I have rent to pay". He answers with a "F*k you, f*king mercenary engineer, who the f**k do you think you are making demands from me?". He pulls open his drawer, lays out his Saturday Night Special on his desk and throws my check across the table. It lands on the floor.

With a "Come on kid, make my day" look I have to choose between picking it up and loosing my focus on his weapon. I choose to leave the check behind, given Henry's history it would probably bounce.

So my new adventure starts next week. Its going to be awesome working at FaceTwit, my geek-Mission-freinds are all super jealous. So long Henry, thanks for the money.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 2 (celebrating my last week!)
Shots : 18 (celebrating my last week!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 197 lbs

They love me!

Its been a weird week since I gave notice. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir has ignored me, I expected that. I have already been blacklisted from his staff meetings, I expected that. To get made a scapegoat in a public forum, I should have expected that but did not see that coming. I was never a "kiss ass" and that was probably my undoing here, I spoke my mind and while everybody says the culture is "open" and "transparent" that is just a tactic to make it easier to slide the knife in.

Even better news that Geek-Babe came and gave me a big hug and a "stay in touch". I'm sure that she was being nice but It made me feel good. Perhaps things with Beam-Me-Up are not working out and I still have a chance? Probably not!

Some say that my last post was a little harsh on poor old Henry. Sure, but as they say the CEO position is the loneliest in the world. It must suck being Henry, but really is not helped by his over promise, under deliver, make shit up to your face attitude. He's not one to shoot straight, he just uses his SS and Gastapo Lieutenants to do his executions. Be warned of the ones in short skirts, they are the most deadly. Nice to look at by death follows shortly after.

One week left to go and my exit interview with Iron-Mike. Its going to be awesome!

I'm looking forward to FaceTwit, its going to be a bunch of fun!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 12 (celebrating my job offer!)
Shots : 6 (celebrating my job offer!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 196 lbs

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

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

Copyright fiasco!

Only Hank Commerce could screw up like this. It now all makes sense why Stan, our VP of Products and the creative genius behind Hank Orange Soda (tm) has been on a leave of absence. Literally a whole battalion of lawyers pitched up this week and seized a pile of materials and numerous hard drives. Turns out that Hank Orange Soda (tm) is a carbon copy of some soda drink from of all places Scotland. The rumor is that Stand simply copied the whole color palette thinking that nobody is Scotland would be paying attention. But global brands have a global presence, including their lawyers.

Just thinking about that, we are going out there saying we are the next big internet story and BAM! We use somebody elses copyrighted color scheme... and Stan thought no one would notice. What a dumb ass!

The creative team have been working 24/7 and trying to get a proof signed off by Henry. He's in New York this week, he's engaging in multiple partner opportunities (aka trying to scrape up any sort of deal). He sent out an email blast to us all about the "9 - 5 culture". Sure, we just work those hours only, are you kidding? I guess he has to break from the hectic contract negotiations at 5pm to get to the nearest bar to get a "well deserved" Martini, while the rest of us get this thing done. What a jack ass. The creative team are pulling their 'fros out tweaking the PANTONE by slight increments, well that's what they tell Henry. The simply have three variations, which they give them to him in rotation, basically saying that they did as he asked and here's the new sample. They are too bust playing Ms. Pacman to really put in a days work.

Henry loves to email from his Blackberry. Its a bad state of affairs when your CEO is telling the staff to "ENGAGE" and that the company is "NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT". Dude, haul your ass of the beach, New York or where ever the f**k your normally are and get into the office and engage with your staff in your company! The CEO is not a Monday Morning quarter back position, is not a spectator sport like you seem to think it is. You have to really put in a days effort like the rest of us. Roll your sleeves up and ENGAGE!

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 : 194 lbs

More graphs! Awesome!

Another week and another weekly all-hands meeting. I don't really get the point. Sure, I love open and transparent communication. It lets us see what is going on, give us data and then shows us ways to analyze it to allow us to draw our own conclusions. Pretty sweet if we have data to talk about.

Don't give the same graphs, just changing the colors or fonts we can see through that. What is says is that you have no idea on what is going on. I did give credit this week, all the graphs were different. Wow, things must have changed! After my initial enthusiasm I was drawn back to the slough of despair when I see that they changed the scale to make the growth look more impressive. As they say there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. Henry loves his statistics.

So news to report this week? Well Geek-Babe is "glowing" and I am shocked how much she has got done this week, especially being slowed down by the size of that ring. If ever we need to break a window to escape (like a fire or something) I know what I'm going to use to cut the glass.

We had another release, it was pretty much along the same lines. QA sign off, PMO sign off, Frank's-Mom signs off. Customer use it, many production tickets, stuff being broken, integrations not working, people can't change their passwords, new functionality plain not working. We get through to the "Monday Peak", which basically means that lights dim across the eastern seaboard as we crank up the CPU horsepower simply to process a few dozen transactions. This is also know as "the same old shit".

Its all rather depressing. I'm still eating the Diwali candy from our "celebration" the other week. I was shocked that Iron-Mike from HR did not ban the whole thing. Think about it, especially working in California. You arrange a work sponsored event. You ask staff to spend time decorating and preparing events. You then ask for "volunteers" to take part in the "competition". Basically that involved a number of partial clothed women dancing in a provocative manner while the judges (aka F-Staff) "judge". If Frank's-Mom was a man she would have been taken away to San Quentin, no questions asked, do not collect $200. How come women get away with this shit?

Anyway, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir seemed to enjoy himself a little too much by the display and could not seem to walk straight afterward. That would seem another HR violation.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 9 (the shame of it all!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more official eating!)
Weight : 193 lbs

Geek-babe is getting married!

I bet that got your attention. You may be thinking, lucky guy. I know, I know. How did a geek pull off the coup of the decade and get the hottest, geekiest girl in the valley. I would like to say it was something to do with the awesome party in Cyprus.

The truth is much more difficult. After our last argument on our first date on the merits of District 9 versus Alive in Joberg our paths split. We, sorry she, hardly even acknowledged me at the Latte station in the morning, and certainly there was never an open seat at the company meetings next to her. I got the cold shoulder, but I was in it for the long term. I could turn her around, just like Henry is doing for the company.

I made sure there was an extra Dunkin' Donut left on her desk, a flower on Valentines day, just your regular stalker stuff, nothing overkill. Perhaps washing her car during the lunch break was just slightly over the line.

And then the true horror of it all. I got word that there was a secret party being planned. Sweet! There was going to be food and plenty to drink. Sweet! It was to congratulate Geek-Babe's engagement to Beam-Me-Up. Sweet!

Hey, hold the presses. What the f**k is going on? How did he muscle in on my girl? Why are they holding hands? Why does she look so happy in the wrong mans arms?

Things just could not have gotten any worse.

Sure, lets be happy for the happy couple. I just have a pile of PL/SQL to convert into JavaScript with the debugging capability of a drunk Ops guy. My life sucks and it sucks today because I'm trying to drink away the pain that Geek-Babe is trying to get away from me! She will see her mistakes, I can turn this one around, just don't let me say "told you so".

Another Henry, blah-blah-blah presentation. Bar charts have not changed in weeks. Who's he trying to kid?

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 18 (the shame of it all!)
Dinner : 1 nights (marriage celebration!)
Weight : 192 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

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

H Staff disappear!

Feels like there is some sort of Stalin like purge going on. Let me recap

• Tori quits. This was a few month back, but had a better offer from one of our Advisors so the whispers are saying
• CFO disappears. We think he was fired, but may have quit. Perhaps he just had a difference of opinion with Henry.
• Constantine definitely quit, but has lawyers chasing him, probably after his parking permit
• DJ quit, according to Henry to "find himself"
• Stan is "on leave". After the slam-dunk of the Hank Orange Soda (tm) color scheme, I'm not sure whats going on there, perhaps he needed to rest after that effort.
  
• Guy who ran support, nobody remembers his name, been here for ages, but has an accent, gone as well. Probably fired.

In terms of H-Staff that leaves

• Henry
• Arnold the VP of World Wide Sales

Henry should have just rolled in some NRA buddies, told them we were all "commie-pinkos" and had us all shot. The blood seems to be running down the corridors and I don't want to spoil my Nike Air Jordans in white that I won on eBay last week.

Just to break the monotony of the constant departures, Henry has been showing us on a weekly basis the latest customer acquisitions and transactions. Weirdly they were as red as the blood in the corridors and also remarkably never changing week after week. If I read the charts right green is good, red is bad. I'm not sure how you can stand up and talk for an hour on basically nothing. We do love Henry, but Henry does love the sound of his own voice. Time for a drink.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 13 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, we still don't even have a VP)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 192 lbs

Constatine leaves!

Never seen a guy so happy in my life. People say that this was "how he used to be". I guess working for Henry can be tough, he's a task master most extreme.

But wow. What a shock. We all though he was in for life, without parole, plenty of long term benefit but lots of short term effort and stress. He's said he would stick around for a month to hand over to the new guy. No word on who that may be. I'm thinking Euro-Fool, which Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir would be pissed at, but that would make the most sense. Despite his garlic breath he has actually worked on platforms and infra-structures for decent sized and successful companies. I pray to Jesus that we don't have an Applications person run the team, that would totally take us down a path of zero interesting architecture work. It would be totally like, dude, put your head in the sand.

Saw Constantine a day or so after it was announced. He looked angry and then he totally vanished. Apparently there was some big shouting match in Henry's office and "Fuck you asshole", slamming doors and he was gone. Saw Henry and he brushed it off. Apparently there are lawyers and everything. That's some bad shit for it to end up like like after all the effort and success Constantine has brought the team. I'm sure they both have their reasons but it feels totally rudderless with Constantine's guiding light.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 16 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares, we don't even have a VP)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 192 lbs

Calculator company shutdown!

Its not clear what Henry is doing, at least to me. I hope that he and the board have a plan.

So we buy this online calculator company after another round of funding last year. The idea was to embed this in all our applications. It basically would become a service so every application would calculate correctly. It was marginal at best, but I'm sure there were other reasons.

However, the technology was a total mismatch but their team were awesome entrepreneurs, real salt of the earth types. They were in some part of the country that most of America flies over, but they are just a few states over from my hometown. They were my brothers.

So Constantine and Iron-Mike fly out there this week and basically shoot them all. They had to have a security guard because those guys pack full on assault weapons in their trucks, just in case the Soviets invade or they see a sweet buck.

So they killed them all, apart from a couple of "keep the lights" on. Its totally bogus. What do we do with their customers? Not clear, but certainly getting features is not going to happen fast if you don't have the staff. Apparently Stacy and his team are going to re-build it at HQ and hire a new team. That's bogus, that dude has totally not delivered iPhone since I have been here. There are companies that have made a fortune and then sold themselves to Apple in a shorter period of time. I hear from one of the architects that they are going to rebuild in Rails and MySQL, that's a totally High School project tech stack. I mean that is already so last century dude! I know Stacy reads Techcrunch, always forwarding links to the "this is so cool, we have to buy/integrated with this" headline. The dude is so last year.

My heart goes out to the Calculator dudes. Great idea which they were executing on. Got screwed twice, first by getting bought and second by thinking the purchase would allow them to expand and hire. Its a shame, but another example of a poorly thought out strategy, executed by the incontinent.

I'm starting to see why we burn through cash. Sure you have to throw some spaghetti against the wall to see if its sticks. You don't need to throw the whole pasta aisle at Safeway to see if two strands stick. Some people say "scatter gun approach", I say "squirrel".

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 14 (We just drink at our desk now, who cares)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 191 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

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

I beat my performance improvement plan!

I had to laugh. I have had Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir check my hours, all my check ins and my dates for delivery like a friggin' hawk. So its my fault for asking Constantine why I did not get the promo that I had been promised, but the medicine that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir punished me with was a like, dude this totally sucks I'd rather drink eggnog.

So I had my follow up with Old-Dude-In-HR-That's-Cool and he basically said that if this was a cop show on TV I would have beaten this rap before the first commercial. He did not sign off on it, but Henry said that Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir gets what he wants, he's mega key to the success of the organization.

So what the hell, he lost and I won. We had our regular 1:1 where he basically said "I knew you could do it, I have the faith". Bullshit. He just didn't like the fact that I stood up to him and escalated when I saw I was being screwed. He did not like that fact that I beat his rap. He did not like the fact that despite his best attempt I rose above it all and won!

So the work? Its kind of crap right now. We are in the death march that Mega Enterprise has become. We are grinding out a result just like the Yankees, not fun to watch but the result will be another world series.

Henry seems pretty joyless at the moment. Stacy said something about another assistant being let go, I'm thinking that was probably the leggy blond this time. I asked him "How's it going" in the elevator. He told me to "Go fuck your pimply self". Sure I could do with more Clearsil, but dude don't make it personal, I can't help my zits.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more official drinking!))
Shots : 18 (celebrating beating my performance improvement plan)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 187 lbs