New branding strategy!

We've had a bunch of Marketing VPs. Henry seems to have a tough time with people that don't share his vision or who are clearly smarter than he is, especially when it comes to those creative types.

New-Maketing-Veep seem cool, gave his pitch at the company meeting this week in a Hawaii-meets-JCrew-via-Target look. Drives a Subaru so is at least "real", not one of the Porsche "look at me" asses.

The pitch is this. Hank Commerce sounds very grown up and mature, it appeals to large customers in the focus groups they have been doing. One of the questions asked "Would you buy a used car from Hank Commerce?" and 97% of respondents said "Yes". However, for the younger hipper, Web 3.0 savvy crowd, Hank Commerce sounds like some where your parents buy their elasticated pants from.

So we are freshening up, we go from Hank Green (™) to Hank Orange Soda (™) and a new destination site call "ranK". Somebody asked if the script used was Hindi or something, but it looks pretty cool. They showed some mocks on billboards, in the American Airlines in-flight magazine (first class not coach class) and three banners hanging in an airport. That was awesome to see with just with the capitalization showing. Very cool.

They want to launch this new destination site by the middle of the year, trying to target the kids who are replacing the baby boomers and who are web savvy. Its going to be rolled into the "Mega Enterprise" product, its going to be sweet!

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

Ethics training!

Wow, its feels so big company that we have ethics training. Apparently some manager was working outside the framework laid down by HR. So to keep us in compliance and to make sure we don't get any complications (e.g. law suits) we have mandatory training.

Turns out that a manager, who they would not name, was coercing his staff in ways which were totally illegal. What an idiot! Why would you put the company at that much risk? Crazy.

So we have to do the self paced web training, answer the questions and we can print a certificate at the end. A waste of my time, could be fixing bugs but if that's what we have to do… It also come with poster on every wall, its a sort of Manga meets Sponge Bob mash up with the slogan "When it doubt, do the right thing". The summary of the poster is that if you see something that you think is wrong then be a whistle blower and tell HR. I can see how this could all go very wrong. The old guys in Ops were playing totally old school hip-hop when they saw the posters, apparently is something to do with some famous movie from the 80's. Weird, I don't remember any Hip-Hop in Flashdance.

Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir has changed up the pager selection process again, we are back to the take-it-in-turns model. Works for me, can book that weekend in Tahoe now! The powder is mega deep at the moment.

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

I suck at chili eating!

There's a weird tradition in my team. But its cool as well.

We always have somebody on call from our team, we are the core and fabric of the system so we always need to be there. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir trusts me to do this now, which is awesome.

We used to do it on rotation, everybody got their turn in order, you know where you are from week to week and so could plan. Big Bill, the Database expert in the team, super techie and has the biggest Afro, came up with a cool idea.

Basically at the team meeting each week, we select who's going to have the pager but eating Chili's. Awesome, its like being back at my frat house all over again!

So he lines up three paper cups and lids. He places a pile of chilies in one, and the other two are left empty. He them shuffles them around the table like one of those side walk games. I don't know if you have every seen one of those, but its a complete hoax. They have somebody in the crowd who gets to win, just to get the everybody else interested. Then they shuffle the cards or shells in such a way that you always loose. You would have to be stupid to get suckered into that.

So back to our selection mechanism. Basically you get to choose a cup, if its empty then you don't have to take the pager. Big Bill shuffles for each team member. Weird that I have been selected and then had to eat the chilies three weeks in the row. My bad luck I guess.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

The rats are leaving!

I don't get it. I had to grab Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir and pour my heart out. I mean Henry has an amazing vision, we are pulling in large and small customers, despite the economy and we are executing against the plan.

So why are some many people leaving us? It makes no sense. I understand that the layoffs were tough and we all lost somebody we knew or saw when we were making our latte's in the morning. But its a constant stream and they are some of the top of the tree engineers, people I hope to become one day.

I hear the same excuses, been here 3 years and burnt out, need stability, need a new challenge etc. It cuts me to the bone that they could turn their backs on the team but mostly turning their backs on Henry. He's amazing and does not deserve that and needs our support!

I think the company line is that they are all pissed at the pay cut and could not be bought off with a little more stock. I mean, I got stock as well, but they don't start vesting for 18 months, Henry said that the board would not approve a faster vesting schedule. But I mean, when we go IPO as Henry is still talking about, stock is going to be better than cash!

So let them leave, it means my stock gets to vest and there's does not and when we go IPO I will be laughing all the way to PF Changs baby!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 180 lbs

Mega Enterprise!

After the disappointment of the Shopping Cart being canned I was switched to the "Mega Enterprise" initiative. Basically what we are doing is slim down the product to focus on the Mega Enterprises, you know the Morgan Stanley, GE, Countrywide Financial etc. Its a bit like Salesforce, not everybody needs all that complexity and customization. We slim down what we have to appeal to parts of their business and then grow from within. Trojan horse on steroids. Makes sense, lets sell what we have rather than build what we don't need.

So I'm actually working for the platform team and for Euro-Fool. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is super suspicious since he is the enemy, but a few weeks here and I have found they are a decent bunch. They have a social every Friday, bread, cheese, roasted garlic etc. They used to do wine before prohibition started.

Not a single American in the team, but will not hold that against them.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 181 lbs

The shopping cart has been canned!

What a crap week. For months I have been working on this son-of-a-gun feature. Late nights, then without dinner and now without drinks. Dealing with the changes from the HaHa, two weeks to deploy and then the QA bugs right up to the day before the release lockdown.

But i made it.

Too f**king late for me. Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir came back from a meeting with Constantine. Apparently American City Bank are going with their existing vendor for the shopping store and since there is little or no IP in shopping we are switching to Google. That's what I f**king said to Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir before I started! There was never any IP in this and the Applications teams were way behind schedule (no change there). Why was I killing myself? Oh because Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir insisted that the architecture changes get done now and pushed into production ASAP. F**king moron.

Next week I'm going to the store to get a can of tartan paint...

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 182 lbs

Beam me up scotty!

Its been an exciting week. I finally got my code out of development and into the hands of QA. The HaHa gave me some serious re-work to make sure that Ops would sign off on the design. I was also super lucky that Dave did not make me go through the new HoMo process, but I'm looking forward to my first one of those.

So basic sanity testing is done, mocked up all the backend external interfaces so that QA can inject the bad and the good. Provided a front end mock for the Applications teams so they can build without the need for having the whole software stack. All looking sweet. All very test driven development, all very agile.

Next step was to get Engineering Services to deploy to a QA environment in the lab. Mother-of-Jesus what an episode that turned out to be and we are still not finished.

Here's what I had to do. A few months ago I had to submit an email which Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir approved. This then got translated onto a cocktail napkin (I'm not joking). This was then pinned to the wall in some sort of timeline sequence, an agile planning wall so to speak. I'm not sure what happens when they reach the end of the wall, they must wrap around or go back to the beginning or something.

Then, I had to attend another daily standup with what's left of PMO. Each day I had to say the following, "Yes, I'm on track and still need the environment". It would have been easier to tell them when I was not on track, but they guy who runs the team wants to "look you in the eye".

Then it came to the day-of-deployment. This basically meant hanging around all day with the services guys. The head guy, known as Beam-Me-Up banged away at his ASUS all day, swearing a lot and then shouting for another Diet Dr. Pepper. I did not like to ask what was going on, but basically if I attempted to get up he said "Leave and I fucking nuke this environment". I mean dude, chill out!

That was three days ago. I'm still at his desk, Can-I-Have-A-Latte-Sir is pissed, he thinks he could have deployed in seconds. I mean that guys is the bomb, I'm sure he could have done it in at least 30 minutes. Its been whack-a-mole, fix one thing and it breaks another. Beam-Me-Up says this is normal.

If I don't get the environment I may loose my QA team and miss the release window. If that happens, then I may not get to deliver this side of Memorial Day, the schedule is backed up with American City Bank work. F**k me, this shit is hard!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 184 lbs