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

Moonbeam sucks!

Wow, we are about a month into Moonbeam and its the friggin' same old story. The former Platform team are driving this, so there PM has spent a zillion years talking to the guys over at Moonbeam to figure out what it is and how we fit this into our Pet Transport system. I don't see the fit, but I just work here.

His boss quit a few weeks back so he can't bring out the heavy armor to fight the battles. He's a swell dude, one of those salty sailor types, just don't bend over. He did a brain dump all this week, we are at the stage where the platform services are all laid out, its time to build the Applications. Then lots of brown stuff hits the fan.

I can understand what's going on here. With Franks-Mom promoted to VP there was a vacuum in the Application team. After an arm wrestle, one Dev Manger beat out the other two and got promoted to Director. Sweet. Trouble is that she has to make a friggin' point in every meeting. Yes, we get it, you got promoted and are now very important, but please such the frig up.

So we get through the week, peoples emotions are high. Salty-Sailor makes a peace offering, but instead of graciously taking it, she comes over all "don't patronize me because I'm a woman". Can you lot just get along?

All of this just to automate the shipping of animals when somebody buys a pet online from 1-800-Pets.com. Can't they just go down to the friggin' store?

Oh god, please bring this to an end, I can't take any more.

In other news... well, that would spoil next weeks installment!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 8 (no more official drinking!)
Shots : 16 (no more official drinking!)
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

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