Tales from other ‘verses, Part 3

Near the beginning of the dot.com bust, I joined Company A, which had just become the latest pet of another, larger dot.com on the opposite coast. Just before the acquisition, the CEO cast a “+1 promotion” spell, elevating titles of the old guard. My manager, formerly the Director of Marketing, whose expertise was print marketing, was now VP of Marketing.

Both companies had web-hosted products. As our salesmen discovered, customers were unwilling to sign a binding, year-long contract without some proof of concept. Our smattering of financial services customers begot contractual requirements for protecting sensitive data. The production environment was unavailable for demos.

My manager was a ninja in her familiar world, but did not have the forethought to budget anything outside her comfort zone. Like: hardware for a demonstration environment. Also, having just received a windfall from the acquisition, she keen to take some time off to make babies.

Not having to report to a boss or write status reports might seem to be my ideal working environment, except that I had no budgetary authority to do what I needed.  Calls to the mother ship were also fruitless.  They didn’t use email.  If they responded by phone, they waited until the timezones were in maximum misalignment to “ask for more information.”  It’s like the ultimate technical support nightmare, only without Dell telling you to “reinstall Windows.”

Seeing the salesman act like caged ferrets was bothering me on several levels.  When I noticed several “broken” computer systems strewn around the office, I reasoned that they probably weren’t completely broken.  I could piece them together and build two or three machines out of it, enough for a fledgling demonstration environment.

While I was playing, an interim VP of Marketing was hired. She soon got on my shit list when she found a way to take credit for the byproduct of my ingenuity.  Soon, she was out of the office a lot, under the guise of visiting the mother ship to “discuss strategery.” One day, I happened to be on the phone with someone from the mother ship.   Karen, who?

The following week, the mother ship’s Vice President of Human Resources flew in. I was bossless again.   I started interviewing for my next job.

Nearly a year and a half later, I was sitting in a coffee shop reading news on my laptop.  On a whim, I checked the mother ship’s stock ticker.  An analyst who had supped with the local management was still woozy from the hedonistic frenzy and apparitions: he wrote a glowing review of the company.  The stock started upward… but then…

An hour after the story hit the newswire, trading was halted.  The company announced an “accounting anomaly” that, in a nutshell, contradicted everything the analyst had written. The following Monday, the analyst, as his final act before being fired, posted his retort, describing management with terms like “misleading” and “thieves.”  It was a beautiful piece of work that I regret not saving a copy.

The company began its arduous death spiral as it turned a billion worth of market cap into market scrap.  They did layoffs.  They did more.  They recycled management.  They restated the restatement of earnings.  They reverse stock split to keep afloat on NASDAQ. They changed their name.  They fired everyone except the two founders.  They tried going private.  Finally, they sold off the remaining “intellectual property.”  What used to be the local office is now a septic cleaning company.  How apropos.