The first thing Steve noticed when he came into the parking lot was the cars. There weren’t very many. They seemed to be down a couple of engineers. He rushed into the building and made a beeline for Paul’s office. When he got there Paul was staring intently at his screen. He made an absent-minded wave with his hand, but didn’t look up as Steve came in.
“What’s the matter,” said Steve. “Run out of bad guitar licks to annoy the office with?”
Paul rubbed his forehead and then looked over. “Didn’t hear, eh? Kevin got the axe last night. Brent and Darrin are now in charge of the 3D interface. The three of us went through the code last night with Peter. It wasn’t pretty. The weird thing is Peter didn’t seem to be that bothered by it. I don’t know, Steve. By the way, check your email. We have another all-hands meeting this morning.”
“Great. I didn’t even know. Also, I noticed that the parking lot looks a little light this morning. What is that all about?”
“I think we just lost a couple people to Cisco. Robert and Keith’s offices look suspiciously clean. I think they will drop the bomb today.” He stared at Steve for a long moment. “It’s starting Steve. If you don’t stop it here, this company will be gutted in the next 60 days. It stops now or it doesn’t stop at all.”
“Well, you and Dan aren’t helping things, frankly.”
Paul held up his hand. “I know, but we haven’t forgotten our promise to you. We will wait until the product launches. And we haven’t told anyone but you and Brent. That’s the most we can do.”
Steve walked down the hall to his office with his heart pounding in his chest. The first rats were deserting the ship. He had known in his heart that this was going to happen, but reality was a little more shocking. He got to his office and dutifully checked his email. Sure enough, Peter had called another meeting. It bothered Steve that Peter seemed to be spending more time with the board than with his management team. It smacked of cover your ass. He and the others seemed to be finding out information in real time along with the rest of the company. Good managers knew how to manage down as well as manage up. Peter only seemed to have the latter skill set.
Peter must have read his thoughts, because he was in his office five minutes later. Steve hadn’t even seen his car come into the parking lot. Peter looked strangely distracted. He stood there for a moment before he kicked in. “So, you wanted action, and I have given you action. I spoke with Kevin yesterday afternoon, and he agreed that our paths had diverged professionally, and it was best if he left the company. I think no one will disagree that our rendering engine work has not been going well and is in fact detrimental to the entire company right now.” Peter delivered this whole proclamation without taking a breath.
Peter then collapsed in a chair. “I went out to dinner with some of the board members, and they agreed it was the best thing to do. We also discussed what we do to replace the rendering engine since we have commitments we have made to our friends in Hollywood. This is the special project I have been alluding to. Brent and Darrin have agreed to work with me on this, but it is imperative that we keep the company moving forward, and the engineering work ongoing. We have a deadline in 30 days to bring our first virtual world on-line for the studio or they can void the contract. And that can’t happen because they are our only partner right now.”
Steve had to ask the question. “You know, we could probably manage our way through this easier if the other executives were in the loop here. And I thought in my role of head of business development as well as finance that I would be included in the business decisions. And yet it seems you are running this company with the board and not the management team. And that is going to make it very hard to guide ourselves down any path.”
“I understand where you are coming from, Steve, but at the end of the day the person the board is going to hold responsible for the success or failure of the company is me. We are at a very delicate stage in our company’s life, and I have to make sure that the board is managed right as well as the company. I have complete confidence that all of you can accomplish your functions without me looking over your shoulders. But I have to make sure that board understand why we are doing what we are doing. Otherwise we will have another execution, but this time it will be you or me.” Peter cracked a little smile. “No, we can’t have that happen, can we?”
Steve wasn’t sure if Peter has trying to be nice or trying to quietly threaten him. Frankly, it was all starting to sound the same. Wheels within wheels. Plots within plots. It wasn’t a start-up, it was the court of Machiavelli. And people thought big company politics were bad. Steve had seen two people shot during his short time at the company. Now, a little voice inside him starting wondering whether the crosshairs were starting to swing towards him. There was a life after this company. And for the first time Steve wondered just how much he would take before his oath of fealty to the board was paid and he could consider leaving himself.
Peter was staring at him. Steve wondered just how much he was giving away. He held up his hands in defense. “I give! Believe me, I’d much rather manage numbers than manage the board. I will happily leave that task to you. I do ask though that you inform the management team before you make announcements to the company. It doesn’t look good to have our collective jaws dropping with everyone else’s. So please, a little advance warning next time, ok?”
Peter nodded. “Agreed. Let’s go break everything to the troops.”
Steve and Peter strolled out and joined Brent as they walked down the hall. To the outside world, it looked like a confident and composed management team. They walked into a conference room that was packed to the walls. Steve still marveled at how quickly they had grown. It seemed only yesterday that the whole company could fit at a table. Now they could barely fit everyone in the whole room. The core team could still be seen scattered about, but they had been supplemented by QA engineers, web designers, more graphics designers, web masters, a controller, a couple of assistants and even more people whose functions were unknown to Steve. Everyone was there except for Robert and Keith.
As always, Peter strode to the front of the table as the rest of the executive staff leaned against the back wall. There were too many resigned-looking people for Steve’s comfort level. He figured about a third of the engineering team was buffing up their resumes at this point. Peter stared down at the table and gathered himself. For a moment he almost seemed uncertain how to begin, but then his characteristic confidence kicked backed in.
“I called this meeting because we are at a very important point in our collective lives. We have an enormous opportunity in front of us, but one that will not come without considerable effort on our part. And I am worried about what seems to be some fragmentation in our pursuit of the goal. In addition, there have been some changes in the engineering team, which seems to be adding confusion to the process. All these events are related, and all the decisions are consistent. I will start from the back if you will, and move forward.”
Peter was picking his words very carefully. He knew as well as Steve did that things were in a very precarious state in the engineering department. One wrong move could send the whole lot of them scurrying for cover. “First, I would like to talk about the changes in the engineering group. As many of you suspected, Kevin was starting to separate from the rest of the group, and his deliverables were not being met. Given the importance we have given to our interface, this was not a situation that could be allowed to continue. We spoke with the board about this, and regrettably we had to terminate Kevin.”
“In addition, Robert and Keith are no longer with us. In was becoming obvious to us that their work was slowly being subsumed by the server and communications code that Paul and Dan have been working on. As such, their roles at this company had been pretty much eliminated. Unfortunately, given their specific and niche software talents, we were not sure we could effectively deploy them with another team.”
Steve heard this, and then had a horrible realization. Brent hadn’t told Peter yet about Paul and Dan leaving. Great.
“It always is painful when we have to say goodbye to others, but we also have to look at why this has happened, and why it does not effect us in our efforts towards our goals. As our company has grown, we have grown to learn not just what we want for this company, but what others want to see from us. And this includes most importantly our partners in Hollywood. As we have spoken with them and discovered what they need to effectively deploy our system. We have realized that the studios want sprite-based instead of poly-based graphics out of the gate. This is where not being a content company led us astray. We of course picked the best technology. But in this case it is not the best looking technology. And that is actually more important to them. Many of you know that Brent, Darrin and I have been working on a special project. I would like to show you what the result of that is.”
The presentation computer had taken up permanent residence in the conference room, and Peter now turned around and turned the monitor on. This is great, thought Steve. Peter is now pitching us. As the screen came to life they could all see the results of the secret project. The three of them had taken Kevin’s core rendering engine, ripped the 3D out of it and turned it into a 2D engine. In other words, one of their first decisions had now been reversed; they were now going with a sprite-based rendering engine. The silence in the room betrayed the collective confusion over this.
Peter was undaunted. “In our discussions with the content providers, we realized that brand integrity was the simple biggest stumbling block. In other words, making sure that their characters and content looked exactly as it did on the big screen. And with our limitations with the polygons, we were never going to be able to satisfy their requirements. Given that, we have taken our core rendering technology and give the content providers the graphics they are asking for.” Peter started navigating around the space that they had created. As he wandered up to the first avatar in the space, everyone had no choice but to start grinning.
It was George Jetson. And indeed the space was the shlocky, 50s-era futurama that everyone had come to love. And it really did look quite nice. Rich colors. Oversaturated light. And the best surprise was when Peter approached George. Suddenly, an audio clip issued from the avatar, in a perfect George Jetson voice. In fact, it was a clip from the show itself. “This is our favorite feature,” said Peter proudly. “The content owners want their characters to sound, as well as look like they normally do. But they also absolutely refused to let anyone drive their characters. It’s a loss of control they could never agree to. But they want interactivity. The way we decided to resolve this was to create an audio trigger around each character. When people come within a certain range, the audio gets fired off. We think they are going to love this.”
Steve looked around the room. The verdict seemed to be mixed. Of course the graphics people we smiling and nudging each other. They all of a sudden moved from being the tail to being the dog. No surprise there. The engineering team was harder to read. The server folks looked ambivalent. They would always think that client software was the wrong side of the tracks. The client folks looked almost mutinous. This affected them most and yet they had no idea what was going on till it was sprung on them. Actually integrating this new code into the software was going to land most heavily on their shoulders. Steve was also watching how they looked at Brent. He was the leader of the engineering team, and yet had not kept his team in the loop. Obviously this was at the request of Peter, but his team did not look very happy about it.
Peter plowed on. “I think we have a chance now to make our thirty-day target with the studios. If we do, according to our contract we can go live with them immediately. This is the chasm folks. This is the challenge we are faced with. We have simplified the client for everyone. It will be easier for the graphics teams to work with. It will send less data for the communications teams, and it will make coordinating everything that much easier for the server team. The opportunity is there for the taking, and all we have to do is not screw it up. And on the other side of the chasm is our prize. Not the studio, but what a successful studio deal will get us. AOL leading a new round of investment dollars that will allow us to scale this out and get our IPO. As long as we stay focused on the task at hand, and not on what has occurred in the past, we can make this happen. And that is all we have ever wanted in this company. To have people outside this building actually using the software. Our software.”
It was a heroic speech. It was a speech that led to charging up the hill in the face of withering gunfire. It was a speech that hopefully brought them together enough to get them over the chasm. And it had to happen in thirty days. In that time they would be dead, or live on the Internet with their first partner. Steve searched the room until he found Paul. Their eyes met, and it was obvious what they were both thinking.
Either it happens here or it doesn’t happen at all.