Steve slid his Lexus into the parking lot and took a quick canvas of the cars. It was eight o'clock in the morning, so almost all the engineers were on campus, but none of the managers. That was exactly how he wanted it. The day before they had one of their state-of-the-union meetings. The company was still small enough that they could fit everyone into one of the conference rooms, so they had expanded the Friday afternoon information to an actual all-hands meeting.
Virtua was Steve's fourth startup. One company had gone public, one had been purchased, and two had crashed and burned. With that track record behind him, his entrepreneurial antennae had become very sensitive to the emotional ebb and flow of a start-up. As such, he was disturbed not by what had happened during the meeting, but what happened after the meeting. The engineers had "podded."
The emotional makeup and psyche of programmers could probably fill a bookshelf of psychological studies. But one unwavering truth was a certain mob mentality to how they operated. A mob not only in the fact that they moved in packs, but also that they tended to not stray from that pack. Steve had discovered long ago that every engineering team had two leaders, the official one and the unofficial one. The official one was either the VP of Engineering or the Chief Technical Officer. The unofficial one was a little harder to find. There was always one engineer that the other ones turned to. This was the one that they complained to, commiserated with and told their triumphs to. Steve liked to call this person the "secret CTO." At Virtua, the secret CTO was Paul Cromer. The other engineers looked up to Paul because of his past programming accomplishments and the fact that he wrote the cleanest, most elegant code in the building.
One of the side effects of the secret CTO was podding. When engineers disagreed with management, they almost never told them to their face. After the meeting, where Peter had spent the better part of an hour explaining with almost religious zeal that the company was dedicated to delivering three dimensional worlds, a pack of engineers had trooped down the hallway, poured into Paul's office, and then closed the door behind them. This was a classic case of podding. General grumpiness had then ensued from the engineering team for the rest of the afternoon.
Steve had forged a relationship with Paul that was almost as strong as the one Paul had with Todd. And it was now time to use that relationship to peer into the general state of the technology. Paul was easy to find in the morning. All one had to do was follow the sound of the music. Paul had his guitars and amps in his office, and he would play music at deafening volumes while he reviewed his code from the day before.
Steve peered in his office as the final chords of a Stevie Ray Vaughn tune drifted out. "What, no encore Paul?"
Paul laughed and put the guitar back in the corner. "In a little early today, aren't we?"
"Needed to get a little head start on some of the financials." Steve absentmindedly picked up a guitar and slung it over his shoulder. Paul tossed him a pick and he started playing a Green Day song. Paul broke into a smile.
"Not bad. Didn't know you could play."
"Yeah, I actually played guitar in a punk band at Harvard. We had our coming out party at the student union. Needless to say, we were not well received." Steve peered in at the screen. "What are you working on?"
"Communication software. Trying to see what I can do to get the initiation packets down the pipe faster when an avatar enters a new space. Think I know a couple shortcuts where we can shave off some time."
"That'll help. How do you think things are going on the rendering engine front? I'm getting some really weird signals from other people that things may not be going well."
Paul laughed. "That would be an understatement. Kevin can't pull it off. I don't think he has the chops to deliver on this. I took a look at some of his optimization code the other day, and it is complete crap. The guy can't hack."
Steve almost dropped the pick. "Who else knows this?"
"Pretty much the entire client team. You may have noticed many of us disappeared after the meeting yesterday. Kevin wasn't even part of that. He's a lone wolf Steve, and that represents a serious problem. Plus he never delivers. Todd doesn't seem to see it, and Peter is completely clueless. He's totally detached from the code, and none of the programmers listen to him anyway."
Steve put the guitar away in the corner and leaned up against the desk. "How's morale?"
"Not very good. I think we've got some people looking at leaving. I can't be sure, but I'm hearing some rumors. The problem with that is if it’s true, that's a very hard genie to put back in the bottle. People leave, and then they call their old buddies and tell them how green the grass is on the other side, then they leave and do the same thing, and then the whole thing snowballs. Although you can replace them, you can't replace the collective knowledge they have of the software. It winds up being a slow grinding death of the engineering team."
"So how do we turn that around?"
"Engineers are funny animals. That don't actually want to be in charge, but they want the feeling that they are part of the decision process. A meeting like yesterday is very damaging because it makes the engineers feel they are no longer part of the future of the company; things are just being dictated to them. And having Peter preach to them is pointless. After five minutes they were all tuning him out anyway."
"And then they all swarmed into your office and complained."
"Exactly. Classic passive aggressive response mechanism. Peter needs to stop preaching and start spending time with the engineers. Close the gap between management and everyone else and start asking people for their advice. Even if then he makes his own decision, he is empowering people. Otherwise trouble is right around the corner."
"How do people view Todd?"
"Everyone likes him, and he is trying to stay connected with the team. But Todd is being defanged, and that means they don't have to pay attention to him anymore. The consensus is that his days are numbered. Someone needs to take the bullet when the rendering engine blows up around us, and it's going to be Todd. What happened between those two anyway? I mean, Peter and Todd have been working together forever, but now they can barely stand to be in the same room together. Something sure went to hell in a hurry between those two."
"Well, I'm not sure it is quite that bad, but everyone is under a lot of stress right now, and that always has some unintended results."
"Sure, Steve. I will accept your response as the flaccid piece of political non-commentary that it is."
“Well, that’s as much as I am willing to say. We have a road trip to AOL next week, and that is all I am concentrating on. If we can shoot the lights out, we can probably create another investment around them, and also have one of the best corporate partners on the planet.”
Paul shook his head. “Man, I can’t believe we are thinking about raising another round. We just closed the previous one.”
“True, but in this industry if you aren’t growing, you’re dying. We have to keep creating incremental value around the company. It’s a never-ending game that is the only way to drive us to an IPO. Which is what we are all fighting for anyway.”
Paul put his guitar back in its cradle. “See, that’s why you guys will never understand engineers. We actually aren’t doing it for the money. We do it because we want to have fun, create great code, and have other engineers incredibly jealous at what we create. And I should point out that the last part is the most important. It’s not business for us, it’s gamesmanship and one upping each other. And that means the minute an engineer stops having fun, all the money and options in the world aren’t going to keep him around. You got me for half of what Laz was paying me. And that means you’ll lose me for even less. Think about that.”
“I have, and frankly it’s scaring the hell out of me. I want you to let me know if you find out about anyone who has definitely decided to bolt.”
“Ok, but only under one condition. Have you ever thought about taking over the company?”
Steve was not prepared for this. “I haven’t really given it that much thought. I probably wouldn’t do that. Deposing a founder is fairly serious business, and as far as I know the board is behind him.”
“But ultimately the board cares about their investment, right? I mean, nothing else should matter to them.”
Steve shook his head. “It’s not that simple. These guys haven’t invested in a company, they’ve invested in a person. And to kill that person off is also to admit that their radar was off. Plus they don’t know the state of the technology. If I tried to pull a coup, they would just think I was trying to rock the boat. Frankly, they would probably aim the bazooka at my head instead of Peter. No, the best thing we can do right now is try to do everything we can to keep the train on the tracks. That means this code has to work with AOL.”
Paul stared at the pile of code on the screen in front of him. “I am really dreading this. This is the first time we have run the communications code from all the way across the country. We can barely make it from one end of the state to the other. And we have the previously mentioned rendering code to contend with. It is going to be a miracle if we pull this off.”
“Well, I am going to make it worse for you,” said Steve. “Remember how we had to run the code on our partner’s machine on the last road trip? This time we have to download, install and run the code all in one session. AOL prides themselves on any new code being as simple to run as their current client. And that means it has to install and run flawlessly.”
Paul bit his lip. “The biggest problem you are going to have is with the graphics card. I don’t trust our DirectX code for the graphics, and if the card is not using standard software to run it, then we will most certainly explode. If that happens I would be surprised if Todd even made it back on the flight. Still sure you don’t want to become king?”
“It’s not going to happen Paul.”
Paul picked his guitar up and ripped off the worst sounding chord Steve had ever heard. It hung in the air for several gruesome seconds before he killed it off. “Well, please reconsider. It may be the only chance this company has.”