Sunday, June 23, 2024

The Enterprise - 59

Alan flew out West, the new king consolidating power across the farthest reaches of his realm. He organized a video link to address the entire company with Bill by his side. The images were grainy and the audio cut in and out but the job was done: a show of unity, of authority. He’d extended a bridge loan to cover expenses, he explained. Someone who shall not be named, but didn’t need to be, had, according to Alan, suggested asking us to forgo our pay. Alan intimated that he was arrogant enough to assume we’d all comply. There’s no way I’d ask any of you to do that. The winner writes the story.

Still changes had to be made. The bloodbath swept away my boss Ed and Mr. Fun. Julie, Peter, Steve and Jimmy. David. Anyone in any kind of soft role like marketing—gone. In Sunnyvale the hard skilled were not exempt. Some stayed, some went. Many of these people had qualifications and expertise far beyond my own. That’s what I thought anyway.

I was among the lucky ones.

Alan hired a bright young man named Josh to handle biz dev. He’d been at Goldman Sachs but hated it. Even with the piles of money he hated it. He was that sort of person. Earnest, idealistic. Looking for a purpose. Eager for a challenge. He was exactly the sort of tireless and dedicated worker you’d want if you needed to save your company.

It was rumored that part of his compensation consisted of extraneous office furniture.

Josh had been given a specific task: cold call giant corporations and try to sell the Product as a customer service solution. If there was no money in the curses and insults of twelve-year-olds, maybe there was in online shoppers whose packages were delayed or cable subscribers who’d forgotten their passwords. This made sense to me. The prosaic nature of the proposition, the dreariness of it, stood in contrast to the world-changing dreams of transforming humankind’s relationship to information. This is how money is made, I thought. This is how jobs are kept and retirement accounts funded: by selling enterprise customers on potential reductions to their overhead of tenths, maybe hundredths, of one percent. Not by declaring victory and throwing candy in the air. Of course. Of course it isn’t easy. Of course it isn’t fun. There was cold, grim satisfaction in this new direction. Except for one thing: no one was buying.

The Enterprise - 58

The following morning an office-wide email awaited us in our inboxes. It might have been titled About last night. The moment you saw it there you knew it had to be there. Though a moment ago you had no idea. Of course. There it was. In the workplace context such a disturbance had to be noted, explained, atoned for even. Mommy and Daddy had a fight and the kids had to be reassured, even if with lies. Hindsight helps me note that the author of such an email must be the loser of the fight. The one who’s reassuring himself as much as anybody else. Things were said last night. Unfortunately many of you heard them. We apologize for this. We. We apologize. The loser adopting the first person plural, doing the dirty work of contrition on behalf of both. You could imagine an unspoken understanding, a sort of telepathy arising from the strange intimacy of a bitter and furious dispute: You’re going to send the email, motherfucker. And so he did.

And so who was the loser? Sam. Could you guess?

Alan and I may have disagreements about day-to-day decisions but that’s only because we are both so passionate about the Product and the future of the Enterprise. Blah-blah-blah, said the voice in our heads. You could almost hear it in unison as we all read the same words. Blah-blah-blah. The kids know when they’re being patronized. Rest assured we are on solid ground and exploring opportunities to grow our business. We are on shaky ground. There are no opportunities.

And that was the end of Sam.

The Enterprise - 57

Alan was among those spectral figures who are spoken of in deferential, even fearful tones, who see you as a box in the org chart with a salary below your name though you don’t see them at all, unless you did that one day they left the elevator and you were going in, you’ll never know, but they’re always hovering, watching, paying the bill for the candy, paying the bill for the heat: the VC guys.

For years I’d heard of him like a rumor. Now he was here.

Like a conquering king, he gathered us round the back of the office to declare himself the new CEO. He paced a little back and forth and spoke with a lisp that made him spit a little. In people like me such an impediment would make us tremble with shame and self-loathing; in him it seemed a mark of authority. He introduced himself, saying some of you know me, some of you don’t. He was from the VC firm, he said—SkyClimber.

“You’ve all been pretty patient and I think you’ve put up with a lot, really, honestly I do,” he said. “I think you deserve for some changes to be made.”

Alan delivered a kind of cynic’s motivational speech—one that took into account the absurdity of our industry, the fruitlessness of our efforts to date, the uncertainty of success. Promises remained vague and threats unspoken. But somehow at the end of it we didn’t feel too bad. Maybe even better.

In the days and weeks thereafter things did change. Gradually, without fanfare. I overheard Dennis and Peter chatting at Peter’s desk as I walked by. Dennis seemed shorter to me than usual.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s just, it’s time, you know,” said Dennis.

“Ah, OK,” Peter replied awkwardly.

“Things are just getting. Yeah.”

“OK.”

“You know, too…”

“Yeah, too…”

“Too… too. Too too!” Dennis concluded with a wan smile.

And that was the end of Dennis.

One evening at about six or seven, the office half empty, I sat working on code when shouting erupted from the conference room. Alan and Sam. It was about priorities, the future of the company, big-picture stuff. But they insulted each other venomously. One would assert and the other would protest NO! NO! NO! As though something deeply, personally offensive had been proposed. They went around in circles like this, stepping all over each other with ever louder interjections.

It was still going on when I left.

Friday, June 14, 2024

My Week

I burned myself on Monday, pouring water from the kettle down the bathtub drain. Hurt like a motherfucker but I didn't care. On Tuesday I sat before the camera for someone’s documentary. On Wednesday when I rode the train back home from work I tried to steal a sentence or two from what the woman next to me was reading. It was some kind of religious self-help nonsense, possibly a chapter on loss and grieving, banalities deflecting attention. Thursday J put the keyboard on the living room floor and picked out the melody from “Doctor Who.” We played guess that note and I started on dinner. And Friday is today. I had a vivid dream, what was it? Carrying something. The responsibility to carry. J’s looking through Magic cards, humming “Message in a Bottle.”

Thursday, June 13, 2024

I’m often on the verge of a catastrophic gaffe, super gluing something that isn't broken, jamming the wrong-size diesel nozzle into the tank and wondering why it wouldn’t go. But I catch myself most times.

The satellite TV dish on the roof across the street waits dumbly for a sign from God.

When I work from home I follow tedious and repetitious patterns, to the coffee maker, the microwave, the guitar. The washing machine sometimes. The box cutter to open boxes. A conversation with a cat. Like a mouse on a wheel, or more than a wheel. A wheel and a colored tunnel. It’s a life of delicious misery.


Sunday, June 02, 2024

When your tablet runs out of power it goes dark at once, with no regard for what you were doing, what you were watching on TikTok or YouTube. There’s nothing to click or swipe, no moving pictures, no light, no fire, just the shadowy reflection of your face.

Saturday, June 01, 2024

The children proceeded to the stage when called, some glum, some happy. Some came right away and others delayed for some reason, five seconds, ten. You could learn to recognize them from their gaits, from a distance, fast or slow, slouchy or straight. A girl almost running back up the aisle holding it up for her parents to see, uncertain look on her face. Eventually whoops and hollers drowned out the echoey announcements from the stage and you couldn’t tell which kid was which, only if they’d been called before or not.