Nebulously bad feelings
2003-09-26 01:52![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chipotleThe afternoon at work was more than a little frustrating--an endless battle to run what should have been very simple queries. Excel locked up. Access locked up. Mozilla locked up, when I was trying to download a demo version of Crystal Reports, ironically.
This was capped off by a surprise all-hands meeting to reveal information that was supposedly very confidential, but which I see now has already been officially posted on company forums: CEO Tom Melcher resigned today.
Now, speaking generally it isn't necessarily bad when a CEO leaves a startup. There's a perception that people who are good at founding companies aren't necessarily as good running them, and there's some truth to that--particularly in the tech world, there's a stark difference between a company's design and implementation phase and the maintenance phase. For a company that's as big as an IBM, people can gravitate to their best location--visionaries can be in charge of the R&D group. For a small company, it's not always that easy. Sometimes "vision" just isn't what a company needs as a direction.
The flip side of that is, of course, that sometimes vision is what a company needs as a direction. While There's implementationhas been by a small team of brilliant people that's completely intact, There's original vision and design was by two people. One of them all but left the company a few months ago to work on what could be described in a non-NDA-breaking way as a related but independent project. The other left today. There's absolutely no question that the overall thrust of the company's product/service is a reflection of the CEO's vision and enthusiasm; this is, as he told interviewers, something he's been dreaming of since he was a teenager.
So the question is, is this the right time in the company's history to make that shift? Sometimes changing even a good leader takes you to great places. Coming from Tampa, I can tell you that fans there screamed loudly when the Bucs sacked coach Tony Dungy and replaced him with Jon Gruden--and of course, Gruden led the team to its first Superbowl in his first year.
Nobody would have described Dungy as a visionary, though, so maybe that's a bad analogy. You'd describe Steve Jobs as a visionary, perhaps--but also a man who fostered a terrible management culture at Apple. That led to him being pushed out by Jon Sculley, which of course led to...
Maybe that's not an analogy we want, either.
I don't know that this directly affects my position, but today as a whole left me feeling uncertain again. Earlier this year, a friend found himself both being uncertain about whether his supervisor wanted him to stay and not being too enthusiastic about staying himself. I'm particularly sympathetic to that right now.
This was capped off by a surprise all-hands meeting to reveal information that was supposedly very confidential, but which I see now has already been officially posted on company forums: CEO Tom Melcher resigned today.
Now, speaking generally it isn't necessarily bad when a CEO leaves a startup. There's a perception that people who are good at founding companies aren't necessarily as good running them, and there's some truth to that--particularly in the tech world, there's a stark difference between a company's design and implementation phase and the maintenance phase. For a company that's as big as an IBM, people can gravitate to their best location--visionaries can be in charge of the R&D group. For a small company, it's not always that easy. Sometimes "vision" just isn't what a company needs as a direction.
The flip side of that is, of course, that sometimes vision is what a company needs as a direction. While There's implementationhas been by a small team of brilliant people that's completely intact, There's original vision and design was by two people. One of them all but left the company a few months ago to work on what could be described in a non-NDA-breaking way as a related but independent project. The other left today. There's absolutely no question that the overall thrust of the company's product/service is a reflection of the CEO's vision and enthusiasm; this is, as he told interviewers, something he's been dreaming of since he was a teenager.
So the question is, is this the right time in the company's history to make that shift? Sometimes changing even a good leader takes you to great places. Coming from Tampa, I can tell you that fans there screamed loudly when the Bucs sacked coach Tony Dungy and replaced him with Jon Gruden--and of course, Gruden led the team to its first Superbowl in his first year.
Nobody would have described Dungy as a visionary, though, so maybe that's a bad analogy. You'd describe Steve Jobs as a visionary, perhaps--but also a man who fostered a terrible management culture at Apple. That led to him being pushed out by Jon Sculley, which of course led to...
Maybe that's not an analogy we want, either.
I don't know that this directly affects my position, but today as a whole left me feeling uncertain again. Earlier this year, a friend found himself both being uncertain about whether his supervisor wanted him to stay and not being too enthusiastic about staying himself. I'm particularly sympathetic to that right now.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-26 08:31 (UTC)Were there any reasons?
no subject
Date: 2003-09-26 09:05 (UTC)I hope I'm wrong
Date: 2003-09-26 10:38 (UTC)I'm left thing... I don't know, a whole lot of things. That the Board of Investors decided to hang him out to dry, because the pricing for the beta testors was so overwhelming good that no one complained; that if it has been 'just right', half the people would have complained. In part, Tom saying, promising, over and over in essence "We love you, we're not going to screw you" isn't compatible with "Well, we're looking at the best way to make money off you." I had a real feeling of truth and integrity, and now that he's gone, will the successors feel obliged to keep his promises.
Or will it be, "Well, we said lifetime, but we meant 1 year" and "Well, we said we wouldn't reset accounts, but..."
Yes, I want the programmers to be paid, yes I want the staff to be paid, yes I think you're all working way harder and a lot of the users complain too much, and are too impatient, but... some things are a little more important than the bottom profit line. This is a communication tool, it's fun. It's the people, and the atmosphere, and that's really hard to achieve, I think. Harder to keep, perhaps. If it turns into "how much can we screw with them, and keep them paying", will it stay fun? Will it still be fun if everyone comes on with a "edge of tolerance" chip on their shoulder, waiting for the next bug, or the next bitching session to unleash a torrent of negativity.
As it is, I'm suddenly hesitant. Eagerly thinking of the things I might buy, now I'm feeling I should perhaps hold off dropping even more money on virtual possessions. Hell, for all I know THERE might not even come up tonight. How many more people feel this way?
It feels like it's over. Like the dreamers are gone, and the abatoir accountants have shown up. I have this vision that I'll be sitting in some work-related meeting years from now, using a biz-stripped version of THERE, thinking "I remember when this was fun, and now it's turned into only a telepresence app" with the buggies and boards long gone... because that it's more profitable that way.
Dammit, even the Dreamcast lasted longer.
Re: I hope I'm wrong
Date: 2003-09-26 11:05 (UTC)Unless we run into some serious software problems, I suspect There will still be here today when you log in and for the foreseeable future, and even if we do run into problems, our on-call engineers, of which I am one, will be working hard to fix them as soon as possible.
Heh. As I described in my last journal entry, even.
Re: I hope I'm wrong
Date: 2003-09-26 11:24 (UTC)imminent sale/merger, as some people have theorized), and I don't think
it's going to appreciably change course for the foreseeable future. I
doubt Tom's attempts at building relationships with the members was
faulted by anyone, either. And, Tuftears is absolutely right in that
there are some pretty brilliant people lurking around here at all
levels.
I have a couple concerns, some of which I realize I can't expound on
publicly. The ones I can, I suppose I've already gone into. But there's no reason to assume that any offered deals are going to be revoked or that any promised features aren't going to materialize.
Re: I hope I'm wrong
Date: 2003-09-26 11:43 (UTC)Re: I hope I'm wrong
Date: 2003-09-26 11:44 (UTC)Hmm, making me wonder now if any of the bugs I've found made it your way.
Re: I hope I'm wrong
Date: 2003-09-26 11:47 (UTC)