Chapter 62: Conundrums

April 26, 1991, Chicago, Illinois

“I saw in the paper that the Penguins finished off the Capitals last night,” Dave said.

“They did! I’m not sure who they’ll face just yet, given the series between the Bruins and Canadiens is close. In the West, it looks like the North Stars are going to beat the Blues and the Oilers are going to beat the Kings. Now, on to business — how many people signed up for interviews?”

“An even dozen,” he said. “And I heard from Penny that Doctors Bauer and Driesson were encouraging the top students to sign up to interview with us.”

I chuckled, “Of course they were! But that’s not a bad thing. Did you get any feedback from Penny on any of the names? She’s graduating with this batch.”

“I ran them by her, and she gave me three names she thinks are the cream of the crop. Do you want to know them?”

I shook my head, “No. I’d rather go in blind and form my own opinions.”

“That has been your history!”

I pulled the BMW up to the gated professors’ parking lot and handed over the pass that Doctor Bauer had arranged for me. I’d used it the day before when I’d lectured in Doctor Driesson’s class. Those kids were mostly Juniors, and there were a couple that had caught my eye as potential interns, though Dave wouldn’t be doing those interviews for another two weeks.

Dave and I got out of the car and headed for the Stuart Building, where we’d be conducting our interviews. Doctor Bauer had arranged for us to use a classroom for the day. We set out our things, and Dave went to Doctor Bauer’s office to let his assistant know we were starting. Two minutes after Dave came back, the first of the dozen candidates arrived.

We saw six during the morning, broke for lunch, then saw six more during the afternoon. Overall, I felt they were a good crop of candidates, though I knew Dave and the other team members were seeing students at three other schools. We’d also had a dozen inquiries based on our notice at the City Colleges. After we wrapped up the final interview, Dave took out his overall score sheet.

“First thing to do while everything is still fresh,” Dave said, “is to eliminate eight candidates, then rank the other four on a scale of one to a hundred.”

“Eliminate eight?” I asked.

“We have two positions. That gives us two possible candidates and two backups from each school. We’ll be deciding between eight candidates and eight backups when we do the final cut down to two, with two backups, minus anyone who accepts a job elsewhere. And don’t forget we’re likely to have one or two from the City Colleges that make the cut.”

“It’s your team,” I grinned. “I think I can strike four off the list pretty easily.”

I indicated which ones I felt were the weakest, and Dave agreed immediately with three of the names. He then proposed two other names to remove, and I agreed with those. That left us with seven names. We spent about fifteen minutes debating the candidates, and eliminated the candidate that I’d wanted to remove, plus two others. We then ranked the other four.

“Without prejudicing anything, how do these rank compared to the other schools?” I asked.

“It’s pretty close, but remember, the rankings are done by different teams, so things will change after the second round of interviews when we see all the candidates.”

“Sixteen? Wow!” I said.

“We’ll move them all through on two days next week. Then we’ll make the final decision right before finals at IIT. The other schools go a bit longer, as you know.”

“If you select any of these four, you don’t need to have them see me again,” I said. “No vetoes here.”

“Good. I’ll let you know in about ten days.”

“Excellent. Let’s get out of here!”

We packed up, let Doctor Bauer’s assistant know we’d finished, and headed for the car.

“Did you guys put in an offer on that house?” I asked.

“Yes. Bill Wyatt has been a huge help. Thanks for recommending him.”

“Where’s the house?”

“About two blocks from where Jeri’s parents live, but the house is less than half as big as theirs. Or yours, for that matter.”

“It’s just the four of you, unless you guys are working on number three!”

“Two is just fine, thank you very much!” Dave laughed. “I’ve seen the zoo at your house! The only downside is no guest bedroom and no finished basement. But I’ll talk to Gerald Brown about finishing the basement.”

“Talk to Jackie or Jeremiah first and see if they’ll draw your plans for you.”

“One step ahead of you! I already talked to Jackie. I didn’t ask her, because she was at work, but do you know when they plan to start their firm?”

“She’s supposed to send me a proposal and business plan sometime during the Summer, with the intent of starting on January 1st.”

“Cool. How’s Katy doing?”

“So far, so good,” I said. “She’s getting plenty of bookings. She’s not profitable just yet, but she was starting slowly so she could learn. As of right now, she’s fully booked for the entire fall. She did some ‘see the leaves change’ advertising that worked really well. She also did some kind of deal with a ski resort that has helped her fill up her reservations for the Winter. You guys should think about taking a trip out to see her.”

“Maybe next year’s vacation. Things are going to be hectic with a new house, two kids, and work. I’m glad to hear things are going well. Did you ever hear anything from Lauren?”

“No, and I didn’t expect to. Once she began acting the way she did, I told her to stay away. She sent two letters to Katy that I forwarded, but I refused to give Lauren Katy’s contact information. If Katy wants to talk to her, she’ll initiate it. I don’t think that will ever happen. Lauren cut out Katy’s heart and stomped on it, even worse than my sister did to Jorge.”

“That was pretty ugly,” Dave said. “He’s a nice, sensitive guy, and she treated him badly.”

“According to Abbie and Henry, Jorge and Trish are getting along really well. Personally, I think something’s developing there, but I have to stay completely out of it.”

“Changing subjects, baseball has started. Are you going to get tickets for Reds games?”

“Elyse is already on top of that,” I chuckled. “May 11th, which is a Saturday, and July 24th, which is a Wednesday.”

“Cool. I haven’t heard you talk much about NASCAR with all the hockey talk!”

“It’s been a crappy year all around. In the last three races, Bill only finished in the top-10 once, and that was last Sunday when he was eighth, Kulwicki hasn’t been in the top-10. He does have a full-time sponsor now, which is a good thing. I’m still planning on the race in Michigan in August.”

“Cool. What’s the problem with Bill?”

“A fucking blue car!” I growled.

“Wow!” Dave laughed. “Seriously?”

“It’s the only time in his entire career he hasn’t run a red car. Coors decided they wanted to use their ‘Light’ brand and demanded the car be painted blue. I know that he who pays the piper calls the tune, but I’d have told Coors to shove it and found a new sponsor if they didn’t relent.”

“Didn’t Kulwicki struggle to get one?”

“Sure, but Elliott is a past champion with a good team. He’d land a new sponsor if he wanted one.”

“You do have some funny ideas about the world, that’s for sure!”

“So I’ve been told!” I said with a grin.

May 3, 1991, Chicago, Illinois

Dave, Julia, Greg, Jeri, and I were in the conference room discussing the project plan for Nelson, Reed, and Pulver on Friday morning. I’d wished Jessica ‘Happy birthday’ when we awoke, and was looking forward to a nice dinner out and a wonderful celebration at home, though given her pregnancy, it would probably be a bit more muted than past birthdays.

“How long do you think it will take to dump and load the database?” Julia asked Greg.

“It’ll be reasonably fast,” he replied. “The hardest part was reverse engineering their database schema so that I could find a way to link the records the way we do. That’s why it took me four days out in Philadelphia. I have some code which will dump the records, and then I’ll put them on Steve’s Unix box and run some scripts that will massage the records so that it’s simple to import them with our standard backup/recovery programs. From the time I get the dump, I can have a working SQL database in about six hours, including programmatic validation.”

“That fits the weekend conversion plan,” Julia said. “They plan to run both systems for a couple of weeks, and do some double entry. But if everything works, they’ll decommission the old software at the end of that period.”

“It should,” Jeri said. “The big issue will be training. BLS does things differently from how we do it, and this firm is still using the DESQView version.”

“They do have Windows on a number of their machines,” Greg said. “But Ralph will need to work with them to get it on all of them. I think they’ll need a few new machines, too, because I saw a couple of old ‘286 boxes there.”

“I think I need to fly out and do a complete site evaluation,” Julia said. “We don’t want any surprises. Are we comfortable with the estimates in this proposal?”

Everyone nodded.

“When do you plan to fly out, Julia?” Dave asked.

“As soon as I can. They’re itching to start. I’ll finish the proposal, and include anything I find that needs to be done as a schedule to the proposal and contract. Who’s going to do the training?”

“That office is big enough that we need two people,” Dave said. “I think Jack and Jeri are the right people. Jack’s finished with the documentation for the new release, though it’s still being proofed. And Zo’s team is finished with all the changes for our release. There’s a bunch of cleanup to do, and some bug fixing for the last update to the DOS software, so they have some time.”

“Julia, did you see my note about the changes to the server hardware for them?” Greg asked.

“Yes. I’ll make sure that’s in the updated proposal.”

“I think that’s a wrap, then,” Dave said.

We filtered out of the conference room, and I went back to my office. Just as I sat down, Greg walked into my office and shut the door.

“When this project is finished, I’m going to leave,” he said.

I’d been expecting that for quite some time, and Dave, Julia, and I had all talked to Greg to try to convince him to stay. We obviously hadn’t been successful.

“Did you let Dave know?” I asked.

“This morning. He asked me to tell you myself.”

I nodded, “Grab a seat.”

We moved over to the couch and chairs.

“I’m guessing there isn’t any way I can talk you out of this,” I said.

He smiled, “It’s been great working here; it really has. But I need a change. I need to do something different.”

“Do you mind if I ask what?”

“An engineering firm that does custom code. They have projects similar to the one we did for Dante, and that’s all they do.”

“Sounds like the old Nuvatec where Dave and I used to work,” I said. “Based where?”

“Rockford. I told them I couldn’t start before July 1st, which should be plenty of time to finish this project. Honestly, the code is written and tested, and you could easily do the conversion if it takes longer. I also got them to agree to let me consult back here if needs be.”

“We’re going to be very sad to see you go,” I said. “Please stay in touch. We never know where our paths might lead in the future.”

He smiled, “Thanks for making this easy on me.”

“Greg, believe it or not, I want what’s best for you. I know NIKA will be fine. Yes, we’ll have to find someone to replace you, and that will not be easy, but you have to do what’s best for you. I mean that.”

“Thanks,” he said, standing and extending his hand.

We shook hands, and he left the office. I wasn’t surprised when Dave and Julia came in a minute later. Dave shut the door, and the three of us sat down.

“How do we go about replacing him?” Dave asked.

“It’ll be tough finding that kind of genius, and tough to recognize it right out of the gate,” I said. “We did with Greg, but that’s because his personality is what it is.”

“Would we hire them right into the ‘Principal Engineer’ role?” Julia asked. “That might cause some consternation.”

“If anyone here is worried about titles, I’ve failed miserably,” I said. “We gave Greg that title as a sop to keep him happy, and it worked for about a year. We all knew this day was coming. The first real question is whether we have anyone internally who could step up to that role? I’d really like it to be a technical leader, not a ‘lone wolf’ like Greg. Someone who could mentor, or that kind of thing.”

“You’re describing yourself, Steve,” Julia protested. “Isn’t that your role?”

“I suppose it is, but while I’m acting CEO, I just don’t have the time to do it. I suppose I could give up coding, but I would hate you both for having to do that, and I don’t think Dave wants to lose the twenty hours a week I give him.”

“Hell no!” he said firmly. “Those twenty hours are worth thirty to forty from anyone except maybe Penny, and she’s not full-time for another six weeks. In fact, I want him to get his sister into that CEO role as soon as the Board allows so I can get him back full-time!”

“Are any of the staff ready for that role?” I asked.

“The two people I’d say who are on that path are Jeri and Terry,” Dave said, “but they aren’t ready to do what you describe. Maybe with another five years of seasoning, but not yet. They aren’t leaders at this point.”

“Were we, when we started this circus?” Julia laughed. “We were a bunch of crazy college kids who decided to start a company. We managed!”

“With more than a little help from some actual adults,” I chuckled.

“True. But given your penchant for promotion from within, doesn’t it make sense to make it one of them?” Julia asked.

“You can NOT take Jeri off the legal software,” Dave said. “No way. No how. We’re in the middle of the designs for 4.1 and 5.0. Forget it. Terry’s on the medical side, and I could see replacing him as a programmer, though it would need to wait until we get the next release out in the Fall.”

“How about we hire three programmers now?” Julia suggested. “And leave the role open. We could divide up the work that Terry would normally do between several people, including the consulting team, since some of it is custom work like they do.”

“And the complex technical problems that Greg always dealt with?” I asked.

“We’ll just have to resort to brainstorming the way we did before we hired Greg,” Dave said. “Unless we want to go out and try to find someone.”

“Let me think about it for a few days,” I said. “I usually don’t make decisions about staff, but this time I think I need to.”

“It is your company!” Dave said.

“Yes, but me taking the decision out of Julia’s hands is a violation of the ‘Prime Directive’!”