Chapter 12: A Major Impediment

August 8, 1991, Chicago, Illinois

“Good morning, Babe! How was the night shift?”

“I should have started my maternity leave last week,” she sighed.

“Are you OK, Jess?” Kara asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. Well physically. We had a bad MVA last night. Three young children. The car ended up under a semi.”

“Did they make it?” I asked.

Jessica sighed and shook her head. We stopped walking and Kara and I put our arms around her. And to my utter shock, my wife started crying. We stood there for a good five minutes before Jessica regained her composure, and we started walking again, now with Kara and me having our arms around Jess.

“Do you need to talk about it?” Kara asked gently.

Jessica shook her head, “There isn’t really anything to talk about. I just kept wondering what I would do.”

“The parents lived?” I asked.

“The mom. The dad was driving and was killed on impact and declared dead at the scene.”

“That’s horrible!” Kara gasped.

“I’m sorry I cried,” Jessica said.

“Are you kidding?” I replied. “I feel like crying at that story! I can’t imagine what I would do in such a situation and I don’t want to!”

We walked the rest of the way in silence and when we arrived home, Jessica went to take a shower. Kara went with her and I went to the kitchen to make breakfast.

“Daddy!” Birgit said gleefully.

I chuckled, “Another naked breakfast, Pumpkin?”

“My purple shirt is dirty! I want to wear purple! Abbie is washing it!”

I just shook my head and went to the fridge to get the eggs. Abbie came out of the laundry room.

“Seriously?” I chuckled.

“Do YOU want to argue with her?” Abbie asked.

“Hell no! I lose every time!”

“Exactly!”

Jessica and Kara came into the kitchen about ten minutes later.

“Birgit, sweetie, go put some clothes on!” Kara laughed.

“Forget it, Honey,” I said. “She wants her purple shirt and it was in the hamper. Abbie started a laundry load. Sit down and I’ll get your breakfast on the table in a few minutes.”

They did and five minutes later I set out waffles, eggs, bacon, and juice.

“We never did finish that conversation last night,” Jessica said.

“You had to go to work, and now I have to go to work,” I said. “I’m not upset. We can finish on Saturday.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

Our conversation about Fawn, about what Jessica had known, and how I felt, had run right into having to walk her to work. And given the night shift, and her emotional state because of the accident, I didn’t think it was necessary to talk about it immediately. Fawn was safely in New York and I was here. We needed to resolve our disagreement over what should have been said and when, which was a common theme recently. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see Doctor Green this week because of Jessica’s schedule, but I was seeing Doctor Bradford Monday morning.

“Are you still going back to the office after karate?” Kara asked.

“I need to,” I said. “I’m going to work until midnight. I just have too much to do and not enough time. In fact, because we won’t be walking Jess to work starting Monday, I plan to go in right after I exercise and work until dinner.”

“You’ll burn yourself out!” Jessica protested.

“As long as I eat right, exercise, and sleep, I’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure, Tiger.”

“I’m sure.”

August 9, 1991, Chicago, Illinois

“Steve, your appointment is here,” Keri announced.

“My office, please.”

A minute later Kimmy escorted the second candidate for Greg’s role into my office. She was about my height, had short, close-cropped reddish-brown hair, and wore horn-rimmed glasses.

“Hi, I’m Steve Adams.”

“Hi, Samineh Soleymani!” she said with a bright smile. “Call me Sam!”

“Coffee or tea?” Kimmy asked.

“Tea please,” Sam said.

“For two,” I grinned.

Kimmy was back a moment later with a pot of Earl Grey, though it would need to steep for a few minutes before I poured it.

“Did Pencom explain the process?” I asked.

“Yes. I took the entire day off.”

“Good. We hope to do this in a single round.”

“How many candidates are there?” she asked.

“Two. But, we’re not committed to hiring either you or the other candidate. If neither of you are what we want, we’ll ask Pencom for two more candidates.”

She smiled, “No problem. You’ll hire me!”

I chuckled, “I see Steve Markman prepared you properly!”

“He did say that if I wanted to have a chance, I had to be confident, and that with you, there was no such thing as arrogance!”

“Not so long as you can back it up,” I said. “All that counts here is performance. We reward it. And we don’t tolerate underperformers.”

“Have you had many of those?”

“Only a few, and early on. We make it clear up front as Pencom did for you.”

“They were clear you run a pure meritocracy, but I also understand the management team were all your friends before you hired them.”

“We were five friends from IIT who decided to start the company, plus Penny over there.”

“Is she your assistant?” Sam asked.

“Only because Steve needs serious assistance!” Penny laughed from her workstation.

“I taught Penny to program when she was fourteen and we’ve been coding side-by-side ever since. She did take a minor detour to get married, have her baby, and finish college, but this is her office as much as mine.”

“As much as?” Penny laughed. “Who does all the programming work in here?”

“Quiet!” I chuckled. “Nose back to the grindstone, young lady!”

Penny laughed and turned back to her workstation.

“What just happened?” Sam asked, puzzled.

“I own the company, but I’m only in the CEO role temporarily. Julia Kallas, our CTO, ran the company for the first five years. In a few years, I’ll bring someone in to run things, but for now, I’m CEO and trying to code part time.”

“So it’s true you want to be a pure coder and not manage?”

“That would be my dream job. So, let’s talk about you.”

We spoke for about fifteen minutes before I called Penny over to do her part of the interview, while I went to Elyse’s office to have a status call with Jamie.

“Not much has changed,” he said. “The depositions are scheduled, and we’re arguing over discovery. We won most of our arguments in that regard, though the magistrate will review those decisions after the depositions. It’s possible some of those decisions could be reversed. So far, we are required to turn over neither our complete customer list nor source code. We will probably have to turn over the competitive deal list and the conversion list.”

“Those don’t really bother me because BLS could produce those lists from their own records. And given that we don’t buy business by discounting, there isn’t anything they’ll find there.”

“I agree. Of more concern are the depositions they requested at the customers we took from them. Non-technical people might well say things that aren’t accurate and which we’ll have to counter.”

“Julia provided all the records you requested, correct?”

“Yes. I have to say your meticulous records are going to make my job much easier. The handwritten notes of each task that was done, backed up by detailed invoices are going to be difficult for BLS to counter anything we say as to what happened.”

“How good are their records?” I asked.

“I can’t say for sure, but the way they’re talking in the discovery hearings, they have little or nothing beyond invoices with little to no detail.”

“You know, we should demand all of their design documents,” I said. “Then we compare theirs to ours, and I guarantee we can show they copied from us, rather than the other way around. I’m not talking counter-claims, but making it look so bad for them that they withdraw the claim. Of course, that didn’t work with Brandon Littleton, who should have never gone to trial after he was embarrassed at the IIT hearing.”

“Speaking of him, your deposition is September 3rd at 9:00am. In their offices.”

“Been there; done that. I’ll put it on my calendar.”

“Jamie,” Elyse said. “Would you send me a running invoice please? I’m trying to plan expenses for the rest of the year.”

“I’ll fax it over as soon as we’re done. Remember, Nelson, Reed, and Pulver are covering a portion of the costs.”

We finished our call and I went back to my office. Sam was in with Julia, and then would see Dave, Jeri, Zo, and Tasha. She was having lunch with several of the team members as well. At the end of the day, I’d speak to her for a few minutes. That gave me plenty of time to do some programming. I ate at my desk, and perused the Usenet newsgroups.

“This is a totally cool idea!” I said.

“What’s that?” Penny asked.

“Something called the ‘World Wide Web’ project. There’s a post in the group alt.hypertext from some guy in Switzerland named Tim Berners-Lee. It’s a way of linking documents together to make it easy to navigate them. If we could do it with our manuals, you could click on a word and it could take you to a definition, then bring you back. I absolutely have to get that leased-line to UofC I talked with them about last year.”

“It can’t work over a modem?”

“Not if I want to create content myself for others to see. Plus, being able to retrieve files by FTP instead of UUCP would be huge.”

“Interesting. I guess I need to read up on this.”

“You have an account on this Unix system. Just login and use ‘nn’ to read news. Subscribe to alt.hypertext and you can read the proposal.”

I finished my lunch, answered some e-mails, and then got into my zone for the afternoon, and cranked out quite a bit of code. Tasha brought Sam back to my office at the end of the day.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think you should hire me. Right here. On the spot.”

I chuckled, “I do have to talk to the rest of the team.”

“Go on. I’ll wait!” she grinned.

“You’re that certain?”

“Positive.”

“And this is a job you want?”

“Would I be here otherwise? I’m no more interested in wasting your time than my own!”

I nodded, “Have a seat. Penny, let’s round everyone up in the conference room.”

Five minutes later, twelve of us were in the conference room, including Elyse and Kimmy.

“She basically demanded I hire her right now, on the spot,” I said in response to Julia’s query.

“Now that’s bold!” Julia laughed.

“It tells me that she paid attention to what the recruiter told her,” I said. “She was also dressed in casual clothes, exactly as instructed. That was the one issue I had with the first candidate - he came dressed in an expensive suit when the instructions had been to come dressed casually. When I’d asked about it, he said that he would never go to an interview without a suit. When I’d asked about the instructions, he’d said he felt that we were just making an allowance for someone who had to come straight from a job or return to one. But, think about the instructions and guidance we gave the recruiter. They were quite clear. And that was my real issue with Joe Janicke yesterday.”

“You’d really exclude someone for wearing a suit?” Tasha asked. “I thought John sort of proved we didn’t care!”

John Reynolds was the ‘punk’ we’d hired. He’d slowly begun dressing closer to ‘business casual’, but still sported bleached-blonde hair with various colors on the spikes, depending on his mood.

“It’s not about the suit. It’s about following directions. If I told you to wear a business pant-suit or skirt and jacket to an interview, would you show up in blue jeans?”

“No. But he was dressed better, not worse.”

“So?” Terry interjected. “We expect people to follow directions here. We don’t stifle innovation or creativity, but when someone makes a decision, we follow it. It would be chaos otherwise.”

“We’re getting off topic,” Penny said. “Are we hiring this chick to be the new Greg or not?”

“Got a hot date, Penny?” I teased.

She and Terry looked at each other, then she winked at me. I wasn’t sure if she was teasing or if they did have plans.

“Does anyone think we shouldn’t hire her?” Julia asked.

“Is that the question we want to ask?” Elyse interjected.

“I figured it was easier to see if there were any outright objections,” Julia said. “But it doesn’t appear there are.”

“Is she going to be happy here?” Jeri asked. “She’s been working as a contractor at AT&T doing some serious work on phone switching systems.”

“She told me she’s tired of doing that and wants some new challenges,” Zo said.

“Here’s the bottom-line question,” I said. “Is she someone you all would accept as a Principal Software Engineer? Someone who would be a mentor?”

“She’s a hell of a lot more personable than Greg!” Tasha said.

“That’s not exactly a high bar!” Debbie said, laughing.

“Any other input?” I asked.

There were head shakes so I sent everyone but Julia, Dave, and Elyse back to work.

“Yes or no?” I asked.

“Yes,” Dave said.

“Yes,” Julia said.

“I’m not sure we should decide today,” Elyse said.

“Will something change by Monday?” I asked. “Everyone’s impressions are fresh from yesterday and today.”

“No, I suppose not. OK. Sure.”

“I’ll have Kimmy draw up the hiring documents. I’ll make a verbal offer now. As we agreed, no negotiation on salary. And I made that clear to Steve Markman. Our salary schedules are what we offer.”

“Agreed,” Elyse said.

I thanked them and went back to my office. Penny’s bag was gone, and a quick glance showed that the rest of the ‘Gang of Four’ was gone. That meant they DID have plans. They were still thick as thieves and did everything together. And given all the hints, everything meant, literally, everything. I closed the door.

“You have the job,” I said.

“Of course I do!” she grinned.

“I’m sure they told you that we don’t negotiate salary, so the offer is exactly as Pencom described it. To the penny.”

“Well, the base is lower than I currently make, but the bonus potential is much better. You’ve paid a bonus every year?”

“For five years running, yes. But remember, that’s not guaranteed.”

“I remember. Your overall benefits package is way better than what SEI offers. So in the end, it’s a better deal for me. Not to mention that getting from Lansing to Lisle is a royal pain in the butt!”

SEI was the firm she worked for that had her assigned to AT&T.

“Kimmy is drawing up the paperwork. I’ll have a formal offer in your hands on Monday. We’ll courier it to your home address by the close of business.”

“Just have them leave it with the leasing office. I’ll pick it up there.”

“When can you start?”

“Let’s call it September 3rd. That’s the day after Labor Day. I need two full weeks to finish the project I’m working on and want some slop time in case it takes longer than I planned.”

We shook hands and I walked her out, and then went back to Elyse’s office.

“Done. She starts September 3rd. Want to walk home together?”

“Sure. Are you coming back again tonight after karate?”

“Yes. Jess has her last shift tonight and I know I’ll miss some time when the baby is born. I was thinking of coming in tomorrow after lunch. Jess will be sleeping, and Kara is having her old Chemistry Mafia group over for the afternoon.”

“You never hit on any of those girls!”

“No. I stayed the hell away from that group. Master’s-level chemistry makes my skin crawl!”

“About like Master’s-level finance?”

“Exactly!”

She shut down her computer and we left the office for the walk home.

“Think she’s a lesbian?” Elyse asked quietly.

I laughed, “Seriously? She wore comfortable shoes so that makes her gay? Or the close-cropped hair? Or the horn-rimmed glasses?”