Chapter 14: The New Team’s First Assignment

The holidays were an enjoyable reprieve from the hectic work schedule Austin endured for months. Tonya’s parents made the trip to Indiana to be with them for Christmas Day. The kids loved the attention of two more adults in the house. Tonya’s dad was at times challenging. He was diagnosed with heart problems, put on a daily regimen of aspirin, and told he needed to exercise, eat more vegetables, and lose weight. He took the news like most of his peers. In one ear and out the other.

The sale of the company completed without a hiccup and the two companies were officially combined on the first of January. That was when the HR changes were also official and Rachel was promoted to VP, Austin a manager reporting to her, and Jackie and Stephanie reported to Austin. It wasn’t until after the re-org that Austin found out Rachel had three directors of other teams also reporting to her. In hindsight, it made sense that she would not be a VP over only three employees.

Before the New Year, Rachel had given the three of them a heads up on their first assignment. She also gave Austin the background on his replacement. She was a manager at the other company and had extensive experience as a manager, so Austin did not need to do much in the way of a transition.

With only three on the skunk-works team, Austin, Stephanie, and Jackie were always on a call with one another. They typically started their day with a call at 8:00, reviewed what they learned the day before, and then decided who would tackle the new work they uncovered in their discussion.

“What the fuck kind of stupid-ass name is Morders?” said Jackie.

Stephanie was nodding her head in agreement. “I get it – Mobile Orders – but yeah it sounds ominous and like nothing I’d want to download to my phone.”

“Sounds like someone had a rough weekend,” commented Austin.

Jackie took a large gulp of coffee. “Sorry, yeah, it was a long weekend. Alex was told he was getting a promotion at the first of the year, then his boss double-crossed him and gave it to relative new hire. Alex thinks his boss and the newbie were hooked up before she got the job and have been playing like they are strangers for the past two months.”

“That’s a load of bunk,” said Stephanie.

“It is, but there’s nothing he can do about it now.” Jackie paused, then offered the deeper reason for the long weekend. “And now, Alex is taking this is a blow to his manhood. To his ability to provide. He thinks I don’t want to be with him because he can’t succeed in business.”

“That’s even a bigger load of bullshit,” Stephanie said with a more forceful tone.

““It is, and he’ll get over it, but he had his ego shook.”

“Yeah, that’s too bad. I hope it works out. He can always submit some resumes. The market is hot right now and he can probably find something else fairly quickly.”

“That’s what I told him,” Jackie said. “At first he was reluctant, but he may start looking. He said he’d give it a week to see how the new dynamic plays out on the team.”

Austin opened his notebook. He felt like a real old-timer when he wrote anything down on paper, but he found it easier to keep track of his to-do list with pen and paper and not yet another application.

“The app name, Morders, is first on the list. Jackie, you already brought it up. We’re a long way from a deal, but start some market analyses to see what kind of name people react favorably to. If we close this acquisition, we’ll want to move quickly to change the name.”

“Stephanie, how is the team-by-team comparison going? I know you’re only able to see what they have online, but have you made any progress?”

“Some. Based on the number of VPs, two, and directors, one, that they have listed on their website, they are pretty small. Maybe thirty employees in total. To me it seems like we’ll be able take their VP of product and slot him into a similar parallel role to our product VP. Not sure where the other VP, or the director, will fit. Individual contributors developing the product will stay as a group. The rest will likely be assimilated into similar teams, HR to HR, etc.”