Last we spoke, David had been fired, I was developing a goal map and polishing my resume. I said I would ask Jesper for a budget and a raise, but it turns out he had other plans.

The Lead Up

Jesper never liked David. He agreed to take David on board in order to get the cash from an investor who (rightly) didn’t trust Jesper to grow the business. I think Jesper’s plan was always to sabotage David and get him canned. He succeeded.

Jesper never approved of David’s expenditures — Jesper simply doesn’t believe in long term investment. It’s like that portion of his brain was extracted surgically. If it doesn’t produce cash in Jesper’s hand that day — that moment — then it was bullshit, period.

He didn’t like David spending money on my infrastructure project, or on me for that matter. He wasn’t on board with renovations. He didn’t like bonuses, hiring needed administrative staff, or spending time on documentation. Everything I stand for at Ideal is bullshit to Jesper.

This of course is why everything from shipping to accounting was haphazard, and why any competent professionals still working at Ideal are always frustrated — they would try to design the systems that would allow the business to scale, but Jesper would undermine them always. For example, because no one had thought to make the various systems talk to each other (before I came along with my infrastructure project), a major portion of Nick’s job was to reconcile the accounting and customer system to make sure people who had support could get it. He spent at least a quarter of his day, every day, just verifying that people who were calling actually should have been in the system in the first place. It was a waste of his time, and a waste of the customer’s time as well. If the system was reconciled, or if they drew from the same data source to begin with, he wouldn’t ever have to do that. Instead he could do his real job, which was to sell support contracts.

I sat in more than one meeting and listened to Jesper admonish Nick: stop reconciling the system, and just make more sales calls. So it went.

Sales Tactics

There’s a common sales tactic that unethical guys like Jesper like to use that goes like this: get your target to agree to something trivial, which will make them more likely to comply with a larger request you have planned for the future. If necessary give a concession. Do not follow through on your concession — by that time the deal is made because the person has learned to comply with you, so you’ve gotten what you want by merely appearing to have conceded, even if you don’t actually hold up your end of the bargain.

So a couple weeks ago in the interest of maneuvering into a stronger negotiating position, I agreed to help Jesper. He had a problem because one of our systems had been designed very poorly, and instead of automating a fairly trivial portion, we were cutting different builds for each customer that needed this feature. Of course Jesper didn’t want to hear about the two weeks we could spend to make the problem go away forever — he just wanted it fixed right now, today.

We had a charming little heart to heart: I told him I’d help, but implored him to let us build the automation we needed. He said yes, he was totally on board with that. He wanted the company to grow, he realized we need to organize, and he wants to let us.

So I agreed for the first time in my career at Ideal to do some bullshit work that shouldn’t have existed in the first place, just to get to the point that the team could move on.

Case Closed

Fast forward to last week, Jesper holds a meeting with the entire development team and a couple other people. He explains that Ideal isn’t trying to grow at all, and we don’t need any darn “processes” or anything. We don’t have time for testing, we don’t have time for planning.

Further, says Jesper, he’s putting “someone” in charge of development. Of course I’m waiting for the punchline since that person is me and he knows it. Well it turns out that Jesper, who is from Croatia, likes his buddy Juka more than he likes me. Juka is also Croatian, and he works for me on the dev team. Or, I should say, he used to work for me — as of that meeting, I worked for him.

I didn’t call him out on the political move, because it was pointless. Jesper knew what he was doing, and pointing out that he had just handed me a demotion wouldn’t have been news. I did voice my concern about his direction. I tried to pitch the case for process, and planning, but he wasn’t having it.

Another team member piped up. What about the documentation?, he asked. We needed it for our regulatory requirements, and we had been working on it despite Jesper’s insistence that we not. That’s because I wanted it. I wanted it because Walter and David needed it, and because we as a team needed to organize our knowledge and workload by documenting it anyway. Now that I wasn’t in charge, what was to become of the documentation?

No more documentation, Jesper says, dismissively. The same team member: Ok…? Prompting Jesper for more information. With a wave of the hand, Jesper says we’ll hire a consultant next quarter when money’s not so tight.

I’m darkly amused — I know that Jesper is pulling a fast one to get my guy to shut up. His “consession” doesn’t even address the real issues, but it sounds nice, I suppose. This is what he does, he’s a sales guy. Many people at the company are variously aware that Jesper does this, and no one actually believes he will ever follow through. I don’t plan to say anything, but another developer is stifling laughter, and I can’t help it. I laugh.

Jesper shoots me a withering look. What’s funny?

Nothing, I’m fine, go on.

No, what’s funny? He wants a fight.

I give it to him.

Jesper, it’s bullshit. You say that stuff all the time, we’ll get a consultant. We’ll have a feature freeze. We’ll all get bonuses. It’s nonsense, you’re just saying it to get Kyle to shut up. Just like two weeks ago we talked about the company growing and getting serious with development, now that’s out the window. There isn’t going to be a consultant to do the documentation — when you realize you need it, you’ll tell us two days before it’s due and we’ll print out a bunch of bullshit like the last time we skated on this stuff, and then we’ll pray.

Jesper didn’t really like that so much. Jesper is a big guy — 6′6” perhaps. His face flushed. He looked like he was going to jump up and take a swing. He swaggered, telling me he could hire anyone he wanted. He had been doing it since he was 19, he said.

I replied that he could hire anyone he wanted to, but he wouldn’t hire anyone to do the documentation. There’s no money in documentation, right?

What have you done that I can sell? He says to me, asking me for an example of a working product that’s in customers’ hands. I don’t do that, I say.

Exactly. Maybe I’ll just stop paying you, eh? He accent gets thicker as he froths at the mouth.

Are we done here? He asks the room, daring the silent crowd to speak up. Hearing nothing, he storms out, and everyone files out the room, sort of dazed.

Lack of Work

If one were to call Ideal, and ask about my time there, you’d get Ben, our CFO and my friend. Ben would say two things. First he’d say, Ken was laid off due to “lack of work.” That’s the standard line for a “general discharge” from Ideal. Then he’d say, here’s my personal number, can you call me back after business hours?

Ben knows what went on. Jesper didn’t talk to me after the meeting. Jesper talked to Ben, who convinced him to give me a severance package before canning me. It must have been really difficult for Ben to ask me into his office. I made it super easy for him: I told him that I couldn’t continue working there, and that I’d already lined up a couple contracts in preparation for my departure.

This made it really easy for Ben to say in a chipper voice: Sounds great! So I’ll keep you on the payroll until the 31st, and that’ll be that?

Ah, I realized at this moment by Ben had called me in. I had practically quit just now, but it was his role to fire me.

Should I come in? I ask.

Um… I don’t think Jesper wants to see you here.

Cool, three week vacation then, huh?

Looks like it. Listen, stay in touch. We’ll go out for drinks soon, and by the way… if you have any opportunities keep me in mind.

My New Direction

So The last six months have been somewhat of a waste. I learned a lot, but I didn’t achieve any of my major goals. I said there would be bumps!

I have to say in all honesty though, I felt fantastic walking out the building that day. My guys helped me clear out my office after I told them, and I was gone. I had the goofiest looking grin ever on my smug little face. I lost to Jesper the bulldozer, but I didn’t mind. I’m not competitive in that sense. I sometimes wonder if that puts me at a disadvantage.

I’ve been caught off guard once or twice during this last week as I mentioned the end of my employment in passing: of course most of the time it’s a bad thing when a person says “So, I lost my job the other day…” but what I mean is “I don’t have that crap clogging my days anymore, I feel
great!” So that’s why I’m hesitant to tell people now — I don’t want consolations when congratulations are in order!

I’ve had a productive couple weeks, looking for contracts and possibly employment to keep my cash flow in hand.

I’ve been entertaining an offer from a company across the country from me. I would be making substantially less than I made at Ideal, but I would be telecommuting, and I’m going to negotiate for a four day work week. That way I can work on my side projects in order to monetize them, which is more stable than full time contracting, I think.

That’s one possibility, but I plan to do a real goal map tomorrow to generate new ideas. In any case, nothing is lost, just clarified — I’m not sorry I made the jump from Acme to Ideal, and although I’m disappointed that I couldn’t accomplish more there, I’m confident that I’m more savvy now than when I started, and that much closer to winning big.