First day on the job - MechanicNet
It was early 2003 and my old boss, former Internet Image CEO Lung Tsai called me. I answered on my Sprint One feature phone. He was trying to recruit me to his new company, MechanicNet. It was small - 10ish full time employees. They had some big deals lined up and needed a Director of Engineering. It would pay 90-95K USD plus stock options. I was making double that as a contract programmer at the time, so I politely declined. It was nice to feel wanted and my ego liked the title.
Over the next couple of days, I kept thinking about it. Sure, the contract job paid well but there was no there there. I wanted to do something my newborn son Aidan would be proud of. So with my wife Yang’s support (talk about generous), I called Lung back and told him that I would take the job, What I didn’t know was Lung had offered me the job because the CTO of MechanicNet had a spat with the CEO Steve Liao and had walked out of the company, quitting. But they had made up and by the time I called Lung back and I wasn’t really needed anymore. Lung didn’t share this detail and while he did seem less eager to recruit me, he stood by his offer. I only found this backstory years later. I also found out, the 90-95K salary offer, while quite low in industry at the time, caused MechanicNet to give its first significant raises to its significant employees.
Before I was “in”, I had to meet with the CEO, Steve. I guess it was kind of an interview but I didn’t know it at the time. I met Steve at a texmex chain in Pleasanton on a Sunday evening and he gave me his vision of the company over tacos and a beer. I heard his big pitch and in my mind was trying to relate that to the systems and software we needed to build and how it would actually work.
My first official day on the job was a road trip to visit three customers in Southern California. The actual task was one of technical support which they could do over the phone but I realized later these customers were not responsive to calls. So, I flew from Oakland to Burbank and, equipped with mapquest directions, a laptop, and our company software, drove to the first customer in Simi Valley. It was in an auto repair shop, in a nice neighborhood, and I parked across the street. I was nervous as I entered and told them what I was here for. The wife half of ownership took me to the back office - a narrow hall of a room - and sat me down. “Last time you guys were here, you broke our printer,” she said. I didn’t know there was a last time. I tried to be helpful and worked on getting the printer working. I asked about what Win95 era PC to install our software on, and was pointed at a DOS machine. I “think”, I got the printer working but could not get our software working due to some dialup network issues. I was glad to be out of there by 11am.
The next stop was in an industrial, urban part of Los Angeles. Very big and professional shop. 16 bays or so. The shop manager was a young guy, maybe 30, sharp and fit. He walked me to the offices upstairs. A large open floor plan office with large windows overlooking the bays. He sat me down in front of a computer and with a serious voice said, “last time you guys ran your software here, it hung our bay machines, so don’t run your software." He repeated, “don’t run the software.” The whole point of my trip was to install and run the software, so I was at a loss for what to do, I was feeling some pressure after the failed effort at the first shop. So, I waited a bit. It really shouldn’t cause problems with the other machines. A waited a bit more. And then ran it. Immediately, and I mean immediately, a voice from the bays below yells up “Hey! I told you not to run that software!”. I played dumb and skunked out of there.
My next stop was to be my last for the day and it was in the general direction of the airport, Anaheim. The flight was something like 5:30pm and it seemed like I had time until I got onto the 10. The 10 (I think it was the 10 anyway, I don;t know LA freeways that well) was barely moving. The cute car in front of me had a cute woman driving and I guess I was staring so she flipped up her rearview mirror. At around 4pm, I called the office and spoke to the CTO and told him I didn’t think I could make it to the third place. And that turned out to be fine. (The pressure I was feeling to get to the third shop was not shared.) I got to the airport and even though I went 0-3, I was feeling jazzed. Director of Engineering. Day one on the job. About to get on a plane and fly home. And then I couldn’t find my boarding pass and the familiar frantic me returned.
Years later, I had realized this was a kind of test by the CEO. He had told me about doing a similar thing to other employees to see if they had the grit to do the job. One of them passed the test by taking a redeye and saving the company hotel costs. Another failed the test when he asked for someone to make copies of collateral for him. I think I got a C+.