It is a rambling, lengthy publish, very stream of consciousness and grumpy and considerably off the thread of telephony more often than not. However it’ll bounce the story from 2010 to the top of 2021. Be warned.
We left off final time in the summertime of my discontent. Laid off throughout the nice recession triggered… to place blame straight the place it belongs… by the very wealthy being sad at getting too small of a return on their billions… discovered me unemployed in middle-age. I used to be additionally in a Silicon Valley that had left behind its novice roots and was insisting on levels far in extra of the wants for a lot of positions… all the higher to assert they can’t fill positions with out extra H1-B visas being issued. So I used to be feeling fairly down.
I bumped into previous buddies and former co-workers, all likewise laid off, and most extra certified than me at virtually the whole lot, at EDD workshops and outplacement seminars, all with a light air of desperation about them because the Obama administration handed out cash through “quantitative easing” to the identical billionaires who triggered the disaster… the identical billionaires who get irate when you give a poor little one a free meal at college… whereas the unemployed frolicked on their meager weekly verify. Right here in California that was, and stays, $450 every week. Lots once I was 22, that was not a lot at age 45 with a spouse and little one at house, a mortgage to pay, and having simply spent a piece of change updating the kitchen.
Even my writing… I stored the weblog going… appears a bit extra grievance ridden than common, which is saying one thing for me. Trying again at July 2010 I used to be largely bitching again and again about Blizzard’s Actual ID plan, and thought so clearly unhealthy that even they realized it ultimately. Offended Wilhelm is offended.
Within the midst of sending out resumes and canopy letters and getting into them in my ever rising spreadsheet monitoring responses… which was a giant fats 1 in 30 over the course of the primary 120 entries… a good friend referred to as up. I had labored with him again at International Village when he was a contemporary school graduate, after which once more at Edify. He had moved on to a different firm, Tuvox, with another former Edify folks to attempt to… properly, make an built-in growth surroundings for simplifying the creation of speech apps… which was what Edify had been about… solely this time targeted on VXML.
I’ve written in regards to the damaged promise of VXML beforehand. See hyperlinks on the finish of the publish.
I could have, previously, glossed over what a nasty thought making a straightforward to make use of built-in growth surroundings for speech apps is. The Tuvox app could be my fifth such app, relying on whether or not or not you rely and IDE constructed on prime of one other IDE to simplify the event of particular sub-genres of speech apps, just like the voice banking app I discussed final time round.
Possibly “unhealthy thought” is simply too robust. They had been all usually good instruments in their very own means, that simplified and sped up speech app growth. The issue is that “actual” builders don’t need one thing straightforward, they need one thing that they will sort code into, and any try to put a layer, be it GUI or key phrases or pseudo code, between them and the precise output makes them bristle and stomp their ft and pout. They need to use that code snippet they discovered on Stack Overflow dammit.
So, mainly there isn’t an actual, professionally oriented market on the market for such growth environments, which inevitably leads any firm that makes one to need to type knowledgeable providers division to make use of the software to construct apps for purchasers who do not need any builders in any respect.
Which is what Tuvox ended up doing. However then someone at an organization referred to as West went out searching for one thing to assist bootstrap them into VXML, as they had been writing all their apps in some house brew code surroundings that actually simply used Notepad. So that they purchased Tuvox for the IDE… and perhaps the shoppers… actually that Tuvox had clients so introduced income to the desk didn’t damage… to make their IDE the default growth surroundings for speech apps going ahead.
This is smart additional down the web page
I’ll minimize to the chase and inform you that it didn’t work out. The devs would slightly write uncooked VXML in Notepad that use any kind of fancy key phrase based mostly quick minimize. Additionally, that West actually needed their devs to make use of the app appears doubtful given the at greatest temperate help it obtained as soon as it arrived.
West on the identical time purchased an Australian firm referred to as Holly Connects that had a VXML “voice browser,” which is the time period used for an IVR that makes use of VXML to drive calls. I used to be signed up as a result of my doubtful expertise with VXML certification to do the testing effort to get the Tuvox IDE to work with Holly, one thing that ought to have in all probability taken six months, however which I spun out into an 11 12 months engagement, largely based mostly on the truth that West had a bunch of particular necessities for the IDE that we needed to work by way of. That was the primary few years of the explanation why builders didn’t undertake it. We needed to repair all these issues!
We wanted emigrate the server facet from Home windows Server to Linux, change up how builds had been transfer from surroundings to surroundings, add in some new VXML choices, change the underlying database from MySQL to Postgres, and some dozen different issues I’ve forgotten.
So I obtained to stay round. I began as a contractor… which I hated, however beggars can’t be choosers and I wanted a paycheck… and finally was employed on as an everyday worker. The IDE carried on for some time, and was nonetheless in use once I was laid off, however solely as a result of there have been some apps nonetheless on it. I used to be engaged on one more simplified IDE for creating voice apps at that time, based mostly on a good dumber premise, however I’ll get to that.
There isn’t rather a lot fascinating in regards to the app at this level. The corporate was the fascinating bit.
I rant rather a lot about mergers and acquisitions, and I feel with good cause, as a result of I’ve been up entrance and middle throughout fairly just a few such transactions which at all times leaves virtually everyone worse off, save for just a few beneficiaries. Wall Road has license to make actually something worse for everyone as long as they will a minimum of faux shareholder worth was marginally inflated.
Earlier than I get to West, I need to clarify my opinion that mergers and acquisitions are by no means useful in any of the methods promised. They practically at all times hurt the shoppers, cut back market competitors, cut back worker headcount, and find yourself with the entire ecosystem round each firms struggling.
Mergers and acquisitions are executed for 2 causes, one for all sides of the deal.
The primary is on the patrons facet, which is to make the road go up. If a public firm will not be performing to Wall Road’s expectations, one certain hearth approach to repair that’s to amass a competitor. Any competitor will do, as long as they carry in some cash. Once you purchase one other firm, with inventory if potential, and definitely as little money as you possibly can handle, for accounting functions it’s a income and stability sheet impartial transaction. You’ve gotten traded one thing of worth, money and inventory, for one thing assumed to be of equal worth, the opposite firm. The corporate you purchase is at all times assumed to be value precisely what you paid for it until one thing is drastically incorrect.
That valuation might change later, however within the second it’s at all times an equal commerce, so any income from the corporate acquired routinely boosts that of the buying firm. We noticed that, for example, with the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Income was up for XBox due to Sweet Crush Saga and WoW and Name of Responsibility. Instantaneous win, line efficiently made to go up!
Possibly you may want the shoppers of the acquired firm or some asset or expertise, however it’s at all times to make the road go up. Then you definately make it go up additional by shedding all redundant employees, chopping the whole lot to the bone, and perhaps discontinuing merchandise that compete with merchandise you already had so as to drive clients to undertake yours, which is a gross sales increase too!
The second is on the promoting facet, as a result of there needs to be a purchaser and a vendor. The vendor is promoting to not make the road go up for his or her firm… the road would possibly even be taking place, or threatening to go down… however to money out. The vendor facet of an acquisition is nearly at all times pushed by someone desirous to receives a commission. No one sells as a result of they suppose the 2 firms can be stronger or in a greater market place or will serve clients higher or any of the press launch bullshit. That’s at all times, 100% lies. It’s at all times as a result of some main investor needs to receives a commission. The precise way forward for the corporate doesn’t enter into it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good, worthwhile enterprise that may proceed to run and generate income for many years, it should be destroyed if a significant shareholder needs their cash out for some cause.
Edify was offered to S1 to money out VCs. Edify was offered once more to Intervoice to money out extra buyers. Intervoice was offered to Convergys to appease the board of administrators. Tuvox, which had a tidy, secure enterprise, was offered to West to money someone out. Out on the planet, each acquisition it like that. T-Cell buys Dash, someone needs to money out. VMware buys Pivotal Labs, someone (Michael Dell) needs to money out. Broadcom buys VMware, someone needs to money out. Broadcom, on the enterprise to enterprise entrance, is an terrible firm that no person ought to do enterprise with if they’ve every other choice, being a latter day IBM in letting clients down… and I wasn’t a fan of VMware actually… however who cares, someone needed to money out.
The truth that West truly needed to make use of the Tuvox tech was considerably incidental, an excuse to make the acquisition. The precise buy included income, so made the road go up. That was the aim. Likewise with Holly. That they had clients and income and the road went up.
Which brings me round to West as an organization. Based again within the 80s in Omaha, Nebraska, its first massive success was doing the again finish and routing for the Psychic Hotline and different 976 numbers of that period. (Possibly I ought to have executed a publish about these. The Simpsons did an episode about them at one level!) They obtained into different strains, did name facilities and all types of different issues finally. However after preliminary success West ended up being an acquisition firm. The story of West is the story of finishing acquisitions to attain success… to make the road go up.
West was a mediocre firm, it stood out by no means, save for the truth that it went public (and later went non-public then went public once more then was purchased and introduced non-public once more) after which stored revenues going up by shopping for a pair firms a 12 months.
One of many causes I mock folks like Lars Wingefors, the fool operating the Embarrassment Group, is that these yokels in Omaha… not one visionary or Silicon Valley wunderkind within the bunch, only a bunch of stolid, work a day, mid-westerners getting stuff executed… primarily ran an acquisition Ponzi scheme for about 20 of the 30 years the corporate was impartial, simply piling on new firms, including their income to the entire, in order that shareholders had been, if not leaping for pleasure, a minimum of noticed the road going up a bit yearly.
I do know the Wikipedia article on the corporate is shy some acquisitions, however simply taking place the listing over time provides you a way of what they had been as much as. They knew the right way to purchase firms, spent the minimal quantity of effort and time assimilating them into the entire, then continued to roll on like some Katamari Damacy ball of disparate telephony considerations held collectively by little greater than that they reported to the identical government employees and board of administrators and all used the identical payroll technique.
They had been good at discovering firms that had buyers who needed to money out. That was the enterprise mannequin. All of the myriad little companies, they only needed to hold ticking, both making extra money or reducing prices, all in service of the road going up. West was a first-rate instance of an organization that wasn’t about making something specifically. It was simply there to generate profits and hold buyers completely happy by rising shareholder worth. They weren’t overtly evil. They had been, as an organization, truly sort of nice. I labored with individuals who had been there since they graduated from school. In comparison with the asshattery of Intervoice or S1 or the duplicity of Nuasis or the crass disregard of Convergys, West wasn’t a nasty place. Type of dumb at occasions, and at all times seeking to save a dime… I labored in three totally different buildings and eventually from house, every transfer a price reducing measure… however they stored the entire thing going.
It was much less a unified company than a bunch of impartial firms flying in free formation and held collectively by administrative capabilities like HR and payroll. Often the corporate would attempt to unify one thing, like getting us all to make use of the identical JIRA occasion… or a minimum of be on the identical JIRA plan… however largely everyone flew on and stored to their spot in formation. It was a semi-benevolent Laptop Associates mannequin. (CA would purchase firms, pare them to absolutely the bone, elevate help pricing for purchasers, and milk every purchase for all it was value. West was by no means that devoted to being assholes.)
The issue was that every group was extra targeted on price range than progress, of constructing the road go up by way of value reducing slightly than increasing markets. The entire “you want cash to generate profits” factor, investing in new issues, was largely absent. Management was administrative, capable of act as a caretaker however by no means poised to steer the corporate into new markets. Entropy was out largest subject. However what do you count on with just a few dozen firms that targeted on totally different areas. We had an asset administration group… a repo depot firm… that targeted on shopping for and reselling workplace furnishings purchased from bankruptcies after which offered to startups.
To counteract that, extra firms needed to be bought which solely elevated the issue. The road can’t go up endlessly. It’s important to do one thing that resets the road.
And so, half means by way of my tenure, West was acquired by a capital administration group… as a result of, once more, someone at West needed to money out. Whether or not they needed to money out as a result of they had been afraid the music would cease and the occasion would finish or as a result of they needed to place all of it into Bitcoin, I do not know. However, as famous, no person sells until the need to money out.
Jerry Yang had big affords for Yahoo, Google would have made him wealthy past… properly, in all probability now outdated goals of avarice… however he didn’t need to money out. (And he was extensively reviled on the time for not promoting out as it will have elevated shareholder worth.) Nonetheless, he was additionally a founder, and founders generally nonetheless care about their creations. Any CEO who isn’t a founder must be thought-about a mercenary, someone given a sinecure as a result of they’ve VC or Wall Road buddies or administration hair or can lie convincingly. If non-founder CEO stands up in entrance of the corporate and says he cares in regards to the product or the shoppers or (massive purple flag) says the corporate is sort of a household, that individual will promote you out the second it’s of their greatest curiosity whatever the consequence. However even founders get drained and money out finally. Edify had a founder CEO and he screwed us over to get his and went on to work for the VCs he helped promote us out.
West ended up being purchased by what I might name a second tier capital administration group, one whose technique appeared to be to have a look at was Berkshire Hathaway was doing after which attempt to do the identical. BH purchased an actual property firm, they purchased one. BH purchased a regional confectioner, they purchased one. BH purchased a telecom concern, they purchased… us.
West, was in fact, a capital administration moist dream, a number of firms to divide up, peel off, and both promote or carry public. They might spent a decade on West, make an actual meal of buffing up bits and items, making them shiny but hole, and promoting them off. A method or one other, they might money out. However first they needed to do the prep work.
Proper off the bat they modified the identify of the corporate. West didn’t have a tech vibe, and doubtless had a little bit of a dowdy popularity in no matter circles even bothered to debate it. They went with Intrado, the identify of one of many firms West purchased again in 2006 and which, coincidentally, was as soon as an Edify buyer that I did some work with round their warning system merchandise for nuclear energy vegetation and oil refiners, an auto-dialer to let you understand to shelter rather than evacuate instantly relying on the extent of catastrophe and the priorities of the buying entity… do they need to save everyone or would they just like the locals to shelter in place and never jam up the roads whereas the execs flee for security.
That’s simply my cynicism speaking on that one. I labored on the auto-dialer facet and had no perception into precise use and planning of the methods.
Then there was a re-org… about as non-nonsensical as each previous re-org as a result of how do you even set up a pile of disparate firms… just a few early, straightforward sell-offs to opponents (line went up for someone else, capital administration obtained a small money out)… after which it was time for the massive plan. For many people, it was going to be buzzword time as we might change into an agile cloud based mostly concern.
My group was going to… oh, you possibly can see this coming can’t you… right here it’s… make a straightforward to make use of built-in growth surroundings to make the event of voice apps straightforward. Solely, this time within the cloud. Additionally… and that is one other consistently recycled and really flawed thought I could not have talked about… it was going to be offered to clients “as is” and we had been completely not going to do particular, one-off customization for giant purchasers and blah blah blah.
Have I lined the dearth of demand for a straightforward to make use of IDE for speech app creation sufficiently thus far? I feel so.
In the meantime, the “take it or depart it” philosophy for enterprise apps falls aside the very second the gross sales staff thinks their bonuses is perhaps in jeopardy as a result of a possible deal hinges (of their thoughts) on a characteristic we don’t have. A substantial portion of my profession has concerned doing options for particular offers. There was an Edify launch that I known as the “Toys R Us” launch as a result of it had options only for that deal and so they had been the one ones to ever use it. (And I feel that deal fell by way of ultimately, which is usually the way it goes.) I’ve been round when we’ve got mutated the core of a complete product line to satisfy the wants of a single buyer… although that is actually because the product has no clients but and gross sales was determined to shut
By this level, I didn’t even blink on the prospect. You get a nasty rep when you’re at all times saying “we tried that earlier than and it didn’t work” or when you even ask “so how is that this going to be totally different than the final try?” so I gave up on that, feeling superb simply going alongside to see if the individual driving no matter the brand new plan is had something new that may alter the result of if they only needed to give you one thing that sounded good and had been content material to determine the small print later.
The latter. It’s, 90% of the time, the latter. No one has a plan. Or if they’ve a plan it’s extra of an idea of a plan, some excessive degree concepts. Or if they’ve thought in regards to the plan and perhaps have some particulars, they haven’t tried in any approach to validate their concepts towards what others have executed. Or they’ve let their nephew, who simply obtained their MBA, work up a plan so indifferent from actuality that it boggles the thoughts. However when the CEO or the CTO or the director of engineering will get up and has a broad strokes imaginative and prescient and a aim, they’re bullshitting you. They don’t perceive the precise drawback, or in the event that they do they will’t change it and have been instructed there job is to promote the thought and determine it out later.
At one level, mid-career, once I was a supervisor and hiring contemporary out of faculty devs slightly than anyone extra senior as a result of “we didn’t need another firm’s unhealthy habits,” thus perpetuating the scenario that has come again to chunk me ever since, I might often get one in all these contemporary confronted devs to speak in confidence to my throughout their month-to-month one on one which they had been anxious that there was one thing WRONG with the corporate, that individuals had been agreeing to nonsense or making loopy calls for or telling clients that we did issues or had options that perhaps existed in some notes on a white board in a convention room and would inform me they had been very anxious about this and puzzled how lengthy we might survive like this.
At that time I used to be skilled sufficient… and had gone by way of that “how can we presumably be so fucked up?” portion of my profession… to interrupt the information to them that each one software program firms had been like this. Possibly not all to the identical diploma. Some had been worse at one factor and higher at one other. But it surely was all an act. To work in Silicon Valley for even just a few years is to know why “pretend it till you make it” is the unofficial motto of the place. And that angle, that we’ll simply do that now and determine the results later, has sure up not simply tech, however something VCs and Wall Road contact as a result of the one consequence they care about is getting paid… you understand, cashing out. So the concept that someone like Elon Musk, who has half-assed his means by way of his total profession, who’s the CEO of a number of firms whereas shit posting on Twitter all day and taking part in Diablo IV all evening… which tells you precisely what a sinecure a CEO place truly is… goes to provide recommendation on how the federal government must be run… properly, that ought to make you very scared, as a result of the top aim of all his sort is to receives a commission… to money out… and to screw over everyone else.
So I went together with the plan. I did coaching on Google Cloud, I did all our SAFe Agile lessons, I requested questions, adopted up, did my work, drove conferences, realized to make use of Miro, and was usually the one individual to even faux to be paying consideration throughout some ceremonies like retro and planning classes.
All of which nonetheless ended up with me getting laid off throughout the holidays in 2021. Firms love to put folks off throughout the holidays. They need that off their books within the present calendar 12 months however are too lazy to get it executed early. My place, together with many others… most crammed by folks over age 50… loopy coincidence there… had been eradicated. Certain, a 20 one thing dev with a grasp’s diploma in laptop science on an H1-B visa was put right into a place so related that I needed to hand off all my duties to them… the one shock in that was that they didn’t simply drive us all out the door with a stick like most layoffs. They really gave us discover and anticipated us to prep our replacements. That they bungled choosing my substitute so I obtained about half a day at hand off was not my fault. And I wanted my substitute properly. I had labored with them earlier than. They had been, little doubt, going to do a greater job than I. Win for the corporate… however there I used to be, unemployed once more.
I obtained my severance and my accrued trip and a subscription to an outplacement service that did a good job serving to me replace my resume after which went by way of all the standard routines about the right way to get a job… a job working for an outplacement service, as a result of that’s all of the individuals who work there have any actual, sensible expertise doing.
I used to be now in my mid-50s and with out a number of hope. I had been, throughout my complete tenure at West… the corporate, after I left, offered the group that held the identify Intrado and so needed to change its identify again to West… some capital administration genius in motion… quietly however persistently searching for a “actual” job, as the entire gig appeared fairly non permanent once I began.
I went on a number of interviews over these eleven years. My cellular phone went from an oddity I stored round for emergencies to my actual contact quantity so I might go exterior or right into a convention room to do a telephone display screen. I’m actually shocked I obtained as a lot response as I did. Silicon Valley will need to have been determined once more. However I lacked the all essential diploma in laptop science, now a base degree requirement for everyone moreover the receptionist in lots of firms, and I wasn’t clearly an knowledgeable on something.
My profession has at all times concerned being extra of a generalist and choosing up no matter wanted to be executed slightly than being the perfect, and even excellent, at one factor specifically. I ran standup. I groomed the backlog and was the gatekeeper for acceptance standards on our JIRA board. I used to be the enforcer for the mission supervisor and product proprietor as a result of I used to be in a technical place however not a developer. I wrote an automatic script suite in Postman to check our API. I knew sufficient SQL to validate issues within the database. I at all times ran our internet apps with dev instruments open and knew sufficient to jot down respectable steps to breed with the appropriate snippets when it got here to bugs. And, one way or the other, I at all times managed to seek out probably the most bizarro world bugs that obtained previous the devs and their unit and construct checks, normally fully by chance, and virtually at all times as a result of I might be bored and begin questioning about potential finish person situations we’d come throughout.
I’ve run into any quantity of people that consider QA as little higher than monkeys or who suppose banging on the keyboard is an effective approach to take a look at or that any take a look at case not documented upfront and automatic is under discover. It’s listening to clients, watching how clients use the app, and studying from that which informs a number of what I do. Sadly, it’s a slightly D20 kind of course of, the place I can spend all day taking place such paths and never discovering something, then will roll a 20 and discover the not fully improbably path by way of the product that crashes the server.
So it goes. It’s powerful to get that throughout on a resume and the good wall of HR wouldn’t care when you might. Buyer focus is a buzzword, not a vocation and never one any public firm actually cares about, press releases and company visions apart. It’s important to match the HR key phrases, meet their standards matrix, and go the look take a look at for recruiter, HR, administration, and so forth to be thought-about… until you understand someone on the within. And even that doesn’t at all times assist.
So the place does one go when Silicon Valley is clearly executed with you? Once more, I take a look at LinkedIn and noticed profiles of individuals my age, former coworkers on my contact listing, who had been a lot better at varied nonetheless legitimate applied sciences who retired or went to work at Finest Purchase or discovered some area of interest job that simply retains the mortgage paid. Who hires a “not even a has been as a result of that requires you to have been” with a background in phone expertise that’s largely tech trivia today?
Subsequent up, the ultimate chapter on this story that has meandered properly off of the aim of telephony and has change into an previous man ranting in regards to the valley. Spoiler: I do, the truth is, discover a job!
