Helen of Applications

Book I

Tell, oh social media pundit, your account, biased and self-interested as all things on the internet, of the ruinous wrath of Achilles, lead programmer of the Systems division. And of how, before the story was over, many programmers had burnt out and quit, gone to high-frequency trading companies and crypto startups, and some had quit tech entirely and become massage therapists and pig farmers. And how the will of the CEO of the Corporation, was accomplished. Start the tale from when Agamemnon, Executive Vice President of Development, first insulted the 10x developer, Achilles.

Who in management allowed this quarrel you ask? It was Apollo, head of finance, who in his rage at the EVP, began to cut his budget, withhold headcount and even threaten to not approve expenses. All because Agamemnon dishonored the old-timer, Chryses from business planning, who was a friend of the founders. For Chryses came to Agamemnon to ask for a new laptop, his purchase request having been re-routed by procurement to Agamemnon, who had used it to buy a rose-gold ultrabook, with copious amounts of RAM, many ports, a powerful CPU, and two internal drives.  

Chryses came to Agamemnon’s weekly staff meeting, carrying with him a printed copy of the budget approval, and offered his political pull with Apollo and other executive staffers, to help the Systems Division in their feud with Applications over who owned the Universal Storage Project. “May your filesystem-based approach be chosen, and fully integrated into the Operating System, and the Applications Division be forced to use it if you will give me the budget to replace my aged Dell laptop with the cracked screen.”

Agamemnon’s whole staff approved of this, at least those who weren’t busy deleting e-mail and not really paying attention. But Agamemnon would have none of it: “Leave my staff meeting and do not schedule more time with me, nor send me e-mails on this subject. I will not release budget for your laptop, for I have spent it already on this beautiful rose-gold ultrabook with copious amounts of RAM, many ports, a powerful CPU, and two internal drives.”

Thus, the old-timer was intimidated and left the staff meeting and walked silently across the campus. Stopping by the fountain, he Slacked his friend Apollo, head of finance, and told him of Agamemnon’s answer to his plea. And he asked Apollo to withdraw his approval from the System Division’s budget requests so that their projects might starve and fail to meet their deadlines. And Apollo heard him and began canceling line-items from the System Division’s budget spreadsheet, and blocking the release of PCNs, so that they could not hire, even for positions already approved. In some cases, offers to candidates were even retracted, though they had already been interviewed and accepted positions.

By the time of the next monthly staff meeting, all Agamemnon’s staff had suffered from cuts and funding slowdowns and had been unable to hire strong candidates for lack of reqs. And Achilles addressed the staff: “Agamemnon, I fear we are going to miss all the deadlines for the Universal Storage Project, and our filesystem-based approach will not be chosen, and we will be forced to integrate the Applications Division’s database-based system, which will not scale, since it relies on managed code, into the Operating System. And we may have to reduce our overall headcount, which will mean smaller stock grants and no promotions for any of us. But come, someone must know why Apollo, head of finance, is so angered. Perhaps it is just a misunderstanding, or we missed a deadline or failed to fill out some paperwork, and if we follow the proper process, we can get our funding restored.”

Then spoke, Calchas, who was a business manager attached to Agamemnon’s staff, and who knew all the ways of finance, and what forms to fill out, and what meetings needed to be attended and how to phrase budget requests so they would most likely get approved. And he said, “Achilles, lead programmer and Distinguished Engineer from the filesystem team, I know what has happened to anger Apollo, head of finance. But you must promise me you will back me up in the stack rank meetings, so I don’t get screwed out of my annual bonus or stock options. For what I say will anger a very powerful executive in the Systems Division, and when the executives have it in for you, you are well and truly fucked.”

And Achilles, he of the 10x programming productivity, said, “Do not fear, Calchas. Tell what you know, for I promise I will advocate for you in the stack rack meetings, so you don’t get screwed out of your annual bonus or stock options, even if you say it is because of Agamemnon, who is Executive Vice President, and highest ranking in all of Systems Division.”

So Calchas took courage and said, “It is not a misunderstanding, missed deadline, or paperwork mistake, nor will simply following the proper process restore our funding. Rather, Apollo, head of finance, is punishing us for the sake of his friend Chryses from business planning, whose request for a new laptop was re-routed by procurement to Agamemnon, who used it to buy a rose-gold ultrabook with copious amounts of RAM, many ports, a powerful CPU, and two internal drives, and rejected Chryses’s ask for a budget cross-charge so he could replace his aged Dell laptop. And Apollo will not relent, and release our full funding and many PCNs, until we procure a new Lenovo and re-assign it to business planning through the interdepartmental asset transfer process, filling out all the forms ourselves, so that Chryses doesn’t have to do anything.”

Now Agamemnon, Executive Vice President of Development for the Systems Division, his heart consumed with rage, his eyes gleaming with anger, glared at Calchas and said: “You never bring anything but bad news, and are always finding fault with our processes, and wasting our time with spreadsheets and budget planning exercises. Now you are blaming me for angering the head of finance because I would not approve a cross-divisional countercharge for a friend of his in business planning. For I have already spent that hardware budget on this ultrabook, which I like even more than the gaming laptop I have at home, for it is nearly as powerful, but lighter weight and has a better keyboard.”

“Yet, I will give up this ultrabook, and transfer it to business planning, if that is what I must do to restore our funding and avoid further cuts. But then I need a new laptop, since everyone else here already has one, and it is inappropriate that I must use my desktop machine, or some old Inspiron that doesn’t even have a dedicated graphics card.”

Then answered him Achilles, who wrote more lines of code than anyone else, even though he was also a manager, “Executive Vice President Agamemnon, who always wants the latest cutting-edge gear, how can we get you a new laptop? You know all the hardware budget for this quarter has been spent, and we have no spares, even the intern machines from last summer have been distributed to testing, and we can’t just take them back from the engineers. Give your ultrabook to Chryses now, and next quarter requisition a new laptop, which will be better anyway because the new ultrabooks have smaller bezels, so you get more screen real estate without an increase in overall size.”

Then spoke Agamemnon, highest-ranking executive in all of Systems Division, “Highly skilled engineer you may be, Achilles, attired in your stylish T-shirts from old tech conferences, but do not try to trick me in this way. Do you intend for me to sit in staff with some crappy old machine with a low-res screen, while you have your shining new development box? No, either I get a new laptop, as powerful and beautiful as this rose-gold ultrabook, or I’ll take your laptop, or that of Ajax, or Odysseus. But we’ll handle that later. Here, someone take my ultrabook, Ajax or Odysseus, or you Achilles, slayer of bugs, and go start the process of transferring it to business planning, that we are reconciled with Apollo, head of finance, and can unblock the budget process.”

Scowling at him, swift-coding Achilles said, “How can anyone in Systems obey your orders, you shameless builder of fiefdoms, to develop new features, or resolve bugs? I did not come here to fight your political battles with the Applications Division. What do I care if their managed database is integrated into Operating System, even though it won’t scale, or they get most of next fiscal’s incremental headcount? What do I care that your brother Menelaus’s rising star employee, Helen, was poached by Paris from Applications?”

“And now you’re going to take my laptop away. I, who have worked many weekends and nights, and have no work-life balance at all, nor do I get bonuses as large as yours when Systems beats revenue forecast. I designed the new filesystem which is more performant and scalable than Application Division’s database-based prototype that depends on managed code. Yet you get the credit and the biggest bonuses. I should quit and take that job at Microsoft or go to Google which has an office close to my house and offers three free meals a day, including the most excellent bacon and pour-over coffee. I’m not going to stay here and wear my fingers to the bone coding for you, only to be insulted and underpaid compared to my peers in the industry.”

Then Agamemnon, who had nearly ten thousand heads in his org chart, answered him: “Quit then. I’m not going to make a huge diving catch counteroffer to keep you. I have other programmers, who respect my experience even though I don’t have much time to code myself anymore, and the CEO supports my decisions. No doubt you are a 10x programmer, maybe even 20x or 30x, and you produce more lines of code than anyone else in Systems, even though you also manage. But you’re a brilliant jerk who nobody likes to work with, and we have a no-asshole rule at the Corporation. So quit, and I don’t care if half your team quits with you. Go do a startup or all join Google, so you can have breakfast together and pour-over coffees in the afternoon. But I will take your laptop, going to your office myself and picking it up, so you remember I am your boss, and no other employee gets the idea to disobey my orders.”

Anguish descended on Achilles, who was such a talented developer and a world-class engineer. And he debated whether to submit his resignation on the spot and just walk out to reception, hand in his badge and leave. But he remembered the words of his hiring manager Athena, who was now CTO, who had told him to stop flying off the handle and making rash decisions and to treat his career with the same care as he did his code.

And so, Achilles put his badge back in his pocket, moved to the door, and turned and said, “Agamemnon, you of the low organizational health score, who is not respected by the engineers, and hardly ever codes anymore, and not just because you don’t have time, nor stays late or works weekends in order to hit the deadlines. Far easier for you to take the laptops of anyone who disputes you. I am going back to my office now, to work on my resume, and I will rest and vest for a bit and do no more work on the new filesystem. And I say to you, a time will come when you have a deadline, or an executive demo that needs to be prepared, and you will wish Achilles was there to implement the necessary features, fix the hard bugs, and run the triage meetings. And nothing will save your project when Hector of Applications presents his universal store that can be both a database and a filesystem, and you are forced to integrate it into the Operating System, even though it does not scale, since it is based on managed code.”

Then spoke Nestor, Distinguished Engineer Emeritus and leader of the kernel team, who was the longest-serving employee of the Corporation and the only one with his name on the 40-year plaque in the conference center. “This staff drama will bring nothing but trouble to the Systems Division. Surely Priam and his directs and the rest of the Applications Team would be happy to see you two arguing like this. Listen to me, I’m older than either of you and used to work with the founding engineering team, who were better programmers than either of you and yet they respected me. Never have I have seen such programmers, Dryas and Peirithoos, and Exadios and Polyphemos, who had memorized the numeric values of the entire x86 instruction set and could read crash dumps with a hex editor. All of them programmed in assembly, without a debugger, and yet never introduced memory leaks or crashes into the kernel. They were legendary programmers and went up against the best at Microsoft and Apple and Sun, and delivered better systems in less time, even though Microsoft’s marketing overcame our technology lead. No one today can program like that, and yet they let me review their code, and occasionally even made changes I suggested.”

“Listen to me, both of you. Agamemnon, I know you’re an Executive Vice President, and have many stock options, but you shouldn’t take his laptop, which was spec’d for him. And you, Achilles, shouldn’t argue with your manager in front of the staff, for he is our EVP and was given this position by the CEO. And though you are by far a better programmer, he is more important because he has a larger headcount. Agamemnon, restrain your anger, for Achilles designed the new filesystem, which is our best chance of beating the Applications Division to win the Universal Store bake-off.”

Agamemnon replied to the old engineer, “You speak well, Nestor, but Achilles is a primadonna, who thinks being a better programmer puts him above all the other employees and allows him to give all the orders. Being brilliant does not excuse being an asshole.”

Achilles interrupted him, “Give orders to the rest of your staff but do not act anymore as my manager, for I do not intend to obey you. I will tell you something else you should remember—I will not resist you or any other man who comes to take my laptop since it came from your budget originally. But do not take anything else from my office or I will block you on Twitter.”

Then Achilles went out the door and back to his office, and the staff meeting broke up.

And Agamemnon gave his laptop to Odysseus to go through the interdepartmental asset transfer process. And then Agamemnon spoke to Talthybios and Eurybates who were his executive assistants and instructed them to go to Achilles’s office and take his laptop and told them “And if he does not give you the laptop, including its unique power supply which is incompatible with every other kind of laptop, I myself will go to his office and take them.”

And the two went down the hall, with heavy hearts, and found Achilles in his office, surfing the web. And they stood in the doorway and hung their heads and said nothing. But Achilles knew what they were there for and said: “You are not to blame, but Agamemnon.”

And he turned to his chief-of-staff, Patroclus, with who he shared open space, and said, “Give them my laptop, and let them witness my oath that I will no longer work on the new filesystem or do any work for the Systems Division beyond the minimum code maintenance and bug fixing.”

And Patroclus handed over the laptop, not forgetting its unique power supply which is incompatible with every other kind of laptop, and the two assistants took it to Agamemnon’s office.

But Achilles went down the hall weeping, and across to building 35 to the office of his mentor, Thetis, who had a job with a weird title, and none knew what she did, other than that the CEO liked her because she had somehow helped him in a huge political battle early in his career, which led to several of the founders quitting and the CEO, who was only a Vice President at the time, getting promoted.

And he came into her office with his eyes still damp and slumped in a chair like an unhappy little boy, even though he was a Distinguished Engineer who led a huge engineering team and had designed the new filesystem.

“My poor Achilles, what has happened to make you so unhappy?” asked Thetis. “Tell me what the problem is, and we can brainstorm synergistic solutions together.”

“Surely you’ve already heard,” said swift-coding Achilles. “I know how the rumor-mill works at this company. You must know that Agamemnon had a hardware budget redirected to him that was intended for Chryses in business planning and used it to buy himself a rose-gold ultrabook with copious RAM, many ports, a powerful CPU, and two internal drives. And when he refused to do a cross-charge back to business planning, Chryses went to his friend Apollo, head of finance, and Apollo began to fuck with our budget.”

“We had a staff meeting to discuss the problem, and our business manager, Calchas, said he knew what the problem was, that was is not a misunderstanding, missed deadline, or paperwork mistake, nor would simply following the proper process restore our funding, but he did not want to say who was responsible for fear of getting shafted in the stack rank meeting. So I promised I would advocate for his bonus and stock grants, even if it was Agamemnon, Executive Vice President of Systems, who was to blame.”

“And lo and behold, as I just explained, it was Agamemnon who was to blame. And he raved at Calchas, who he said always brought bad news, and frankly, Calchas is kind of a pain in the ass with all the process he makes us go through for planning and budgeting. But I had promised to back him up. So, I told Agamemnon he’d better get Chryses a new laptop or Apollo would keep cutting our budget and we would miss our deadlines on the Universal Store Project and lose the bake-off and be forced to integrate the Applications Division’s database-based system into the Operating System, even though it will not scale, since it relies on managed code.”

“But Agamemnon got all huffy and said it wasn’t fair that he had to give up his ultrabook when everybody else in staff already had a new laptop. Now I got mad and pointed out the hardware requisitions were all done for the quarter, and we couldn’t just take a laptop away from one of the engineers. And then Agamemnon said he would give up his ultrabook but that he would take mine to replace it, just to remind everybody that he was the boss. So, then I got really mad and threatened to quit and take that job at Microsoft or go to Google where they have the great bacon and pour-over coffee in the afternoons. And then Agamemnon called my bluff, and we yelled at each other some more, and then Nestor tried to make us stop fighting, but Agamemnon kept insulting me, and I insulted him back, in front of the whole staff, and then I went back to my office and his EAs came and took my laptop.”

“Yes, I heard this already, you know how the rumor-mill works at this company. But thank you for providing your perspective. This is terrible news, both for your career and for me, who have advocated for you so many times with the senior staff. If you quit or sit in your office resting and vesting, it will look like I backed the wrong horse, and people will start questioning my judgment, even the CEO, who owes me,” explained Thetis.

“Can you talk to the CEO for me?” asked Achilles. “Tell him to favor the Applications Division in the Universal Store bake-off, so that Agamemnon regrets insulting me, Achilles, his best programmer, and the designer of the new filesystem, and without whom Systems Division cannot prevail.”

Thetis nodded. “The CEO is on a business trip in the middle east and won’t be back for two weeks. But as soon as he returns, I’ll go to his office and try to persuade him as you wish. In the meantime, go back to your office and do the minimum amount of work you can get away with and not get fired. Resolve a few maintenance issues and catch up on all your required training. But don’t quit and take that job at Microsoft or go to Google with the great bacon and pour-over coffee, even though that sounds pretty nice. And whatever you do, don’t do a lick of work on the new filesystem!”

Meanwhile, Odysseus took Agamemnon’s ultrabook and got it transferred to business planning, which wasn’t easy because for some reason business planning had a different asset tracking system than the rest of the company. After many hours of fighting the internal website and e-mailing around to various admins and IT staff whom he thought might know the process, explaining what he wanted, and then waiting for them to e-mail him back, and then calling and explaining the situation again, and them disappearing for several days and then transferring him to someone else, he finally reached the person who owned the asset database, who hand-edited a table, and the transfer was approved. Odysseus was able to put a new asset tag on the ultrabook (though he was never completely sure the laptop was de-registered with the old asset system, but it didn’t matter because nobody ever checked where equipment went after it was tagged) and then he personally carried it across campus to Chryses’s office and gave it to him.

Of course, Chryses complained because the ultrabook was a development machine and was spec’d different from the Lenovo he had ordered, and he didn’t like rose-gold, even though it had copious RAM, many ports, a powerful CPU, and two internal drives. But Odysseus pointed out it was either that or use the old Dell with the cracked screen until the new hardware upgrade cycle. And so, Chryses told Apollo, head of finance, that he was satisfied, and suddenly all of Systems Division’s budget problems went away, or at least the problems went back to what they had been before the whole kerfuffle with the laptops.

By then, two weeks had passed, and the CEO returned from his business trip. Thetis walked upstairs to his office and gossiped with his admin for twenty minutes. When they had caught up, the admin proceeded to postpone the CEO’s next meeting, which was an important IT policy review the CEO didn’t really want to go to anyway and had already been postponed four times.

And so, Thetis went into the CEO’s office and adjusting her skirt, perched gracefully on the edge of one of the Aeron chairs before his desk. But the CEO had completed his mandatory sexual harassment training, as well as many hours of personal coaching and legal briefings on inappropriate relationships with staff members (don’t ask why), so he ignored her allure, and asked her to cut to the chase.

“You know Achilles, from Systems Division, who is a 10x programmer and writes more code than anyone on his team, even though he is also a manager. Agamemnon, who is his boss as well as the most senior executive in the Systems Division, insulted him and took away his laptop. If ever I have helped your career in any small way, I ask you to favor Applications Division in the Universal Store bake-off, until Agamemnon is forced to call on Achilles, who designed the new filesystem, and give him the respect he is due, as well as a special stock grant and level bump. It is only what he deserves as the best engineer in Systems Division, even if he is a bit of an asshole.”  

The CEO sat quietly, saying nothing. Eventually, Thetis begged him, “Say yes or no, will you do this. Let me know whether anything I have ever done for you was a help. Do not hold back. I do not care if the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I just want to know. If ‘no’ then I will simply retire to my villa on the Cote d’Azur and start work on my tell-all book on the inside workings of the tech industry, and you need never see me again.”

“Ugh,” groaned the CEO. “You’re forcing me into conflict with the COO, and with the CTO too, and half the executive staff. The COO already thinks I favor the Applications Division too much. I can already hear her complaining to me and pointing out Systems Division has better margins even if overall revenue is less. Please go back to your office before one of her admins notices you here. Yes, yes, I’ll do as you ask. You can relax, you have my assurance.”

So, Thetis returned to her office, and the CEO went to his afternoon staff meeting. But one of the admins had reported to the COO of the postponement of the IT policy meeting and she learned from another staff member that Thetis had visited him in his office instead.

As soon as they were all seated, and before most of them had even opened their laptops and tuned the meeting out, the COO turned to the CEO and asked: “What new thing are you planning and not sharing with us? We are the senior executives of this company, and yet you’re constantly hatching some new project and not consulting us. We find out about it anyway, you know how the rumor mill works in this company, so why not just tell us?”

He answered, “As CEO, I do not need to share all my thinking immediately. As soon as appropriate, you will be the first to know, but I am allowed to ideate before I present any official plans, and even a have discretionary fund for incubation projects of $40 million a quarter.”

And the COO said, “I don’t doubt your right to ideate and incubate without reporting to all of us, but I have this feeling that Thetis came to you and requested you favor Achilles, the 10x programmer from Systems Division, in his dispute with Agamemnon. Even though this will lead to burnout and staff attrition as the other engineers try to win the Universal Store bake-off without him, in turn leading to slipped ship schedules and slowing revenue growth as early as Q4 of the next fiscal.”

The CEO turned to her angrily, “You somehow always guess what I’m thinking, which seems impossible, even though I know how the rumor mill works in this company. But it doesn’t help you. I’m the CEO, and the chairman of the board, a board that loves me, as does the founder, and Wall Street. As long as the stock price stays high, I’m far more powerful than all the rest of you staff together and can do as I wish.”

This frightened the COO, who knew the CEO could demand her resignation, or work with the compensation committee to reduce her bonus or stock grants, so she fell quiet, and a feeling of gloom fell over the whole executive team, even those with their laptops open who were deleting e-mail.

Hephaestus, who reported to the COO and ran IT, and was thus despised by the other executives, because his team was an expense center rather than a revenue generator, broke the silence, “We shouldn’t quarrel in the executive staff meeting. Soon all the regular employees will hear, you know how the rumor mill works in this company, and if they lose confidence in us, our organizational health scores will suffer. Truthfully, we all serve at the pleasure of the CEO, unless the Corporation misses its numbers for two or more consecutive quarters and the stock price drops precipitously, leading to board action or a shareholder’s revolt. I can’t defend you from him, even though you are my manager. You remember when I tried before and he moved my whole department to the Midwest, where staffing was less expensive, but it was impossible to get good espresso, and the only half-decent restaurant was at the country club.”

At the recollection of this story, all the executive team members laughed, and then went back to deleting e-mail while the visiting President of the European subsidiary did a Powerpoint presentation of sales forecasts on a country-by-country basis.

Book II