Moe is an engineer Silicon Prairie follows through his employment travails and successes. On the pages of this column, we’ve seen him step up to management, get fired, freelance to great success only to discover that he doesn’t have a freelance personality and, late last year, accept a position as chief technology officer for an Internet startup. With this job, Moe seems to be taking to management. I checked in with him a bit early this month because last time he told me he was facing some pressing deadlines and I wanted to know whether he survived them.
“Did I survive? Just barely,” Moe told me as he inhaled yet another vegetable samosa that was supposed to be mine. (Since I paid for Moe’s lunch, he ate everything that wasn’t bolted down to the table and may even have swiped a few packets of NutraSweet.) He started the meal by telling me a number of stories in which I had no interest — how things are going with his girlfriend, about a play he saw while away at a conference in late March, why he thinks the Biosphere 2 is cool — but he finally got to the news.
Last time I met with omnivorous Moe in mid-March he had to hire and install a staff of 11 by the end of the month to deliver a product on time. At that time three of the 11 positions, including the most important one, were still open, and Moe was getting ready to attend a conference 2000 miles away.
“We’ve got all 11,” he said. “We hired the last guy — the key guy — on April 1, so technically I missed the deadline, but no one seemed to care about that. We won’t have the whole staff on board until the 27th, though, so I’m still spending far too much time telling individuals about small parts of the project as each person joins the company. I wish they’d all start the same day — I could put them all through boot camp, and we could move forward. Upper management knows exactly what has to be done, we all agree on it, we just need the bodies to do the work. My boss (the CEO) was extremely helpful during the hiring process; he even let me go $10K over budget for the lead designer position because he knew it was so important to get him.”
Moe is now seeing less of his boss.
“Two things happen in late July. We have to have a working prototype of the product. My Director demo wowed those who saw it at the conference last month, but if our company has a successful secondary offering, we’ve got to prove it’s real. I’m spending all my time working with my staff to be sure we’re adhering to the spec and demonstrating progress every week — progress we might have to toss when my designer starts on the 27th. I’m spending way too much time on the road talking to backers and potential backers with another one of the VPs. It’s going to come together, but I wish I could just focus on building something great. Selling it before it really exists makes me a bit queasy sometimes.”
Deadline tension aside, Moe is happy.
“I feel focused, I feel we’re all focused in the same direction. But it’s crunch time. I’m showing our main backer something on May 8. If it’s great, we get lots of money without having to go to new sources of funding.”
If not?
He laughs.
“Is the Trib hiring?”
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WorkSpace will continue to check in monthly with Moe until he gets tired or fired. If you have any advice for Moe, regarding his job or his table manners, we’ll pass it along.
