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 company. With this job, Moe seems to be taking to management. He’s working against some deadlines that would make even journalists complain.
Important note: Like Seinfeld’s departure, our tale of Moe is nearly over. On June 3, we’ll present the final installment in his dubious saga. Any advertisers who want to pay Seinfeld-like rates for sponsorship of that page are welcome to contact us.
In the hour before dawn on the last Friday in April, Moe and Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks were playing softball when the phone rang, ending his dream. It was his boss, the CEO.
“Don’t come in until after lunch,” he ordered.
“It’s a quarter to five,” Moe said.
“Not until after lunch,” his boss repeated, and hung up.
Moe is no fan of waking up early, but he couldn’t go back to sleep after a call like that.
“My first instinct was that the company was closing down,” Moe said as he glanced at his watch nervously.
To speed up the time, Moe turned the ringer off the phone and watched the last episode of M*A*S*H for the 268th time. But time continued to lug by. Around 11:00, he got the urge to bring up his resume. He made some quick changes and updated his trusty list of contacts.
Lunchtime came and lunchtime went. Moe paced up and down his driveway. Moe drove his car around the block.
At 1:00, he went to the office. It was quiet, but nothing seemed amiss. Moe went to his desk and checked his e-mail. Most of it was “junk,” except for two labelled “urgent.” They were broadcast messages, sent to the entire staff.
The first message was from the CEO, saying that the company’s secondary offering had closed, but at $3 million instead of the expected $8 million. The note concluded with a hopeful sentence about the cut in anticipated funding “focusing our efforts in a worthwhile way.” It also mentioned that the 4:30 all-hand meeting was still on. The second message, dated half an hour later, was from the chairman, announcing the resignation of the CEO, the layoff of 20 percent of the staff and an accelerated development schedule.
“I went to the CEO’s office right away, but it looked like someone had gone in there with a vaccum cleaner and sucked everything out of the place,” Moe said. “Only the furniture was the same. There were no books on the shelves, no computer on the desk, not even a phone in the room.”
Moe called the CEO at home and got his answering machine. He checked his voice mail at work, then his home answering machine. There were no messages.
“I was nervous, especially after I noticed that none of my 11 direct reports were in the office. But nobody had informed me of my termination, so I just got straight to work.”
Over the next hour, eight of Moe’s 11 employees slowly arrived at the office. They grilled him for more information. He had none.
“I wasn’t in the mood to speculate,” he said. “At 4:30 Moe and his staff went to the conference room only to find a handwritten note from the CEO’s secretary saying that the meeting had been indefinitely postponed.”
Moe dismissed everyone and then called the CEO again. This time he was able to reach him. “I’ll be right over. The chairman’s coming to meet with us and the other three executive board members any minute now,” the CEO said.
Around 7:30, the chairman, who’s worth about $20 or $30 million, came in with two Dominoes Pizza boxes and a case of Coor’s. Everyone ate. Everyone drank. Everyone was reassured that the chairman would pay for the company “out of his own pocket, if he had to” to keep it afloat.
“You are building a great product in progress here, and I will do everything in my power to give you all the resources you need to complete its growth. I give you my word,” the chairman said.
The next morning, Moe arrived for work and read a new e-mail from the chairman. This time the message was directed only to him. In the first paragraph, he said he was stepping in as interim CEO until the board found a replacement and thanked Moe for his upcoming support. In the second paragraph, he said he needed to cut his department’s costs by 25 percent and that he expected Moe to give him a revised budget by days end.
Moe shut the door, picked up the phone and phoned his favorite recruiter.
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Tell Moe what you think of his decision before his time is up. We’ll be sure to pass it along to him.
