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The Worst Of Times 163

Note: Troubled dot-commer Kurt Gray wrote this eloquent and tragic story -- a story all too typical in today's troubled tech market, when even the best ideas can be swept aside by a market that just isn't ready for them. Probably more than a handful of you can sympathize with the havoc that an economic downturn can wreak on what just a few months ago might have been wild success stories.


I've read one-too-many tech boom-to-bust sob stories lately and now I have the urge to just summarize them all as follows:

I got my ticket on the tech boom gravy train back in 1997 when a stranger I had shared a taxi with pitched me a leading technical position at his new start-up company, Yellow River. The next day I was interviewing for the job in his top-floor mid-town office suite overlooking the Bay. I was asked who invented the dumbwaiter (luckily I knew it was Thomas Jefferson) and how to best move a flock of sheep between two moving icebergs, and before I could answer I was hired.

Rick, our CEO, and his college drinking buddies had a revolutionary idea that was going to change the world. All they needed was more investors, 300 programmers, 200 administrative staffers, a mile of warehousing space, a fleet of private jets, and a few international trade treaties to be rewritten. Our software afterall would forever change the way people adjust the brightness and contrast of their computer screens. I was an area of computing that was wide open and untouched: the monitor, the screen itself. People adjust brightness and contrast on their screens all the time manually pushing big old fashioned buttons and twisting knobs and dials, and they have to be in front of the monitor to do it. This is where Rick saw the opportunity: Why not let people adjust their screen settings from anywhere in the world over the web? At the time we could barely comprehend how profound of a concept that was, and I was excited to be part of it.

In no time we had investors beating down our office door. Because of our tight non-disclosure agreements we couldn't even explain to our investors what exactly we were working on, we could only tell them it was going to be "big and yellow." Thus the project code name "Big Yellow" which we later had to hire lawyers to wrestle that trademark away from the Yellow Pages, but it was worth the battle because we liked the color yellow, it meant something to us, and for our investors it was all they had from us so far.

I was charged with hiring our entire technical staff of programmers, tech support reps, internal support, networking, and field technicians. Although I didn't see the harm in it at the time I immeditaely hired all of my friends from the local role-players' gaming club to fill out the top technical positions in the company. Some of them had actual computer experience and others were just really cool people to hang out with. We worked long hours together, only it didn't feel like work because we turned our management process into a role-playing game, another revolutionary idea that we were very proud of.

The trouble started when we missed our first ship date. Little did we realize it at the time but most computer monitors settings can not be controlled through software, a major setback. It also didn't help that most of my staff had been put on the "Bigger and Bright Yellow" project which Rick's cousin Nell was personally managing. Soon there were a clash of personalities and unexpected failures in our role-playing-modeled management process. Investors were also starting to demand some kind of description of what our product was supposed to do and our lawyers couldn't hold them back much longer. After Rick came back from his new time-share in the Italian Riveria, we had the talk I was dreading all along. I was being replaced. Rick's brother-in-law Jed had just been certified to repair PCs and other electronic devices and now his wife wanted Rick to make Jed as our new CTO. Jed was a smart kid in his own way, but he clearly did not know anything about role-playing games. That made it difficult for us to respect him as our boss.

But we worked hard and the money didn't mean anything to us. As long as my stock options were still worth more than $20 million, and my salary was twice the market rate, the money didn't mean anything. These were the fun times. Our office was a playpen of ideas and creativity, we had really smart people and free soda, as much as you could drink all day and night.

By 1999 it was all over. None of us saw it coming. Our executives were dragged out of the office in handcuffs; apparently the investors decided to play dirty and called the FBI on us. I couldn't believe they would accuse us of fraud -- we had a product, we just hadn't finished thinking about how to make it yet. The saddest part came when I had to fire my friends. They felt betrayed, the week before we were shopping for luxury yachts and now they were wondering how they would make rent next month. All I had left from my years at Porkius was the twelve-sided die we used to cast our most important executive decisions.

Still I am ambivalent about the outcome. After all, I have learned some valuable lessons: never trust guys named Rick -- Rick is an asshole, Rick lied to me; never trust investors; hire only the friends who play the same games you do; and wait until the computer monitor market matures before stepping back out there.

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The Worst Of Times

Comments Filter:
  • There's a GLUT of unemployed IT workers now. Are companies still pressuring congress to increase the number of H1B visa's each year? Why?
  • by Anonymous Coward
    I can do that in 4 lines of Erlang, 3 lines of Tcl, 2 lines of perl, or 1 line of Python if you have the right libraries installed. On Windows, MS's security settings make it impossible except by a VBA that sends email to a buffer overrun in Back Office that does it with a few registry settings, except you have to re-boot if you want to use the keyboard.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    In A.D. 2001
    Shakeout was beginning.
    CEO: What happen?
    CFO: Somebody set up us the bankrupt
    CTO: We get signal
    CEO: What !
    CTO: CNN fN turn on
    CTO: It's You !!
    Greenspan: How are you gentlemen !!
    Greenspan: All your options are belong to us
    Greenspan: You are on the way to destruction
    CEO: What you say !!
    Greenspan: You have no chance to survive make your time
    Greenspan: HA HA HA HA ....
    CEO: Take off every 'account'
    CEO: You know what you doing
    CEO: Move 'account'
    CEO: For great justice
  • Way to put her in her place. I hate it when your spouse has a dream and you have to carefully squash it and make them feel like they are more of a failure than they realize. How dare they put such burdens on us!

    Luckily you caught her in time and smacked her around, so that she understands that her single role in life is to be a provider for you.

    (If you're kidding, so am I; if you're trolling, so am I; if you're serious, so am I.)

  • by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @07:02AM (#240584)
    I submitted my company's failure [kuro5hin.org] to Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]. It's not a parody, and not a dot-com failure.

    Of course, I'm biased, but I think it's interesting. I wanted to post it to A) give some meaning to 18 months of personal hell, and B) allow for the discussion and study of failure. I spent a little time pursuing an MBA, and nobody ever studied failure.

    Those immune to failure, feel free to criticize the story, my business and my struggles with it.

  • by pohl ( 872 )
    That's funny. I'm glad you pitched it as a sad story. That really brought out the humor.

    I couldn't help but get the feeling, though, that this is an elaborate plot to get us to forward this to all of our friends to prepare the market for intelligent monitors that can be used for copy-protection of content.

  • Didn't the proposed product tip you off just a little bit? Software that allows you to adjust the brightness and contrast of your monitor over the internet? Even most of the dot-coms that failed at least were _going_ to produce something with a slight bit of use.

    Hey, there were dotcoms that allowed you to deliver dog shit to your enemies' houses. After that...
  • Starmedia?
  • A "proven leader"... at the age of 20-something??? I agree that there are plenty of bright, motivated, and even highly responsible/moral people in that age range, but I'd have a hard time believing they've had enough years under their belt to be considered "proven leaders".

    --
  • In all the world there is no opportunity for people to manage via Role-Playing - why the fuck not? I think there should be.

    I think the quick and simple answer would be "because how could it work?". But that's just me.

    If you mean your question to be less literal - well, there are certainly seminars whereby management roleplays workers, etc, to get a better feel for what actually goes on. I think the spoof article meant they roleplayed managing in something like AD&D, though.
    My humour filters may be broken, however.
  • Hey, on our Northern Telecom system you can remotely adjust any phone's LCD display contrast from another phone, once you get into the system programming menu.
  • Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
    As long as the "cannoli" isn't this one [emdx.org]... :) :)

    --

  • Hey, on our Northern Telecom system you can remotely adjust any phone's LCD display contrast from another phone, once you get into the system programming menu.
    No wonder Northern Telecom stock is going through the floor!!!!
    (Just saw a friend of mine today who works in HR for NT. He's dead tired: he laid off 700 people last week! LOL!)

    --

  • I think this story is a hoax.
    What a stupid idea to set a monitor via the web. For what reason will you want to set it, when you are not in front of it?
    Sure, some monitors have software control (Apple), but you only will want to set them when you are sitting in front.
    I have never heared or read about such a company or product.
    The irony in the article seems a bit to much too, smells like an urban legend to me.
  • ... was helped along by basing hiring on silly little quizes like how to move a flock of sheep between two moving icebergs. Unless that's what the business does or the candiate claims to have experience in that area what benefit does that question really have to the interviewer? The company doesn't have people on staff that know squat about producing products but they sure know the answers to those trivia questions!

    Oh, sure, there's something about them that shows that a candidate can think on their feet but, personally, I could care less about these arcane and, IMHO, useless questions. I'm beginning to think that most of them are asked merely to place the interviewer in a superior position so that the candidate won't be in a position to bargain effectively. Or it could be that the interviewer is so unsure of their own skills that they have to toss one of these questions out so they can feel like they know more than the candidate (there's that superiority thing again). Next time you get one of these questions, just remember: That's why your new boss is making the big bucks; he knows how to move a flock of sheep between moving icebergs.

    Just remember: Before you go to your next interview, be sure and research the company, rehearse your little spiel about your work history, and, for god's sake, don't forget to memorize the Interviewer's Big Book of Stupid Interview Questions (coming soon to a bookstore near you!).


    --

  • by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @08:47AM (#240595)

    Me, too. Another Rick has owed me $0.75 since the second grade! Hey maybe it's the same one! (Once a dead-beat, always...)


    --

  • See that foot? It's funny, laugh.

    I really, really, hope that I'm not missing out on some serious meta- meta- meta- levels of sarcasm here.

  • But it hass a passing resemblence to this Salon.com article:

    http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/05/02/sacri fice/index.html [salon.com]

  • I have to confess -- I read the story a couple of times before concluding it was a joke. Not because I can't recognize satire, or notice the humor icon on the story, but because there's little here that's obviously unrealistic.

    Oh? Hmm. I have a can't-miss investment opportunity for you. There's this thing called a bridge -- 'scuse me, I mean it's called an eBridge. I'm looking for a limited number of backers for a plan to build an eBridge across the East River, from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Cash only, in small bills, please.

  • I think we've touched a nerve 8^)

    If you can't laugh at pain, especially stupid, self-inflicted pain, then what can you laugh at?

  • Oh, I don't know. We voted him in so I consider the W self-inflicted pain. 8^)

  • Why would you need to adjust your screen settings remotely?

    Why would anyone want Clippy to pop up while you're working on something? [thegourmet.com] Stupidness abounds. Wanting to adjust a screen that you can't see, isn't relatively stupid.


    ---
  • I was an area of computing that was wide open and untouched

    Was he really hairy? Did he not shower? Wear really cheap cologne? There had to be a reason why he was untouched. Not 100% sure what he meant by wide-open. He can't be the goatse.cx guy, because he's DEFINITELY been touched.

    --
  • If it were a little more creative.

    Unfortunately, all of us were making identical jokes before the bust. The jokes were funny then. Now it's just tired. And a little offensive because real people are hurt.
    --
  • Why, so people can properly moderate your post?
  • Note the foot icon next to the story. That signifies HUMOR in Slashdot. It's a joke.
  • Well-done indeed. All too close to reality.

    In the end, a lot of the dot-comians forgot a few simple rules:
    • You need to make a product people want, need, and will continue to want and need.
    • You have to make said product on time.
    • You have to make said product work.
    • You need to make enough money to continue to exist - you can't rely on external sources.


    I have mixed sympathies for victims of the dot-com crashes. Sure, some were niave, some were truly concerned, many were energetic. But far too many ignored simple, basic economics.

    Im a consultant, happily working for a branch of the company that studiously avoided getting involved in dot-coms. A lot of our competitors have fallen by the wayside, but we're steaming along.
  • Yeah, there are some absurd dot com business plans out there, but not this absurd.

    I don't know man, sell a free OS?
    That's pretty damn absurd.

  • LOL
    don't ever interview for a job in Santa Cruz then...

    even the 50 year olds are "some skateboarder looking reject who thinks its hip to interview me with a little dog running around the office"

    LOL
  • adjusting monitor color via the web? hopefully i put some fuckedcompany points on you.
  • "Why not let people adjust their screen settings from anywhere in the world over the web?"

    Second paragraph. This is the sentance that I thought was DAMN funny. It should also be a sign to anyone smart enought to consider themselves a geek that this is a fake story. Think about it for a second. Why would you need to adjust your screen settings remotely? If someone else is there looking at it, then they can adjust it. If nobody is looking at the screen, then why adjust it? How are you going to adjust a screen that you can't see? It's completely absurd.

    Yeah, there are some absurd dot com business plans out there, but not this absurd.

    -B

    Taco and Co. - Check your lameness filter code. It's jacked up.
  • You still owe me money Rick!!!

  • Are you the Rick that owes me money????????????
  • Is he the one that owes me money??????????
  • > Now if anyone who doesn't believe me wants to
    > invest in my plan to turn the volume up on your > computer from the internet, email me the money.

    In fact that you can already do :)
    There is a plugin for winamp (calld winamp remote i think) that allows you to turn up the volume of your PC over TCP/IP (as well as changing tracks ...).
    Rather handy for messing with your colleague's minds :)

  • hehe that was my thought too.
  • by Rupert ( 28001 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @05:54AM (#240616) Homepage Journal
    LNUX [valinux.com] isn't totally worthless.

    Yet [fool.com].

    Nor will you see Larry [valinux.com] being led away in handcuffs any time soon. They need the cell space for someone else [microsoft.com].

    --
  • That's okay--looks like at least three moderators read as carelessly as you did.

  • Are you using the streamsicle?
  • by Matt2000 ( 29624 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @06:06AM (#240619) Homepage

    The problem with the tech boom of the late 90's was that people didn't buckly down and release useless products, they took their sweet time about it.

    If people would just get off their asses, and get those terrible websites out a bit faster then they can go out of business with much more authority and confidence, versus this current crop of companies who can't even handle their bankruptcies emotionally.

    These lessons have been learned by the current crop of startups, and they have become tightly focused on synergies around expenditures. Meaning, they will blow money at a faster rate, and bring products to a market that doesn't want them that much faster.

    Get ready for the new, really new, economy!

  • The lessons we must learn from this are profound. I have my own views as to what some of them might be, but it would be facile to attempt to put them down here in such a short message.

    Dude, you've got the gift! I'd definitely like to hire you to pitch my new dot-com idea to the VCs.

  • What about Rick Moranis, eh?
  • I agree, its a joke. The sad thing, however, is that this could have actually happened. How many of these dot-coms were founded by an idea thought up during a drinking binge, for a product that was completely unnessary and in many cases extremely difficult to implement. How many of these products were funded by VC firms with little more than blind faith, then crashed and burned before even getting out of the vaporware phase. How many companies had executives that were hauled off in handcuffs? This story may only be satire, but the true ironic humor to be found here is that this story could be passed off as true and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Thats sad.

    -Restil
  • by macpeep ( 36699 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @07:10AM (#240623)
    Yes, people were foolish. But just like everyone was all hyped up about dot-coms and e-commerce and new economy, people are also now all hyped up about the failure of these. It's *all* out of proportion.

    Do you have any idea how many car makers have existed? Over 15000! How many exist now? 20? 30? Does that mean that cars aren't one of the most revolutionary inventions ever or that it's a bad business idea? Should we laugh at Ford, Honda and Audi?

    What's idiotic is getting into extremes, using terms like "e-revolution", "new economy", "cyberspace" etc. Just because something is revolutionary doesn't mean we have to use it in every single aspect of our lives. After all, we still drive on "roads" - as opposed to "automobile space".

    It's easy to make fun of it all now, when we know how it all turned out. But just because boo.com went bankrupt and just because Nasdaq was/is about 10x overvalued doesn't mean that we're not talking about a revolution - it is a revolution for sure. I consider it revolutionary enough that I can read my email on the subway, that I can buy movie tickets with a cell phone from a café using a web / wap browser etc. There's no need to hype it, but there's also no need to ridicule it.
  • i worked for a dot com for a year and had the best fun i ever had. did i quit b4 it went bust ? hell yes. did i learn anything ? yup. did i get another job in a stable company ? yup again. the dot com revloution was really fun if you kept your head above the hype and amused yourself. i went to more trade shows, hired and fired people, earned a decent salary and made the best friends ever..all while working in an insane dot com driven industry.
  • woah, streamsicle is somethign i've been kinda thinking about for a while. mark my words: one day, we'll acess all our mp3s wirelessly, from anywhere. no need for cd-rs so that you can take em from your computer to yuor car to your stereo to your whatever. :D
  • A few of us have gotten bits of the linux kernal running on the n64. All we needed was an i/o device to the real world :-(
  • What you have to do is melt the icebergs and float the sheep - this creates a level playing field (pool?) for the sheeps and they can then be herded together by a sheep dog - a sea lion will do if your dog can not stand the cold temperatures.

    Failing that you can melt the sheep however I have not been able to reconstitute liquid sheep as yet.

    Please be aware that in the UK you must add a generouse slosh of disinfectant to either the sheep or the icebergs while liquid to prevent contamination by foot and mouth disease.

  • = You have been marked for pyschological cleansing. =
    = Please sit tight while we remove all free will. =
    = You will be a much happier, more productive worker then. =

  • Are you all morons? This is satire. It's not real. A lot of you are taking this WAY too seriously.

    --

  • by imac.usr ( 58845 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @05:55AM (#240630) Homepage
    Truly you were ahead of your time. Every iMac made uses software to control its monitor settings (as do Apple's flat-panel screens). If only you could have held out another year, the installed base might have grown enough to show your investors a potential market.... alas, now we will never know. :-]


    --
  • That is too funny!
    nice job, I needed a humor injection this AM...
  • we turned our management process into a role-playing game, another revolutionary idea that we were very proud of.

    Actually, I don't think this is such a bad idea.... I mean, compare it to some "real" management techniques....
  • by joq ( 63625 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @06:01AM (#240633) Homepage Journal


    Anyone ever seen the movie boiler room? The story was funny and somewhat similar, but whats scary is, it happens in the real world although its rare when tech based, however whats ironic IMHO is that most VC firms who invested in companies that went under for lack of having products never attempted to seek injuctions against those companies. Also noteworthy to me is the mentioning of hiring friends, and lack of management due to age constraints.

    I worked at a content provider like Yahoo that catered to Latin America, except 90% of the staff weren't Latin (get worse). Well no one was ever allowed input during weekly meetings (where much money was spent on catering) into what the company should look to for future revenue, or methods to cut costs (e.g. option for cheaper servers, etc.) not because no one had a clue, but because management between the departments were mostly 20 something'ers.

    I remember a few people had ordered (no bullshit) Sun E450's for personal mp3 storage servers, the company brought just about everyone top of the line IBM Thinkpads, Motorola i1000 pagers, Nextel phones, you name it they brought it.

    Now the management team used to all work together in prior companies, some were college buddies, and when they had disagreements with each other, they would act out like brats who didn't get their way and disrupt the company by not allowing needed change, not because it was or wasn't good, but simply because they didn't like each other. Weird place I ended up leaving after about 6 months.

    I barely trust companies where management is some skateboarder looking reject who thinks its hip to interview me with a little dog running around the office. Sure one would like to go to their jobs and enjoy the environment they work in, but management (although most times are hated) is a very important part of any company, and not many 20something'ers have that edge yet in my opinion, mind you I'm in my upper 20's.


  • I was in a similar position. A few years ago, I started a business with my best friend. It never went anywhere. Last year, we went our separate ways, splitting off into two companies. Mine took off. Her's...well...you know the rest.

    Once I became successful and my services had a little demand, I was suddenly surrounded by people who where telling me to raise my rates and grow my business. When I asked why, they said, "Because you can." I figured I was fine where I was, so I stayed put.

    Now, most of them are out of business and I'm still going strong. Sure, I'm growing, just not exponentially like all of the generic three-letter companies around here.

    - Milo Hyson

  • streamsicle rocks...



    Dive Gear [divingdeals.com]
  • I don't think he's entirely serious dear...

    Hell, I've been in places like this. Of the three places I've been in the last two years or so, one is very dead, and the other is barely hanging on?

    Now, I'm not saying I personally had any impact on their downfall ;-)

    Mong.

    * ...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
  • um, it's a joke (or, more precisely, a satire). Joe
  • never trust guys named Rick -- Rick is an asshole, Rick lied to me
    My father's name is Rick..

    -------------------
  • Do it and find out... :-)
  • Now if anyone who doesn't believe me wants to invest in my plan to turn the volume up on your computer from the internet, email me the money.

    d00d, do you have PayPal? I am SO there!
  • Here are some clues:

    1. Yes. Of course the very idea of a method for adjusting your monitor settings over the Internet is completely absurd.
    2. The part describing the questions the "author" had to answer in his interview was noticably similar to the beginning of a Salon article [salon.com] about a bad experience at a software company we discussed here [slashdot.org] a short time ago.
    3. The Yellow Pages aren't trademarked. This was a famous oversight by Bell Telephone, which is why anyone who wants to can publish a Yellow Pages telephone directory.
    4. Do you, personally, know of anyone who made management decisions by rolling a d12?
    5. There was this large foot next to the story listing on the front page, which generally indicates a humorous article.

    Conclusion: IT'S A PARODY!

    Sheesh!

  • Why get completely out if you knew it was coming? You should have short sold the dot coms and made a bundle.

    My investments were in a 401(k), not in hand-picked stocks. The 401(k) offered numerous investment vehicles (various stock funds, REITs, bonds, etc.). I had about 50% of my money divided among 2 or 3 stock funds; in February, I transferred all that money out of stocks and into other investments w/in the 401(k).

    As it was, I spent a month wondering if I had been overly concerns (since tech stocks kept going up until mid-March). ..bruce..

  • Perhaps the most amusing/saddening aspect of the dot.com crash is that so many Slashdot posters would read the story above and think it was real. As many others have pointed out, the real stories aren't all that different (and some are worse).

    Though it's easy to say (and hard to prove), I saw the dot.com crash coming. (One piece of evidence: I got out of the stock market completely in February of 2000.) I've been involved in two different startups and have helped bring half a dozen commercial software products to market. I know how tough and unforgiving the market can be, even with good intentions, a decent product, and competent management. Been there, done that, wrote a book about it [thinkwyde.org].

    Here, by contrast, were these dot.coms blowing through more venture capital in a month than the last startup I was with used in five years, with no product, no business plan, and no experience in winning and maintaining a customer base. Even under normal circumstance, two out of three VC investments fold--and the VCs still make money, lots of it. The dot.com mania suckered both entreprenuers and investors; the resulting death rate is more like nine out of ten, and many VC firms are hurting in a way they never have before.

    I'm not thrilled about the subsequent crash, since it's having an impact all over the economy. My own employer is 'retrenching'; since my current practice isn't sufficiently profitable for their needs, I'm going to be 'spinning off' to run it as an independent. I'll do fine. It's not the first time I've been through this, and it's not the first time that we've been through a tech-related boom-and-bust cycle. But I was hoping to build up a pension over the next dozen years or so. Now I have to do it the hard way, while paying my own employment tax, benefits, legal and accounting services, infrastructure, etc.

    I _am_ amused by how every time the stock market rallies a bit, commentators jump in to speculate whether things are going to turn upwards again. To borrow an earlier poster's phrase, I fear we are going scrape along the bottom for some time. I'd love to be wrong about that, but I fear the worse (in the tech sector and possibly in the economy) may stil be yet to come. ..bruce..

  • What a brilliant idea! This is gonna make millions - no, BILLIONS! I missed out on Microsoft and Apple - I'm not gonna miss out on the Next New Thing! I'm gonna buy a heap of these stocks. Just let me liquidate my 401K and ...

    Oh. Oh, dear.

    "Never mind..." -- Emily Litella

  • Man, Streamsicle does rock! But what's the dilly with that dancing popsicle?
    Multiplayer Strategy [toronto.edu]
  • I think this is funnier if you have read this slahsdot post [slashdot.org], and this article [salon.com].

    --Ty
  • And I am suing you!!!!

  • In University I learned programming techniques the first two years and then had feasibility studies driven into my head in 3rd and 4th years. Was half the problem with startups that they were run by people who perhaps didn't have the expertise to design software properly?
    College/High School dropouts who thought college couldn't teach them anything about programming. Theory about software engineering and algorithms doesn't matter because they already know "C" (or Visual Basic, these days).
  • Life grinds on in the technology based startup world. There's less capital to make it happen and we keep stuggling to meet deadlines and ship product. Some companies had real value 18 months ago, some still do. Sure it'd be nice to be shopping for the yacht now, but as the rest of the startup world burns, it's nice to have work and keep pluggin'.
    I watched from the sidelines during the boom. I watched options traders start companies with no management experience save their connections with wealth. I watched naive programmers' fortunes rise and fall with the market. I know a number of millionaires from the boom, I know a number of guys left nearly penniless. Technology marches on.
  • It would be funnier if, at the end, all of the guys DIED horrible deaths. And their families too! And their DOGS! OH GOD I *HATE* DOT-COM GUYS DOGS! BLEAARRGHH!!!

    I mean, WTF? The absolute GLEE in the crash of dot-coms is kind of sickening. People are out of work. Real people - not just a few asshole biz school drop-outs* who could use Front Page.

    G.H.

    * - those jerks deserve it. :P
  • by tokengeekgrrl ( 105602 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @09:55AM (#240651)
    Sad part is, some of us tried to use good judgement and still got burned. During the big dot-com boom, I avoided many job offers figuring as you that it wasn't stable enough, not trusting anything told to me. Then a very, very close friend of mine who had tried to hire me a couple of years prior, (for a sucessful company they had already sold for a few million), was starting a new business and offered me a job. I was still a bit wary but went to check it out and did parttime contract work for a couple of weekends helping setup the network, research and write documentation while deciding whether it was what I wanted. My friend showed me the business plan and there was a real product and real investors and a real facility being built. There were sales people already making sales. One of the investors had ties in the Phillipines so the plan was to grow into the Pacific Rim. It looked good. I asked friends and family for advice and they thought I should go for it. Someone I respected told me to consider that it's easier to live with known regrets then unknown regrets.

    During one of my parttime contract weekends the current CTO disappeared, just left. Took a company phone, laptop, keys. No word. My friend was left holding the bag and turned to me to fill in. I still wasn't sure about the job but this was a very close friend, someone I trusted and they needed me. I couldn't let them down just on principle. I reworked everything the former CTO had done, (much of the network had been setup rather sloppily so I had to redo it), and kept everything on track. Still, I was uneasy so I agreed to come on board fulltime for 6 months, to get the company started, but that was it. I might stay longer after that but could not guarantee it. This way, I could feel satisfied with myself that I wasn't leaving my friend in a bind while at the same time not living with the regret that I had let a good opportunity pass me by.

    After relocating myself to the area and working fulltime for a couple of weeks, I still hadn't been signed on as a fulltime employee. I was living off of my own savings for a bit of time. I was just going to rent a car but went ahead and bought a new car at my friend's urging as they wanted to wrap the company logo on it promising that the company would buy the car from me once I left. I finally received a pay check so I felt more secure about the situation and continued to trust my friend and take them at their word, especially after they agreed to sit down with me the next day to get everything settled and in writing as I had been requesting since day one.

    By the end of the month, there was very little in writing, my friend always had meetings or was too busy to meet, and a new business plan was being written. The entire mission and product goals of the company were being changed, including my job description. I was suddenly "promoted" to CTO which meant "do everything tecnical to make it all happen, whatever it happens to be." Of course, I'm not qualified to be a CTO and barely qualified to be an IT Director which is what I was doing on contract, still not a fulltime employee.

    I was pulled into VC meetings to answer technical questions about a new business plan with which I wasn't familiar which made me uncomfortable. My staff was anxious. I started to hear rumors about why the former CTO had left, how my friend had been changing the direction of the company at will in order to get VC money and was fixated on making $20 million dollars. When I questioned my friend about anything, I was accused of being naive and/or disloyal followed by how comforted they were that I was there to help them, how they couldn't do it without me.

    I then realized that my friend had no idea as to what they were doing. They seemed to have a junkie addiction, only concerned with money and making lots of it and would tell anyone anything if it would help them get it. I resigned from my contract and told my friend that it wasn't going to work out. The company and job had not turned out be what it had been presented to me as and I didn't like being baited and switched. My friend felt bad and we agreed on a compensation package for all the time and money I had spent to accommodate the company. We split on good terms. That happened last summer 2000.

    Currently, "my friend" is no longer my friend. Promise after promise that was made to me was broken time and time again. I still have not been paid all that was owed to me and am only now getting out of the debt I incurred from helping my former friend. In spite of it, I am still doing okay. My former friend's company is, of course, not going to make it. Many people have left or been layed off and my former friend is being sued. I am relieved that I got out when I did and don't want to have anything to do with my former friend ever again.

    I don't regret taking a gamble by working for a dot-com. I should have paid closer attention to the inconsistencies but the biggest error in judgment I made was trusting a close friend who took advantage of my faith in them. I will never make that mistake in business again. I've learned my lesson.

    - tokengeekgrrl

  • I'd imagine that what makes this difficult on PCs and easy on Macs has nothing to do with the relative merits of those two Operating systems, and everything to o with the fact that Mac hardware is made or spec'd by apple, so they set there is a standard mechanism. There isn't this feature standardisation on PCs.

  • because there is a shortage of talent, not a shortage of workers. idiot.



  • Not that I think these people are cool or anything, but how about:

    Master P: Believe it [rollingstone.com]. A couple years ago, I read that he was in the top fifty list of richest men under 40 from his record label empire that he runs, No Limit. He made 365 million in one year-- that topped Michael Jordan. He turned thirty this year.

    Michael Dell: Currently aged 34 years. Started and has run [time.com] Dell computers through his 20s. Now has 21 billion dollars.

    Seth Warshavsky: At the helm [wired.com] of the largest online porn entity-- IEG (Internet Entertainment Group) at age 24. He started and has run the company responsible for profitting off the online Dr. Laura nude pics and the Tommy Lee and P. Anderson video. In 1997 it grossed $20 million. Granted, unlike Dell, this guy has some morals and taste.




    Seth
  • Can you hear it? That's the collective ignorant outcry of a hundred thousand geeks who can make a Linux box fly but can't recognize satire when they read it.

    This is not a real dot-com people...It's half tongue-in-cheek, half satire. You must chill.

    Now if anyone who doesn't believe me wants to invest in my plan to turn the volume up on your computer from the internet, email me the money.

    RB
  • According to their website:

    DogDoo.com has ALWAYS been profitable, ever since our inception in June of 1999! When other huge web sites like Amazon.com still remain in the red we have turned profits each and every month.

    It's not hard to see that a company that ships dog crap would be profitable. There's a few reasons for this:

    1. This is a service that has demand. There are several reasons for this as well.
    2. There is very low overhead. The cost of dog food and dog care for a few animals is all.
    3. Shipping and everything else is paid for by the customer sending the package. The end result is that dogpoo.com is probably making close to 100% profit.

    Even if only a few people order, they are already making money. A single order from any of the "sizes" of dog crap will pay for the food for the dog for a month or more. It's $25 plus shipping for 2 lbs of feces. That's more than steak.

    Pretty much the only other raw materials, besides poop is the shrink wrap and boxes for sending the stuff in. Dogdoo.com [dogdoo.com] is actually providing a service that some people want. Granted it is probably a niche market, but some people are buying it. I cannot see anyone wanting control of their monitor from anywhere in the world.

  • of almost every .com I've heard of that was created and died during the .com goldrush. My wife was there for 2 of 'em and when I heard her spouting this shit for the second time around, I was forced to smack her around a bit -

    her: "well, we're REAL close to getting funding"
    me: "are you going to get a paycheck this month"
    her: "if we get funding"
    me: "call the temp place tomorrow and find a temp position immediately."
    her: "but we're close, we'll probably get a sheet by the end of the week"
    me: "yeah, we're close too....close to having to live in a fucking box on the street corner unless you get a paycheck"

    Needless to say, the paycheck never came....
  • by antis0c ( 133550 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @06:12AM (#240668)
    This was a very good peice of satire.. and not far off from the actual truth on the market. Most companies did very little research if an idea was marketable.. For example, my previous job was working for a company called InterAct Accessories, (GameShark.com, interact-acc.com).. I worked on many projects that were just not researched.. My boss at the time's outlook was, "If its internet enabled or does something on the internet, it will sell millions." And thus a product called SharkWire was born. SharkWire was a modem for your Nintendo 64 that allowed you to get Gaming information straight from Sharkwire.com for only 9.95$ a month! The best part you ask? You can't browse anywhere else on the Web, and Sharkwire.com was always down! I know, I know first thing I said was where can I sign up to get one of these devices... Well instead of even just testing the water before investing a lot of money, they put approximately 2 million into it, produced 80,000 units, setup a huge sharkwire.com hosting deal with Genuity (approximately 90,000 a month for Solaris machines, Radius servers, mail, etc..), then released the product LATE.. Missing its target date before christmas.. But alas, it was the technology era, it would sell anyway right? Well InterAct sold approximately 500 units over a period of 5 months.. of those only 100 actually called to subscribe to the service.. The rest were eventually returned.. Needless to say after about 8 months the project was shut down... with still 80,000 of these units in a warehouse.. Fortunately I wasn't directly involved with this particular project, but my job was eliminated anyway thanks to the huge loss involved..
  • by crazyj ( 145672 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @03:52PM (#240670)
    Yeah dogdoo.com is profitable, but their business plan is shit.

    --
    J, Pixel Pimp

  • WTF is it with Slashdot's hostility towards the very web community it caters to? Over the weekend we were being encouraged to laugh at the unemployed in this econonomic downturn (Oh, look at the stupid yupee getting his car Repo'ed! [slashdot.org]. Laugh. It's funny!). Now we have a satire that pretends to be the template for all start-ups in e-commerce. Maybe your hoping it's just Windows users getting fired out there, but it's your Linux buddies too.

    If Andover decided to trim some fat and the staff of Slashdot was laid off should we laugh at that too? Or maybe it's just funny when it's the other guy. Assholes.

  • This same thing happend to me, although not a parody, there were some similarities.

    I was just starting in my career, had passed my CCNA, my RHCE, and I thought I knew it all. I met some guy who was looking for someone with Cisco and Red Hat Linux experience and I thought, "Hey, I really fit that bill!!!" I interviewed with the guy at a local restaurant.(my first hint should have been that I never actually was able to see the office space they had) He asked me what experience I had with Linux to which I naturally responded, "Well, I have my RHCE." Which was similar to the response I had when asked about my Cisco experience.

    He sounded all excited and wanted to hire me starting me at a salary that was double what I was already making. I bet you could see the dollar signs in my eyes. He was going to call me in a week and make an offer. A week passed, then two. I called him, and he responded with "Well, I am meeting with some Venture Capital companies this week..." This went on for about a month. In the meantime, the company I was working for was looking to make cut-backs. They had found out somehow that I had interviewed elsewhere and figured I wasn't a team player any longer and I was chosen as one of ten to be let go.

    Oh well, things turned out for the best, but that's how a young, naive person could get caught in the dot-com hype. Lesson learned.

  • Libel. Not slander, libel.

    --

  • No shit! Telling jokes about failed dot-coms is like telling Ike jokes at this point.

    And most of the slashdotters are far to young to know who the fuck "Ike" was, or which commedian I stole that comparison from. (It was Steve Martin, talking about how stale jokes about Nixon had become in 1977. You young whippersnappers may not know it, but his stand-up acts were once popular enough to sell out football stadiums. Crap, do I ever feel old now... Pardon me while I climb onto a drifting iceburg and float out to sea...)

  • Twenty-something managers definitely deserve a lot of blame, but to be honest, good managers of any kind are hard to find.

    I was involved in a dot-com startup. We raised 4.5 million in the first round. We decided to hire a 40-something CEO, figuring that he very successfully ran a multi-thousand person corporation that went public, so he must have done something right.

    What a disappointment. The biggest problem was that he was extremely intimidated by "the New Economy" and bought into every dot-com cliche you could imagine. Spend money as fast possible. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you grow. I was the CTO, and tried to bring some sanity to the process, but was overruled. I eventually left the company.

    Later, they raised another $15 million. The guy hired to replace me was, quite frankly, one of the stupidest, most irritating people I have ever met. However, he could butt kiss like you wouldn't believe. He would spew techno-babble that would never fail to impress my "grayhair" CEO. Eventually, only an uprising by the programmers got rid of him (they threatened to walk out, en masse, if they didn't get rid of him). One catty comment: the ugliness of his personality was exceeded only by the ugliness of his appearance. He was truly offensive in every possible way. There aren't many people that I truly hate (even people that have screwed me in the past), but this guy I truly despised.

    Anyway, the irony is that it really was a great idea, but it would take careful execution to make it happen.

    There were SO many other stupid things they did. Long term office space lease (although, they at least didn't get the most expensive they could get). HUGE Oracle/Exodus contract that was 10 times more power than what they needed. On and on.

    This was late 1999. They have pissed away 17 million of the 19.5 million they raised in about 2 years. They finally fired the CEO. However, the VCs hired another guy for, I believe, $350K/year. My partner (who was still there at the time) absolutely hated the guy, and thought he was completely useless. My partner was fired.

    My lessons? NEVER use other people's money. You very, very rarely need it. Trust your instincts. Be frugal, and slow steady growth wins the race.


    --

  • See that foot? It's funny, laugh. I really, really, hope that I'm not missing out on some serious meta- meta- meta- levels of sarcasm here.

    That's what I get for posting about five minutes before the morning caffiene kicks in.

    [shrug]

    Foot in mouth tastes good on monday morning. Now all I got to do is learn to whistle.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @06:55AM (#240687) Journal
    Where are all these fantasy stories of "mismanaged" dot-coms coming from? Why is it so vogue now to ridicule dot-coms?

    When the Internet exploded - it caused massive cultural change. The kind of things Katz is famous for ranting about *are* possibilities, broad flat publishing, heightened communication, empowerment in various ways, re-invigorating communities of all kinds - DO and DID occur because of the Internet. The Internet has been the single greatest Cultural Revolution to happen in the last 15-20 years.

    But its success is something very unique - it did not translate into massive, powerful profitable businesses? Why? Because not everything that is culturally significant is economically significant. So when VCs flocked to the Internet (a whopping 4-8 years ago) they expected to become rich by riding the economic saddle of this explosion. Well that did not happen. The Internet is proving to be a very hostile to their economics.

    So - what is my point? It is a sad commentary that we will ridicule and malign what is a significant cultural event. I understand that trying to run a 'business' as is described in the article is a funny. What is very funny (in the Strange sense not the "ha ha" sense) is that there is no mechanism or ability for people to participate in our world in this way. In all the world there is no opportunity for people to manage via Role-Playing - why the fuck not? I think there should be.

    Every day millions of us goto our places of work and participate in the inhuman charade that robs us of our Life. Most of us probably would rather being doing something Else with our time. It is truly sad that there are NO OPPORUNITIES in the world to do something different. Why does everything in the world need to participate in the un-reality that is the business world. For a very short time people were equipped and empowered to build something they found interesting. Allot people will downplay the Katz description of the Internet as being insignificant - while i agree it is not the most important thing in existence - it is profound and exciting in many ways.

    It is really troubling to think of the other 'significant' things that humanity could enjoy, what strange and different ideas could be explored - in a large way - that may prove to be significant in our lives - but *ARENT* pursued or built or conceived or developed or explained or discussed or shared or whatever simply because it does not participate in the world in an *Economically* significant way.

    Where is humanity going? What are goals? Is it to consume and work and conceive of nothing else if it doesn't work in our broken 'economic' reality?

    This is a very difficult thing to express - im ranting a bit (and definitely running on) but I hope everyone 'gets my point'. Most will read this as a simple anit-capitalist tie-raid(sp?) - which pragmatically it is - I mean it to be a whole lot more than that.

  • One clever .tragedy in salon was fun. One more in cnet, red herring, upside or nytimes.com was tolerable. And this was in January 2001. For cryin' out loud, we are in May of 2001. And we are still laughing at these dot coms or shedding tears for them??? Havent we passed that point where parodies fail to amuse us and elegies fail to make us cry? /. should go back to talking about technology, rather than focusing on the business of technology coz its writers do *not* have the insight to write about management and business.
  • ...that I feel a sense of satisfaction while watching the dot-com bubble burst.

    Yes, this makes me a petty person, and yes, I really want to feel bad for these folks who created snake-oil dreams -- but I don't. The people I do feel for are the workers -- the developers, office people, and general grunts who got caught up in this mess. Most of these folks -- including the programmers -- went to work in good faith, being promised the sky by crooks and false visionaries.

    Yah know what's funny, though? Two years ago, people were urging me to join their dot-com dreams; I, instead, found myself a comfortable position with an unexciting company that works in the boring realm of document management. The work is quite challenging, but not very sexy -- and a lot of techy friends derided my choice.

    Those same techies are now calling *me* to ask for a job.

    Yeah, I've made my mistakes over the years, so I don't blame people for wanting to get rich on the dot-com boom. Perhaps the dot-com mess is a reflection of our society; I think the reasoning is similar to that of gamblers -- one more pull of the lever, one more roll of the dice, and I'll never be rich beyond the dreams of avarice...

    ...but in the end, most folks go home with empty pockets and broken dreams.


    --
    Scott Robert Ladd
    Master of Complexity
    Destroyer of Order and Chaos

  • If you can't laugh at pain, especially stupid, self-inflicted pain, then what can you laugh at?
    George W. Bush!

    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
  • by update() ( 217397 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @06:55AM (#240702) Homepage
    Can you hear it? That's the collective ignorant outcry of a hundred thousand geeks who can make a Linux box fly but can't recognize satire when they read it.

    I have to confess -- I read the story a couple of times before concluding it was a joke. Not because I can't recognize satire, or notice the humor icon on the story, but because there's little here that's obviously unrealistic.

    The deranged business plan, the interview questions, the godawful management, executives landing in jail -- this sounds exactly like one of those sob-stories Salon is always running. Actually, if you combine Eazel and Ximian's business models, LinuxCare's management and the Red Hat and VA IPO's, you'd have a similar story.

    Now, if the interview question had used goats instead of sheep, and the word "goat" had been linked, I'd have caught on quicker. ;-)

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • ... and nobody ever studied failure.

    Errrm, actually, in the second year of my university course, we did quite a bit on "Understanding system failures" (systems of all types, from Three Mile Island to business systems).

    Any decent systems analysis course should have a good chunk devoted to understanding failure.

  • by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @06:47AM (#240704)
    "All they needed was more investors, 300 programmers, 200 administrative staffers, a mile of warehousing space, a fleet of private jets, and a few international trade treaties to be rewritten."

    "Why not let people adjust their screen settings from anywhere in the world over the web? At the time we could barely comprehend how profound of a concept that was, and I was excited to be part of it."

    I bet he was coding this for Windows. Since Mac OS's contrast/brightness/ColorSync settings are all done in software (and hardware) (for color calibration purposes), I'm willing to bet this could be coded for MacOS by one person in one day.

    Does this mean I could be the next .com millionaire?

  • by JohnTheFisherman ( 225485 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @05:46AM (#240706)
    You assumed a position suggested by some stranger in a cab, and wonder how you got screwed? Sheesh....
  • I thought this was very funny. Nonetheless, some of the comments posted here afterwards disturbed me. It's very easy to crow with the benefit of hindsight and there are a lot of readers here who are commenting with little or no experience themselves.

    Remember that the majority of people involved in the .com boom were highly intelligent people, some of whom had already made a fiscal success of their lives. I don't believe their greed unbalanced their intellect. I believe something else happened that is a sign of our times.

    Technology has advanced to a state now where it is rare, if not impossible, to have a complete grasp of more than one subject. Technology in its widest sense simply means a body of knowlegde, so I'm also using this to refer to wider contexts, such as finance, or business too. We rely on the expertise of others. Clearly the marriage of finance/business and internet technology is what failed here. Two groups of people with sound knowledge of their own areas failed to communicate clearly in the confusion and excitement of a new 'goldrush'. Financiers were scared that their speciality was about to be usurped by something new and alien to them, and they jumped on board the e-tech bandwagon for fear of being left behind.

    The lessons we must learn from this are profound. I have my own views as to what some of them might be, but it would be facile to attempt to put them down here in such a short message.

  • I somehow have difficulty feeling sorry for an employee who felt that role playing games and synergy were more important than delivering a product. I've seen dozens of entepeneurs with great ideas and actual results who couldn't get the time of day from capitalists, while these guys come up with a colour and took a lot of time to do nothing. Honestly, the world doesn't need synergy...it doesn't need a group of youngsters who feel good about charging blindly into a business world using pitchforks to unload bowling balls. What the American business landscape needs is nice products -- fine china so we don't buy from Mikasa, a quality automobile so we don't buy from BMW, a quality TV so we don't by from SONY, and decent clothing so we don't buy from Indonesia. We need blue collar work to reduce crime and better pay for salesman, so they don't need to force crap and extended warranties down our throats to live. But this is what we get...funding for dumb ideas (or, in this case, no ideas...just elves and trolls in yellow caps dreaming hazily) while great ones sit on the sidelines because they don't offer to change the world.
  • by bryan1945 ( 301828 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @05:55AM (#240721) Journal
    Sad part is, some of the real-life stories I have heard are worse than this story. Bad business ideas, bad hirings, bad money spending. I can't wait for the next computer/network revalation to hit so I can 1) put my money in early and get the (inflated) earnings out early 2) watch and laugh as the same mistakes are made again.

    At the time I wondered if I should make the dotcom leap into the "big money." Decided that it wasn't stable enough, stayed where I was, and got a 19% raise in Dec. '99 from my current employer for a job well done, but mostly because they were scared to lose me! With a little patience and insight (or luck?) I still have a job with benefits and seniority, and a kick ass raise to boot (no pun intended).

  • by Chyron ( 304285 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @06:04AM (#240727)
    Um... in case it wasn't clear, this is _humour_. Most of the people who got screwed by the big dotcom implosion didn't actually work for people they met in cabs. This article's a spoof, exaggerating all the flaws of the dotcom paradigm.

    For the humour-impaired, here are the parallels:

    a stranger I had shared a taxi with pitched me a leading technical position at his new start-up company
    means:
    "people were way too eager to be a part of the dot-com phenomenon, without knowing or caring what they were really getting into."

    and before I could answer I was hired
    means:
    "the dot-coms didn't really care about the professional qualifications of their employees - in fact, most often, the management was incompetent as well and couldn't even tell who was qualified and who was not."

    All they needed was more investors, 300 programmers (...)
    means:
    "dot-coms were so inebriated by their initial successes that they set themselves unrealistic goals, dooming themselves to failure."

    Why not let people adjust their screen settings from anywhere in the world over the web?
    means:
    "Many dot-coms were based on ideas that were stupid, trivial, and impractical."

    we liked the color yellow, it meant something to us, and for our investors it was all they had from us so far.
    means:
    "Most dot-coms had all of the hallmarks of a successful business... except product. You could get by on pure spin for a while, but not forever."

    But we worked hard and the money didn't mean anything to us.
    means:
    "Dot-coms worked hard _at keeping themselves above water_, instead of producing something tangible. They built a castle of hopes and dreams, and people were stupid enough to pay them rent."

    After all, I have learned some valuable lessons: (...) never trust investors.
    means:
    "Dot-com management was (and is) often dumb enough to whine like a spoilt child instead of trying to understand _why_ they failed."

    There, is everything nice and clear now?
    --
  • by deaddrunk ( 443038 ) on Monday May 07, 2001 @06:07AM (#240735)
    I love this kind of article. It brings out all those that believe that irony is a kind of metal.
  • I am VC workman. I like idea you have. Please, you have beezeenice plan? No? No problem. I give you money. Only problem, I do not have too much time to do doodoodiligence. You tell me if ok, OK? Also, please, can color be changed to Blue? Mrs VC not like Yellow. PS. Person who mentioned business where "dog shit is purchased online"...is still possible to subscribe? Such opportunity fits our investment philosophy perfectly. I have young MBA name Chad from Tuck run it through our 'model'.

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