GaffneyWare

Integrity

All last week, our entire sales team was in the office. They were reviewing 2008, which turned out to be an amazing year for us, plus they were working through their 2009 plan. On one of those days, I had the opportunity to sit in the back and listen in on one of their meetings. The meeting I sat in on was a review of a particular deal. Our sales guy went through the multi-month deal, step by step and provided everyone with an amazing amount of detail. As he went through it, members of the sales team would pepper him with questions.

It seemed pretty grueling to me but he seemed to enjoy it. While I sat in there in the back and listened, two things dawned on me. First, that we have a kick-ass sales team and second, that I am damn lucky to be a part of such an amazing team.

I have worked at more than a few startup companies. Some of them were good and some of them were bad. But as I sat in the back listening, I remembered one that was particularly horrible and I actually remember the beginning of the end for that company, which I’ll call Havaco. It happened the day our CEO announced we had won The Big Deal.

Havaco Inc.

I was at my desk with my headphones on, trying to untangle a mountain of spaghetti code I had inherited from an engineer who had quit two months ago. His code was a mess! He had methods which were over 400 lines long and he repeatedly used foo and bar as variable names. Everyone in engineering agreed that his code needed to be rewritten but management kept telling us there was no time to do it.

Unfortunately, I had to dig through this mountain of shit because somewhere in there a really nasty bug existed. You see, one of our newer customers had called me the day before to complain, yet again, that she had found yet another bug. Yes, you read that correctly, she called me directly. Havaco did not have a customer support department. Sadly, it was a typical day at Havaco for me.

As you can imagine, I was not in a good mood so when our product manager knocked on my desk with his wedding ring to tell me the CEO wanted everyone in the conference room, I was not happy.

Havaco wins The Big Deal

The CEO was already in the conference room standing next to the VP of Sales when I arrived. They both stood there smiling and greeting people. The two of them looked like a pair of used car salesmen.

Once everyone was in the room, the CEO said something like “Everyone, I have some great news! We have just signed our largest deal. The Big Fat Cat Company is now one of our customers!”

Everyone, including me, started clapping, but as I clapped I had this sinking feeling in my stomach. It wasn’t joy, it was dread. During the thunderous applause, I glanced around the room and noticed something awful. Not a single developer had a smile on their face. We were all experiencing that same sense of dread.

After the applause died down, the CEO heaped a mountain of praise on the Sales and Marketing teams. He talked about how hard this was, and what a great win it was, and lots of other crap. He finally ended the festivities with “We have a lot of hard work ahead of us. We promised The Big Fat Cat Company we could make a few minor changes for them which I know we can deliver on.” That’s when I stopped listening.

Welcome to hell

After the company meeting, the CEO met with the development team. He told us what we needed to develop for The Big Fat Cat Company and when we needed to deliver it. He said that it was a do or die situation for Havaco.

I should have quit. The changes were not small, they were huge. I asked, could we hire some more engineers? No, we didn’t have the money. I asked, could we free up the engineers from doing customer support? No, there wasn’t anyone else to do it. I really should have quit.

We started working on the changes that day while the rest of the company went out to celebrate. I should have quit.

The next five months were a blur. Design? No time, just code. Unit Tests? No time, just code. We broke all the rules and every time one of us suggested a way to fix our broken process, we were told it would take too much time. It was horrible. I worked twelve hour days, seven days a week for close to five months. I should have quit.

We regularly missed our milestones. The Big Fat Cat Company turned into a tiger when we missed our first deliverable. We were late by two weeks and what we delivered just didn’t work. As the months went by, The Big Fat Cat Company got out of control. Their guys would directly call our engineers multiple times a day wanting a status update. It was hell.

Liars

I should have quit the moment I realized that Havaco lied to The Big Fat Cat Company. The VP of Sales said and did anything to get The Big Deal. The CEO knew that she had lied but went along with it. And the VP of Engineering lacked the courage to stop it before it even started.

It was hell but I did learn one important lesson from Havaco: never work for a company where the executives lack integrity. Think about it, if the executive team is willing to lie to a customer, why wouldn’t they lie to the employees?

BoxTone Integrity

So, as I sat in the back of the room quietly listening to the BoxTone Sales team grill one another, I realized something cool. Our sales team has integrity. They never lie to get a deal. They love our product and they believe in the team that built it and the team that supports it. As I pondered this new revelation, I thought about the company as a whole and realized that from top to bottom, BoxTone is filled with people of high integrity. In fact, I can think of at least one person that was let go because they lacked integrity which means our executives won’t tolerate people of low integrity.

I love working at BoxTone because working with people you trust makes all the difference.

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