Fall 1996 - The Cube

After being confirmed as "Master of the Abacus" there was work to be done at ValueRx. Lots of work. Well, actually not that much work. Scratch that. NO work. See, there was still a fully functioning department running in Detroit - the work hadn't actually MOVED to Minneapolis yet. They were staffing up for the EVENTUAL work that was to appear. But they hired a good 2 months too early.

Now to be fair, in 1996 people were starting to worry about a thing called Y2K - where thanks to disk-space saving techniques employed in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a very real possibility that computer systems would think that the year 2000 would be the year 1900. Financial services and insurance industries were particularly concerned - interest and annuity calculations, AR aging, etc. So by 1996, most forward-looking institutions were scooping up people who knew COBOL and putting them to work on rewriting vast acres of code - millions of lines of linear procedural code. And this was before the "object oriented" revolution where you make a widget and call out to it, no, basic date calculations were cut and pasted into these long long long programs.

For the record, I never needed to work on a Y2K project. I did do some minor work to make sure that the freight shipping software I helped build would handle it, but that was it.

Anyway, COBOL guys were going fast, and their prices were going up. So it was smart to build a team in advance... but we who were hired early were a bit mystified. And there was a lot of finger-pointing in the ranks of the transition team as to who was to blame for the delays in bringing the work to Minneapolis... Angry James was in the middle of a lot of those discussions, but Mark and Mike were spared, since they were just carrying out the directions.

So what we had: Office space. Staff. Chairs. What we didn't have: MUCH office space, computers. We were double-cubed, with one computer to share. I was in a cube with a traditional Cobol guy... who really liked playing Solitaire. For my part, I liked surfing the new-fangled WEB. We were in this cube 8 hours a day, and took 30 minute turns at the computer, doing nothing.

After a few weeks, we at least got copies of the source code to start reviewing... and by 6 weeks in, the first Detroit Transplants started arriving, and bringing with them actual WORK. But I'm going to level with you, those first 6 weeks were very surreal, because I was paid 40 hours a week to really do nothing. In a different way from the telephone billing system scam in 1993 - that was 6 weeks with no hope. This was just 6 weeks of idleness with the expectation that things would be getting CRAY-ZAY soon enough.

My cubemate, being a very traditional coder, was beyond thrilled when the source code came available, and would enter trance-like states of staring at screens and screens of code, taking meticulous notes. Being who I was, I could review code for maybe 20 minutes before glazing over: Tell me what you need the code to DO, and I'll make it DO it. But "learn the code?" Ugh.

So I started my now-classic method of "when you're bored, find a meeting and sit in on it". And I participated. And before I knew it, they asked me to be the team lead for the Reporting team, because I liked to get to the heart of the problem and solve issues, not just talk about it. Which was awkward for the ACTUAL team leader, who had relocated from Detroit, and was very very used to being the "Skip" of the team, guru of knowledge, and giver of long timeframes for fixing things. When I jumped in and by the next morning had the solution to the problem she said would take 3 weeks to resolve, I was not making a friend.

But I was young - like a puppy dog. Not even 30 years old - I had not yet settled into the comfort of a job you can keep doing for 20 years. (and for the record, I have still not settled into that). I didn't KNOW I was stepping on toes, I honestly thought they'd be thrilled that I found the solution. HA.

Fortunately, the people in charge who had decided to make the move from Detroit were all relatively new to the organization, and weren't fixed in their ways. They saw me not only as Master of the Abacus, but as "someone who gets things done". This reputation would serve me well in early 1997... But let's stay in 1996 for just a moment longer.

In late 1996, near the holidays, the CEO of the company paid us a visit: By this time, the Detroit people had moved in: Over 40 IT people had uprooted their families and decided to move to Minneapolis for their career. Prior to this, ValueRx had offices in Minneapolis, Detroit, Connecticut, and Arizona. This move was to centralize all operations, and allow the company to be more lean and agile.

The CEO popped in and called an impromptu meeting in our lunchroom: 40 people, some from Detroit, some from Arizona, some new employees, some contractors, all crunched into a stinky-microwave lunchroom, while one floor down a much more comfortable conference room sat, unused, because nobody thought to plan this out. The guy (his name is lost to the ages for me, and I refuse to google him) started a half-hearted "thanks for coming together, gang" speech... and a few minutes in, his cellphone rang. He reached to his belt clip and unhooked his then-awesome StarTac flipphone, and took the call. Standing in the middle of a ring of people. He simply pretended we weren't there. For 5 minutes. It was the most rude thing - he didn't excuse himself, he didn't ask the person to call back. In that moment, we just didn't exist to him.

He snapped the phone closed, finished his little speech and asked if we had any questions for him. Someone from Detroit asked him when the corporate offices in Connecticut were moving to Minneapolis, since all of the other divisions already had. His answer:

"We're going to keep that office open - it's just a few of us out there, and my wife likes our neighborhood, and the kids are in a good school, so we're staying out there. We can manage remotely."

After a pep talk about sacrifice for the company, and thanks for relocating. It was incredible. He then scurried off to a meeting, leaving us all in stunned silence.

I think 4 people quit that day, and many more of the people who were planning to relocate decided NOT to do so. Heck, these were COBOL people, and as I mentioned, it was 1996 - there was plenty of work for COBOL people then. In fact, I think that was about the point at which the local people in Minneapolis got a whole lot more work, as the transplants and the stay-behinds all found lucrative work elsewhere.

I will also note that within 3 months, there was a new CEO as well.