Hey Nate, Don't leave us damned Michigan Yankees out of the picture. Some of us truly speak their minds regardless of consequences. My last employer and I had such a relationship. We called each other down on a lot of sh*t when we thought it was not good for the company. It was taken in good faith and never caused a problem between us. We discussed and came to a sane conclusion to the problem at hand. Those were good years where each of us could speak our minds openly with no fear of retribution. We disagreed on some things but had a meeting of the minds on most. I regard him as the best boss I ever had in my career as an A&P, an equal in the course of keeping in compliance with the regs, and he's still a best friend fifteen years after I hung up my shingle.
I did learn a lot from my dad. He was honest to a fault, and that was impressed on me when I closed a real estate deal for someone he worked with for forty years. When the man said to his wife "He's Lisle's son, we are in good hands" I knew I had a reputation to live up to. I've been following that ethic ever since.
Haha yup. Michigan. You're right! That's true!
Some of my crusty honesty was from dad, but I have to credit some other folks, too. Telecom engineers who'd been doing it a LONG time.
I've also had a few great bosses over the years, and I've shared the story here of the one who might have tripped over circumstances he wasn't given when he stopped a product release meeting right after the CEO said a particular piece of new hardware in the product was a "solution", and he blurted out, "That's not a solution, that's a f***ing kludge!"
He didn't know that the CEO needed the thing out the door and shipped to customers to tide over customers who would later be offered a nearly free upgrade to a new product that replaced this one, and had been developed for three years, off-site, in secret from everyone except the CEO, the head of engineering, and the team that built it.
So... his timing was a bit poor, but he didn't know. His job on the release Board was to stop garbage like that which would become a support nightmare and high support costs, from leaving the dock. He was mad nobody was going to stop it.
And he got the walk to HR to tell him to watch his language, and later that day, a private conversation with the CEO saying he was right, and we should not ship the kludge, and was "read in" to the secret cabal who knew about, and I'm not kidding here... "System X".
About three months later I knew about System X because folks were excited about it at the old employer. I had moved to a data center building company, but old friends who were upset about the old place's trgectory were once again energized when we'd have lunch or see each other.
I had been "read in" a bit on it right before I left, because I would have been involved with setting up the support training for the thing.
The old boss and I met up for lunch or something and I got to hear "the rest of the story of the day I was told to go to HR for saying that thing was a 'f***ing kludge". We both laughed really hard that day.
Sometimes you're right, but don't know the rest of the information you needed to know. Sometimes the thing is really a "f***ing kludge", but the CTO needs that kludge to ship so he can finish the new thing and then give the customers a screaming deal on throwing out the kludge. Haha.
Building stuff is fun. Building stuff when people are scheming and hiding stuff and making their little plans to take over the world, can be REALLY entertaining!
Oh, the CEO? His gamble worked. Product did really well, replaced all the kludges quickly, except the one sold to Japan, and nobody could ever figure out why they didn't take the deal... and he cashed out for multiple millions when the company got bought... right when I went back to work for them seven years later, after the dot-bomb blew up the data center company's finances.
Harvard guy. Last I heard he was mentoring young CEO hopefuls and sitting on a number of Boards. Very very bright. Knew how to sell at the peak, too.
Never had a chance to ask him why all the secrecy. By that stage, we only had one real competitor, and by the time I came back, we had acquired them, and I think that was planned all along... so who he needed not to find out he was building the killer product, I'm not really sure. Sure confused my boss! Haha.
I wonder if he thinks the weird effects of letting the main company think they were not engineering new things and the associated frustration as the original product aged and got very nasty hacks to keep it alive, were worth developing the new thing away from everyone at a "Skunk Works". I wonder if he'd choose that strategy again. Fascinating to find out.
