Youth

I've got this new thing I've been doing at work. Everywhere on my floor the ceiling is maybe 9 ft. high except for corridor going though the middle of the building where the elevators are. Here the ceiling is quite a bit higher (~12 ft.?), and on each end of the corridor there are places where the 9 ft. ceiling stops and the 12 ft. ceiling starts. At some point during the last few weeks I started jumping to see how high I could touch on the wall going between the ceiling levels. I don't remember doing it for the first time, or why I decided to do it that first time (probably because I had a lot of energy after downing four cups of coffee or something). Now, however, I'm very aware of why I do it – it makes me feel younger.

Of course it's not immediately obvious why jumping at work equates to feeling younger, so I'll explain. The first sport I played regularly was basketball. My parents put me into a basketball league when I was six, and I played every year until I was 16 (at which point I decided to "dedicate" myself to Garfield baseball (retarded), which I ultimately quit (no pun intended) and moved onto bigger and better things with Garfield ultimate team and MoHo). I have distinct memories of being nine and "preparing" for my Saturday morning basketball game by running back and forth in my bedroom trying to run, jump, and touch my ceiling. I never really had great hops as compared to, say, good high school basketball players, but I definitely was springy as a kid. At my basketball peak – 8^th grade, when I played with my Hiawatha AAU team – I had a 26" vertical leap. I never quite got high enough to dunk, but I could certainly touch (and almost grab) rim.

I had a lot of fun playing basketball when I was younger. It's kind of a shame that I essentially quit playing once I got into high school, never even trying out for our school team. I had all kinds of excuses at the time. I think the one I used the most was not wanting to try-out my freshman year when I had played against Garfield's freshman team in one of my summer leagues (i.e. the coach already had his freshman picked). The real reason was that I was just scared. (well, and I was depressed as all hell, and was eating and getting fat, but whatever, not getting into that here). At Washington Middle School I was considered by many friends to be one of, if not the, best player in the school. Whatever. I knew better than that. I may have been the best during our lunch games that were made up of kids in the accelerated program, but those games were devoid of any of the local central district kids whom were the real ballers at the school. I had played against those guys in my rec league games, and I was barely average among them. So I stopped. Then I got fat. Then I started running to lose weight, any my vertical was never the same again. Sure, when playing ultimate I could still out-jump most people I played against but, on top of just being taller than most, that was aided by the fact that I knew how to time my jumps. I stuck with ultimate for a while, but by my junior year of college I had effectively quit playing ultimate (again for semi-bullshit reasons, though I feel those were a bit more valid) and thus quit jumping.

Over the last few years I haven't had the opportunity to jump. I don't play pick-up basketball or pick-up ultimate. There's nothing in my workouts that lead to jumping (though I may start integrating some plyometric jumping exercises soon). Coincidentally or not coincidentally, I started feeling older in the past year, and by feeling older I mean sensing a lessening of my youthful spirit. I'll grant that part of that was probably due to going through NE's furlough (regular pay periods resume this week!!!) – that shit was in no way easy (or even possible) to compartmentalize. But other than that, I can't really put a reason to why the spirit has been dwindling. Maybe it's due to my adult work environment. Most of NE's employees are in the 25-35 range, and most of them, though fun people, act like adults. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and not that that shouldn't be expected, but the fact remains that's there certainly a lack of youthful exuberance here which certainly isn't helping me feel young.

So why, at my tender age of 23, do I feel this need to feel young? Well, there's a special, unique kind of happiness that is associated with youth, one of innocence and naivety, one with which you just feel good because the most ludicrously simple things strike a happy chord inside of you. A couple of the employees here bring their kids to work and I recognize that in them immediately. Anything and everything is possible because they have no reason to think otherwise. I've noticed the same thing while reading the Harry Potter books. As much as I try to read the books in the state of mind of a 13 year-old I can't quite completely escape the reality of "what would actually happen in the real world." A group of teenage wizards taking on a group of adult wizards are dedicated to torturing and killing? No way they survive. But in the mind of a 13 year-old, sure, why not? Of course they could take them on. Sigh. Adulthood is all about learning what you're not allowed to do and what's not possible. And while that is ultimately unavoidable, there are things you can do that, even if only momentarily, can take you back to those special times. I've recently discovered that jumping is one of those things. I may only hang in the air for a quarter of a second, but during that time I manage to escape all of the ball-and-chains of the adult mindset.

And when I land, I always have a smile on my face.

Loyalty

As a relatively young cub in the business world, I, as well as most of the workers in my generation (according to a number of articles I've read over the past year), do not have the word "loyalty" in my business vocabulary. Of course, you can argue as if that is a good thing or not - management looking to keep costs down probably consider that a bad thing, whereas employees looking to get the best possible deal for themselves probably consider that a good thing. Where do I stand on all of this? Well, you never really know your position for sure until you're actually faced with a defining situation. And, of course, it's no coincidence that as of this writing I am faced with such a situation.

As I mentioned last week, my situation at NE has gotten better over the last month. This past week has built on that - on Monday we received $500k, in our bank account, as a "temporary relief" payment until the deal for the $4 million is officially complete. That has paid off for me personally in that on Friday I received all of my back pay from June and July. Yes! Besides the obvious joy that comes from getting a couple g's dumped into your bank account, this latest development has me pleased because my "oh shit" fund has been completely replenished, meaning that November, not September, is roughly the point at which my cash runs out. However, I don't think running out of cash is going to be a problem that I'm going to have to worry about. And this is where the loyalty discussion begins.

On Friday I interviewed with a Pasadena-based company that's developing technology to made online google-style ads more efficient for the companies advertising. When I arrived I was of the mindset, "Ok, lets see what these guys are about, see what my market value is, but there's no way I'm leaving NE." And it pretty much stayed that way for the first half of the interview. Then, as I was talking with their VP of engineering (or, more correctly, hearing his sales pitch for the company), I started thinking about what it might be like to work there. Then, maybe 5 minutes after I started thinking this, he busts out with, "So, wanna work here?" Now, I've done a decent number of interviews in my young years, but I've never been asked that, straight up, during an interview. I was so taken-aback from that question that I stammered out an answer that somewhat resembled, "yeah, seems like a cool company, it'll be a tough choice that I'll have to think about." (not to future self - figure out a good answer to this question). After him I talked with the CEO, a late-20's Caltech Ph.D. grad (Koch lab grad, if you're familiar with the group) who founded the company based on some side ideas he had while completing his Ph.D. First of all, dude is smart. Secondly, dude knows his shit, and expects everybody around him to know their shit. That I like. I have this vague memory of my first CS 175 class, with Zoe lecturing and Schroeder sitting in the first row. Zoe asked a question to the class and some student answers with "I think it's such-and-such." Schroeder turns around: "Do you think, or do you know?" Student: "Um...." Schroeder: "You have to know the answer, not think." The CEO is on that level.

Quick side bar: Here's a brain teaser that the CEO gave me. I'll put the answer at the bottom of the post. You are playing a game with another person that involves alternately placing quarters on a circular table such that the person who places the last quarter on the table that does not lie on top of any other quarter wins. You go first. What is your 100% guaranteed winning strategy?

So, back to the interview. I talked with the CEO for a while (at least an hour, I'm sure), and by the end it was pretty clear that they were going to make me an offer afterwards. Sure enough, I got a call Saturday afternoon from the VP of engineering telling me that they'll be sending out a formal offer letter on Monday. This is, of course, awesome. I now have a back-up in case NE dies. And when I started my job search, this was all I wanted. However, there's a chance that the offer may be good enough to pull me away from NE, regardless of whether or not NE gets the full $4 mil.

This is the classic scenario of "I wasn't looking to move on, but then this came along." Really, I wasn't looking to move away from NE. (btw, if you're wondering why I always refer to my company as NE rather than by its full name, it's because I don't want someone googling for info on it and coming across my blog and finding out my thoughts on NE's crappy financial situation. That might piss off my current CEO, and that's definitely not good for me). I was just making sure I had options, making sure I didn't lose my apartment and my car, making sure that I'd always have enough money to eat. It would have been irresponsible to not look around. But still, in my heart of hearts, I never thought I'd actually come across a situation that would actually lure me away from NE.

So what is so appealing about this company? Well, it's a small company (I'd be the 5th developer), it's a young company (barely six months old), it's well funded ($10 mil in the bank), and it has customers that have seen large sales increases as a result of using this company's services. In short: the business model looks good, the company is funded, and I'd be getting in at the very beginning. That's the biggest part. Another significant part of the offer deals w/ my 401k. They match. NE doesn't. That's HUGE. Currently I put in 20% of my yearly pay into my 401k. If the company matches that's an immediately 100% return on the investment. You can't find a better deal anywhere. Now, NE certainly has plans to match (as I was told when I started in January) but not until they're profitable. Well shit, NE's been a start-up for over 5 years and they still aren't matching. This company is six months old and they are. I think that says a lot.

One last bit about this company comes from a conversation I had with the CEO towards the end of the interview. He asked me, in a long-winded manner, what I thought the next big thing in the software industry would be. I responded, also in a long-winded manner, with "artificial intelligence and learning algorithms." His response: "I think you're absolutely right. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence is a horribly complex problem that really can't be made profitable at this point. For situations like this it's generally best to start off with a much smaller, simpler problem, make money off of that, and use that success to go after the greater problem, and that's what we're doing here." Whoa. You want to talk about upside? And this isn't some random guy sitting in a basement talking about how cool it would be to do this or do that. This is a Koch lab Ph.D. (Koch lab is computational neuroscience, for those of you not familiar with Caltech). This is a guy that could actually follow through on that idea. Wow.

So, of course everything with this company seems great and perfect and all - it's the initial courting/honeymoon period. And once it settles down to a reasonable level, I'm going to be faced with a very tough decision: Do I stay with NE, or do I jump ship and take up with this new company. This is where the issue of loyalty comes in. I wish decisions like these were made completely based on numbers - "Which company is going to pay me more? Ok, I'll go with that one." As Michael Corleone said best, "It's not personal. It's strictly business." But that's not the reality. Firstly, there are personal relationships here. There would be a let-down feeling if I were to leave. But while I would certainly miss the people here, dealing with the cut connections is really nothing compared to the loss that NE would feel as far as work on our viewing application goes. Over the last two months I've been the lead (by nature of being the only) OpenGL developer for our viewing application. It's not just that I know the code and the design of everything best, but that nobody else is even a close second as far as being able to pick up the code if I were to leave. The only other person who has so much as looked at the code is my dev lead, and while he's a smart guy and a great programmer he is most definitely not a math guy and would likely have a great deal of difficulty working with the vector and matrix algebra that comes with creating a 3D viewer. If I were to leave NE would be set back at least a few weeks while somebody else learns the code base. The real loss, however, will be from the loss of another employee. This furlough period has decimated our development staff such that we're basically working with a skeleton crew. There was a meeting among the engineers here a month ago during which is was pretty much agreed upon that NE can't take more than 1 or 2 people leaving if we plan on meeting our upcoming January and April deadlines. I happen to be in a particularly critical position because the C++ UI team currently consists of me and my dev lead, of which I probably do half to two-thirds of the development (as he gets tasked with various managerial duties). If I leave, he's all that's left. All of the other developers are working on projects more directly related to getting the scanner ready. Agh! Why can't I just slip out the back door without anyone noticing? In reality, I feel a sense of responsibility to every other employee here, as my departure would affect every single one of them. So what the hell do I do?

In all, I have to say this is an incredible situation to be in. It's certainly much better than the bullshit that I've had to go through over the last six months. That doesn't necessarily mean it's easy, though.

Updated: My bad for not posting the answer. Your first move is to put your quarter at the center. Then, arbitrarily pick a diameter and use that as a line of symmetry. Every move after that should mirror your opponents move.

Life Continued

Huh. Well, it looks like I kinda neglected this for a little while. That's understandable. My life's been somewhat hectic in the last month. Among other things, I started searching for back-up jobs just in case things at NE don't work out. Ironically enough, on the day of my first in-person interview (for which I spent the day in Mountain View, CA) NE's CEO held a company meeting to announce that he and an investor reached a deal in which NE would receive $4 million in capital, which should fund us for approximately a year, at which point our scanner should be out to market and, in theory, we no longer have to depend on investment capital. If nothing else, we'll at least have money to pay employee salaries for a year, which is great news for the short term. Now, the deal isn't absolutely finished - it still has to be approved by our board of directors - but everybody involved stands to gain from this deal being completed and, unlike our Saudi Prince investor, this investor actually has the cash to give us (and doesn't have a money-grubbing entourage standing between him and us). So, it appears as though our furlough may soon be over. Of course, I'm going to continue interviewing with other companies as if no deal had ever been announced, since if I stop now and the deal falls through then I'm no better off than if I had never started interviewing. Still, I'm optimistic.

What I'm most looking forward to as part of having a steady paycheck again is being able to plan into the future for purchasing things that I want. Thankfully I've been largely unfettered as far as collecting records for spinning. I've also been able to make trips to Montana and Buenos Aires. Still, there are so many things that I want to get at some point in the future - a new phone, new clothes, upgraded DJing equipment, whatever - that are going to require multiple months of saving up before I'll be able to purchase them, and not receiving regularly scheduled paychecks makes that incredibly difficult. Well, that and having to keep a large chunk of savings put away to weather the periods where no pay comes in (such as the last month and a half). Ah, money, how I love thee.

Ok, short post this time. I'll make sure to do a better job of keeping this up.