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.