No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  No. You choose a third path. You call a man like me. I fly into the company, size it up, fire three-quarters of the staff, and try to salvage some value from what’s left. It’s called a restart. Perhaps I will figure out a way to sell the company to an acquirer. Or maybe I can knock a few of the engineers’ heads together, and get a new version of the product out the door, and start making sales. From the venture capitalist’s perspective, whatever I manage to do is better than calling the whole thing a total loss and writing it down to goose eggs.

  Typically a restart assignment is brief – twelve months or less. I get paid a decent salary, but most of my compensation is what is euphemistically called ‘upside’. Upside is another way of a venture capitalist saying, If I don’t make money, there’s no way in hell you’re going to.

  So that’s the prize. If I can turn the place around, and restart it successfully, I make millions. If I can’t, I make little. The job is half Green Beret mission, half crapshoot. You have no idea what you’re going to find until you walk through the door.

  I hear Amanda’s voice on the intercom. ‘Attention Tao team members,’ she says. She speaks languorously, as if the act of making a public announcement is exhausting. ‘There will be an all-hands meeting in the lunchroom starting immediately. Repeat, all-hands in the lunchroom immediately.’

  Despite the announcement, there’s little movement – just a solitary chair squeaking somewhere behind me. Indeed, for a company haemorrhaging over a million dollars of cash each month, there’s an obvious lack of brio on the floor. I see a Hispanic woman sitting in her cube, doing her nails. I pass another cube, where a young man – his back to me – is hunched over his desk with his phone at his ear, discussing what distinctly sounds like tonight’s dinner plans with his girlfriend.

  The office has an open floor plan – modern Steelcase cubicles and Herman Miller chairs. Around the perimeter are small private offices. Each has a window facing the building’s exterior, and a glass wall facing the interior bullpen, presumably to allow management to keep tabs on the underlings, or maybe to allow the bigwigs to demonstrate good work habits to the rank-and-file. However, since all the private offices are dark and empty at five minutes past nine o’clock on a Monday morning, this inspirational message may be lost on employees at Tao.

  From the entrance of the building, there’s a commotion. Amanda is talking to an animated – and now rather disturbed – man. He carries a briefcase. He has just entered the lobby. I can’t hear their words, but I see the man’s eyebrows arch in surprise as he mouths the word ‘Now?’ Amanda nods, says something, and points in my direction. The man takes a long look at me, then drops his conversation with Amanda without saying goodbye. He makes a beeline to me. Twenty feet away, he already has his hand outstretched, and a big smile planted on his face.

  He rushes me. ‘Hello. You must be Jim. I’m David Paris.’ He says this without pause or breath, one long word: HelloyoumustbeJimI’mDavidParis. He adds: ‘VP of Marketing.’

  I take his hand, shake it perfunctorily. David Paris is shorter than me, small-boned, with a wiry body that would look fine in spandex on a gym mat. Here in an office, wearing chinos and a shirt, he just looks peculiar. He has dark hair, ears the size of croissants, and eyelids pulled upward at the corners. His appearance is either the result of unfortunate genetics, or of a botched facelift. Either way, he reminds me of an elf.

  ‘I’m Jim Thane,’ I say.

  He wags a long elven finger at me, as if I’ve been naughty. ‘All-hands meeting? I like it! Trying to shake things up a little?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Good.’ He lowers his voice to a stage whisper. ‘I’m glad you’re here. Jim. Really glad. It’s time to get some competent management in this place.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, David.’

  The lunchroom is twenty feet square, with three sets of tables and chairs. It’s a typical corporate kitchen: stocked during a period of great corporate largess and ambition (microwave, dual cappuccino machines, cartons of Pop-Secret stacked along the wall), but depleted and worn down by tedious workday life. Several dirty, waterlogged laser-printed signs cajole the reader to behave properly: to clean the counter, wipe the microwave, empty old lunches from the fridge. There are many exclamation marks on each sign. From the look of the place, these pleas, despite the copious punctuation, have been ignored.

  I go to the front of the room. The employees of Tao – the ones who have actually arrived for work – gather on the other side. There are now twenty of them. Each wears the official Software Company Uniform: slacks on the bottom, short sleeves on top. I’m the only person in the State of Florida apparently stupid enough to wear a suit and tie in August.

  I clear my throat. ‘Good morning!’ I say loudly. I try to make my voice seem both authoritative and happy at the same time, but I realize, too late, that I sound like a drill sergeant getting a blow job. I lower my voice, try a more conversational tone. ‘My name is Jim Thane. As you may have guessed, I’m the new CEO here at Tao Software.’

  I peer into the audience. Not a single face looks glad to see me. The most common expression seems to be mild amusement: Let’s see how long the guy in the wool suit lasts.

  ‘I’ve been hired by the investors in Tao. My job is to help turn this company around.’ I decide to leave out the part about how I was hired only after the previous CEO disappeared off the face of the earth, and how I was surely the last available choice to take the job, and how no one – including me – holds out much hope that I’ll succeed.

  Instead I say: ‘From what I understand, there’s a lot of terrific potential here at Tao. The investors in this company are very enthusiastic. They tell me there are fabulous people here, and that the company has created a very exciting technology.’

  Which is half true. The investors are excited by the company’s technology. It’s the people they could do without. Indeed, if there were some kind of capitalist neutron bomb, a device that could make people disappear, but leave a company’s intellectual property intact, the venture capitalists behind Tao would surely have deployed it, in this very lunchroom.

  I continue: ‘I know a lot of you are nervous. You see a new CEO. You don’t know what to expect. You wonder if Tao will survive. You wonder if your job is safe.’

  Finally, my words gain traction. People look at me expectantly. They do wonder. ‘Well, I’m not going to lie to you. There will be changes. There have to be. We need to work harder. And we need to work smarter. We need to – let me be blunt – we need to make more money.’

  I say these words slowly, and let them sink in. It’s a simple point – that a business needs to make money – but you’d be surprised how often it’s overlooked. After working in the same job for a couple of years, people tend to forget. They stop thinking about their company as a business, and see it more as adult daycare. It’s the place they go to keep busy between weekends. They forget a business has only one purpose. Not to entertain them. Not to fulfil them. But to make money. For someone else. That’s all.

  ‘But there is good news,’ I say. ‘The fact that I’m here means that important people believe in Tao. If they didn’t, the investors would not have hired me. They would have given up. They would have shut the place down and called it a day.’

  Which is not exactly true. In fact, they almost did shut the place down. When Charles Adams, the previous CEO of Tao, failed to show up for work one morning, and then disappeared without leaving a forwarding address, the investors in Tao came this close to closing the company. It was only because I managed to run into Tad Billups at Il Fornaio, where he couldn’t hide behind his secretary, and where I could relentlessly beg him for a job – any job – that I’m here. Tad is the Chairman of the Board at Tao, and a partner at Bedrock Ventures, the VC firm that owns most of the company’s stock, and which supplies its capital. More importantly, Tad was my roommate at UC Berkley. We go back. Tad owes me.

  But not that much, apparently. This job is bottom o
f the barrel: almost no chance of success, three thousand miles from my home in Silicon Valley, geographically undesirable, and, for any other man, a sure résumé killer.

  I suppose Tad thought that, given my own colourful résumé – my alcohol and drug addictions, my gambling problem, my twenty-one-day stint in the Mountain Vista Recovery Centre – a gig at Tao might be a step up. He was right. I’m a bit of a restart project myself.

  I say to the assembly: ‘Does anyone have any questions?’

  No one does.

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘I have a question for you.’ I look at my watch. ‘It’s 9.15 on a Monday morning. I counted a dozen cars in the parking lot. My question to you is: where the hell is everyone?’

  No one volunteers an answer. I notice a familiar face in the crowd. It’s the Hispanic woman whom I last observed giving herself a manicure at her desk. She’s attractive, a bit overweight. I look to her and say: ‘You. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Rosita.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Rosita. What do you do here at Tao?’

  ‘Customer service.’

  ‘OK, Rosita, please tell me. How many employees are there at Tao?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Eighty, I think.’

  I know the exact answer is eighty-five, but I don’t correct her. Instead, I say, ‘And how many people are in this room?’

  She looks around, does a quick count. ‘Maybe twenty?’

  ‘Maybe twenty,’ I repeat. ‘So that means that even though the workday has started, sixty employees haven’t bothered to show up. Maybe that’s the reason we’re having problems. What do you think, Rosita?’

  She’s noncommittal. ‘Maybe.’

  I lift my hand to my eyes and look around the room, like a man who has misplaced his car in the multiplex parking lot. ‘Are there any VPs here? Tao has five Vice Presidents, if I remember correctly. How many of them are here?’

  David Paris, the elfin Marketing Vice President, waves a bony finger. ‘I’m here, Jim. David Paris, VP of Marketing—’

  I cut him off. ‘Yes, I know. David’s here. Anyone else?’

  A man pushes his way into the lunchroom. He’s carrying a brown paper bag, neatly folded. He was on his way to the refrigerator to deposit it. He realizes that he’s being talked about.

  He says, ‘I’m Randy Williams. VP of Engineering.’ He’s in his late thirties, with a round Midwestern face and a doughy gut. He has blond hair cut in a spiky style that’s too young for him, and skin the colour of milk. He smiles, revealing a gap in his two front teeth, wide enough to ride a pony through.

  I say: ‘You’re late.’

  He bristles. He wasn’t expecting a public reprimand. He stutters, ‘Sorry, yes. Sorry. I know. I didn’t think that—’

  I cut him off mercilessly. This is where I establish that it’s not business as usual any more. Time to light a few fires, burn the place down. I say: ‘Randy, I expect everyone to arrive at nine o’clock. Not 9.01, not 9.02, and certainly not 9.15. If and when this company turns profitable, we can loosen things up. Until then, nine a.m. sharp. No exceptions.’

  I pause. I look at Randy. ‘Understand?’

  He can’t believe he’s being publicly humiliated. His face turns cinnamon. ‘Yes,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Now then,’ I say. ‘Where’s our VP of Sales?’

  I look around the room. At first no one answers. Then Rosita pipes up. She’s smiling now, clearly enjoying this dressing down of the VPs. ‘That’s Dom Vanderbeek. He’s not here.’

  I hear laughter and gasps of pleasure from the edge of the room. People are looking forward to my tearing the VP of Sales a new asshole. I won’t disappoint them.

  Amanda is at the far side of the room, near the door. She says, ‘Dom works from home on Mondays and Tuesdays.’

  ‘Oh does he?’ I say. ‘Amanda, get him on the phone.’ I point to a phone mounted on the nearby wall.

  ‘That phone?’ she asks.

  ‘On speaker, please.’

  She shrugs – couldn’t give a shit – walks over to the phone, dials nimbly. In a moment, we hear ringing on the speaker. A voice answers. It’s staccato, clipped. ‘Yeah, this is Dom.’ I’ve heard that voice a thousand times: the former athlete, the macho sales guy, the company blowhard.

  ‘Dom,’ I say into the phone. ‘This is Jim Thane. I’m the new CEO at Tao.’

  ‘Jim, how are you.’ He says this like a statement of fact, not a question. The reason it doesn’t sound like a question is because it’s not. He couldn’t care less.

  ‘I have you on speakerphone, Dom. We’re all in the lunchroom, at the all-hands meeting, and we’re wondering why you’re not here. Since you probably have hands. And since you’re the VP of Sales.’

  Silence on the line. He’s measuring me now, trying to figure out if this is a joke, or if I’m a lunatic. Finally, he decides on a course of action: he’ll be friendly and patient, try to get the new guy up to speed.

  ‘OK, Jim. Well on Mondays and Tuesdays, I usually work from home. It’s easier to make sales calls from here.’

  ‘The thing is, Dom, the sales team isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire. So I want everyone working from the office. Every day. That includes you.’

  Silence again. I look at the faces in the lunchroom. Most of the people here are low-level employees, and they’ve never heard executives argue. A girl titters nervously.

  ‘All right,’ Dom says, finally. ‘I’ll be there first thing tomorrow.’

  I shake my head, for the benefit of my audience. I say: ‘Now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Now, Dom.’

  ‘Listen, at this hour, traffic is nuts. I wasn’t planning on—’

  ‘Start planning. I want you here. Now.’

  More silence. The room is quiet. People are titillated. They know there’s a chance that this conversation could spiral out of control, that Dom Vanderbeek could take my bait.

  Everyone waits. There’s a moment when I think Dom Vanderbeek might say something sharp to me, but instead he backs down. Now I have a sense of him: he’s wily, knows not to fight when he’s at a disadvantage. He’ll wait until circumstances are in his favour.

  ‘All right, Jim,’ Dom says pleasantly. ‘I’ll be on the road in ten minutes.’

  ‘Looking forward to meeting you, Dom,’ I say.

  ‘Me too,’ he says, and hangs up.

  CHAPTER 2

  A corporate turnaround is like a murder investigation. The first thing you do is interview the suspects.

  I ask Amanda where is the most convenient place to hold a series of private meetings. She points to the conference room right across from the reception area.

  At first, I think the engraved plaque on the door – the one that proclaims ‘Boardroom’ – is an ironic joke, a small-company jibe at big-company pretension. But once I enter, I realize no irony was intended. Like every other space at Tao, the room is overwrought, designed to impress. There’s a long black table, twelve Aeron chairs, a sideboard that may or may not hide a wet bar. Everything in the room is state of the art: two flat-panel video screens on opposite walls, remote-controlled halogen lighting, recessed audio speakers built into panelling, a huge whiteboard with coloured dry-erase markers.

  I station myself at the centre of the table, on the long side of the oval. My message here – by not taking one of the two power seats at the ends – is that I’m just a regular guy who wants to shoot the breeze. Which isn’t true, of course, but it’s a CEO’s job to be aware of appearances.

  Each meeting lasts twenty minutes, and each follows roughly the same format. First, five minutes of pleasantries. A little friendly laughter on my part, to show that I am not an inhuman monster and that I have a heart, or at least that I can superficially simulate this fact. Then, the important question, which I ask gently, as if afraid of causing offence: What, exactly, do you do here at Tao?

  Perhaps not surprisingly, no one who works at this sinking ship
can give me a simple and straightforward answer. Randy Williams, VP of Engineering, tells me his job is to make sure ‘great software gets built’. Since Tao’s new software version is nine months late, and nowhere near completion, I’m tempted to ask him if he has a second job somewhere else where he puts that skill to use.

  Dmitri Sustev, VP of Quality Assurance, tells me through Coke-bottle glasses and a thick Bulgarian accent that his job is ‘to make it all very very good, very very solid’.

  Kathleen Rossi, the VP of Human Resources, tells me her job is to make sure Tao is a great place for people to come to work. I think, but do not say aloud, that her job will soon become making sure that Tao is a great place for people to leave work.

  And David Paris, the elfin VP of Marketing, refuses to answer my question directly, but instead asks if he can take a moment to describe his ‘strategic vision for Tao’. When I say indeed he can, he rises from his chair, circles the table, and approaches me. At first, I think he’s coming to give me a hug, but at the last moment, he grabs a dry-erase marker from the whiteboard just behind my head and begins sketching a diagram. By the time he’s done, fifteen minutes later, he has either laid out a startling strategic vision for our company, or he has sketched a nickel defense for the San Francisco 49ers. In either case, he has managed to convince me that he is worthless, and so I thank him, and shoo him from the room.

  My most important meeting of the morning is with Joan Leggett. Joan is (according to the organizational chart I keep in front of me) ‘Acting Controller’ of Tao Software. Which means that Joan knows the one critical fact that I must now learn: how much cash is left in the bank.