Seer

by Robin Roseau

“I have high standards,” I said. “I’m not sure I live up to my own standards.”

  “Oh?”

  “Intelligence is critical,” I replied.

  “It is not hard to find intelligent women. They are everywhere.”

  “Confident, comfortable with her body, takes care of herself.”

  “Keep going.”

  “Sexy.”

  “Yes, yes. Get to the heart of it, Sidney.”

  “Someone not too much like me, but with enough in common we can spend hours talking. Someone who wants to try new things, but isn’t foolish about it. Someone who won’t resent my job. Someone who doesn’t do the same job, but understands mine, at least at some level. Someone who understands that running my own business means she doesn’t always come first, but someone worth making sure she comes first most of the time. Someone with her own life, but who will make room for me, and not just for a while.”

  She cocked her head. “I believe that last statement was the most important one.”

  I looked away and nodded. “Well, both sides of that. In past relationships, either I’m settling, or one or the other of us begins to neglect the relationship.”

  I turned back. “And you. Do you neglect your relationships so that you may focus on business?”

  “Not when the woman is worth a relationship in the first place,” she said.

  “Then why are you single?”

  “My last major relationship ended when we discovered we were a little too alike,” Solange explained. “That was a while ago, and I just haven’t gotten serious with anyone since. If I meet the right woman, she’d find herself at the center of my attention. I can be very intense.”

  “Do you drive them away?”

  “I’ve done that more than once.” She didn’t offer details, and I didn’t ask.

  “So, I have shared what I look for. Will you do the same?”

  “My list isn’t that different from yours, Sidney.”

  That was when the captain announced we would be landing in just a few more minutes. Solange and I didn’t have time to pursue the conversation any further. But I was left wondering if she intentionally waited to initiate that conversation so that it couldn’t last too long. Did she plan that far ahead? I decided she easily could have.

  I also wondered whether she had been flirting with me. Was she as interested in me as I was in her?

  * * * *

  The Green Gulch headquarters were not directly in Salt Lake City. Instead, they had an amazing office in the hills west of the city. As we pulled up in front of the squat building, I turned to Aubree. “Expensive.”

  “Not that bad, actually,” she said. “It’s about as costly as office space in some of the more expensive metropolitan areas. That makes it high for Salt Lake City, but not unreasonably so. It’s not opulent inside. It’s just a good location and very much in keeping for a firm with the name Green Gulch.”

  I had to agree with that last part.

  Inside, we were expected. There was no receptionist, but we were noticed immediately, and a minute later, we were introduced to Monty Stanton, the president and owner of Green Gulch. He was full of smiles for us. He led us to a conference room.

  “Lunch will be catered in about a half hour,” he said. “We have time for you to meet everyone.”

  We didn’t meet everyone. We met Bertram Everest, the Vice President of Marketing and Sales; Kent Schmitt was the Chief Technology Officer; Blain Falkner was the Chief Financial Officer; and Eileen No Last Name Offered was Monty’s executive assistant.

  “If you need anything while you’re here,” Monty said, putting an arm around Eileen, “Eileen will see to it.” We would learn that Eileen was one of two women in the entire office. I didn’t like seeing the patronizing way Monty treated Eileen.

  I’d been impressed with their technology, but so far I was unimpressed by the diversity of the company. But it wasn’t my place to judge.

  Solange handled things from our side. She introduced all of us, then she asked Monty more about the company. I learned that the VP of Marketing and Sales had a single inside sales person. I thought that was an extremely light sales effort. The CFO had one employee. The technology department was of a proper size for such a small company with two tech support guys who doubled as quality assurance, six developers building the product, and two phone developers.

  “You have a mobile version?” Warren asked.

  “No,” said Kent, the technology officer. “The mobile developers are our experts in what the software should do. They’ve been with us since inception.”

  I wondered if the entire product hadn’t been their idea, but they’d lacked the skill and financing to build the company. I wrote a brief note saying, “Mobile dev equity position?” and slid it to Aubree.

  She looked at it and wrote back, “Good question. Not your problem.” And I nodded to her.

  Monty was clearly a salesman, and he was deeply interested in selling us his company. He gave the full court press to Solange, and she let him. I wanted to know what the technology platform was, but I held my questions.

  Lunch arrived, and conversation turned less formal while we ate. As soon as the Sales VP was finished with his meal, he stood up and said, “The rest of you, keep eating. I thought I’d give a demo.”

  He didn’t give a demo. He gave another sales pitch, clearly designed for corporate decision makers. As a techie, I was unimpressed. I already could see the value in what they supposedly did, but I wanted to see the limits. Twenty minutes into the talk, Aubree leaned over and whispered into my ear, “Ask questions.”

  I smiled at her and gestured with my nose to Solange.

  “Her idea,” Aubree added.

  So I raised my hand.

  The salesman went on for another thirty seconds. I stayed there with my hand in the air. Finally he said. “Yes? Miss…”

  I stood up. “Sidney Welsh. So, I have my new iPhone app, and I want to run it through your software to look for the sort of trouble the compiler won’t find.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he went back into his sales pitch. I hadn’t even gotten to my question, so I remained standing. When he continued to ignore me, I raised my hand again. Finally he stopped and said, “Yes, Sidney?”

  “The program represents my intellectual property,” I said. “When I submit it, I might be a little worried about what is going to happen to it. How do I know it’s safe? I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to steal it.”

  “We conform to all the security standards,” he replied with a moue. From the corner of my eye, even I could see the CTO was unhappy with that answer. Bertram then went into a spiel about cloud computing and how all the big companies are moving to it.

  I still didn’t stand down, and I was tired of being ignored. “Which security standards?” I asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I would like to know which security standards I can count on before submitting my life blood to your web site.”

  “Well…” he said. “All of them, of course.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes. All of them. We are very careful with your program.” He then went back to talk about cloud computing, but I interrupted.

  “Can you list a few specifically, please?” I said. “I really am very careful. My programs represent my livelihood, and I want to be sure it’s safe.”

  The salesman looked annoyed. “All. Of. Them.”

  “So… ISO 27001, I presume?” ISO 27001 was a security standard, one I’d expect them to follow if they were serious about security.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “SAS-70?” That one was for data centers.

  “All of them,” Bertram insisted.

  “Are your servers located in a Tier Three data center?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The CTO was still shaking his head. The company president looked annoyed with me. Perhaps in his company, women are seen and not heard.

  “HIPAA?” I asked. “That’s a
n important security standard.” HIPAA are the standards used for protecting personal information like medical information. There was absolutely no reason at all for them to follow it, except when dealing with their own employees.”

  “Yes.”

  “And H-701?” I asked. “Do you have certification from Hazel Software Services for H-701?” Hazel Software Services was my company, and there was no H-701.

  “All of them, including HIPAA and H-701.”

  “Both parts A and B of H-701?” I asked.

  “Refresh my memory. Which one is A and which is B?”

  “A is used to validate the hardware microinstructions of your servers to ensure no nano-scale viruses can cause bit decay leading to a security breach. It is actually far more invasive a test than Part B. B is a validation of your source control bug tracking validation suite to ensure proper integration with your physical security monitoring to verify your QA staff logs all third level bugs using an industry standard messaging protocol. Most companies who certify with H-701 start with Part B, as A requires disassembly and reassembly of your core processors, which can be time consuming.”

  It was the worst technical bullshit that had ever been spewed from my mouth.

  “Oh, right. We have Part B certification. A is pending and is due in a few weeks.”

  “Thank you, Bertram,” I said sweetly. I sat back down. I waited for him to start babbling again before I leaned over to Aubree. “Asshole. Can we cut this short and get to someone who isn’t going to lie to us?”

  She whispered back, “Solange wanted to see. HIPAA? You asked about HIPAA?”

  “His CTO is right here,” I whispered back. “WTF?” As soon as I asked a question he couldn’t answer, he should have let the CTO answer.

  Maybe the CTO tended to offer too much truth. If so, I was okay with that.

  We put up with another twenty minutes of sales babble before Solange was able to redirect. “Perhaps we could have a tour, stretch our legs, and take a break. Maybe we could break into smaller groups. I know that Mr. Sutton is anxious to get a look at the books, and Ms. Welsh is dying for a look at the code.”

  * * * *

  We got a tour of the facility, including their machine room where their servers were located. The salesman had told me they had a Tier Three data center, but this building wasn’t remotely at that level. I didn’t particularly care about their servers, but I’d been interested in seeing if he’d lie to me. He had.

  I sidled next to Aubree and whispered, “Do you know what a Tier Three data center is?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “So I don’t have to tell you when the salesman is bullshitting you?”

  * * * *

  It was nearly three before I finally got to meet the technical staff. Kent introduced Felix, Aubree and me to his staff of ten, all men. Because there were more of us than any other group, we got the conference room, and everyone else disappeared into various offices.

  “All right,” I said, once pleasantries had been exchanged. “I want a high level overview of the technology used, especially languages and tools. I want a proper demo. Then I want to hear about your development practices and policies. Before I leave today, I want a tour of the source code. I also want copies of any information security certifications you have, and I want copies of your conformation documentation associated with them.”

  The men looked at each other uncomfortably for a moment, but then Kent, the CTO, said to one of the guys, “John, do you want to describe our technology?”

  “Sure,” he said. “We have a true client/server application. The front end is HTML/5 compliant JavaScript. We use AngularJS for that. Calls to the server are REST, primarily written in Java, but we have sections written in Clojure.” He talked for several minutes, referencing a variety of technologies. Other than the number of programming languages they were using, it was all pretty straightforward, which would simplify my job.

  When he got done, Aubree leaned over to me and asked, “Was that a proper answer?”

  “Yes,” I whispered back.

  I had been taking notes, and I asked several questions. John gave good answers, and I was much happier than listening to the salesman from earlier.

  “All right,” I said. “Along with everything else I asked for, I want any documentation you have on your REST calls.”

  John glanced at Kent then said, “We don’t publish our REST calls.” Which meant they probably had no documentation.

  “Javadocs?” I asked.

  “Um. Sure.” Better than nothing, depending upon how complete they were. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be impressed.

  “All right,” I said finally. “Aubree, did you have anything further?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Perhaps during the demo.”

  “There was a demo earlier,” Kent said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I want one where I can get answers to my technical questions.”

  “We’re awfully busy here,” Kent complained.

  I turned to Aubree. She was here to handle the politics.

  “Kent,” she said, “Perhaps you and I can step away for a minute.” She got up and headed for the door, not even waiting to see what he did. Kent paused enough to show he didn’t answer to Aubree then followed her out into the hallway.

  “I signed up with a demo account over the weekend,” I said, “and ran some small programs through your software. I was pretty impressed. You guys are to be applauded. I want to see what it can really do.” Okay, I wasn’t going to let Aubree have all the fun.

  Aubree and Kent were in the hall only for a minute or so. When they came back in, Kent didn’t look happy, but he said, “John, can you run a demo?”

  “Sure,” John said. It took him a minute, but he used the conference room computer and soon had their web site up. He logged in and showed off the user interface features. I didn’t care about any of that. Then he showed the software providing an analysis of some simple iPhone programs. They were the same programs the salesman had used for his demo earlier.

  “Very good,” I said. I smiled, held up my thumb drive, then slid it down the table towards John. He caught it before it fell off the edge. “I have six projects on there, all too large to run using a demo account. Are you able to run them and then throw the results back onto the drive?”

  It took John a few minutes, during which the other staff talked amongst themselves. I watched John, and eventually he slid my thumb drive back to me. I pulled out my own computer, slipped it in, and then took a few minutes to scan the results.

  I understood most of them, but I got to a few things I didn’t. “John, do you also have my results there?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I have a warning I don’t understand,” I admitted. I read the message. “What does that mean?”

  John didn’t answer. Instead he turned to one of the guys. I consulted my notes. It was Theo. He was one of the mobile developers.

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “If I were on the web site directly, could I click and get an explanation.”

  Theo looked pained. “No,” he said.

  “If we pull up my code, can you show me?” I didn’t wait, but I found the referenced module. Theo rose from his chair and stood over me. He read the error message again, then he squinted to look at my code.

  “There,” he said. He explained the error. Then he told me what the code should have done instead.

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that.” I asked for explanations of several more errors, some of which made sense when Theo explained, some of which didn’t. Several of them were just strangely-worded ways to describe errors I had intentionally inserted into my programs. In the end, I discovered several things I didn’t know I should have been doing.

  “Okay, I understand. This error.” I pointed. “How did the software determine it was an error?”

  They tried to explain why it was an error. “No, I get that,” I said. “But how did the
software figure it out? That error is intentional, but I want to know how you found it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Theo. “I’m the mobile guy.” And with that, he returned to his chair. So I asked John to explain.

  “It’s proprietary,” one of the guys said. “Why do you need to know that? The software works. You can see that.”

  I let Aubree handle that.

  “Brody, you understand that MetaWolf Technology has made an offer to buy Green Gulch, subject to a due diligence review. That review requires an understanding of what MetaWolf would be buying. When buying a software company, there are several things that have real value. There are the hard assets: buildings, computers, vehicles, cash in the bank, funds owed by customers, that sort of thing. Also of value is the ongoing revenue stream as well as the customer base. Oftentimes a company such as MetaWolf would buy a small company as this one strictly for inside access to your customers, although that’s not the case here. Then there is, of course, the technology involved. Does it do what it says it does? Is it reliable? Is it free of copyright and patent violations? Can it be maintained and enhanced? Lastly, there are the people involved. Each of you is an asset. We are here to evaluate all of that. Which means we need to know everything to make sure this sale is fair. MetaWolf wants to be sure they are buying what they think they are buying.”

  Brody didn’t say anything for a moment, then he nodded. “I don’t remember how we find that error.”

  “Perhaps you can refresh your memory and explain it tomorrow,” I suggested. I asked the same questions for about six more of the errors. Brody explained two of them, the simplest two, but told me he’d have to “refresh my memory” on the others. I didn’t believe him.

  “Kent, is someone on vacation?”

  “No,” he replied. “This is everyone. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. Let’s talk about development practices, and then you can show me the source code.”

  * * * *

  I collapsed against the seat of the car. Aubree looked just as tired. “It’s going to be a long week,” I said.

  “That’s why we make the big bucks,” she replied. “Solange is talking to the other teams now but wants to know if we can go to dinner together.”