{"id":438,"date":"2009-01-05T11:51:24","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T11:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/01\/05\/the_year_of_living_dangerously_finale\/"},"modified":"2009-01-05T11:51:24","modified_gmt":"2009-01-05T11:51:24","slug":"the_year_of_living_dangerously_finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/01\/05\/the_year_of_living_dangerously_finale\/","title":{"rendered":"The year of living dangerously–Finale"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hopped in the car, and a couple of pints later Peter spoke, and spoke fast. I had to ask him to slow down. (Sorry, a Private Dick<\/a> moment there). As far as I can tell, Peter had been fired for being too smart and innovative, which are not qualities wanted in a small startup, apparently. At least not one run by a greaseball of a CEO who, while we were in dire financial straits, was quite happy for the company to put him up in a hotel because he didn’t want to move from Manchester. Rumours about secretaries, improper liaisons with, and tills, fingers in, are mentioned only to dismiss them. Although they would make interesting side-plots in the screenplay of my life.<\/p>\n

\nI suggested to Peter that it couldn’t have been a personality clash because for that to happen the CEO would have had to have a personality to start with. Although we laughed, I learned more about corporate behaviour in that one evening at a pub in Heydon than I had in the year and a half previously.<\/p>\n

\nHaving been tipped off as to the slightly dishonest nature of certain people (and realizing that there was no way the company had the cojones to fire my manager so I could have his job), I began looking for something new. Back at the ranch, things started moving in even more disturbing directions. Despite my best efforts, the AutoQuitereasonablereally(TM) was not flying off the shelves (although those who had bought one were very happy and kept re-ordering consumables from us), and the company was strapped for cash. So in a stroke of genius the CEO laid off the poorest paid people–the two who who worked in production, putting together the columns to supply the AutoQuitereasonablereally(TM), the kits, and making up the reagents for Kate to run the DNA extraction service. Which not only pissed off the production manager, but also made the hierarchical pyramid even more top-heavy and holed one of our revenue streams beneath the waterline. <\/p>\n

\nAbout the time the enormity of this error was realized I had already responded to an ad in Nature<\/em> for a post-doc at the MRC-LMB. I was also able to assist Peter as a consultant in an edition of Time Team<\/em>, in which we attempted to PCR DNA from a Stone Age human tooth (and if you look very carefully you can see the back of my head behind Baldrick<\/del> Tony Robinson in one pan shot). By the time I was told I had to assist in Production, putting plastic columns together (because someone realized that we had to assemble the bloody things in order to make any money at all, and oh look, we have no staff to do this), I was really losing interest in the company itself.<\/p>\n

\nAnd one day the CEO called me into his office. <\/p>\n

\nTimes were tough, he said. They really appreciated the work I’d put in, he said, to develop the kits and make the AutoCrap(TM) salesworthy. There was no money for a pay rise but please, he said, take myself and Kate out to a nice restaurant and the company would cover it.<\/p>\n

\nTo the tune of fifty quid.<\/p>\n

\nI heard Please don’t leave us<\/em>. I said, “Thank you.” <\/p>\n

\nThen we found that the company was being sold to Whatman, apparently for our IP. We were told that our stock options were worthless, although we still had to hand them over so the sale could go through.<\/p>\n

\nKate and I went to the Jade Fountain, had a nice meal and a reasonable bottle of wine, and after I got the money back from accounts I handed in my notice. <\/p>\n

\nDuring the next couple of months I wasn’t allowed to work on anything useful, so I spent the time documenting the AutoCrap(TM) software and re-writing the user manual. Documenting the software shouldn’t have taken that long, but I decided to make the most of it and wrote it as hyperlinked pages, which was the perfect opportunity to learn HTML 4 and CSS. My position was advertised–and they actually appointed two<\/em> people to replace me, which was rather gratifying.<\/p>\n

\nWhen I left I took a pay cut, but the MRC pumped a load of money into the system soon after, and the rather generous raises we got over the next six years more than made up for it. They were the best years of my career to date, so it all worked out rather well in the end. But it was quite the ride at the time.<\/p>\n

\nAnd the company? A couple of months after I left, Whatman relocated it to another science park in Cambridge, right next to an expanding biotech company. When most of the staff were made redundant a year later they quite rapidly found new jobs. The only thing left now is the contract DNA extraction service, last seen operating out of a small shed in Ely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hopped in the car, and a couple of pints later Peter spoke, and spoke fast. I had to ask him to slow down. (Sorry, a Private Dick moment there). As far as I can tell, Peter had been fired … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}