TO FULLY GRASP this story, you’ll need to have some idea of what the years 1999 to 2001 were like if you were working on Web sites. It was a boom time: weekly technology company IPOs, billion dollar investments in twenty-something entrepreneurs, and friends and family shares raining from the heavens. But it was also a time of creativity and reinvention. Back then I worked at a company that created Web sites for large corporations.

I was young and single, so traveling for work was an adventure, at least at first. One day, when we pitched an ecommerce site to a household name company, the front two rows were packed with salesmen who were unhappy about being disintermediated. About 3 minutes into the hour, shouting started, and two salesmen jumped up and got in the face of a guy from our company. They were red faced and screaming: “I have a family and a mortgage, how is your mother f*&%$ Web site going to help me pay my mortgage?” Fists were going to fly. Then poof. The lights went out.

It became almost pitch black. The shouting stopped. Everyone tried to find a light switch. Then I realized: the switch is right behind me, I must have hit it accidentally. I turned it back on, and said something like “OK, the lights are back on. Let’s continue with the presentation.” We continued, and no more fights broke out. The presentation convinced the salesmen that the new site would relieve the sales guys of the painful record-keeping drudgery that they hated. They applauded. Deal signed. The lead for our team later pulled me aside and said: “Stefan, you have excellent instincts. Well done.” I nodded.

For my next gig, I landed at a five-star hotel in San Francisco. I was greeted in the elevator by a clutch of Japanese business men talking loudly. As soon as I entered, we stood silently for 20 floors, me in my 501 Levis and a t-shirt trying to think of something to say, them in their tailored 3-piece woolen suits wondering what this scruffy guy was doing there. The next morning I called the number I was given for a ride. A fancy limousine came to pick me up. What on earth was going on here?

DOUBLES

The browser company job was more traditional. I drove myself to work and sat a desk. As soon as we started designing/developing in earnest, we started to hire rapidly. I think the company doubled, then doubled again. Maybe 300 people were working there total at peak, maybe almost half on the browser. It was hard to know who was doing what, and when. Everyone and everything was new. There were no well worn paths. You had to make your own boots from discarded tire treads, and thread your a way through the undergrowth.

FRONT END DEVELOPMENT IS HARD

The “you have twelve months to finish” comment was something I thought about quite often. The browser chrome was mostly done early on, but the various productivity apps were taking longer. Several of them finished, but I think the email client was taking a long time, and it was not clear if it would make it. The design called for a lot of rounded corners, which were not simple to implement at the time, and front end frameworks were in their infancy. It was like growing your own wheat and barley and then grinding it to make flour you could use to bake bread.

The front end team was huge by this time. They occupied this whole portion of the floor we were on, and they seemed to be having a good time, but maybe there was no choice. They worked a lot of hours, especially after the VP of product announced that the only way we’d finish in time was if we worked 24 hours a day. That’s right. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Shift A would develop, Shift B would test, then shift C would come in and work through the night and QA would take over in the morning. I think I was spared the night shifts, but did end up working on some weekends. It was not a fun time, but we were all hoping that this browser could be finished in time. What would happen if we didn’t finish in time? It was not clear. Maybe the partner would pull out? Maybe we’d all lose our jobs.

The front end developers, being last in a very long, big batch, big bang, waterfall process, ended up with all the pressure on their shoulders. It was up to them to make everything happen in time.

THE AMBULANCE

One day, in the thick of this absolutely all-consuming pressure to perform, I heard: “Rolando’s on the floor.” I knew the guy by name. He was a front end developer. I walked over, and saw a group of people kneeling around him. Couldn’t see him. I heard someone say “I called 911. EMS is on the way.”

I went back to my desk. Had I contributed to the pressure? Had I pushed for more, faster, better? Were we all partly responsible for creating the tank that rolled over him, and us?

PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT

See: He said “All you have to do now is just write the code”

NEXT INSTALLMENT

I’ll share what happens when the clouds parted, and the true nature of our project was revealed. See: Look for a manila envelope on your desk

NB: Names and details have been changed.