Different but Not Ridiculous

I still chuckle when I recall one pizza dinner many years ago at the Boardwalk, a beer and pizza style restaurant in Mountain View, CA. Our company volleyball team was celebrating a victory just weeks after experiencing the trauma of layoffs. For the first time in my career I was a manager who decided who stayed and who went. In one sense it was a relatively easy decision because the obvious choice was the one person who both had the least industry experience and was the most recent addition to the team. It was still painful, however, because this person, Paul (not his real name), had become an integral member of the team.

A day or so later, the engineering team, including Paul, gathered in the conference room to brainstorm over job possibilities for him at other local companies. We helped him update his resume, putting the best possible spin on the experience he’d obtained with us. Paul continued on the company sponsored volleyball team which played in the IVL (Industrial Volleyball League), a Silicon Valley institution. We had a great season and ended up taking first place in our league by defeating one of the IBM teams.

After the big victory we ate pizza at the Boardwalk, sharing tables with various players from the IBM team. One IBMer said to Paul “so you all work together, no?” and while pointing at me Paul replied “well they all work together. I used to work there but she laid me off, not that she wanted to but someone had to go and I was the logical choice and they helped me find another job” not even noticing the stunned look on the other guy’s face. Finally, the gentleman from IBM recovered from his shock and said “well, I’d heard startups were different but this is ridiculous!”

Long live such differences!