As she waited on Brannan Street, Lindsey Munro noticed a group of elementary school children, thirty strong, coming down the street. They were all talking, yelling, pushing each other, laughing. Trying to maintain order were two teachers, moving quickly here and there, cowboys trying to control a cattle drive. The adults were overwhelmed and outnumbered, the children oblivious.
For the third time that morning Lindsey called Don, her recruiter, but again he did not answer. Don had given her the street, but not the address of the office for her interview. As she left a message for Don, two men and a woman come around the corner, having just arrived on the CalTrain at the downtown San Francisco station. All were listening to music via earbud headphones, carried coffee cups from Arturo’s, and all carried messenger bags with a company logo. They walked past her, and into one of buildings. Lindsey hung up, waited five minutes, then entered the same building.
Taped to the directory board was a business card with no name, no address, only the company name, DouSly, printed in bright green, orange, and blue, on a white background. In pink ink under the company name was hand written ‘*3rd Floor!*’, and below that a little smiley face in the form of a flower with petals.
As the elevator door opened, she first felt then heard rap music. It was the hit of the moment, heard everywhere: on the radio, sports club, and most recently the sound track of a commercial: predictable lyrics about getting it on, the singer sounding like he was squeezing his dick as he sang, gasped, panted, then complained about not getting enough. Well, what should she expect – The Anonymous Four singing from the Montpellier Codex?
She went to the end of the hall, turned into the ladies’ rest room, and called her husband. Yes, he had dropped the kids off at school on time. Yes, he had started the dishwasher before leaving the house. Also there was a message for her from her luthier who had a repair question. While dropping off the kids he had seen Jennifer, who wanted to know if Lindsey planned to go riding this weekend. Her husband also told Lindsey he was helping out at the swim meet this weekend, so they’d need to coordinate schedules.
Lindsey hung up and checked her outfit in the mirror; she was glad she had worn her jeans, but thought the particular blouse she had chosen that was still too formal. She walked down the hall and went in the office. The music had been turned off. Right by the front door there was a little area set aside with a small reception desk and a vinyl couch. There was a large open area with clusters of paired desks set up facing each other. In the very back to one side was a kitchen area where there was a large stack of dishes, and to the other side were three glass walled offices, all empty.
A young man at one of the desks saw Lindsey come in, and walked up to her. “Sorry about the music.”
“No, that’s okay, I don’t mind. I only heard it when I got out of the elevator.”
“Oh. You’re not with that real estate company? Downstairs?”
“No, I’m here for an interview at ten.”
The heads not under headphones turned to look at Lindsey. There were no executive level openings. Why was she interviewing? Or maybe she meant she was here to interview someone for the company, and therefore she must be from the venture capital firm that had recently invested in DouSly.
“Oh.” The young man looked back at his co-workers for a moment, then asked, “What are you interviewing for?”
“I’m here for the release engineer opening.”
There was a pause, a blank look, then the nice young man said he’d find Stacey, the office manager. He pulled out his cell phone and walked into one of the empty offices. The employees looked another moment at Lindsey, then went back to looking at their screens.
Just as she sat down on the couch a man about her age walked into the office. He too wore jeans, from Nordstroms, not Mervyns, and instead of a messenger bag he carried a tan leather briefcase. He came over to Lindsey, who stood up as he approached. He introduced himself as John Goodwin, shook Lindsey’s hand, and asked her how he could help.
“I’m here for an interview in the engineering department, I think someone went to get Stacey?” Lindsey nodded towards the back room.
“No. Stacey just called me and said she was stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge. Let me get you started.” He went around to the receptionist’s desk, opened a drawer, fingered through a series of hanging folders, pulled out a document and passed it over to Lindsey. “Could you first please sign a non-disclosure agreement, or have you done that already?”
Lindsey looked through the document: it was three pages, single spaced. She laughed, rolled the NDA into a tube, and hit it against her palm a few times. Then she thought better of it, and dropped the document on the desk in front of him. “You know John, it’s funny you want me to sign an NDA, because I’m not real clear on what DouSly does. The recruiter had told me something about technology in the social media sector, dashboards, mobile applications, and big data aggregation. He said he couldn’t provide a lot of details, but that I had to absolutely interview here before the end of the week.”
John smiled as he replied. Looking closer, she thought John might be just a few years older than her; he had the permanently raised eyebrows and frozen fixed happy face of cosmetic surgery. “Yeah, we can’t talk much about what we’re doing. We’re still in stealth mode.”
“Stealth mode? Maybe that’s why Don didn’t know the address. Okay. Tell you what, how about this.” She looked at John with a certain intensity as she spoke. He couldn’t know that Lindsey was using the same tone as when her oldest child had locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t unlock the door until Lindsey agreed to something. Lindsey had made clear that the longer the door stay locked, the worse the punishment would be. All other hopes were futile. “We’ll stay away from any sensitive material during this first round of talks. Then, if you like me and I like you, for subsequent discussions, I’ll sign an NDA.”
John looked at Lindsey and didn’t say anything for a moment. She could see he was making an effort not to look her over, but there was something else he was struggling with: all other candidates had immediately signed the NDA, without even bothering to read it. No candidate had ever refused to sign, nor offered any suggestion as Lindsey had done. John blinked, then said, “Well, I guess that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay. What do you do here, John?”
“I’m the company’s legal counsel. But, as in all startups, everyone does a little bit of everything.”
Why had they hired a lawyer when the company was so new and so small? What other tasks outside of the legal ones could he help with?
“From what Stacey told me, you were to meet with Jess, Nicole, and Mike, but Mike is not hear yet, so let me get you started with the others.” John took her to one of the back offices, then closed the door. Through the glass wall she saw him walk over to one of the desk pairs, and speak to the man who had gone in search of Stacey, and the woman in the desk opposite him. Lindsey couldn’t hear what John was saying, but the woman shook her head several times, John said something else, mostly to the woman, then walked away. The man and woman spoke to each other across the desk, occasionally looking over towards Lindsey.
A few minutes later they came into the conference room. The introduced themselves as Nicole and Jess, and said they’d be doing a tag team interview, if that was okay.
Lindsey smiled back. “Of course.”
“Uh, do you have any copies of your resume?” asked Jess.
She pulled out two copies from her black Coach leather satchel, a gift from her father after graduating from Cal Poly. It was battered after fifteen year of use; she saw Nicole admiring it.
Jess took a moment to look at her resume.
Nicole, said, “Wow, two pages.” then handed Lindsey a piece of paper. “So, Lindsey. How would you go about solving this?”
Lindsey read through the document twice. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Hmm, well I’ve never had an interview question like this before. But I guess what I’d do is create a rotating schedule of kitchen clean up, and make sure the work is distributed fairly throughout the company. But, it seems kind of silly.”
Nicole and Jess looked at each other, then at Lindsey. “Kitchen clean up?”
Lindsey gave the document back to Nicole. “Yes, kitchen clean up. Who’s Hunter? I assume the John who wrote this is John the lawyer.”
“Hunter is the company founder,” said Jess. “Can I see that paper?”
The document was a printout of an internal email:
Team DouSly,
Hunter emailed me last night about the state of the kitchen. And he’s right. It’s a mess. It looks like just about everyone left their dishes all over the place. Hunter and I want to be very clear about this: Stacey’s job is not to clean up after you. In addition to being the office manager, she’s serving as an executive administrator to me, Hunter, and the other c-level executives.
No one should have to clean up after anyone else. I’ve done my share of cleaning other peoples’ dishes, emptying the dishwasher, etc. and am tired of dealing with it. DouSly has a no jerks policy, and we expect everyone to abide by it. So stop being a jerk and clean up after yourself. I am considering installing a web cam to monitor the kitchen area.
There will be drastic consequences to anyone who does not clean up after himself/herself.
John
Now she knew what John meant by everyone doing everything at start-ups. She looked out the office window: more employees had come in, most looked to be the same age as Nicole and Jess.
“Oh shit. I printed the wrong thing. I meant to print one of the interview questions.”
“That’s okay,” said Jess. He put down her resume. “I have some questions. Lindsey, can you tell me how many manhole covers there are in the United States?”
“What? Man hole covers?”
“Yes, how many manhole covers are there in the United States?”
Her first thought was that manhole covers were some sort of anal sex toy, an orifice accessory, but then she realized Jess was talking about street manhole covers. She was relieved at her mistake and the innocent nature of the question, yet struck by its utter stupidity. What did the number of manhole covers have to do with the release engineering position?
“Wait, I’ve heard about this question. Isn’t the question supposed to be, why are manhole covers round?”
Jess frowned and looked down for a moment. “Oh, right, I must have confused that with another question. Ah! It’s how many ping pong balls could fit inside a 747. Well, I assume you already know the answer, then.”
Lindsey nodded. “Yeah, well, the first question is simply a matter of design and safety, and the second basically a volume problem.”
Nicole had been looking through some papers, not at Lindsey’s resume. She looked up at Jess, then Lindsey.
“My turn? Okay.” Nicole looked over at Lindsey, trying not to appear as if she was reading from the pages. “You’re the captain of a pirate ship, and your crew gets to vote on how the pirate booty is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the booty in such a way that you get a good share of the pirate booty, but still survive?”
“Pirate booty?”
“Uh-huh.” Nicole smiled at her.
Lindsey looked for a moment at Nicole. She wanted to like Nicole, but after Jess’s question, she was already starting not to care. Try to keep the genie in the bottle.
“Well…what’s the nature of the pirate booty? Is it doubloons? Silver ingots? Hostages to be ransomed? Or slaves to be sold? Another ship taken as a prize of war? Dutch tulip bulbs? Gold coins?”
“Well, I think for the question to work it would need to be something easily divisible, so let’s say gold coins.”
Lindsey put her elbow on the table, touched her fingers to her head, and closed her eyes for a moment. “Okay, gold coins. So, if I understood the question correctly, then what I would do to ensure my survival is to divide the booty among 51% of my pirates, myself included, and leave out the remaining 49%. To sort the pirates, I guess I would have some sort of pirate performance review plan, to rank order everyone. I think the question called for me to get a good share of the booty, although what good is isn’t quantified, but I’m not greedy. But otherwise, if I wanted more, then I’d conspire with the ship’s doctor to poison all the crew, say at a ship wide dinner, using a tincture of laudanum, waiting until we first got back to land, of course. I’d blame their deaths on bad meat, then slit the doctor’s throat, dump his body overboard, and keep all the booty for myself.” She opened her eyes and looked up, smiled at Nicole and Jess. The genie was out.
“Uh, okay,” said Nicole. “Jess, I think you’re next.”
“My husband reads all those Patrick O’Brien novels, you know, about the English sailors during the Napoleonic Wars. I read one once, they’re sort of like Harlequin Romances for men. That’s where I got the idea to poison the pirates with the tincture of laudanum.”
Jess blinked for a moment, he was still parsing Lindsey’s last comment, then asked, “So what kind of coding projects do you work on in your spare time?”
Lindsey paused, titled her head slightly. “You said in my spare time. Correct? Is that important? Are you specifically interested in the coding projects done in my spare time, or done at all? Is this as opposed to coding projects I’ve done NOT in my spare time, such as at work? Does the time of day matter?” Damn.
Jess was saved from answering when the door to conference room opened.
“Hi, I’m Mike, sorry I’m late. Are you all almost done? Remember we’ve an eleven o’clock meeting.” Nicole and Jess said they were almost done, and had just a few more questions.
Nicole asked the next question. “Why are you leaving Adobe?”
“I’m not sure I am leaving. My boss has asked that whenever I get an offer, to at least give him a chance to counter-offer. I will, but it’s not just about salary. And I’ve had a few offers from other divisions in the company. But to answer your question, I’ve been there seven years, and am looking for a change.”
“Wait, your boss knows you’re looking for a job?”
Lindsey smiled. “Yes. It’s a bit unusual, I admit. But I’ve been there a while, and if I leave, I want to make sure it’s done correctly. For the most part, I’ve really enjoyed working there.”
Nicole asked about missing dates in the resume. “I took a year off after our second child, a girl, was born. Adobe held my job for me for that year, although I didn’t get a salary, of course.”
No one said anything for a moment, and Nicole and Jess looked at each other, then got up to go, but were stopped when Lindsey said, “Wait, you guys don’t mind if I ask you a few questions, do you? I mean, this is a chance for me to get to know you, too.”
“Sure thing,” said Jess. They both sat back down.
“First thing, where does the name come from? DouSly? Is that like sly, as in clever, or something else?”
“No, it’s French. Hunter spent a summer in France and learned French fluently.” said Nicole.
“I thought it was Quebec,” said Jess.
“No, it was definitely France. He has pictures in his apartment. Anyway, the space we’re in is toys, and Hunter said the French word for toy is doudou, spelled d o u, but that wouldn’t sound good in English, right? So instead, with the help of our identity agency, we changed it to DouSly.”
Lindsey was going to ask more about their business, but first she had to make correction, “Actually, I think doudou means stuffed animal, not toy.”
No one said anything for a moment, then Lindsey said, “I worked as an au pair for a French family one year in high school. They were teaching at UC Santa Barbara and wanted someone to watch their kids for a few hours every day and teach them some English. So I learned some French, but not much. I think the word for toy is jouet.”
Jess nodded for a moment, “Yeah, but I think that DouSly is okay. Most of our users won’t know the difference.”
Lindsey regarded Jess, “I think you’re exactly right, Jess. Maybe you don’t need the perfect company name, just don’t have a bad one. So, Jess, what do you do here?”
“I’m the director of engineering.”
“Director? Okay. And what did you do before DouSly?”
“I worked at Sivananda as a programmer.”
“And before that?”
“I was in school. I graduated from Dartmouth.”
“Nicole, what do you do here?”
“I’m a UX/UI designer. This is my first job, and I went to Dartmouth, also.”
“What did you study?”
“I was a double major. I studied anthropology and studio art.”
Lindsey nodded and smiled, “Now that’s different. That’s interesting.”
“Yeah, I really liked it. My last summer I interned at the Norman Nielsen Group.” They talked for a moment about software usability and then Lindsey wondered if she should ask questions about programming languages, source code control systems, their engineering process, and other work-related questions, but she saw Jess looking again at his watch.
Five minutes after Nicole and Jess left, Mike came in.
“So, how’s the interview going so far?”
“Fine, but can you answer something for me? I’m still not clear what DouSly does. The recruiter never told me, and I didn’t have chance to talk to, John is it? The lawyer. And I ran out of time with Nicole and Jess.”
Mike laughed. “Yeah, everyone seems to think it’s the Manhattan Project around here. We’re looking into a sort of toy sharing exchange, or maybe toy marketplace, we’re not yet sure. Maybe both. Kinda like AirBnb slash eBay for toys. We’re also looking into developing apps for the virtual toy space. But right now, we’re just laying down the basic technology for it all. We can decide exactly what we want to do later.”
“Also, Jess didn’t seem to know that there was an opening for a release engineer.”
Mike nodded. “Yeah, the position will report to me, not him. Uh, do you have a copy of your resume?”
Later that morning, still before lunch, Lindsey left the building. It was mid-September. Fall was the best season in San Francisco. The days were sunny, there was little fog, the rainy season was months away. She thought about calling a friend to meet for lunch on Russian Hill, but decided to go back home so she could pick up the kids, and save her husband from having to leave work before six.
She had wondered if she should leave Adobe to join a small company—her life was full enough: in addition to her job, she was married, most of the time happily, had two children, played in the second violin in her town’s symphony, and in the years she could afford it, which were few, she leased a horse to ride and groom weekly.
As she walked towards the Cal Train station, her phone rang.
“Hi Don. No, I never got your message, because you didn’t leave one. Oh, your cat? Really? Well I am sorry about that. Uh-huh. Yeah, the vet bill will be high. Oh. Well, for your couch try a solution with a bit of hydrogen peroxide, soap, and lemon juice, that might help, but you’ll need something stronger to get rid of the smell. Yes, I found the company and had an interview. Well, I thought it was interesting and it went well from my end, but I don’t know what they think. Yes. Yes. No, I met vice-president, Mike, yeah, he was interesting, but that’s not really enough. No, don’t bother. No, I’m not interested. I’m sure there’s someone who’s a better fit. Take care, Don. I hope your cat gets better.”
Lindsey walked a little faster. The beautiful weather and her happiness at being out of that interview gave her energy. She hurried to catch the train back to Mountain View.