Electromagnetic Networks: A Three-Year Retrospective

10/28/02: For immediate release
Keywords: stockholder meeting background

A Bold Beginning

The beginning of Electromagnetic Networks is a story of the ages. Based entirely upon one man's greed, it serves as an object lesson for all those who would get rich quick via the dubious inventions of questionably educated self-professed "genius engineers."

On October 27th, 1999, one man was inspired by his dream. His goal: to attain a significant fraction of the untold wealth of the New Economy. Acting quickly, he put down $35 on a domain name, paid a friend a $100 flat fee to be webmaster, and put an ad in the newspaper for an engineer. He had heard that there was a new startup founded every day, and he felt that each one of them would certainly need semiconductors for their intensive computer needs. He had no idea what a semiconductor was, mind you, having flunked his only introductory course in electrical engineering, but he was sure that the market was ripe for innovation, since there were only a handful of monoliths in the field. He sat back and waited for applicants. Six months later, his advertisement was answered by not one but two individuals claiming to be engineers. Realizing that he would need help interviewing these men, he called the webmaster and explained that a part of the job duties was participating in the selection of new employees. Somehow, his friend agreed, and at 3 PM on a day in April that all parties concerned were never to forget, they sat down at a hastily-rented conference table to attempt to make sense of a barrage of incomprehensibly accented English.

Both men showed up together, vigorously maintaining that they were British immigrants from Liverpool. Indeed, they took extreme offense at the imputation that they were Russian, and seemed on the edge of walking out of the interview. Since both Dmitri and Nikolai were the first respondents to the job advertisement, the founder acted quickly to soothe their ruffled feathers, and somehow managed to calm them down.

After a prolonged investigation, we managed to track down one of the interviewees, who remembered the conversation clearly. It seems that their British origins were impressed upon the original two employees of Electromagnetic Networks with the following exchange:

"Certainly, to untrained ear, might be seemink that accent is beink Russian. Have wery frequently been beink accused of beink Russian," barked the first applicant. "But please to be listenink. Chheerio, guffornor," he enunciated. "How are you doink, olt bheen," growled the other. "Is beink British accent."

It seems that this was enough to convince the founder of their nationality, although the webmaster was still doubtful. "Well, he told me that he hadn't given me a hundred dollars in cash to quibble, only to interview," said the webmaster when we got to speak with him. "I thought I was raising a valid objection, being as how these people might be lying about their background. But he ignored me, and, well, the rest just sort of happened."

Indeed, it did "sort of happen." Although the original plan was only to hire one of the engineers, the founder quickly realized that they both seemed to work well together, and as far as his knowledge of engineering went, they both were about equally qualified. Even more importantly, if he didn't hire both engineers, there wouldn't be anyone in the company who could understand the Engineering Department. By hiring them both, he felt that he was ensuring that there would always be at least one employee who could understand what one of the engineers was saying.

An Exciting Step Forward

The two engineers were quickly hired, given their pick of office supplies (which tended towards Bombay Sapphire), and turned loose on the Laboratories. For about a month and a half, they succeeded in destroying every integrated circuit that entered the lab doors, much to the horror of the founder. He knew that for a startup to succeed, not only did he have to hire the best, as exemplified by prima donna attitudes, but he also had to create a product to sell quickly, saturate the market, and then fix what had been sold. Every day that the engineers engaged in destruction rather than production was a day without cornering the market, and he eventually became so frantic as to invade their labs, ignoring the many explicitly worded signs threatening bodily harm to any non-engineer entering. He burst in, demanding that they show him a salable product immediately. The engineers acted quickly, almost as if they had rehearsed this contingency, and promptly connected a mosfet to +48 VDC and ground within a foot of his nose. The ensuing explosion and violent escape of "magic smoke" left the founder speechless with wonder. According to Dmitri Virinof, he sat down cross-legged on the floor and repeated "Oh, wow" for forty-five minutes. When he finally staggered out of the lab, he was convinced that he had a product that could sell. And thus, the MOSPHET made its appearance on the market.

The founder, high on the heady fumes of life at Internet speed, chose to diversify, and went in search of a sound engineer to "drop some funky beats." The press release for the MOSPHET went out on the 21st of June, 2000, and the next day, Electromagnetic Networks Recording Studios released its first single, using a studio band to record "Electromagnetic." The musicians were a little hesitant to rush out a cut so quickly, since there was no album to accompany the single, and the lyricist had been inspired at far too impressionable an age by "Weird Al" Yankovic, but again, the founder refused to hear objections. "This is the way a startup works. We release a product, then we fix the bugs. We'll just tidy up the album in post."

Apparently the lack of a second verse bothered him not at all. According to the sound engineer at the Studios, "he was getting so into the music, man, just rocking back and forth in time to the beat, that when the lead singer started ad-libbing with the words 'Something goes here in the second verse,' he just smiled and kept rocking. Whatever those engineers showed him must have really made his day."

Sales of the MOSPHET were slow in coming, and for a couple of months, the engineers' pay was partially in shares of the company rather than negotiable currency. No one thought twice about this, since an IPO was already tentatively planned for the following year. The founder, now styling himself as CEO, managed to sneak into the labs again, and discovered the engineers hard at work testing their newest invention, the Clue-by-Four. He was so staggered with the idea that he managed to stumble out into the street, and hired the first person he saw to head up the newly formed Sales Department. Since at this point, titles were an acceptable alternative to pay for marketing experts, the newest addition to the Electromagnetic Networks family was given the title of Sales Engineer and forced to help the Engineering Department with their tests. This was to be the start of a trend. Until circumstances prevented it, Engineering almost unilaterally solicited Marketing and Sales' help with new product testing.

Nikolai Alexihov reminisces:

"Da, am remeberink like was beink yesterday. Many was beink day when would be sneakink into Marketink bright ant early, often even before four o'clock (beink teatime, as any civilized individual is knowink). They would be runnink around, screamink with delight. Would be havink much fun together, Marketink and Engineerink."

Dmitri added, "And yet, was never causink gratuitous injuries. Was like big happy chasink-around family." Almost every product to bear the Electromagnetic Networks logo of quality to date has been tested with Marketing's help. At least, we think that's what Dmitri told us. His British accent is sometimes hard to understand.

An Exciting Discovery

Now that they were firmly entrenched in the marketplace, the next major milestone for Electromagnetic Networks came with the Countdown to the Billionth Second. In an effort to provide critical support infrastructure for the Laboratories, the former webmaster was promoted to the new position of CTO, and a systems administrator was hired practically off the street to maintain the webserver. He was promptly issued stock (which he has not voted until this day), ensconced in the basement, next door to the router and the server room, and forgotten about. We attempted to ascertain his name, but when we asked him, he barked out "I'm not on trial here! Go the hell away before I slash your quota!"

(Attempts to convince him that we neither had accounts at Electromagnetic Networks nor were accusing him of anything were fruitless, since he then got a fire extinguisher and blasted us with it. No one else we asked had any idea who we were were talking about, except for the engineers, who stated "Am not carink what name is beink. As long as webserver is runnink, is not beink our problems!" Therefore, for the purposes of this retrospective, he shall be known only as the systems administrator.)

The countdown was released upon the world as a marketing ploy, and served the intended purposes Marketing had intended, although not in the anticipated order. The primary goal was to gain worldwide recognition for the Networks, incidentally guaranteeing the jobs of everyone in Marketing. The secondary goal, of ensuring that Engineering came up with a breakthrough that could not be tested on Marketing in unpleasant ways, was even more of a roaring success. Ultimately, it took nearly a year for the world to notice the countdown, by which time the Billionth Second was imminent. Even without this, the Sales and Marketing departments were excited about the achievement of releasing a development that was neither heavy nor pointy, and the notoriety that Electromagnetic Networks received once the Countdown was found by the masses was quite simply icing on the cake.

In fact, the Billionth Second was seen as such an amazing success that the Recording Studios was given another round of funding. Using almost two thirds of their new financial sway, the lead sound engineer rushed out to the store and bought a new ream of paper, and two pencils. These new supplies, combined with a fertile imagination, and some coffee (acquired with the remainder of the budget), produced a Christmas carol gone terribly wrong. Ignoring the protests of the CEO, the new song was released nearly two months too early, without any real editing beyond removal of coffee stains from the final master copy.

Realizing that releasing such a bizarre tune could adversely affect the newly found beneficial reputation that Electromagnetic Networks had so effortlessly obtained, the CEO once again dared to visit the Laboratories, where he demanded that the engineers release a new development as quickly as possible. Dmitri still remembers the conversation.

"Am not too sure to be callink it conversation. Nikolai and I had just been gettink into work at exceedinkly early hour of clock. Was beink two, maybe even one in afternoon. So when CEO was managink to sneak in, were not beink able to be noticink and interceptink until he had been reachink inner sanctum, behind bar, where were tryink to get rid of awful headache from last night. CEO started talkink about needink new product. Not havink anythink prepared, were ignorink him and hopink would be goink away. Unfortunately, lab notebook was beink out. CEO was seeink research into Sweet 'n' Nasty, and was demandink further research. Was havink grave concerns about doink actual work."

A Powerful Statement

In a rare burst of scientific industriousness, the engineers got as far as performing actual research into this new artificial sweetener, tentatively dubbed "Sweet 'n' Nasty," when they came to an earth-shattering conclusion. In Dmitri's words, "science is beink suckink." (This amazing burst of insight was more formally codified in a research paper released by the Laboratories, entitled "Science Sucks.")

"When we were doink research, were comink to very important conclusion. Science is beink suckink. Every bit. Very lucky for us, CEO was not beink set on releasink Sweet 'n' Nasty. CEO havink very short attention range, and just demandink some kind of production of Laboratories, CEO was beink happy to settle for research paper, improvink reputation of Laboratories in scientific world. Also beink lucky for us, CEO not gettink chance to read research paper before release, and not realizink that no scientific journal be willink to be publishink."

The notoriety of this treatise is chiefly due to a few snide comments that one of the engineers introduced shortly before press. Neither Dmitri nor Nikolai would confess, nor incriminate the other, so history may never learn whose idea it was to include the "discovery" that not only does the allegorical reader's résumé suck, but additionally, a direct quote, "French people suck," as well. This single phrase seems to have incensed the general populace.

The engineers were by no means single-minded in their hatred of almost anything associated with an improper or even collective noun, and when various web surfers would type "sucks" with any other word into Google, they would frequently discover this page. However, once having read it, the most popular venue of discussion seems to have a heated argument over the lack of merit of bashing the French. The vitriol spilled in this still-running controversy quickly became enough to reach the attention of the system administrator, and indirectly, the CEO.

An Amazing Creation

Although it took a surprising amount of time, when the CEO finally realized that the only place willing to acknowlege the research was the Laboratories' own website, he became incensed, but the recording studios once again rescued the engineers from occupying the CEO's attention, with the release of "The Bad Packet." Although the song was the most successful to date, the engineers knew that this reprieve was limited, and rushed a new product out the door. Nikolai discusses the germination of the idea.

"CEO was beink distracted by potential of actually maybe beink able to sell a copy of new song. Was spendink so much time harassink studio engineers instead of us. While he not beink in Laboratories gettink in way and screamink about thinkink we were beink waste of money and good gin, were finally comink up with brilliant idea. Idea was learnink how much gin beink fittink inside engineers. Unfortunately, were beink personal sorts of accidents in process of such demandink research, and Laboratories' supply of clean trousers was becomink depleted. Were needink replacement sets, and to be gettink reimbursement for expense, were needink project to justify purchasink with company credit card. Had to be callink project 'Emergency Field Trousers Replacement Kit' to convince beancounters to be payink for."

The EFTRK provided another 60 seconds of fame to Electromagnetic Networks, as engineers from all over the world stepped forward to testify as to the value of having a spare pair of trousers handly. Now that the engineers were sure that their jobs were safe, at least for the moment, they retired back into the Laboratories and proceeded to further their research into gin consumption. Unfortunately for them, the CEO took advantage of a newly increased line of credit on his personal card to purchase high-powered fans, which scattered their receipts that they were trying to use for reimbursement all across the labs. Frustrated by this newfound inability to encourage the company to pay for their alcoholic excesses, the engineers painstaking scoured the Laboratories for their receipts, which they stuffed under two halfbricks that happened to be lying around as ammunition for their next skirmish with local shopkeepers. Now that their receipts were safe, they staged what they termed a sit-down strike and what Accounting termed a "six week lie-down stuporous strike with frequent bursts of terrorizing" until their receipts were repaid in full.

An Incredible Development

Luckily for Accounting, an eager new hire who was desperate not to be pantsed again encouraged the engineers to term the two half-bricks as a new product, since the line item "office supplies" was more likely to be approved than the engineers' proposed line item of "gettink drunk." The engineers, seeing the wisdom of this approach, slapped the half-bricks in a shoebox and called the "prototype" a Redundant Array of Independent Paperweights.

Now that the engineers expense accounts had been taken care of, they would not set foot outside of the Laboratories with a new product for quite some time. They, of course, still made their weekly forays into Marketing every Friday to spread terror and encourage respect, as well as their regular excursions into town, much to the regret of the municipal authorities, and sometimes the National Guard, but no out-of-the-ordinary developments would occur for nearly eight months. Attempts to encourage them to do work were met with armed uprisings, and the CEO quickly decided that discretion, or perhaps abandonment to the inevitable, was the better part of wisdom.

The studios were not so lucky in avoiding the attention of upper management. Now that the CEO had nothing better to occupy his time, the "platinum months" of Electromagnetic Networks, as Nikolai termed his employ at the time, were spent harassing the studios into attempting to produce a chart topper. The CEO went so far as to lend the senior sound engineer a whopping sixty dollars to purchase a CD burner for recording copyright copies of the new songs.

With little else to their pocketbooks, the studios were forced to draw upon internal talent for their future works, which helps to explain why the bass in all of the songs sounded exactly like "a '59 DeSoto backing up into a refrigerator, which then proceeded to fall down the stairs, providing a percussion section, and land upon an entire neighborhood's worth of strays (these being what the one and only electric guitar the studios owned sounded like, on a good day)." When the sound technicians had the temerity to propose that perhaps the guitar ought not to be stored in the minifridge next to the Federally Declared Emergency stash of Bailey's (this being stocked to dimish threats to local stability by emergency-conscious engineers), or perhaps even to purchase new strings once in a while, the CEO would take a page from the engineers' Guide to Life, and wave a Clue-by-Four around threateningly.

Thus cowed, the studios had little recourse but to churn out attempts at chart-toppers, all of which uniformly failed to even go tin, let alone gold. A memorable example of these releases is "What I Like About Juice," inspired by one of the drunken reminiscences of the engineers. The studios, like the Laboratories, tested their new ideas upon Marketing, and upon hearing this through the intercom at a volume loud enough to void hard drive warranties, three of Marketing's employees spontaneously went bald. (This, of course, was hardest upon the woman that went bald, and her quite costly lawsuit for "emotional distress" had to be settled out of court, with the help of the engineers on one of their infamous Fridays.)

This burst of productivity by the studios, combined with the enforced teamwork provided by the engineering team, led to a brief respite in the onslaught of productivity demanded by the CEO. As a result of the nearly financially destructive consequences of his two week sleepover in the studios that led to "What I Like About Juice," he decided that perhaps his attention could be better spent worrying about the onslaught of the dot-com bust. He was worried for nearly two days, until he finally realized that Electromagnetic Networks was a dot-net, not a dot-com, and therefore had nothing to fear. Thus heartened, he placed an ad in the newspaper for a technical writer slash software developer.

(In fact, he used those exact words, rather than saving the nickel per day by using an actual slash mark. When the newly hired CFO questioned this bizarre and out-of-character behavior, the CEO responded with "I will spare no expense! I want the hordes of out-of-work programmers to recognize that at Electromagnetic Networks, the spirit of all that is right with the dot-com bubble is alive and well, and that we are a company dedicated to flashy wastes of money! This way, we can get one of the better prima donnas, who will cheerfully sign a contract before noticing that we still pay the engineers in gin and refuse to authorize conferences. We'll get the best of both worlds!" This was around the time that the CFO was forced to disable the CEO's cardkey access to the Laboratories, much to the delight of the engineers, who quite frankly were becoming tired of the CEO coming over and participating in their drinking contests uninvited.)

This activity seems to have been the limit of the CEO's willingness to actually attempt to find a qualified candidate for the job. Since his previous attempt to hire appropriate work staff had resulted in the hire of the engineers, he simply hired the first person who would agree to get paid the ludicrously low salary that the CEO was willing to allocate out of what remained of the budget after deducting Engineering's "office supplies" budget. This seems to have been exactly the right decision, since the new "Technical Writer Slash Software Developer, Grade III" got right to work and completed both the initial technical specification and alpha-level software base for the TCP/IP Mound within a month of getting hired.

Unfortunately for him, the dizzying speed with which he had completed his first task (suggested by an extremely drunk Nikolai) unsettled the CEO, who immediately became convinced that the new hire was after his job. (The fact that the only person under the programmer was the systems administrator, who technically had seniority, having been hired earlier, and the only people who could promote the programmer were either the CEO himself or his close friends on the Board of Directors, cut no ice at all.) The CEO promptly fired the hapless programmer, and shut down the newly formed software division of Electromagnetic Networks.

As it turns out, since the CEO had completely forgotten about the entire web server, as well as the support staff for it, when the Software division was shut down, the system administrator was also implicitly fired. However, having just watched Office Space, the systems administrator was feeling confrontational, and decided to reinstate his paycheck himself, so that someone would have to come and fire him in person. Since the CEO had completely forgotten about him, and no one had told the CFO that the systems administrator existed, or was to be fired, no one ever noticed that anything was amiss.

A Force in the Music World

With yet another disaster under the CEO's belt, or at least so he thought, it seemed time for a return to the studios. The engineers, of course, were now on a quest to see how long a bender could last if the only thing that they consumed besides gin was martini olives, and were in no state to discover anything other than where the extra-strength bottle of ibuprofin was hiding. The lead studio techinician, who was the same person who had been previously inspired by "Weird Al" Yankovic, and the engineers, in that order, once again taxed his imagination and penned the infamous "I Ground Myself." This recording of a paen to faultily constructed electrified prototypes managed to make it all the way to the burn lab before being consigned to an emergency skeet shooting session attended by the Board of Directors. Sadly for the good name of Electromagnetic Networks, the system administrator was routinely issued a copy (or rather, since he ran the burn lab, he managed to make himself a copy), and he promptly put the lyrics on the website. The CEO, having not quite gotten to the level of figuring out that the computer on his desk was actually an empty shell, the engineers having long ago gutted the internals for their own uses, was quite unaware of the continued existence of the website, and therefore was not concerned about the inadvertant publication of the song.

The CTO, on the other hand, noticed within a mere matter of days, and rushed into the studios, where he gave the senior sound engineer a mandatory six month vacation. For their own safety, the rest of the studios also took a six month break, and upon taking some advice from the engineers, managed to bill their entire stay in Carson City back to Electromagnetic Networks. Since they weren't there in person to present the charges to Accounting (having borrowed the CEO's credit card with a yet again increased credit limit), the slowly accreting bureaucracy of Electromagnetic Networks promptly paid the bills in full.

The CEO, having mysteriously been deprived of the studios to torment, and still not daring to inspect the Laboratories, launched himself upon Marketing to carry out an idea that the engineers had come up with several months previously. He almost gleefully sprung the May 2001 "Gin Month" bash upon both remaining employees of Marketing, who desperately attempted to produce ad copy in fear of their jobs. Luckily, fear of cirrohsis took a back seat to fear of being fired, and they managed to produce nearly the full month's worth of material before finally collapsing after the remastering of "Dr. Strangelove," and having to be rushed to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped.

A Powerhouse in the Marketplace

Once they returned from this brief sojourn to the land of intravenous restoration of electrolytes, the two members of Marketing demanded more headcount and oversight of Engineering. The CEO quickly acceded to their demands, since Engineering had last been seen charging into town with what looked like a battering ram duct taped to the CEO's new car, and he was unsure that he could afford another lawsuit after he paid off the local store owners. Marketing quickly exacted a fearful retribution upon Engineering for suggesting Gin Month to the CEO, and flexing their new-found power, stopped the Friday forays by Engineering, and sent them on the road with an untested product, Electromagnetic Cereals.

To be fair, the engineers had originally created the entire product line of cereals when they finally concluded their epic research into levels of intoxication, and were initially quite keen on the entire world tour idea. Nikolai reminisces:

"To be beink fair, cereals were beink quite good when milk was beink replaced with gin. Was not beink our fault that cereals not makink goot emergency floatation devices. Is most certainly beink Marketink's fault that Innsmouth, MA, is not beink existink."

When the engineers finally returned from this catastrophic journey, about which they have been strangely unforthcoming, their first action was to duct tape each employee of the newly enlarged Marketing department to separate cubicle walls and then pelt them with leftover Sweet 'n' Nasty packets until the engineers' pitching arms got tired. Then they called the SEC and told them about certain pecuniary malfeasances on the part of Accounting (which Engineering viewed as Marketing's accomplices in mischief), thus torpedoeing the planned IPO of Electromagnetic Networks. Dmitri's explanation for this seemingly counterproductive behavior by two stockholders of Electromagnetic Networks is simplicity itself.

"Accountink, evil lackeys of Marketink that they were beink, were refusink to pay for perfectly legitimate expenses incurrt escapink from, er, expenses incurrt on journey. Beink as how they were claimink no budget and yet were havink nice shiny office furniture more expensive-lookink than bar stools in Laboratories, was thinkink is no reason for Accountink to be gettink raises for preventink engineers from payink for expenses. Nikolai also thinkink so. So no IPO for company."

An Innovative Development

Once their revenge was complete, they retired to the Laboratories, available only for interviews as the world's foremost authorities on S1G, as they termed the Billionth Second. Since no interviews were forthcoming, they spent the time practicing answering hard-hitting questions from Mr. Bombay Sapphire, up until the moments leading directly up to S1G, which they spent terrorizing townsfolk and visiting the Brickskeller's, not in that order.

Their drunken rampage through the town caused no little consternation back at Electromagnetic Networks, especially since they had defaced the corporate website (which the CTO had reminded the CEO of when Electromagnetic Networks got slashdotted) before defacing the locale in general. Most discouraging of all was the blackmail, as Accounting put it, of refusing to explain what the defacement meant until bail was posted.

Always fancying himself one to land on his feet, when the CEO eventually bailed out the engineers from the drunk tank and determined that "Countdown to the Lass Bapf" meant the Countdown to the Last Bit in the UNIX clock, he distributed a press release to the media. Since the local college rag couldn't care less what the "blight upon the town," as they termed Electromagnetic Networks, was doing, and the more reputable sources of news couldn't care less about an event nearly three years away, these releases tended to be filed in the trashbin rather quickly.

Disheartened by the lack of response to this latest missive to the print media of the world, the CEO again brought pressure upon the Laboratories, hoping that the rough carbon of the engineers could somehow be artifically fashioned into, if not a diamond, at least cubic zirconium. The totally valueless result of this urging turned out to be made of common plastic, and was unleashed upon the world in the form of the Fake Plastic Smartass.

A Miracle of Science

About the only thing that can be said for this example of the engineer's disinclination to actually follow through on any goals that a) did not involve getting the CEO to leave them alone so that b) they could consume more gin, is that contrary to popular belief, this product bears only coincidental relationship in nomenclature to an album by the excellent musical group Radiohead.

To be completely fair to the engineers, there was a positive side effect of the development of the Fake Plastic Smartass: the sprinker system at Electromagnetic Networks got its annual testing a week early, and several redundant cubicle walls were eliminated, thus reducing the amount of work the beleagured cleaning staff was required to do.

Once again, the CEO turned to the studios in his time of need. Due to an extremely well-founded belief that he would be under an investigation for insurance fraud if he demanded any more out of the engineers at the moment, his dream of releasing a platinum album was once more expressed in no uncertain terms to the studios. The lead sound engineer discusses his memories of the conversation.

"His words were, and I quote, 'If this doesn't go at least platinum, if not double platinum, you all will never work in this business again.' Luckily, like most of his claims of the last couple of years, he was talking complete and utter nonsense."

The upshot of these threats turned out to be "The Slow Compiler," a discussion of life in a startup in the post-dot-bomb days. Dissatified with poor chart performance, the CEO did indeed fire every person in the studios, including a pizza delivery boy. However, his attempt at blackballing them all totally failed, since as a matter of sound business practice, every sound studio within fifteen miles of Electromagnetic Networks tended to do the exact opposite of whatever idea the CEO promulgated. As for the pizza boy, he has found a lucrative job as the manager of his own pizza place, and offers a fifth of gin with the order of a large pizza.

"All good thinks must be comink to stoppink point," as Nikolai put it. With the shutdown of the studios, the beginning of a turning point in Electromagnetic Networks can be clearly identified. The CEO's attention would never again be distracted by the shiny bauble of musical noises coming from the studios, and both Dmitri's and Nikolai's future work with Electromagnetic Networks would clearly show the strain of more frequent managerial interaction.

A Pillar of Financial Strength

One of the first steps that the CEO took, and perhaps the most drastic, as far as the engineers' productivity was concerned, was to replace all of the Sapphire he could find with Beefeater, in the hopes of traumatizing the engineers into doing work. As detailed elsewhere, the engineers frittered away several months trying to avoid the fate of consuming a non-top shelf gin, and when review time came around, had naught to show for it save a cobbled together collection of stolen landscaping tools they termed a "Hoe-Hose." The CEO was surprisingly enough not taken in by this ruse, and demanded a higher level of quality out of the engineers.

The legal department, seeking a way to get back into the CEO's good graces after threatening to sue over the failed "Wet Dry Bar," pointed out the potential liability that the Hoe-Hose 'Hos could create for the company, thereby quite effectively putting the kibosh on the promotional tour that Marketing was planning on inflicting on the engineers.

Dmitri and Nikolai had a trump card up their sleeve. Since they had never actually produced anything of any real merit, there was no metric the CEO could appropriately apply that would fairly measure their distinct lack of performance. Secure in this knowledge, they proceeded to run even further amok than previously expected, and developed the Non-Stick Hammer.

This miracle of kitchen technology proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back, or at least broke most of the drywall at Electromagnetic Networks. The CEO continued demonstrating his newfound ability to occaisonally lock the stable before the horse had left, and promptly fired the engineers. Both Marketing and Electromagnetic Networks' insurance underwriters breathed collective sighs of relief.

A Courageous Paradigm Shift

Marketing's relaxation was to be short-lived, however. Once again, the CEO had fired the group that had been occupying the forefront of his attention, and now that the shenanigans of the engineers were no longer daily police-blotter material, Marketing was placed in the uncomfortable position of finally having to pull their own weight.

Without a product research group, Marketing was forced to attempt to fill the void with the wild hype of a consulting group. Perhaps in an earlier time, the CEO would have fallen for the consultant's claims, but after having spent years being hoodwinked by some of the best, the CEO was distinctly not playing along, and he promptly let all of Marketing walk out the door as well.

At this point, the CEO realized that the former engineers' frequent claims that Marketing was a waste of valuable oxygen were indeed correct. Although Marketing consistently claimed to be able to innovate, it required a real product development group to come up with new ideas, and only required Marketing to shoot the ideas straight down the tubes. Since by now, no money had been coming into Electromagnetic Networks for some time, the CEO took advantage of the fiscal year rollover at the beginning of April to start the new books with a new corps of engineers. He placed a slightly smaller ad in the paper, with the usual promise of company stock, and met with the first two applicants in mid-April.

An Infusion of Fresh Thought

These two men, wearing large bizarre-looking beards and speaking with thick Brooklyn accents, seemed to be extremely familiar with operations at Electromagnetic Networks. No sooner had they been admitted to the main building than they headed for the main conference room and awaited their interview eagerly. Dmitrius remembers:

"Worst part of interview was havink to explain to CEO that accent was beink from Brooklyn, not beink British. For one thing, am not likink Bombay Sapphire. Am only drinkink Gordon Tanqueray. For another, please to be listenink. 'Am needink wa-ter for khoffee.' See? Is beink fine Brooklyn accent!"

For all their familiarity, the new engineers required several weeks of training to ensure that they behaved appropriately; that is, completely unlike the previous engineers. While they were busy learning what not to do, Sales stepped in to fill the gap left by Marketing, and presented a month's worth of new slogans. Unfortunately, those that were not downright incriminating were nonetheless colossal failures, at least insofar as encouraging anyone to buy anything from Electromagnetic Networks. The CEO, unwilling to sit through the corporate training videos that the new engineers were supposed to be watching in the Laboratories, filled his days firing the more criminal junior employees, and culminated the month by letting all of Sales go. In an unprecedented burst of responsibility towards the shareholders, he also fired the CTO's nephew, who had initially come up with the entire misbegotten idea.

Sensing a climate change, and distressed by the firing of his nephew, the CTO promptly quit. If anyone had thought to ask the systems administrator what he thought of this, he doubtless would have expressed satisfaction that the CTO was gone, since the major part of the CTO's daily routine seemed to be trying to think up new stupid things to do with the servers. No one, of course, asked, and this is probably for the best, since getting an answer out of the system administrator frequently involves a certain element of personal risk.

A Dominating Industrial Presence

Dmitrius and Nikolaius spent the months of June and July perfecting previously undiscovered research of the previous engineering team, and in the beginning of August, released Electromagnetic Networks' most recent addition to household problem-solving, the Booze-o-Matic. Despite the fact that performance had only been established inside the Laboratories, which had been well stocked with alcohol in preperation for the demonstration, the CEO was at this point desperate for a new product to bring positive cash flow to the Electromagnetic Networks coffers, and the new product was released with great fanfare.

This represents the past doings of the fine company known internationally as Electromagnetic Networks. It is certain that in the upcoming months and years, yet more greatness can be expected. May the next three years be as remarkable as the last three. Moreover, with the introduction of the new Engineering group, and the new, streamlined Electromagnetic Networks, may they be both more profitable and less destructive to the immediate vicinity!

Updated 10/28/02 18:30

A totally unexpected event has occurred at the shareholder's meeting today! Totally unexpected, that is, to the blithering idiots who made up the Electromagnetic Networks Board of Morons, er, Board of Directors. Dmitrius and Nikolaius, showing up with proxy votes for Dmitri and Nikolai, whose stock was still active, and dragging the system administrator along with them, forced a vote of confidence for each remaining member of the Board of Directors. Between the system administrator, Dmitrius, Nikolaius, and the proxy shares of Dmitri and Nikolai (whose obvious similarities to Dmitrius and Nikolaius seems to have escaped the now-former board members), there was a combined total of 50% of the outstanding voting shares, and since each board member could not participate in each of their votes of confidence, each director was sequentially voted off of the board.

Once they had been relieved of their duties, Dmitrius and Nikolaius promptly called Security and had them escorted out of the building, and once all of them were gone, new Directors were elected. In a demonstration of the high esteem in which the previous Board was held, a duck that lived in the parking lot was elected the new CFO, and a plush stuffed toy was elected the new CEO. "New Board members are havink large shoes to be fillink, but is beink lucky that both duck and fuzzy toy are havink large feet," quipped Dmitri, er, Dmitrius.

A Colossal Disaster

Who am I kidding? Anyone who saw the new engineers would need his head examined if he didn't recognize them. I was hired by the old CEO when he needed a new press release and realized he'd need an outside firm since there was no more Marketing group. This was supposed to be something to make the shareholders feel good after the annual meeting, and instead it is more than a little doubtful as to whether or not I'll even get paid!

I had to spend two and a half months of my life that I'll never have again, meeting with the CEO and doubtless losing brain cells in the process! Still, I suppose that if I don't give the new Board anything, there's no way I'll get paid. Perhaps Sir Quacks-a-Lot will quack approvingly or something. It has to be better than the previous CFO's reaction to a preliminary draft, which was that the font for the draft I used was "a tiny bit too proportional," of all things!

At least the engineers leave me alone, instead of having interminable meetings. The CFO is happily swimming in the company pond right now, and I think the systems administrator has borrowed the CEO and sat him on top of the webserver to "keep an eye on it."

I really hope they pay me for this.

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