Life Stories: An unforgettable experience working at Programmed Logic

The very first company you work for usually sets the tone for the rest of your life. In my case, it was the second one. I started out in the US working for a company called Encore Computer Corporation in Florida. It was a blast and I loved the atmosphere. I made great friends who I still fondly remember after all these years. My one true love has always been operating systems for everything else pales in comparison. Encore nurtured my love and gave me an opportunity to indulge myself, for which I will be eternally grateful.

But it was Programmed Logic that changed my life. Programmed Logic was an obscure filesystems company in Somerset, New Jersey. After my initial stint, I was feeling pretty full of myself. I thought I was good! When I got this call from New Jersey, I went there more out of curiosity. At the end of the interview, I was painfully reminded of my negligible knowledge of operating systems. I went home assuming that I would never be recalled and to my absolute surprise I was made an offer. The pay at that time was not spectacular and admittedly I never deserved it. It took me a grand total of five minutes to make up my mind and I was in New Jersey, Lickety Split!

Today, I wonder why I was so eager to move from warm sunny Florida to cold dank New Jersey. The heart always has a way of knowing what your mind may not have come to terms yet.

I remember my first day at the office as the 7th employee of the company. It was bitterly cold, grey and a typical NJ morning. There was no one in the office except for Steve. A lady at the front desk steered me to a room and asked me to wait. There was a note stuck to folder with my name on it. The note read:

I have been working on RMTP for AT&T in Holmdel and there are some things that are not complete. Please read the documentation. I will be in a little later and we will talk about it

The first page of the folder enlightened me that RMTP stood for Reliable Multicast Transport Protocol. It was all gobbledy gook! I had not looked at or written a single piece of networking code at that point in my short career. I truly believed at the time that a mistake had been made so I waited patiently for Steve to show up and naturally I ignored the folder.

Steve bustled in at 11.30 and said “Hey! I am sorry but I had a meeting with Cheyenne. Did you finish the document?” I guess as far as cultures go this was pretty weird. No “hi, how are you on the first day at work!” Not even a “would you like to have some coffee”. Of course Steve had no way of knowing that I detested coffee but that’s beside the point.

I stiffened my backbone and decided to tell Steve in no uncertain terms that I was here to learn filesystems and there was no way I was going to do RMTP. I looked straight into his eye and that was a colossal mistake. Steve eyes were warm, sharp and always laughing. I wondered whether he was enjoying my discomfiture but I later realized that Steve was being himself, always jovial and deadly serious underneath. My resolve slipped away and I brazenly lied that I had indeed read it.

I was then introduced to Gordon who performed the duties of a CTO, Tim who was clearly the prime force driving the company’s business, Gus who was an affable technologist, Jeff who did sales and finally Morgan the silent but deadly programmer. The introductions lasted for 10 minutes and that was the last I saw of any of them for the next couple of months. Steve called AT&T and told them that he was loaning their resident network specialist and with those prophetic words, I was thrown into the deep end. I pored over the documentation the entire night, struggled over the code for an entire month and ended up learning all about streams network programming, Solaris OS, pyramid OS and eventually RMTP itself. I fixed a few bugs, caused many more and spent a lot of time re-fixing them.

source: DLT Consulting

AT&T was like a tomb and I was like the pharaoh buried alive for hundreds of hours! I slept very few hours a day as I was determined to get back to Somerset. Two months passed by before I delivered the kernel modules, tests scripts and the required documentation. The next instant I got a call from Steve asking me to come on home. Of course he proffered no reasons for not calling me earlier! But that I was learning was essentially Steve being Steve.

I landed the very next day and this time Gus was there waiting for me. Gus was an amazing guy to work with because of his tremendous mental composure. He was a big believer in fate and had a formidable knowledge of OS programming. I got along great with him and enjoyed listening to him speaking about his home country of Ghana. Steve came in and I dreaded the thought of another folder being dropped into my lap. Little did I know that he was done with scraps of paper and he asked me to copy his RCS tree and set me to work building a stackable snapshot filesystem.

Steve was a joy for someone who was hungry to learn. He was amusing at times, quick witted and really sharp. His profound knowledge of the network stack was transferred in bits and pieces to me as time passed on. Gordon was another extremely intuitive guy who had practically invented the concept of journaling file systems. Tim was moody but with a razor sharp intellect. He had a way of tearing any idea down into pieces in just a few seconds. Jeff was a typical happy go lucky sales guy and we never saw much of him except during our weekly company lunches. Morgan did not speak for months at a time and sometimes did not even look in our direction. I had never saw Morgan laugh in all the time I spent there. All of them were ex AT&T (Bell Labs) and each one a unique personality in his own right.

After I had spent a couple of months at Somerset, I realized that Ayn Rand would have been proud of Programmed Logic. They were peers performing roles without stated positions. There were no egos just a mutually understood deference in terms of responsibilities. Anyone could criticize the other but they would do it in such way that no offense was taken. It was like a surgeon telling you about the decrepit nature of your liver while simultaneously fixing it. It was a busy life with every day being a breathless fight to the finish. Tim was the longsword slashing to the core and draining the essence in a single instant. Gordon was the rapier patient, probing and thorough. Steve was the Katana tempered by his own purity of purpose. Gus was a Urumi famous for carving out pieces whole. Morgan was the Ninjato silently whistling through the air.

Work was very simple. You sat in a corner and dreamed up what the customer would like. The customer was invariably a solutions company which could resell your products under their banner. Each one would come up with customer requirements, translate that into a product definition, build the product, create the documentation for it, market it to the OEM and then support the customer. Simple, huh? There were no deadlines, merely customers waiting for solutions. Very rarely did anyone jump to help you with your problems.

Some customer calls were undeservedly harsh and Tim would make it worse by poking holes in our already leaking egos. Customer visits were rare as the OEMs would handle most things and OEM visits were even rarer. But when it happened, you knew that trouble as brewing. Many a time Gordon would step in and defuse the crisis or Gus would be sent to sing them all to sleep!

Learning was an endless and fascinating quest in the company of individuals who themselves were learning every single day. My conceptual clarity on core storage and filesystems emerged from my discussions with them. I learnt about all kinds of filesystems, networks, operating systems, memory management and a little about life itself in the short time that I was there.

Constant ideation was the life blood of the company. Ideas were formed in our brains, hung on our lips and scattered to the winds every single day. We would have these pizza lunches on Friday wherein one of us would propose on paper and circulate it amongst everyone. Tim would invariably be the first to tear it to bits; Gordon would then painfully enumerate the reasons for its failure. Steve would argue like the whirlwind and Gus would make everyone see the light at the very end. Morgan meanwhile would just sit in the corner, eating his pizza and contribute by blinking his eyes in cadence. It required great humility and a terrible conviction about your own stupidity to survive these idea wars. I remember proposing a way to auto archive obsolete files and I was literally crying inside after it was over. But it was utterly gratifying when I found out later on that the sweetness of acceptance far outweighed the consequences of rejection.

source: new jersey herald

Even though I used to drive 60 miles to the office every day, I would race to work just so that I could be around them. I never cared if there was a snow advisory on effect and if one of them did not show up then I would be crestfallen. I always longed for the company of either Steve or Gus. I spent a lot of time asking questions, doling out stupidities and refreshing my own capacity to learn from my mistakes. When we used to go out for lunch, they would be very nice and always try to take me to a place where I could get some vegetarian food. I realized that gruff they might be but caring they most certainly were. One day I took them all out to this famous Thai restaurant called Four Seasons in Edison which was reasonably close by. They all decided to test their spicehood and boy was that fun. Steve was dripping sweat constantly but that did not stop him from eating. Tim’s face became red like an onion while Gordon was rolling around in mirth. Gus meanwhile patiently finished his lunch enjoying himself oblivious to the commotion all around him. Morgan would never eat spicy food and he contented himself with some fresh juice and a coke.

It was a sad moment when I had to leave the company. If there is a single regret in my life it is the fact that I moved on much too soon. Whenever I meet youngsters today, I always tell them of my experiences working there. I am sure the world has many companies like it but I was fortunate enough to be part of one albeit temporarily. I learnt that the reason we work together is because each one of us has a role that we need to select. Then we have to perform that role to the best of our abilities so that we are deserving of the right to work with each other.

Many years have passed by since that time. Programmed Logic was wildy successful until it was acquired like all comets consumed by a brighter star. Gordon sadly has left this world. Steve and Gus are still working doing what they do. I have no knowledge of Morgan or Jeff. I do keep hearing about Tim from time to time. The memories that I carry have sprung deep from my interactions with a set of people who I will treasure forever. I never forget about it and I always use it as motivation for anyone who cares to listen to me. My experiences at AT&T and Programmed Logic is the closest that I have come to in terms of hobnobbing with the blue bloods of computer science. The day I left, Steve gave me a signed copy of his book which still occupies prime position in my treasure trove at home. I carried the baton until I founded my own company and passed on what I learned as much as I could.

Maybe this particular quote sums up the very essence of work at Programmed Logic:

“Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.” ― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

---

Life stories are always about real life experiences which are collected from real people. Sometimes I do it myself and at other times I get it second hand. Names/places are generally fictitious so that the subject’s identity is not compromised. In this particular case, I have not spared any of them and have identified them by their real names and places are genuine.

In case you are interested in my collection of life stories, they can be found here:

• The election drumbeat

• a temple town that lives

• an amusing train ride

• Sad story of a disappointed father

• Hope dwells eternal even for a pavement dweller