My on-again, off-again love affair with the tech industry, episode one

Aside from one paper route in middle school and a summer spent at a now-defunct retain chain, I've always had a job that has involved writing code. I don't consider this worthy of praise: I'm just lucky I suppose. I fell into my passion for coding and happened to go to one of the best computer science schools in the country. It's funny how some things work out.

The coding-and-building-things part of the job I've always loved and continue to love. My relationship with the tech industry as a whole, however, has been a bit...mixed.

This is my attempt at retelling a bit of that on-again, off-again story. It's not When Harry Met Sally. There's no Meg Ryan or Bruno Kirby, and there's a lot less romance than what you would get in a Nora Ephron movie -- this is about tech, after all.

When Paul Met Big Tech

My first job out of university was with Microsoft. You've probably seen any number of photos on social media of a new employee standing in front of a company's logo announcing how proud they are to begin working there. That was me at Microsoft, only there weren't any camera phones and there were no social media sites, so it was just me and a logo looking awkward. I only wanted to be a part of big tech.

And despite the fact that it was Microsoft, it wasn't even that big of tech, relatively speaking. I was actually working for a startup within Microsoft: the Internet Gaming Zone, which had only been acquired by Microsoft a couple of years before. The goal of the Zone was simple: see if you could make money with games on the Internet. It turns out the answer is yes, but it was still years before the world decided to spend untold hours harvesting virtual crops and raising imaginary livestock.

For the first year or so, I loved the job and I loved the team. I had a lot to learn and made a ton of mistakes, but it felt like I was doing what I wanted to do.

The Phantom Menace

It's hard to describe now the excitement around the release of Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace. At least among the geekdom, this was the Eras Tour times 1000. The first new Star Wars movie in 16 years! Then there was the iconic "Episode I" movie poster with a young Anakin, face downwards, casting Darth Vader's shadow on the walls of the Lars family home. I actually got to attend a charity screening, making a $500 donation so I could see it three days early at the Cinerama, Seattle's then newly-restored film cathedral. The lights dimmed, the Lucasfilm logo appeared, followed by "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way..." We expected we'd get something incredible.

What we got was a movie about a trade dispute. And midi-chlorians.

The tech industry was itself embroiled in its own trade dispute, not involving mysterious Force-wielding bacteria, but mysterious websites called portals. Web portals were supposed to be your home page of the Internet, and the tech galaxy was fighting for domination of your attention. There was Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, and there was MSN.

Back at the Lars family home, I was the lowly coder/moisture farmer. MSN was the big strategic push of the company. Everything had to go fall under its purview. Plus, MSN had to be seen as a success. The Zone was only a small site that was trying to make money, but it could be used as a pawn to prop up MSN. So the company decided to force the Zone to change its name to the MSN Gaming Zone and pay MSN millions of dollars for the privilege.

This was my first experience with big company politics. It didn't like it. It was a rude awakening for a young idealist who only cared about building cool things.

Bursting the bubble

On Friday, March 10, 2000, the Nasdaq Composite index peaked at 5,048.62. We were in the midst of the dot-com bubble, a boom cycle that would give rise to companies like Webvan, Pets.com and Kozmo.com. If a company had ".com" in its name, it was assured a high valuation, no matter the foolishness of its business model or the meagerness of revenue. Surely the tech industry would never again witness such irrational hype surrounding a meaningless buzzword.

I had left Microsoft around this time. I don't think I really a plan around what to do next. It was then when my friend Paul, who was a big card and board game fan, had an idea: why not make it easier for independent card and board game creators to get their games online? We decided to do what any sane people would do in the middle of a booming economy: start a startup!

There was only one problem: we had no idea what we were doing.

We were both software engineers, so building the technology wasn't a problem. The problem was that we didn't know anything about sales, marketing, licensing, or any of the other particulars of building a company. It was more like an old Mickey Rooney "let's put on a show!" movie. It didn't end well, and our relationship suffered for years afterward.

Could it have worked? Obviously it worked years later for other people. Only we weren't equipped to do it. It was, in the end, my first attempt at creating my own place where I could do what I loved without the tax of corporate politics. It just wasn't going to happen that way at that time.

The bubble had burst.

Next Tangents

It's funny how some things work out. While Microsoft and my startup didn't work, I still liked programming and wanted to build something cool. I was still looking for my place. There would be one more stop along the way for I found it.