My love affair with the tech industry, episode two: the good, the ugly, the bad

When I walked into the waiting room of Wildseed, the company I would spend the next 3 years at, there were two posters on the wall: one poster of Matchbox 20, and one of the album cover of Radiohead's OK Computer.

At some point I did have to ask one of my new coworkers: didn't they know the album OK Computer is a screed against technology and capitalist consumerism?

"No," the person responded. "I think it was put there just because it looked cool."

The thing is, I didn't want to be there. A few months before I left my previous job, intending to get out of the tech industry for good. I went to film night school to follow my passion to become a filmmaker. Unfortunately filmmaking is a very expensive passion, and I ran out of money. That's how I found myself crawling back to tech, into the Wildseed lobby with their ironically-placed Radiohead poster.

The good

Sometimes when you're not looking, you end up finding exactly what you want. That's what I found at Wildseed. That company, only a couple of years old, was a team of smart, driven weirdos who were trying to build something completely different. I felt like I found a tribe of people like me. It didn't matter that I didn't like the tech industry: I was building something cool, solving problems and have fun doing it.

The company itself was founded by the late, great Eric Engstrom. If you've ever played a game on Windows, you have Eric partly to thank for it: he was one of the three "Renegades of the Empire" that created DirectX, the technology that enabled triple-A games on Windows, despite the objections of the powers at Microsoft. He was a rule-breaker, and he attracted people who didn't mind breaking rules when it meant making something great. Though it would only be clear in hindsight, the team at Wildseed really was building the future.

It is almost impossible to believe now, but back in 2002 less than 10 percent of Americans had accessed the Internet on a mobile phone. Less than 10 percent! At the time, smartphones were for business users. What Wildseed was building a fun, consumer-focused phone. It had threaded messaging, emoji, and replaceable "smart" covers that allowed you to personalize your phone experience. This was all was 5 years before the iPhone.

I would spend the next 7 years with this team, though three different product cycles, one acquisition, one divestment, and an uncountable number of highs, lows, wins and struggles. I met people who would become lifelong friends. I met my wife and got married. One year I got to fly to Paris for a 3-day work trip, and another I got to fly to Hong Kong. These are memories I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

The ugly

Back to the smartphone that Wildseed was building. It was eventually released as the Curitel Identity. If you've never heard of the Curitel Identity, you are not alone.

Sometimes it's not good to be ahead of your time. In fact, most of the time it's not good to be ahead of your time. We were building an iPhone before anyone realized they wanted an iPhone.

There was also another big problem: the phone was upside down and banana-shaped. We thought it was "cool," but it what comedians like to call "putting a hat on a hat": it was just one too many things added together. It's what people who would put a Matchbox 20 poster in their lobby in 2002 would think was cool.

The ugly truth is that a good deal of the Wildseed's rule-breaking culture was borne of a great deal of egotism. We thought we were the best of the best: we compared ourselves to Navy Seals and looked down on anyone who stood in our way. We made a lot of cool stuff, but we also made a lot of enemies. This type of ego also is a nasty breeding ground for groupthink: if you think you are the smartest, if you think all your decisions are always right, you won't ever listen to others' opinions or consider you might actually be wrong.

The bad

I wish I could say we were an aberration. Sadly, we weren't: this type of mentality was commonplace. The tech industry was rife with problematic behavior. Sadly, it still is rife with this type of behavior, as we can see from all the tech bros behaving badly, the companies that turn out to be outright frauds, or the startups building "game-changing" products that no one wants.

As much as I enjoyed my time at Wildseed, I come here to bury the tech industry of this time, not to praise it. While we thought we were rock stars, or ninjas, or vikings, we weren't any of those. The tech industry was (and is) filled with bros breaking rules without regard to protocol or political correctness. The goal was to win, whatever the cost. This is the part of the industry I really don't want to be a part of anymore.

I don't want to be a part of it because I also fell prey this toxic environment. Perhaps it was insecurity, perhaps it was trying to fit in and believing we were as cool as we thought we were. That's the thing about ego: it's a very addictive drug. Unfortunately I also acted poorly, was difficult to work with and made enemies of my own. It took me far too long to realize the problems I was causing and to understand the value of lifting people up rather than knocking them down.

Let down, hanging around

My ride with the Wildseed team ended in 2009 when the funding ran out along with the Great Recession. I chose to be part of the layoffs rather than continuing on with a skeleton crew. I wanted a new direction.

This was the middle of the mobile boom. The iPhone app store was launched in 2008, as well as the first commercially-released Android phone. "Apps" were the next big thing. Surely the tech industry would never again witness such irrational hype surrounding a meaningless buzzword.

Here I was, unemployed, searching for the next phase of my career. So what did I decide to do? I decided to learn Android. I wrote an app.

That app would change my life.