I first ran into Red Hat Linux when I joined Cygnus; it was one of the platforms we supported. As a matter of fact, it was the de-facto platform for developers, and as a Windows guy (no Macs at Cygnus), I was at once pleased, and aghast. Pleased because the command-line tools were real and worked and familiar. Aghast because the GUI editors sucked and the compiler was s-l-o-w to compile large amounts of code. Not Red Hat’s fault. To be fair, the people working on gcc had not made execution time a priority in a while, but still… And I hated the default window manager, but was not going to learn others. I had work to do.

A few months into my tenure at Cygnus, a software company doing products for NextSTEP went out of business. One of my employee’s spouses worked there, and he called her to collect friends, and we could come over and take whatever wasn’t spoken for. I got myself a Sun SPARCStation 5. Oh, boy!

Well, I did not have a Solaris license. Those were expensive (and there were none sitting around in the detritus of this company). But I could download Red Hat 4 (I think) for SPARC, and then find a CD burner to make a CD with (builtin burners were not a normal thing in 1998). But I found one, and I installed Red Hat Linux on my SPARC 5 and setup my own mail server. I figured that if any hacker tried to exploit any weakness, they would be sending x86 instructions and their attempts would just crash or error out.

The machine did not run for very long before it died. Sigh.

Then Red Hat started to make news. Red Hat decided to go public in 1999. Before they went public, they did something unusual. They identified several key people on the open source community who made important contributions to significant pieces of software that made up Red Hat Linux, and invited them to be investors in the IPO itself. One of those fellows worked for me on GDB. He got his invitation, and decided to participate, only to be thwarted by the investment bank’s rules about net worth and such. Almost none of those invitees actually had the ability to invest; Red Hat would have been better off just issuing them stock options.

Red Hat’s IPO was one of the stories of the dot com boom. They opened on August 11, 1999, at $14/share. It soared up very quickly to prices around $150/share, and then backed off a little.

One Wednesday late 1999, I heard a rumor that Red Hat was going to acquire Cygnus. I never paid attention to these things; after all, it was just a rumor! Of course, all rumors of this sort start somewhere… This rumor swirled around in the hallways. On Friday afternoon, about 2:30 PM, I caught one of the senior people at Cygnus painting all of the little hats on the men on the foosball table red.

Monday came, and we were ushered into an all-company meeting, where it was announced that Red Hat was indeed acquiring Cygnus.

We were given a formula for how to convert our Cygnus shares to Red Hat shares for purposed of taxes. I had some incentive stock options, and decided to buy some right after the new year, right before the merger was to complete. However, there was a wrinkle.

Red Hat’s corporate headquarters in North Carolina was an open-office plan. Everybody could hear everything going on in the office. What this meant for us was that every Red Hat employee was considered an insider for stock trading purposes, and we could only buy and sell stock during an open trading period. Furthermore, employees at Red Hat who were employed at Red Hat on the day of the IPO had a six month blackout period, and then had to wait for an open trading period.

Well, we weren’t part of that blackout, but we were subject to the open trading period. We found out that the deal was going to close on a Thursday, and the open trading period, which was a couple of weeks, would have been already open when that happened, and the trading period was going to close on Friday. The Board of Directors extended it one day to give Cygnus people a chance to trade. Wow. 3 business days.

I wanted to sell as much as I could. Here is what had to happen:

• I had to call some bank in New York somewhere and get them to fax me a form to fill out requesting my stock certificates.
• I had to get that form notarized.
• I had to FedEx that back to the bank in New York. No faxes here.
• They had to print the certificates, and Fed Ex them back to me.
• I could then deposit said certificates with my broker, and then I could trade.

Some people got their certificates in time to sell on Monday. I did not. Mine came Tuesday morning. At the time, the stock price was about $120.

But I could not sell according to Red Hat. I could be fired if I did. What I should have done was walked into my boss’ office with my cell phone in my hand, said “I quit!” to my boss, and “Sell” to my broker on the phone, and then asked for my job back. If my boss said “No”, the proceeds could keep me going until I found another job. What I did instead was wait until the next open trading period.

It was in April, and Red Hat stock had fallen to about $40/share.

Sigh.

I made money, but still, leaving $80/share on the table….

And I was now working for Red Hat instead of Cygnus.

Subject: You are THE only one

I have been searching for a great Mac/Win software engineer for my best
client – a privately-held, pre-IPO software company with 18 patents on
their own technology, and YOU are the only candidate that I have found
that comes close to what my client is looking for in terms of skills.  I
would welcome the opportunity to talk with you about your current
employment and if you would consider this opportunity:

MACINTOSH and WINDOWS SOFTWARE ENGINEER

RESPONSIBILITIES:
This individual will be a key developer in a small team of software
engineers designing and developing MS-Windows and Macintosh based vertical
applications and tools that allow digital watermarks to be embedded in and
read out of digital images.  The candidates selected will work closely
with the core digital watermark R&D team as well as the marketing and
business development groups.
SKILLS:
* Working knowledge of Macintosh architecture, MacOS, Macintosh
application and systems software programming.
* Working knowledge of PC architecture, WIN32, MS-Windows application
and systems software programming.
* At least 2 years experience developing C, C++ software with
Metrowerks CodeWarrior and PowerPlant required.
* At least 1 year of experience developing C, C++ software with
Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) required.
* Demonstrated ability to deliver robust, high-quality end user
products on time.
* Experience developing digital imaging software (including image
filtering and compression) highly valued.
* Experience developing graphical user interfaces highly valued.
* Ability to work in a fast paced, dynamic small company environment
* Demonstrated creativity, problem-solving skills.  Demonstrated
ability to work in a team as well as individually.
* Excellent oral / written communications skills are required.
* BS / MS in Computer Science, EE, Physics, Mathematics or equivalent
a plus.

Please send me an email and let me know when would be a good time
to talk with you further about this.  I look forward to hearing from you.

I am certain I could got this job, despite lack of C++ knowledge. C++ had really come into its own by 1999, but I stopped programming before learning it. I responded that I was happy as a manager. I was also missing working on digital imaging software, but I hit enough of the requirements….

But once again, an anonymous company. They were de riguer during the dot com boom. I am not a huge believer in software patents, and having 18 of them is much less impressive than a revenue stream.

My best guess is that this company was acquired by somebody else in 2000 or 2001.

However, once again I missed the clue that I should have stayed in development.

 

Got an email:

Subject: Gui tcl/tk programmer position in Campbell

I have sent you an email before if you recall, I am a recruiter who found you on the net and I am wondering if you might be interested in this position at a pre-IPO software company in Campbell?  What is your salary expectation?  Could you send me a Word version of your resume?

Thank you

A few things:

• I don’t have a previous email from this person, but I was not really good at archiving email before 1999, so I did not recall.
• I do not like it when they don’t tell me the company name.
• I do not like it when they don’t have a full job description.
• By this time, I was (foolishly) only considering management positions.
• It would have taken an really good offer to get me away from Cygnus. (Of course, that changed a few months later…)
• I really hated the “Word version” of a resume; at the time, my resume was online, and people could just look at it. (I actually had one admin ask for a fax of my resume. I told her that it was at the URL it was at. She said, “Great! Could you fax us a copy?” I said, “You are looking at it in your browser right now?” She said, “Yes”. I said, “You could print it and give it to who needs it easier than I can find a fax machine.” I never heard from her again…)

I apparently sent this person a “not what I am looking for” response, because a few months later, I got this:

I talked to you a month or so ago and I remember you saying that this position is not what you are looking for.  Could you help me and let me know if there is anyone that you know of that does GUI tcl/tk programming in C under unix? I would really appreciate any info, a name, an email address, I won’t mention your name if you don’t want me to.

Now that we have more an internet, and we have LinkedIn, I don’t get asked for other names all that often. But this was pretty standard 20 years ago.

I somehow doubt whatever company this was lived passed 2001.

 

The next article should be posted the week of August 12, 2018.

Ah, yes, those heady days of the .com boom.

I got an email:

Subject: Your Headhunter has arrived…

Currently, we are staffing many of Silicon Valley’s start-up companies including Jim Clark’s latest venture, as well as established public companies such as Nokia and Network Appliance.

I wanted to get in touch, introduce myself and learn a little more about your sphere, focus and goals.

If you aren’t in ‘search mode’ at this time, that is fine.  My purpose is more to open a dialog and keep you on top of what is going on outside of your present situation.

Please contact me at your convenience, so I can share the details of these opportunities, if not for yourself possibly for someone you know.

Thank you for your time,

and gave me her name, email, recruiting company name, and phone number.

I wrote back asking who Jim Clark was:

Jim Clark’s start-up is going to be providing financial services over the
Internet. Everything from Director of MIS to UI / Web / DB developers is needed at
this point. More specific, there is a need for a SR Languages/compiler/tools developer.

In addition to this company, quite a few of my other clients (other start-ups as well as public companies) would be interested in speaking with you. Please give me a call or shoot me an email with a good time and place for me to contact you.   Then we can discuss the details of these opportunities in more detail.

I wrote her back asking about management jobs, and she indicated that there might be manager jobs out there.

Here is a list of companies she was working with:

www.healtheon.com – redirects to webmd
www.justliketv.com – website still up with copyright date of 2009
www.liberate.com – redirects to liberatehealth.com, which hawks an app. There is a video on the bad home page with 2014 in the date.
www.netapps.com – I think this is a typo for netapp.com, which she mentioned above. NetApp is still a going concern.
www.iprg.nokia.com – This site is gone. nokia.com works. However, since Microsoft bought them and gutted them…
www.pacoffee.com – “Undergoing maintenance; be back soon”
www.pluris.com – some kind of financial firm. Possibly Jim Clark’s.
www.tivo.com – well, they are still here, but they are not what they used to be.
www.veritas.com – still going strong
www.yodlee.com – apparently owned by edvestnet, whomever they are. Appear to still be breathing.
www.tumbleweed.com – acquired by a company called Axway in 2008. Not really sure what the products are.
www.asctivesw.com – D-E-D dead
www.whowhere.com – They actually formed in 1996, and are still active. The copyright notice says “© Lycos”, so they got acquired at some point.
www.arasys.com – “who has changed there(sic) name to @motion.” – The domain is for sale.

I’m actually reasonably impressed at how many of these companies survived what was coming in the next year or two. She had a good instinct.

We never reached a point where any of these companies interviewed me, but it is an interesting window to the frenzy that was happening during that time.

She did send me one job description, which I will talk about in a future post.