Jonathan abandoned MIT without a backward glance, foregoing orals, academic conferences, third-floor potlucks, and staid job prospects at Microsoft or PARC or IBM Almaden. Cannily, he convinced his advisor to come along for the ride, naming the eminent cryptographer, Oskar Feuchtwangler, Senior Scientist. As a finishing touch, he proposed stealing Mel Millstein, the best of the computer-science administrative assistants, and naming him Director of Human Resources.
Jake had balked at this idea and suggested that hiring Mel away might alienate the department.
“You were fine with Oskar,” Jonathan pointed out.
“He’s just taking a leave of absence,” said Jake, “and he’ll come back. He’ll always be around. Once Mel is gone, he’s gone. We’d be stealing him.”
“It’s his choice if he wants to leave,” said Jonathan.
Jake shook his head. “Maybe we don’t want to burn our bridges.” He had always been the most academic of the four cofounders, the most theoretical, as he was also the hairiest, with a wild mop of brown curls and thick unruly eyebrows. Dark-eyed, driven, shy, he was an idea man, a Westinghouse finalist in high school, and a gifted pianist as well, a former student in Juilliard’s pre-college division. Lockbox had been built from Jake’s algorithms. ChainLinx came about as a series of answers to Jake’s questions. The others needed him and his exceptional mind. Technically they were formidable, but Jake was creative. He pointed out, “We might want to go back to school eventually.”
Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “What fun would that be?”
He liked a good time. His idea of a corporate Christmas party was paintball. His highest praise, uttered without an ounce of irony: “You guys are animals.” His rough edges never failed to impress.
“The guy’s a natural,” the VCs whispered to one another, and shook their heads at Jonathan. Oh, brave new world that had such creatures in it. And yet he had a thoughtful side; he recognized and pursued excellence in every form, particularly in the shape of Emily. He loved her brilliant, principled mind. Why did she test him then, tempting him with Veritech’s secret project? How could she, knowing him as she did? He was not high-minded on his own, and he looked to her to model what his soul might become, once he got exactly what he wanted. When he was rich and eminent, a policy maker and philanthropist, Emily would be his wife and chair the family foundation and they would have daughters delicate like her, and athletic sons like him—and all their children would go to Harvard and major in math and play rugby and take up sailing. This was how Jonathan would live when he lay down his arms and beat his sword into time-shares. But not yet! Emily’s behavior baffled him. She had set up a kind of competition, trusting him like that, and demanding a secret from him in return. Did she doubt he loved her? Did she want some expensive proof?
After Thanksgiving, when he met with ISIS CEO Dave, Jonathan kept electronic fingerprinting to himself. This was not difficult. Dave was rich and he was experienced, with his years at IBM and BBN behind him. He was a sport, approximating native dress at ISIS, so that where Jonathan wore jeans, Dave wore khakis, and where Orion wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt, Dave wore an Oxford button-down. Dave knew about marketing and goals and five- year plans, but even in his shirtsleeves, he would always be a suit. Dave just barely understood what ISIS was doing now, and could scarcely intuit coming trends. He had his silver-gray hair styled in a salon and he lived in a Cambridge mansion, a brown Victorian on Highland Ave. That wasn’t even his first mansion. His first had been companies ago, along with his first wife and first set of kids. Retro CEO Dave carried a fountain pen. He even played golf. The man was like a car with fins.
Jonathan sat in Dave’s office overlooking redbrick Kendall Square. The company was about to go public, but it was newer than Veritech, and in keeping with the accelerating market, its rise had been faster. ISIS had yet to build a leafy campus out in Dedham, or renovate a funky mill. ISIS squeezed into an ordinary flat-pack office building off Broadway, starting with the top floors, and working its way down until the company leased the entire building. Electricians and carpenters had just renovated the first floor, finishing the space as a control center with a bank of monitors displaying Secure Web Traffic across the globe. The control center had a space-age look, part NASA, part flight deck from the Starship
“Where do you see us in five years?” Dave asked, philosophical as always when he sat down with Jonathan.
“Five years?” echoed Jonathan as he fiddled with his BlackBerry. “Let’s talk about five weeks from now.”
Dave smiled and refrained from asking Jonathan to put his new toy away. At times Dave bridled at Jonathan’s manners, but no one could argue with his results. The ISIS client list spoke for itself, and to watch Jonathan pitch ISIS to a new company—the kid could give a clinic. Dave was full of admiration for what he called the growing ISIS family, and often said that he learned more from his young colleagues than they could learn from him. Jonathan readily agreed.
“I want you to take the long view,” Dave said.
Jonathan nodded. “After the IPO, I want to see ChainLinx adopted by every Fortune 500 company, and Lockbox standard for every transaction, so no one dares to buy anything on the Web without seeing our logo guaranteeing the site’s secure. And I want at least fifty more programmers working on new products….”
“You’re thinking about more people,” Dave mused in his deliberate way.
“Of course.” Jonathan glanced at the smooth-shaven face on the other side of the desk and marveled at the way Dave missed the key words—
“We need to have a conversation with Mel,” said Dave.
“Okay.” Jonathan turned back to his BlackBerry.
Dave marveled at the way Jonathan missed the key word
Yo Mel, Jonathan was texting. Find more people your slowing us down.
“Maybe we could set that up for Monday,” Dave suggested.
“I’ll be in San Jose,” said Jonathan, “but you can meet with him.”
“I think it would be good for you to be there.”
“I just talked to him,” Jonathan reassured Dave. “He knows what to do.”
Mel was finding people as fast as he could. He didn’t know how to hire faster without pulling programmers off the street. Quality did matter. “I have a process,” he told Dave.
“I respect that,” Dave assured him.
But Jonathan said, “Just speed the process up.”
He had never worked like this before. Résumés haunted his dreams. Aldwin talked about opening two new groups, and Jake demanded more support staff. Suddenly Mel was trying to hire HR people to help with all the hiring. With so much money flowing through ISIS, and so much demand for ISIS services, Mel had become the human bottleneck. “You look frazzled,” Barbara told him.
Oh,
