Microserfs

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3 Inferiority

SATURDAY (Several weeks later)

We took a few hours off to attend a Halloween barbecue at the chic San Carlos home of Oop!’s president and CEO, Ethan, Mr. “Let’s-Ship-Units!”

Also in attendance were a crew of Apple workers Ethan is scanning for “hireability.”

The evening was a typical geek get-together, and conversation stayed along conventional lines: the Menendez brothers, consumer and military aviation, and hiring/firing gossip. But the mood was also tinged with an atypical moroseness: Crunchy Frog jokes blended with tales of fiscal woe. Apple people are all trying to get laid off so they can get the layoff financial package — so everybody’s trying to be as useless as possible. It’s a shock, let me tell you. And they’re all frightened the PowerPC’s going to bomb and they’re worried about the Newton — and they’re frightened they might merge with Motorola or IBM and lose their identity, and—gosh, they have a lot to worry about, it seems.

“It’s all so … anti-coding” said Todd, dressed as Atlas. (Speedo swim-suit and a globe tied to his shoulder. Show-off.) “It’s the total opposite of Microsoft. It’s not the way, you know, we’ve been raised to think about Apple.”

“Hey, Pal — just goes to show you what happens without a Bill to whip people into shape,” said Ethan, dressed as “Money”—his face painted green underneath a green George Washington wig that was actually a rented Marilyn Monroe wig misted with green hair spray. “Without a charismatic at the helm, you’re history.”

Apple is kind of depressing, we agreed dispiritedly. Not at all what we expected, but we bravely try and Keep the Faith. We’re trying to find somebody to give us an Apple campus tour.

Nobody rules here in the Valley.

No Bills.

It’s a bland anarchy. It takes some getting used to.

Ethan, Oop!’s president, is somewhat evil. Well … amusingly evil. Smarmy? Perhaps that’s the right word. White- toothed and always impeccably dressed, he’s what Karla calls a “killer nerd.” For some reason, he’s paying a lot of attention to me and keeps giving me all sorts of confidant-type information. I’m not sure whether to be flattered or to consult an exorcist.

Sitting next to a burning Tiki torch spiked into the ground, beneath an orange tree, Karla said to me, “You know, Ethan’s been a millionaire and filed for Chapter Eleven three times already — and he’s only 33. And there are hundreds of these guys down here. They’re immune to money. They just sort of assume it’ll appear like rain.”

While decoding Ethan’s existence we were removing stray grass seeds from each other’s Clockwork Orange thug costumes. I said, “There’s something about Ethan that’s not quite oxymoronic, yet still self-contradictory — like an 18-wheeler with Neutrogena written on the side — I can’t explain it. The whole Silicon Valley is oxymoronic — geeky and rich and hip. I’m undecided if I even like Ethan — he’s definitely not one of us. He’s a different archetype.”

Inspired by Ethan’s costume, we discussed money. We decided that if the government put Marilyn Monroe on a dollar coin, it would be popular enough to succeed. “And if they want to replace the five-