Microserfs

much, yet have them be so indifferent to each other.

Oh, and Misty’s getting really F-A-T, even though Mom has her on a “slimming diet.” The neighbors are feeding her scraps because she’s irresistible. So Mom had to have a dog tag made up that says, “PLEASE DON’T FEED ME, I’M ON A DIET.” Karla said Mom should have millions of the things engraved and she could make a fortune selling them all over America, to people.

But, oh, does Misty waddle now!

Smoggy day down in the Valley. Rusty orange. Depressing. Like the 1970s.

Susan told us about her first date with Emmett last night, at a Toys-R-Us superstore in San Francisco. Emmett bought himself a Star Trek Romulan Warbird. Susan bought some infamous “softer, less crumbly Play-Doh” as well as an obligatory Fun Factory, a Bug Dozer as well as a container of “Gak”—a water-based elastic goo-type play object endorsed by Nickelodeon and called by all of us, “the fourth state of matter.”

Afterward they parked on the Page Mill Road and monitored cellular phone calls.

Susan’s still obsessing that Fry’s doesn’t sell tampons. I think Fry’s had better look out.

Todd’s given up on trying to be political because Dusty no longer cares about the subject and, it would appear, nor does anybody at the office. It was a fun ride while it lasted. He talks to his parents up in Port Angeles more now, too. You can imagine how his religious parents wigged out when he told them he was a Communist. They still believe in Communists.

Ethan and I went out for drinks to the BBC bar in Menlo Park after a “Trip to Europe” (ten hours of coding; so much for yesterday’s leisure dictum). We both commented on a sense of unrest in the Valley. The glacial pace of the Superhighway’s development is absolutely maddening to the Valley’s citizens, their mouths fixed in expressions of relaxed pique amid the LensCrafters franchises, the garages, the S&L buildings, and the science parks. Nonetheless, Broderbund, Electronic Arts, and everybody else here grows and grows, so it’s all still happening. Just more slowly than we’d expected.

I said, “Remember, Ethan, these are geeky, on-demand type people who suddenly have to spend their lives as if they’re waiting for an Aeroflot flight out of Vladivostok — a flight that may or may never take off.” Then I remembered that we’re all “Russia’d out” after the political turmoil of the past few weeks and wish I’d not said that.

Ethan was glum: “CD ROM design is beginning to feel like aloe product sales chains and pyramid schemes.”

“Ethan — you’re our money guy. Don’t talk like that!”

“No one wants to pay for the highway’s infrastructure — it’s too expensive. In the old days, the government simply would have footed the bill, but they don’t do much pure research any more. Unless there’s a war, but then it’s hard to see how Bullwinkle and Rocky interactive CD products will help us crush an enemy. Fuck. We don’t even have enemies anymore.”

The music was playing a comforting old Ramones song, “I Wanna Be Sedated,” and we were feeling maudlin.

“Companies want to be signposts, toll booths, rest stops — anything except actual asphalt. Everyone’s afraid of spending heaps of money and becoming the Betamax version of the I-way. And I don’t think a war is something that would speed up development. I don’t think it’s that kind of technology. This thing won’t be real until every house in the world has had a little ditch dug up in its front lawn, and an optical fiber installed. Until then, it’s all Fantasy Island.”

I guess he was remembering how long it took for him to build his own Lego freeway in the office’s Lego garden.

We reordered Harvey Wallbangers (1970s night).

“It’s just so strange to see this sense … of stalematedness,” Ethan continued, remembering the Atari boom era. “This was the land where all you ever asked for was all you were ever going to get — so everyone asked Big.” He was getting philosophical. “This is the land where architecture becomes irrelevant even before the foundations are poured — a land of sustainable dreams that pose as unsustainable; frighteningly intelligent/depressingly rich.” He twisted a cocktail napkin into a rope. “Well,” he said, “the magic comes and goes.” He chugged a Wallbanger. “But in the end it always returns.”

Later on Ethan then became excited and pulled a crumpled sheet of thermal fax paper from his pocket. It was his list of “Interactive Hiring Guidelines” he had laser-printed and faxed throughout the Valley, like one of those “Thank God It’s Friday” posters, and was returned to him, about 17th generation. He felt proud to have entered the realm of apocrypha and urban legendary.

The Eight Laws of Multimedia Hiring:

1)

Always ask a person, “What have you shipped in the last two years?” That’s all you should really ask. If they haven’t shipped anything in the last two years, ask, “So what’s your excuse?”

2)

The “job-as-life phase” lasts for maybe ten years. Nab ‘em when they’re young, and make sure they never grow old.

3)

You can’t trust a dog that’s bitten you. You wouldn’t want to employ someone who you could steal away from another company in the middle of a project.

4)

The industry is made up of either gifted techies or smart generalists — the people who were bored with high school — the sort of people the teacher was always telling, “Now, Abe, you could get As if you really wanted to. Why don’t you just apply yourself?” Look for these people — the talented generalists. They’re good as project and product managers. They’re the same people who would have gone into advertising in 1973.

5)

One psycho for every nine stable people in the company is a good ratio. Too many maniacally-driven people can backfire on you. Balanced people are better for the long-term stability of the company.

6)

Start-up companies beware: kids fresh out of school invariably bail out after a few years and join the big tech monocultures in search of stability.

7)

People are most ripe for pilfering from tech monocultures in their mid-to late 20s.

8)

The upper age limit of people with instincts for this business is about 40. People who were over 30 at the beginning of the late 1970s PC revolution missed the boat; anyone older is like a Delco AM car radio.

I suggested he plug the text into the Net in comp. hiring. slavery, and see what other laws get tacked on, but he got offended and said that because he had the paper version that these were “THE LAWS,” and I realized there was no fighting either it or him.

“Ethan,” I said, “thermal paper, I mean, how 1991.”

Another super-long day. It’s 6:00 A.M. I think I see the sky pinking up. Oh God— dawn.

WEDNESDAY

Susan is tormenting poor Emmett now by ignoring him. Poor Emmett is feeling “pumped and dumped.”

Susan’s switched off her instant mail, and whenever moonstruck Mr. Couch visits her workstation she rations out her words, saying that she’s too busy coding and/or too busy working on her Chyx ‘zine, called “Duh …,” to speak with him.

Susan set up a Chyx Internet address and forecasts at least a hundred Chyx signed up on the Net by next