Let’s get some housecleaning out of the way, starting with the definition of the word “libel”.
li·bel
[lahy-buhl] Show IPA noun, verb, li·beled, li·bel·ing or ( especially British ) li·belled,li·bel·ling.
noun
1.
Law.
a.
defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.
b.
the act or crime of publishing it.
c.
a formal written declaration or statement, as one containing the allegations of a plaintiff or the grounds of a charge.
2.
anything that is defamatory or that maliciously or damagingly misrepresents.
verb (used with object)
3.
to publish a libel against.
4.
to misrepresent damagingly.
5.
to institute suit against by a libel, as in an admiralty court.
(from Dictionary.com)
Strangely, as a mere amateur writer, I get accused of libel a lot. While I am prepared to say things that are damaging, I will not misrepresent. All instances have sources. All information has been verified by multiple independent collaborations. Further, I can’t make this shit up, I’m not that creative. It’s not libel if it’s true.
From the good folks at LegalZoom.com:
“If the statement is not protected as an opinion, you may still be protected under the truth defense. A person who wishes to successfully sue you for libel must generally prove the statement is false. In most states, truth is a complete defense to a libel action. You generally can't sue if the statement in question is true, no matter how unpleasant the statement or the results of its publication.”
There is a great story of the painter Pablo Picasso. He painted his seminal work “Guernica” (or “War” in Spanish) during the Spanish Civil War. The piece was a protest against the war in general and fascism in particular. When the fascists broke into his studio and asked him, point blank, “Did you make this painting?”
Picasso responded simply, “No, you did.”
“What Can I Do To Put You in a New Car Today?”
I like The Kid for the most narcissistic of all reasons. He reminds me of me. I like me, therefore, I like The Kid. Most people wouldn’t see it and say, “You two are nothing alike!” I am bigger. Louder. Obnoxious-er. The Kid is quiet. Cerebral. Up in his own head a lot. I look like an ex-football player. The Kid is built for marathons. All that stuff is superficial. When you get done to underpinning philosophies and the way we think, The Kid and I are completely sympatico.
I met The Kid when I was his manager at the most toxic of all the small parasitic consulting companies in the Seattle area that used to feast off the large host body, Microsoft. We got along pretty well and he always did good work. One of the many reasons I told “Toxico” to fuck off was I gave The Kid a good review. They didn’t like my review, they had him rated poorly. I opened his review and reread it and decided I didn’t want to change a single word and their ratings were nothing more than a popularity contest. They didn’t like the way The Kid dressed. They didn’t like that The Kid wasn’t outgoing. They ignored the fact that he actually got shit done with minimal direction.
The Kid had some problems. I talked to The Kid. He acknowledged the problems and said he would work on them. He wasn’t defensive about it. Our talk was good enough for me. I didn’t write a review that glossed over this and I didn’t rate him number one. It was fair and honest. Ironically, the next year, The Kid had a new manager that thought his job was to promote his direct reports. The new manager wrote a review that said The Kid was the second coming of Jesus Christ himself. For whatever reason, they bought into this new evaluation of The Kid and had him ranked at the top of his class. Sorry, Kid, I didn’t talk you up enough - that’s on me. Right when The Kid had the number one ranking, he quit. Yeah, I like The Kid.
The Kid is not a sycophant, so I never thought he was nice to me because I wrote his review, but then again, you never know how someone feels about you when you have a modicum of power over them until you don’t. There’s no reason for The Kid to keep in touch with me at all unless we actually do get along on some level. So, I was sitting at work, minding my own business, when The Kid IM’ed me via FaceBook. He just realized I was back in town after my two year walk about/midlife crisis in Australia and he was positively giddy over his purchase of a new Tesla Model S.
Side note, I have said a couple of things over time to Julie that have been radically misinterpreted. One of these things was when I told her that if we didn’t have kids we would have money fights. She was hurt by my statement. I clarified, “No, what I meant was if we didn’t have kids, there would be piles and piles of money everywhere. Occasionally, for no real reason, I think I would be tempted to pick up a huge wad of cash and throw it in your general direction ala Scrooge McDuck. I would laugh and laugh as I watched the cash balloon into a small money cloud and then we would roll around in all that money.”
My explanation placated her. Actually she found it kind of funny. Needless to say, The Kid does not have kids of his own and hence the Tesla Model S. So we swapped some messages and agreed to meet up at The Matador in Redmond.
The Matador inhabits the exact same spot that was once occupied by Big Time Pizza. Big Time Pizza once was a family friendly pizza restaurant and Julie and I celebrated our first few anniversaries there. Unceremoniously, it closed and I was disappointed. I drove repeatedly past the spot in the middle of Redmond and saw the building for a long time sitting sadly abandoned. One day, a sign popped up announcing The Matador opening soon and promising to bring a tequila bar to Redmond.
The Matador eventually opened and I didn’t care. My life had changed. I was wiping my kids’ asses not chasing asses in tequila bars. Yet, slowly, the reputation of The Matador reached even me. First, you have to understand that Redmond is not a happening place. Seattle has a scene. Even Bellevue has a scene. But Redmond, historically, was a sleepy farming community with a reasonable commute to Seattle. Things changed a bit when Microsoft put their corporate headquarters in Redmond, buying up huge chunks of land, and establishing a sprawling campus. Still, younger Softies tended to live in Seattle and commute to the Eastside. Softies with families may have lived in or around Redmond, but no one went out in Redmond. Yet The Matador managed to establish a mini scene where none had formerly existed.
The thing about Redmond is that it is sort of dominated by Microsoft. The thing about Microsoft is they don’t put much stock in physical appearances. I used to joke that if Playboy ever did a girls of Microsoft issue, it would be a pretty sad issue. The women at Microsoft wear sweatpants, tennis shoes, and scrunchies. They wear little to no make up. They may go to the Pro Club, but it’s only to drop their kids at daycare and drink lattes - never to work out. The whole town kind of adopted that attitude. Except when The Matador opened, I started hearing rumors of “talent” in Redmond.
Talent is sort of a loaded word. Boys in their twenties don’t talk about talent. They are out trying to get laid. It’s guys who are already married and looking down the barrel of middle age who start talking about talent. Here is where I get a bit confused as I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do about talent? Do I stare and oggle? Do I take a quick peek and avert my eyes? Am I supposed to just be happy to bathe in the glory of an attractive younger woman who smiles up me because she works for tips? Am I supposed to flirt?
Guys my age start doing some goofy shit. Some of us get obsessed with golf. Some take fantasy football way too seriously. Others obsess over talent. While I try my best to ignore it, others make it their second job to become talent scouts. They know where the talent it is, where it used to be, and where it is going.
Joey’s on Lake Union and Bellevue are known for talent. All the bars and restaurants in Seattle and around the one cool pocket in Bellevue are known for talent, but talent in Redmond? Impossible! Yet, I kept hearing rumors that there were real girls going to The Matador that wore their hair out of ponytails, they wore high heels, and even - dare to dream - skirts. So The Kid, who is really no longer a kid and getting close to middle age himself, and I met at The Matador.
We ordered dinner and had a couple of beers. Attractive waitresses brought us our food. We talked a lot about cars and the consulting industry. Strangely, the two wildly disparate subjects somehow merged. Not only has Tesla changed how cars are designed, moving from a combustion engine to an electric engine, but they are changing the way cars are sold. Traditional car sales go from the manufacturer to an independent dealer where Tesla has showrooms and then orders cars on behalf of the customer.
“What’s going on in Texas is ridiculous,” said The Kid.
Texas state law actually requires car manufacturers to sell cars through dealers. If a Texan wants a Tesla, they can go to a Tesla showroom, but the people working there cannot mention that they can buy the car. If the customer goes out and orders the car, Tesla will put the car in an unmarked truck and drive it out from Louisiana. The independent dealers are up in arms as they, rightly, perceive a threat to their livelihood.
I laughed. “Kid, I remember a time when I got my first job. Being twenty-two and having just a little bit of money, I wanted my first purchase to be a Convertible Z28 Camaro. I took about a month off between college and starting my job I was sitting around the house, and my dad is kind of a car guy, so he said, ‘Let’s go to the Chevy dealership and test drive some Camaros.’”
“I didn’t want to buy the car in Arizona knowing that I’d be moving to California, because California had already started their special ‘California Emissions’. But, we were both bored, and I had never even driven a Camaro, so we went to the dealership. Mind you, I wanted a Z28 convertible in either red or black with a six speed. I talked to some loser car salesman and before you know it, I was driving a white V6, that was not a convertible, and an automatic. I didn’t mind as I had no intention of buying the car and I thought I could at least get a grip for how I fit in the car and how it handled a bit.”
“So I drove the V6 and tried to imagine how it would feel if it were an 8 cylinder. The test drive was over and I was ready to go, not really sure what I got out of the experience, but I realized that social protocol now dictated that I was supposed to pretend that I was interested in actually buying the car. Before we knew it, my old man and I were literally in a glass room in the back of a car dealership. The sales guy said just wait here a moment and disappeared for a while. He came back with some brochures and he literally looked at me and said, ‘So what can I do to put you in that car today?’”
“The honest answer was nothing, because I needed to buy the car with California Emissions, but my jaw just dropped open. I told him I was looking for a red or black six speed convertible V8. What I drove was a white fixed roof V6.”
“He was unperturbed. ‘What can I do to put you in a new car today?’ he repeated.”
“Really, that was all I needed to know about ‘independent dealers’. They have no desire whatsoever to match a consumer with a car they want. They have a very strong desire to match a consumer with a car they have.”
We laughed a bit talking about how the dealers say they are consumer advocates. The Kid told me about his experience buying a Tesla and it was so different from high pressure based on available inventory. He paused and brought it back full circle, “Really though, it’s no different from consulting firms. They have no interest in putting the ‘right’ consultant on a project. All they care about is getting people off the bench and billable as fast as possible.”
I jumped in. “It’s funny because somehow companies that don’t have to use middlemen are convinced that it’s in their best interest to use them.”
The Kid and I had both witnessed Microsoft’s roll out of the “Approved Vendors List” (AVL). In 2009, Microsoft’s procurement department had decided there were “too many vendors”, so procurement decided to unilaterally create an AVL which would, in theory, lower cost. A handful of vendors were secretly blessed to be on “the list”. The criteria for selection was not clear and the vendors that made the cut were oftentimes questionable. For those who did not get approved, there was no communication. One day everything was fine, and the next day their purchase orders were being rejected from the internal application without an explanation.
Sadly, this passive-aggressive management of vendors caused some really hard times for people. One day they had a decent, hourly gig at Microsoft. Then, without warning, they didn’t. All because the “consulting company”, and I’m using that term loosely, was no longer on the magically approved list. All sorts of weird shit started happening during this timeframe. I almost directly profited handsomely from it because I got a call from a friend at a vendor off the list and was brokering a deal to essentially pass the contract through an approved vendor with a mark up. How these deals and markups were beneficial to Microsoft is really beyond my comprehension, but this really happened.
In the end, those who were on the list now faced lowered competition. Those who were on the outside looking in had to jump through hoops and kiss the right rings to even have a chance to compete.
Why the procurement department thought they knew how to select the “right” consulting agencies and to negotiate the rates is the epitome of corporate arrogance. My feeling is that the mission of the procurement department is to justify its own sorry existence. A bunch of people who have no idea what the “consultants” who will be brought in will actually do go to bigger “consulting” firms and ask for a discount on the rate card. Having checked a box on their year end goals to reduce cost by X%, the edict was out to use the AVL, and all further studies into the effect of said AVL were never conducted.
In reality, the “consulting” firms on the magic list did not offer their best resources to Microsoft as they were no longer able to get the premium rates. The net effect was the people within Microsoft who actually hire and depend on the “consultants” had to go to medium to bigger firms. These firms no longer had competition and started to send their B team to Microsoft. While the hourly rate went down, they were getting lower quality candidates which probably increased timelines (costing more money) and significantly adding to risk. Sadly, this is what happens when you introduce a middle-man into the ecosystem, just like when a consumer goes out to purchase a vehicle through a dealer.
