Becoming a Regional Software Coordinator and More
I'd driven down to Sacramento a number of times while I was stationed at Beale AFB in Marysville and I had passed through a few times to go skiing in the Sierra's or river rafting down the American River. But all I really knew about the area was Old Sac, the Arden Mall, and Country Club Plaza along with Tower Records and the Sam's Hof Brau next to it. The only other place in the general area I'd been was the Roseville Auction, The GBS (General Business Systems) Sacramento branch office was located at 555 Capitol Mall. The building was relatively new and a landmark building at the time. GBS had an office on one of the top floors.
I came up for a weekend to look for a place to rent. Downtown looked a bit tired and run down to me, not to mention rather dead. So I decided to look elsewhere. I was not too sure where to look but I remembered Bob had indicated to me that the office would be moving out Hwy 50, near Watt Ave, so I looked out that way. I found what looked like a new apartment complex off Watt and 50 on a street called Manlove. (Coming from San Francisco this seemed like a sign.) Anyway it had a pool, it was off by itself, close to the freeway, and would be near to where the office was planning to move. There were a couple of apartments for rent. I checked it out and took one. They required the usual first, last and deposit. It was a Sunday when I found this place and with the banks being closed I brought cash just in case. (This was before ATM's were common, at least I hadn't started using them yet.) There was a sign in the office that said “No Cash”. I laughed remarking that the sign was humorous. The complex manager looked up at me straight-faced and replied “That sign is not a joke. We never take cash.” Oops, sorry all my previous landlords loved cash. I thought “What's up, is this a bad neighborhood?” I had my checkbook, so I wrote a check. I moved most of my stuff up the next couple of weeks and then moved in permanently.
Once moved I began working in the Sacramento branch. I was in a brand new position, one that hadn't been fully defined yet. My boss, Bob, and I met regularly having conversations about just what I should be doing with Bob encouraging me to take the lead . My job was to include visits to the other branch offices to check on how they were doing. Bob suggested that maybe I could briefly help out branches when they ran into trouble. I visited a couple of the offices and the one thing that jumped out at me was the lack of consistent documentation standards at the software branches. They all had some documentation but the documentation was incomplete and inconsistent. Documentation had been largely left up to each individual programmer. There seemed to be few formal company guidelines or standards. I told Bob that was something that needed to be done and something I could work on. I explained how difficult and time consuming it can be when someone leaves for the person taking over their work's assignments. The biggest challenge was usually trying to understand what had done and what hadn't, not to mention losing all the history only the departing programmer knew. We, GBS, needed to have a binder of some sort for each customer with a list of all customer applications, their software modifications, and a log of the reported problems with the associated resolutions. We also needed to push for documentation within the program coding itself.
So we, actually “the royal we”, put a plan together and then organized a meeting with all the branch software managers to discuss and finalize some corporate documentation standards. However that was not taking up all my time. So Bob asked me if I would help out Diane, the Sacramento Branch Software Manager, in my spare time. The Sacramento office was swamped with a large backlog of software modification requests. I had the office next to Diane. We got along well and in fact I had run some of my ideas across her. Plus I had already started doing some stuff for her. Soon I was spending half my day working on the Sacramento branch software backlog and half on my new position. I had no clients so even though I was only spending half my time programming I actually had more time to program than I had when I was back in Burlingame as a programmer. Customers take up a large portion of a programmer's time with both onsite visits and resolving issues on the phone. Having no customers of my own allowed me to make multiple software changes quickly. With me working in the background we were able to wipe out the entire backlog in just a few months. Soon the backlog was depleted. Bob was quite impressed. I tried to explain that it was more a function of uninterrupted time than anything about me.
With Bob's assistance, I organized and held the big meeting with all the branch software managers as well as the HQ software managers. I managed to only misspell 2 of the managers names on the invitation. For some reason this minor issue moved up to the number one item on the meeting agenda. After that I presented my documentation ideas and we all agreed on a standard method to document customer software enhancements and modifications.
I continued to work on some of the Sacramento software modifications as they came in and visited a branch or two every now and then. Still my work days were not especially busy now that the Sac office was largely caught up. Sales started to slow a little and one morning Bob called me into his office and proceeded to ask my opinion on the Sacramento software staff. He then invited me out to lunch. One of Bob's MO's was that when he wanted to ask you take on something new he would take you out somewhere for a nice lunch. At this point I was still a vegetarian. I didn't eat any meat at all. The first time he took me to lunch in Sac he took me to a place where there was really nothing on the menu I could eat except a simple salad. This time he took me to Sheepherder's Inn. Again nothing on the menu for me but they did have a big salad, something like a Cobb Salad without the chicken. However, the salad did come with bacon on it. I asked the waitress if they could make it without the bacon. She gave me a hard look like I was a weirdo or something and said “No” I looked over at Bob and the frustration on his face was priceless. After the waitress left he looked at me and exclaimed “Backus what the heck do you eat anyway?” I couldn't help but laugh. So much for cozying up to me to soften me up for the big request. We left Sheepherder's and went somewhere more vegetarian friendly and by more friendly I mean they had a salad choice without meat. In 1980 there didn't seem to be many vegetarians in the business world and restaurants that served vegetarian meals were not likely to be places for business lunches.
Once we got to a restaurant that had something for me, we successfully ordered. Bob started out asking about how I was feeling about my new position and then moved on about how slow sales had been lately. A little more of this and that and then he popped the question. How would I feel about taking on Diane's position along with mine since there really isn't enough work for me in my position. Now that the business had slowed and the backlog was cleared up he thought I could handle both. I asked what Diane would be doing and he said she could stay on as a programmer but he expected her to choose to move on. I told him I thought letting Diane go was a mistake and besides I wasn't comfortable about taking her position. He said that was my choice but he was going to need to combine my position with hers regardless and while she was a good branch software manager he didn't feel she was a good fit for doing both my position and hers. One of the reasons he gave was that she didn't like to travel. I hated the idea of Diane losing her position because of me. We discussed it a little more but it seemed clear the direction he was going to take. I told him I needed time to think about it.
I let a couple of days go by and then I privately spoke with Diane. Bob had already talked to her. I told Diane that I was thinking about quitting as I was not happy about or comfortable with replacing her. She said Bob was going to end up replacing her regardless. She said she was fine with it and that she was sure she could find another job, probably one that paid better. We talked a couple more times about it. Diane encouraged me to not factor her into my decision and to take it if I wanted it. Diane left the company the next week and I ended up staying. Bob gave me a raise and I was now the Sacramento Branch Software Manager as well the Regional Software Coordinator. Diane called me a couple of weeks later to tell me she had found a new job. We talked a couple of times after that but that was it and I never saw her again. Looking back I often wonder if it had been Phil and Bob's intention to combined the Regional Software position and the Sacramento Software Branch Manager position from the beginning.
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