Suit to Suit Combat


"Do I want to be feared or loved? Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me."

- Michael Gary Scott

Last week, I finished my one-year contract with the Underpants Project. I am now a minority owner of a small software company with excellent potential and a horrible balance sheet. They can’t afford to pay me a reasonable salary, so I’ll be working there part time, and am now free to pursue full time employment elsewhere.

So I spent some time updating my resume, drafting some cover letters, taking advantage of Prima’s top notch editing skills and insatiable red pen, and looked for jobs on Craigslist. I decided that when I was really, truly serious, I would venture over to Monster, but Craigslist jobs seemed more my style. This one caught my eye:

The job basically consists of weighing vehicles for the DMV. You will not be working directly for the DMV though [sic]. You [sic] are at a booth, you wait for customers to come wanting to get a weight certificate for their vehicle registration, then you place some portable scales in front of their tires, you take the weight, and give them their certificate. That simple [sic]. On average there are maybe 3 to 5 customers a day so the rest of the time you are free to read, write, or study whatever you'd like. As of right now, you would only be needed the following dates to cover somebody else's shift:

I responded, and noted that I had worked a similar job in the past, and thrived in virtual isolation. I was hired. Unfortunately, this was not a full time gig, so I was forced to accept the job and continue looking. Three other jobs caught my eye, such as building a quality assurance team at a small software startup three miles down the street in Santa Monica, a business writing oriented job with (what sounded like) an interesting corporate culture, and then there was a job as “product manager” which was a “gateway to executive management.” I submitted my resume, but didn’t hear back from anyone for a week until Ham1d responded regarding the product manager job. We set up an interview for last Friday.

I studied, and reviewed all the common interview questions I could find on the Internets, got together some good work anecdotes, thought up some weaknesses that could be spun into positives “My lats are really underdeveloped, but that’s only in comparison to my massive triceps”, and some good strengths “I invented the Hello Kitty sweep in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Yeah, that was me.” I dry-cleaned my one and only suit. I dumped some adrenaline off on the step treadmill at Bally’s early on Friday before the interview. I had a couple of pops of gin and grapefruit juice, and washed it down with scope. I drove, sans air conditioning, into the valley on the hottest day of the year picking up some unavoidable pit stains along the way. TNT happened to call with the windows down, sweat pooling all over my corporate blue shirt:

“You are very personable, and shouldn’t have any problems but don’t get nervous. When you get nervous your voice starts to shake, and that will NOT look good, particularly for this position.”

“Thanks,” I responded, “this is exactly the sort of advice I need walking into an interview, sweating balls due to the heat, and coming off a few years of battling anxiety.”

Ham1d had me waiting ten minutes while I drank some water served up by an effeminate African American fellow who thankfully told me that my jacket collar was turned up, and popping the collar might play on an Ivy League campus three years ago, but this is Los Angeles where you probably don’t want to call attention to your cheap Men’s Where house suit, and scuffed shoes. And your hair looks like you haven’t touched it since drying it off after your shower and good God man, why are you sweating so much?


When Ham1d finally sat down opposite me, I felt a sense of calm. A sense that was immediately broken by his rapid-fire questions, to which he gave me virtually no feedback. He asked me a question, I responded, and he sometimes interrupted me to ask me another question, or to argue my response. I fell back on some software truisms, the kind of things that people in the industry say to each other to communicate our depth of knowledge in the field. He stared at my resume steely-eyed and continued to fire away. At one point, things got a little contentious. He questioned my prior company’s use of dedicated user interface designers. I explained our process to him twice. I felt my voice quiver with uncertainty, so I knuckled down and backed our process before he finally agreed that as a B(usiness) to C(onsumer) software company, maybe it made sense for us to work like that.

I felt like I was answering the questions with an appropriate combination of experience, knowledge, and passion. I described my philosophy for firing people. I described my love for Los Angeles, and my intention to stay here forever and ever, Amen. He asked me where I saw myself in five years and I responded, “the CTO of a small to medium size software company, with growth potential.” “How could you be respected as a CTO with no in depth technical knowledge?” I described my old boss, who had little technical knowledge, but was a very effective leader. “Why not the CEO,” he asked, and for the second time in the interview I was caught off guard, and actually thought about my response. “I would love to be the CEO,” I said, “but I lack sales experience, and I believe that to be an effective CEO, it requires the ability to sell an idea to others. I do think I could be successful in a sales position, I just have never put in such a position.”

After about an hour of back and forth, in what felt more like a sparring session than an interview, he gave me some positive feedback.

“Well, obviously, you are a smart guy, you have good experience, you’re young, and you communicate well. This company is my baby. I started it eight years ago, and didn’t take a salary for the first two and a half years. I had a house that I was forced to rent out, and I moved into a one-bedroom apartment to keep the business afloat. I’m looking for someone that will not only do the job well, but will take care of this company, and take ownership of this business. I would love to be kicked out of here someday by someone like you.”

He told me more about his company – they only have seven full time employees, they have been growing 25% year over year, and he is not interested in rapid expansion. He mentioned several times that his company is “solid.” They have government clients, and are not subject to the whims of the NASDAQ.

Then, he told me that we will both sleep on it, spend the weekend thinking about the interview, and he’d give me a call next week. I think it went well. My responsibilities would be well within my area of expertise, for the most part, but Ham1d’s poker face was difficult to read. Oh well, if not, there’s always this.(If you get offended by things on the Internet, do not follow this link)