Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

You know your relationship with someone is bad when you find yourself doing the math to answer the question, How much longer until I can quit these clowns? In this case the clowns are my mortgage company, and "quit" means pay off my mortgage so I can be done with them.

I've noted before that I don't like my current mortgage company. My loan has been sold a few times, starting from the originator, whom I genuinely liked. Then it was sold from Originating Lender A to New Bank B. Bank B worked fine when everything could be automated but was a pain in the neck to deal with every single time the computers kicked out an exception that required human intervention. Now Scumbag Debt Collector C— yes, my new mortgage servicer is a scummy debt collector— pisses me off with every single communication they send me because, well, they're a debt collector. All their processes as they try to move into mortgage servicing still read like they're a debt collector, treating me like a deadbeat borrower who's fallen behind on payments.

The answer, BTW, is 6½ years. In another 6.5 years of steady monthly payments I'll have this loan paid off.

Could I be done with these clowns sooner? Oh hell yes! I could increase my monthly payments to retire the debt sooner. Hell, I could just write a check to pay off the balance. The whole balance. It's not that big anymore. I've been paying down the mortgage for 20+ years and have never taken cash out on refinancing.

Of course, just because the balance "is not that big" doesn't mean I have that kind of cash sitting around. I'd have sell a few things from my investment portfolio to pay it off. But the thing is, investments are investments. They earn money. And the cost of this mortgage— the financial cost— is small. I have a rate below 2.5%! It's financially a loss to sell assets that return way better than 2.5% APY to pay off a loan that costs less than 2.5% APR.

What would change that calculation? One thing is if the emotional cost of keeping the loan with these clowns becomes too expensive. The first time these clowns screw up in a way that's more than just passively irritating, I may just pay them off and be done with them.

A few weeks ago I blogged "Sure, Cancel my 7am Meeting... at 7:05am" about, well, the title. It happened again today.

We had a 7am meeting, a customer presentation, which I was asked to attend as of yesterday afternoon because, apparently, it's super important. So again, today, I woke up early to get camera-ready to present at an early meeting.

A few minutes after 7 the first customer joined. He was calling in, while traveling—so he was unable to see any of the presentation and demo. And then he informed us that the whole rest of his team was called away to fix an urgent problem on their side. He urged us to give the demo anyway, using the meeting as a recording the rest of his team could watch later.

Thankfully my teammate who's taking the technical lead on this project put his foot down on that request. It would be stupid to create a recording of a customized demo for people to watch, whenever, maybe, if they remember, if they feel like it. Instead the demo should include the right stakeholders, interactively, so we can ensure their concerns are addressed and validate their feedback.

While my colleague was negotiating with the customer at 7:10am about when/how to reschedule the call I was already blowing up my boss's Slack with messages about how this is getting ridiculous. This is now the second time this has happened— with the same customer. And not only that, but our regional sales VP for some reason decided this meeting was so important that we had 4 people from my functional team (sales engineers) attending... plus a VP engineering from our product org. From a staffing perspective this was a super expensive meeting for my company. A super expensive meeting with zero value because the customer is not committed. We're throwing the whole varsity team at them to win the sales, while I believe they're just tire kickers.

I wish there were a penalty box I was allowed to put customers in for blowing off meetings. Like, if you demand a meeting that's outside my normal work hours, and I agree to accommodate because I'm working with you in good faith, and then you leave me standing there alone only to cancel 5-10 minutes after it started, you don't get to do that again. You can have your next meeting at a time that's convenient for me. And if you abuse my good will twice, you definitely don't deserve further good will from me.

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way in most places in sales. Most managers in sales are completely spineless in front of customers. Customers abuse us and then whine we're dragging our feet to serve them? Management amplifies their concerns because, gasp, they might pay us money in the future. Except tire-kickers are not likely to do that.

It's sad that so many sales managers are spineless because having a spine in this situation is literally one of their important jobs. Sales managers are supposed to ensure their team is putting effort in the right places to maximize revenue subject to the real-world constraint that there isn't time to do everything for everybody. A sales manager who thinks that staff time just grows on trees is counterproductive to sales.

Bonus meeting dipshittery: at 11:23am today a customer messaged us, "Is this meeting still going on?"... for a meeting that started at 11am. Several of us from my company were on the call. We gave up at 11:15 after all customer invitees no-showed. It's like, dude, we're not going to sit around for 23 minutes in a 30 minute call just in case you mosey in at the end.

Two Nights in San Diego #5
Leaving a meeting - Thu, 27 Jun 2024, 1:30pm

Today I had a few-hours-long meeting with another customer in San Diego. Unlike yesterday's customer meeting it wasn't six hours long. It also wasn't frustrating dealing with a customer who's not as smart as they think they are. That made it like night-and-day different.

At the end of yesterday's meeting (again, six hours!) I asked my colleagues, seriously, "Out of our agreed-up goals going into this meeting, which of them did we actually accomplish?" Because we had some goals that seemed fairly straightforward prior to the meeting but in hindsight they seemed ridiculously ambitious. Whereas after today's much shorter meeting, we left feeling great with confidence that we'd achieved everything we set out to achieve with this customer.

Part of the difference is that bozo factor I mused about yesterday. It's clearer in hindsight with today's comparison that the people we were working yesterday are, on 1-10 scale of "Are they smart and can they get stuff done?" at best a 6. And the problem is they think they're all 9s and 10s. While the people we met today actually are 9s. And, better yet, they aren't cocky about it. (Plenty of 9s and 10s I know are flaming assholes.) I say that having worked with them over the course of 4 years now. I've often complimented them during conversations and have always spoken highly of them to my colleagues. It is refreshing to work with genuinely smart— and nice— people.

Friday midday I walked out on a meeting with my boss and a colleague. The colleague was being disrespectful toward me, even after I told him I found his behavior disrespectful and asked him to stop. My boss had acknowledged the problem beforehand (it's part of a widening pattern) and offered to help address it. But in the meeting he did nothing as it happened again. I told both of them, "I'm done with this [disrespect] for today. Find someone else for this task if you have to," and then walked out. I took a few minutes to convince myself I'd done the right thing with some help from my spouse then circled back around to talk to my boss 1:1 to tell him I need to see significant improvement soon. I didn't explicitly say "Or I will quit" but IMO only a fool would fail to see that was clearly implied.

After that I left for the airport. I had been in Austin for a day and a half of technical training. I was glad I had a built-in excuse not to have to be around my offending colleague or my boss... though I did see my boss briefly outside while we were both waiting for Ubers. I remarked on something he said among a group of us who were waiting there that was unrelated to personnel issues. He didn't engage with me. That made it seem more awkward. Thus I was glad I would have some alone time for the next few hours to process things.

It turned out I had more processing time than I expected. The wifi on my flight back to SJC was busted. With little entertainment to occupy my mind I found myself mulling the situation over again and again. Like I wrote in my previous blog, it was a case of "shots fired". A shot, once fired, can't be taken back. And the shots I fired basically put me on a path of having to leave this company soon. As I considered the prospect of leaving this job in a messy breakup after almost 7 years together I found myself... surprisingly at peace with the situation.

I've written for years now that I've been planning an early retirement. The goal line to cross to get there hasn't been a date but rather a target amount of money in my portfolio. I'm not at my target yet— among other reasons, I've moved the goalposts twice due to inflation— but I'm getting close. And while leaving my job on a sour note isn't how I envisioned starting retirement, neither is having a totally upbeat going-away party with cake and streamers and everybody clapping. Walking out the door by myself while singing the chorus to "Take This Job and Shove It" (Wikipedia link) is perfectly adequate.

Realizing that I already have a post-job (or at least post-this-job) mentality was striking. And it was striking how refreshed I felt. Suddenly none of the things that have been bothering me about the job for... frankly, years... bothered me anymore. Even the most recent problems suddenly stopped bothering me.

• I won't be prepared to deliver an in-person seminar on Wednesday because it was scheduled too soon against my recommendation and the material isn't ready? Fuck it, I don't care if I stand up there and look like an idiot as things fall apart around me. Soon it won't be my problem.


• Getting pushed into starting an evaluation project with a customer prematurely, with expected delivery dates I've advised are almost impossible to meet but have been ignored repeatedly on? Fuck it, I don't care either if the sale slips and people yell at me.


• Another (really weak) deal slips further out because coworkers keep trying to go around me instead of listening to me and believing me when I say what technical things we need to do? Fuck that, too. Their success is no longer my concern.

It's amazing how many problems just roll off like water on a duck's back when you just don't fucking care anymore.

It's been a while since I've posted about Stupid Customer Tricks. One happened just today. ...Or yesterday, technically.

I'm managing a technical project with a major customer. They spend over $1 million annually with us. I'm working with my counterpart on the customer side to bring the right subject matter experts (SMEs) from both sides together to review how they're using the product & recommend ways to do it better (get better functionality, performance, and reliability). I asked him on Monday afternoon to schedule a meeting for Wednesday afternoon (the time was already agreed to) and "invite everyone from [my company] on the cc list" from my company to the meeting.

I expected to see a response Tuesday morning. Nothing. I know this person starts early in the day but I figured maybe he was busy. I was sure he'd do it by the afternoon. Nope! This morning I followed up and asked if we were still meeting today. He sends me the "original" meeting invitation... that was sent to everyone else yesterday.

The dude took my request to "invite everyone from [my company] on the cc list" literally. I wasn't on the cc list— I was the sender on the From: line— so he didn't invite me. 🤦

What a clown.

It's about 5pm and I've gotten back to my hotel. I checked out this morning but left my suitcase with the bell desk so I wouldn't have to lug it through the conference. Yeah, I could have gone straight to the airport from the show if I'd taken it, instead of trudging on foot almost a mile back to my hotel, but the waits for taxis, Lyft, and Uber from the conference hotel are crazy. It's actually somewhat quiet back here at the Resorts World... but only somewhat, as people are streaming in for National Finals Rodeo (NFR), one of the biggest events of the year in Vegas.

I worked the show all day today, 10am-4pm. I actually arrived at the booth at 9:45 when almost nobody else was there. The few who were noticed that I was early, though, and thanked me. One of my teammates didn't even show up at all today. Trade show discipline has sadly never been a priority at this company. Though maybe that's changing now with new people in the marketing events team. ...Until they all turn over again in 6 months, then who knows what comes next. 🙄

I dressed up as the Jenkins the Butler again today, after lunch. I'd done it earlier this week on Monday evening. Overall recognition of the character was poor. It's not quite the best demographic here at this show. I got a colleague to join me on making a round through several other vendors' booths this afternoon. The idea was we'd have some fun and stir up some trouble. ...Trouble by challenging competitors with a living mascot, that is. Sadly the competitors' booths didn't have many technical people in them, so few people were aware of the prank we were playing.

I did score an interview with a roving AWS re:Invent TV crew. I told them I'd just come back from the Rap Battle booth, and spat fire on a few verses live for them. The interview loved it and did a mic drop for me on camera.

I'll post more about the Jenkins cosplay soon.

A few weeks ago I posed the question, What if I Just... Didn't Travel... for my Travel Job? It bothers me that a number of my colleagues, maybe about half, are declining travel for various reasons— when we're employed in jobs that specifically include travel responsibility. For the trade show I'm flying out to support this week, there's yet another person declining to participate, with yet another reason. This time it's Coronavirus— specifically, refusal to get vaccinated or even take a test.

The conference has a health requirement. Attendees must show either proof of vaccination or a recent negative test. And masks are required to be worn indoors at the show. That's too much for one of my Covidiot colleagues. He called our boss last week and told him he wasn't going to be able to attend.

The immediate response from my company's even organizer was, "Well, the rest of you are just going to have to work longer hours to pick up the slack. Sorry."

In my post a few weeks aog I remarked that I feel like a chump for bearing the hardship of travel when half my colleagues are opting out of it with seemingly no consequences. Now I really feel like a chump.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog entry titled Stupid Meeting Tricks. It was about 5 sadly common fails people make in attending meetings unproductively or canceling them at the last minute. Just yesterday I saw an intriguing new form of meeting fail. I'm going to call this one, "Did you just drunk-text me a meeting invite?"

So, yesterday afternoon a customer invited me and a sales colleague to a meeting to discuss their use cases. It is a four hour long meeting. With no clear agenda. And less than 24 hours notice.

As if that weren't already ridiculous enough, he invited one of our competitors to the meeting, too. Like, we're supposed to share our project plans with someone literally trying to take that business away from us.

Oh, and the invite was full of spelling errors. There were 3 in the first sentence alone.

Sadly— or gladly, I'm not sure— this invite is legit. The customer's company culture really is rotten enough that they plan a four hour long meeting, with only a vague agenda, and ask everybody to come to it. 🤦‍♂️

I learned through my network today that a former colleague of mine died of Covid-19 yesterday. My sympathy for his wife and daughter (age 22) is tempered by my frustration with him for his poor choices. He was a Coronavirus denier. He refused to get vaccinated. He skirted public health regulations, like mask wearing requirements, every chance he could get. "The left are in hysterics about Coronavirus, it's no worse than the flu," he believed. "We've got to just live our lives."

Well, he lived his life. He lived it to an untimely, avoidable death.

I'm working with a particular customer prospect, "V", to sell them one of our flagship products. V is using the free, open source version of that product today. V came to us asking for "dashboarding" to help them understand all their problems: when, why, and how often infrastructure and automated processes are failing.

As I first reviewed this opportunity with the account executive, "Calvin", I warned that dashboarding is not our product's strong suit. Most of the specific capabilities V requested are not in our product. I cautioned Cal that if we simply answered their questions repeating their language back to them the answers would be "No, no, no, just a little bit, and no." Going down a list of requested features and saying No to most of them is obviously not how to win a sale. Thus we would need to determine the nature of V's underlying problems and seek to align it to what our product does do.

The first meeting with Customer V went well. I quickly discovered that their underlying problems are exactly the ones we address: scalability, use of Kubernetes infrastructure, and management of environment configuration at scale. V even agreed that solving these problems was the real goal. "Dashboarding" was what their implementation-focused people talked about because they were thinking very short term. They wanted detailed instrumentation to analyze the frequent failures in the hodge-podge, DIY system they'd built instead of thinking about replacing it with a robust commercial system has already solved those problems.

Our second meeting with Customer V went well, too... up until the end when Cal wrapped it up by going back to the terminology in their email from weeks earlier and asking, "So, you said the most important thing to you is dashboarding. Did you see enough dashboarding? Will this solve your dashboarding needs?" Seriously, Cal was repeating dashboarding like a toddler who's learned a bad word and seen that it gets a reaction out of his parents. I kicked him under the virtual table— i.e., I furiously typed messages to him in Slack— asking him not to use that word. ...Not because, like with the toddler analogy it's a bad word, but because it's an inaccurate way of framing what our product does that will block the sale.

Customer V went dark on us for a few weeks after our last meeting. Cal and I discussed this morning about reaching out to them again. As we reviewed our previous call notes, I repeated my admonishment to Cal that we need to reframe the argument for buying our product away from "dashboarding". I reminded him that a) we don't have dashboards, and b) their real problems are scalability and management, which we do solve. Thus we ought to frame it as, "We solve scalability and management for you." In professional realm of enterprise software sales this is not hard stuff.

Cal sends out an email to Customer V at lunchtime today. Guess what he does.... Yup, the whole email is about "dashboarding". FFS! Has he listened to anything I've said on the topic, even as recently as this morning? Is he trying to lose the sale here?

I'm split on which of two approaches to take with Cal and his idiotic behavior at this point:

1) Confront Cal using very direct language. "Cal, I've told you multiple times, as recently as this morning, that we need to reframe the problem with Customer V. Are you interested in winning this deal? Because the way you're ignoring me you're going to lose it. And I'm prepared to be clear with Management that you've repeatedly agreed to a plan with me then gone and done the opposite."

2) Malicious compliance. Rather than fight Cal, show him what happens when we do it his way: Reaffirm the customer's and his language that this is all about dashboarding. Show them the one, small dashboarding feature we have. Answer their questions about it truthfully so they see it's a weaksauce feature. Answer their other dashboarding questions directly with "No, we don't do that," multiple times. Likely result: Customer V says, "We're not interested then," and I can stop having conversations with a brick wall named Cal.