Job 3.1: Army of One

Then an interesting thing happened:

1) Microsoft released a version of Windows that actually worked.

2) Intel consistently made new computers that were multiple times faster than the old ones.

The world changed.  I changed my tools to run on Windows, changed the products to run on Windows and added windows features.  We dabbled in mapping for several years, without success; then Microsoft created a mapping program that worked, and only cost a hundred dollars a seat; it's initial interface was incomplete so I patched it (the assembler thing comes in handy sometimes).  The company grew significantly (10x) and pumped seventy or so man-years into a new PC version of the product.  I wrote the core messaging infrastructure and solved problems whenever no-one else could figure them out; occasionally I would be unsuccessful, so I trained management to believe that a problem I can't solve is by definition an "unsolvable problem"; it was fun.

In those days, if a customer had a crisis, I was the fourth person to show up (because the previous three were unsuccessful).  I was bit of a cowboy (that's an understatement - more like Denis Rodman or Darth Vader).

That was phase two of my third job.  I created, wrote down, and pursued my mission and vision:

Mission: Create software that enables the company to be highly successful.

Vision: Our products are reliable, high performance, feature complete, scalable, easily deployable, tightly integrated, and easily modified.

Strategic checklist:

* Reliable software continues to perform when something unexpected happens.

* High Performance software has transactional response times less than 1 second under full system load.

* Feature Complete software has all the features a customer role player would expect in each module.

* Scalable software gives a consistent user experience with all customer sizes and infrastructure.

* Easily deployable software is installable by anyone, without training.

* Tightly integrated software gives a consistent user experience.

* Easily modified software has a high percentage of all software features exercised by testing software with no manual labor

I was motivated by the dream of doing this better.  My hobby was reading PhD and Master's theses from the Internet and studying Bayesian statistics.