One of my favorite shows depicting the Wild West of the technology scene in the 80s and 90s is Halt and Catch Fire. While most know of Lee Pace as the chiseled emperor "Day" from the Apple TV series Foundation, his first cult classic hit was playing the scrappy, determined, and sometimes manipulative tech entrepreneur Joe MacMillan. Joe teams up with a ragtag group of hackers and engineers to take on the industry titan of the era: IBM. While the plot of the show itself is fictitious, the backdrop of unfolding events – IBM's unwillingness to change; the rise of Apple and Microsoft; the proliferation of the internet – serve as a credible backdrop while Joe's group tries to climb that slippery slope of success.
Aside from the entire series being great – seriously, if you work in tech and haven't seen it, you should – the one thing that kept standing out for me was just how rigid and threatening IBM was. A simple meeting with Joe's team meant IBM sending in an army of lawyers to negotiate via physical presence instead of by nuanced debate. It reminds me of a similar intimidation-style interaction by a vendor my team used in a previous job, and I have to tell the story by obscuring the details enough because said vendor is notorious for frivolous litigation.
Our company had recently acquired technology and IP from another company (let's call it "David Inc.") in a similar space as ours, which included an extensive due diligence process to ensure the acquisition was air-tight and that no claims could be placed against the acquired company during or after the process – the corporate version of probate. As we started merging the teams post-acquisition, we discovered that one of the data servers from David Inc. was using a specific type of chip architecture that required an enterprise license from a vendor I'll refer to as "Goliath Inc.", but it turns out David Inc. had only been paying for a much cheaper developer license. Further digging confirmed this was a simple mistake, as the server had always been used as a developer server, and previous audits by Goliath Inc. never caught this mistake. None of the individuals involved in setting up the deal on either side were still around, so we were left with a lot of ambiguity to work through, which meant it was time to jump on a call and sort things out.
Our company had only a couple people from our C-Suite attend, with a casual set of talking points to work through and prove there was no clear party to blame and that we simply wanted to sort things out in a reasonable fashion. Goliath Inc. didn't share this philosophy, and showed up with literally a dozen suits on the call – a mix of lawyers, salesmen (I'm pretty sure it was all men), and executives. Literally, Davis vs. Goliath on a call, and Goliath demanded back-pay at the full enterprise rate since the agreement began. The total amount was such an order of magnitude higher that it threatened to tank our financial metrics for the year. We were so shocked and frustrated by the unwillingness of Goliath to even entertain the discussion of a compromise, so the call ended quickly, and one of our executives sent a follow-up message to Goliath that I'm pretty sure was a universal language translation to: yeah, you can go and kick rocks.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.
Thankfully, it did pay off, and Goliath came back with a proposal to allow us to maintain the existing license costs, with a grace period to convert to the correct chip architecture, and that we would be billed full rate if we didn't. Doing what any good David-sized vendor would do, we immediately started planning on how to move as quickly as we could off Goliath's technology, ignoring placating calls from Goliath who tried to sweet talk us into a "better" enterprise deal after basically threatening to tank our business. I left the company before that transition off Goliath occurred, but I'd like to think it finally did.
So what's the morale of this story? First, if you're a large tech company, try to focus on retaining customers rather than taking hostages. Second, if you're a local resident that's excited about a large tech company with this type of reputation moving to your city, then show cautious optimism instead of blind optimism towards the news. You'll often find that those of us directly interacting with vendors like this aren't shouting from the LinkedIn rooftops in excitement. Instead, we're rolling our eyes and staying silent, because we don't like dealing with a dozen suits on every call.
Aside from the entire series being great – seriously, if you work in tech and haven't seen it, you should – the one thing that kept standing out for me was just how rigid and threatening IBM was. A simple meeting with Joe's team meant IBM sending in an army of lawyers to negotiate via physical presence instead of by nuanced debate. It reminds me of a similar intimidation-style interaction by a vendor my team used in a previous job, and I have to tell the story by obscuring the details enough because said vendor is notorious for frivolous litigation.
Our company had recently acquired technology and IP from another company (let's call it "David Inc.") in a similar space as ours, which included an extensive due diligence process to ensure the acquisition was air-tight and that no claims could be placed against the acquired company during or after the process – the corporate version of probate. As we started merging the teams post-acquisition, we discovered that one of the data servers from David Inc. was using a specific type of chip architecture that required an enterprise license from a vendor I'll refer to as "Goliath Inc.", but it turns out David Inc. had only been paying for a much cheaper developer license. Further digging confirmed this was a simple mistake, as the server had always been used as a developer server, and previous audits by Goliath Inc. never caught this mistake. None of the individuals involved in setting up the deal on either side were still around, so we were left with a lot of ambiguity to work through, which meant it was time to jump on a call and sort things out.
Our company had only a couple people from our C-Suite attend, with a casual set of talking points to work through and prove there was no clear party to blame and that we simply wanted to sort things out in a reasonable fashion. Goliath Inc. didn't share this philosophy, and showed up with literally a dozen suits on the call – a mix of lawyers, salesmen (I'm pretty sure it was all men), and executives. Literally, Davis vs. Goliath on a call, and Goliath demanded back-pay at the full enterprise rate since the agreement began. The total amount was such an order of magnitude higher that it threatened to tank our financial metrics for the year. We were so shocked and frustrated by the unwillingness of Goliath to even entertain the discussion of a compromise, so the call ended quickly, and one of our executives sent a follow-up message to Goliath that I'm pretty sure was a universal language translation to: yeah, you can go and kick rocks.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.
Thankfully, it did pay off, and Goliath came back with a proposal to allow us to maintain the existing license costs, with a grace period to convert to the correct chip architecture, and that we would be billed full rate if we didn't. Doing what any good David-sized vendor would do, we immediately started planning on how to move as quickly as we could off Goliath's technology, ignoring placating calls from Goliath who tried to sweet talk us into a "better" enterprise deal after basically threatening to tank our business. I left the company before that transition off Goliath occurred, but I'd like to think it finally did.
So what's the morale of this story? First, if you're a large tech company, try to focus on retaining customers rather than taking hostages. Second, if you're a local resident that's excited about a large tech company with this type of reputation moving to your city, then show cautious optimism instead of blind optimism towards the news. You'll often find that those of us directly interacting with vendors like this aren't shouting from the LinkedIn rooftops in excitement. Instead, we're rolling our eyes and staying silent, because we don't like dealing with a dozen suits on every call.