by Dan Conway
None of it worked, because Acme is a mish-mash of regional companies that have been pieced together through acquisitions over decades. Each company’s processes had been smashed into the centralized structure that has governed Acme forever. This is the same structure Acme helped pioneer and that virtually every corporation utilizes to this day, including Google, Facebook, and other tech darlings that pretend to be more decentralized.
The point of Unified Acme was to make all of the company’s 245,000 employees less surly and idiotic to each other. The goal was to pull the masses of a massive company together, systems-wise and culture-wise, to avoid situations like this.
Ultimately, what was I going to do? Decline the job, stay at Safeway for $20,000 less per year, and forego the big title and bigger stage that Acme offered? At least I’d be working closer to home, in downtown San Francisco rather than the East Bay. This was probably the same calculus the company used when formulating the offer in the first place. I told myself to buck up, and I did. It was still a step in the right direction, and I’d work my way to a higher salary eventually. I accepted the job.
Chapter Three
Cypherpunks
While my focus in the years after the financial crisis was to climb as high as I could in the establishment, a group of zealots called the cypherpunks were challenging the establishment.
These computer scientists, political-edge cases, and contrarians were concerned about privacy and personal liberty. They believed that corporations and governments had become too powerful. They’d been communicating with one another for years through an email list that had been going strong since the first days of the Internet Bulletin Board System in the 1980s.
The cypherpunks considered cryptography to be an important tool for thwarting surveillance. They developed new ways for people to communicate using digital cyphers, which required the use of private keys.
In the mid-2000s, computer networks became exponentially more powerful, and social media introduced the world to new data-mining vulnerabilities. By that time, many of the cypherpunks had created organizations that were fighting for libertarian policies in the courts and on the Internet.
In Washington D.C., cypherpunk Mitch Kapor’s Electronic Frontier Foundation was battling AOL at the Federal Trade Commission, alleging AOL engaged in deceptive and unfair trade practices by disclosing the search queries of 650,000 users.
In Silicon Valley, cypherpunk Bram Cohen’s peer-to-peer file sharing program, BitTorrent, had drawn blood from big telecom in 2006, after Comcast had throttled the BitTorrent service. Cohen, who self-diagnosed his Asperger’s Syndrome, sued and won a federal lawsuit, one of the first skirmishes in the net neutrality war.
The cypherpunks were outstanding at coming up with new ways to send information privately, but they struggled to find a way to transact value privately. A functional underground community required that two parties be able to conduct business outside of surveillance. If their messages were private but their exchange of digital money was not, the entire transaction was still compromised.
They believed the answer would be found by utilizing distributed computing, which uses multiple unconnected computers to complete a task. They worked on different ways to establish a public ledger (i.e., a third-party ledger) that was maintained by multiple nodes (computers) and did not rely on any one party to validate the exchange. In a distributed—or decentralized—system, if any node was compromised, the remaining untainted nodes could still ensure the transaction was completed.
It was an elusive goal, and they had several false starts. The Hashcash and Digicash projects achieved breakthroughs but ultimately didn’t work. The two most difficult challenges were removing every single point of failure and preventing “double spends,” which could occur if the same money was sent to two different parties.
In October 2008, a person or persons named Satoshi Nakamoto sent an email to the cypherpunk email list, introducing Bitcoin. He said he’d solved the digital money problem. He attached a nine-page white paper explaining how he’d done it.
“In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions.”
Satoshi proposed that each peer-to-peer transaction be arranged into a block of transactions. It would then be chained to the previous block by the node that wins a race to solve a computational puzzle. The winning node receives bitcoin in return. In this way, bitcoin was an entirely new currency that would be distributed to the computers that added their power to the network. As Satoshi wrote, “The steady addition of a constant amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation.”
Bitcoin was similar to gold in another way. It appealed to the anti-inflation, store-of-value investor types, the same people who bought gold. Only twenty-one million bitcoins would ever be created, which is zero inflation for eternity. Since money has value only if people think it has value, this store-of-value attribute was a brilliant move by Satoshi.
The cypherpunk community turned to the Bitcoin white paper and tried to find its flaws. They couldn’t. It appeared he’d done it. The clouds parted. Their combined brainpower, applied over time, had found a simple and apparently flawless solution.
They’d fiddled with the figurative lock on the computer room for decades. No one thought they’d ever get in, but they kept trying. Then, suddenly, the door opened. These anarchists, hackers, Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts, and self-proclaimed revolutionaries had been fighting for their vision of personal liberty with sticks and stones. They’d just acquired a lightsaber.
Before long, several hundred computers pointed their power at the Bitcoin blockchain. And it worked. Before long, the network had more computing power than all of Google’s servers combined.
But more importantly, Bitcoin had opened Pandora’s box. It had proved decentralization was an organizing principle that worked. Hypothetically, other things could be decentralized.
From the moment the price of bitcoin started rising, the world focused almost exclusively on the price and very little on the underlying philosophy of decentralization. And who could blame them? In its first two years, despite high volatility, bitcoin was up 10,000 percent, making its early adopters filthy rich.
As for Satoshi, no one knows if that pseudonym belongs to a man, a woman, or a group of people. We may never know, because despite being nominated for a Nobel Prize in 2016 and sitting on a stash of bitcoins worth billions, Satoshi vanished in 2012, never to be heard from again.
I remember reading an article about Bitcoin back then. I thought it sounded like total bullshit.
Chapter Four
Currents
On my first day at Acme, I travelled up the elevator to the twentieth floor and started my career at the new company. In an odd bit of timing, before being introduced to everyone individually, I’d be joining a previously scheduled meeting of the California leadership team with executives from Red State and New York. In most cases, I’ll be referring to persons from Red State, California, and New York by those division names, rather than individual names. In the maze of organizational charts that is Acme, I worked day-to-day with California, reported to Red State, and feared New York.
Red State and I arrived at the conference room first and sat next to each other at one end of a long oval table. A few moments later, the rest of the group entered. They were talking about a project I was obviously not yet familiar with as they arranged themselves around the table. We were one chair short, so an executive assistant was summoned to get another chair from a nearby office. Finally, we got started.
“Hi, everyone, this is Dan Conway. We didn’t want him to miss any of the fun, so he’s going to join us today, even though he is brand new,” Red State said.
Everyone chuckled. Standard corporate irony.
“Thank you, Red State,” I said. “I’m glad to be here, and I look forward to
spending time with each of you later.” I settled into my seat. I was relieved not to have to say anything more.
The meeting was to discuss the California team’s number-one priority, which it had failed to achieve after several years of effort: winning approval for Acme’s widget factory in San Francisco. The city was the last major metropolitan area in Acme’s footprint to not have a widget factory. Neighborhood activists were fighting the build. They didn’t want the smoke stacks.
Once I processed what they were talking about, it was obvious to me why the California team hadn’t been able to get it done. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is famously feisty. This was a heavy lift. This didn’t appear to be obvious to Red State. I found out later that in other regions, Acme entered markets like conquering heroes. Not so in San Francisco, though the company had given a ton of money to community groups, snuggled up to each supervisor, and made rounds of concessions at the behest of the board.
“It’s been two years, and it doesn’t seem like we are any closer,” Red State said. “Are you guys going to be able to pull this off?”
One of the leaders of the California team was a senior executive I’ll call Prince Charming. As the room turned toward him, I noticed he was wearing a gorgeous suit and a smirk. He had pale white skin and bright blue eyes. I soon became familiar with his endearing liberal arrogance. I also discovered that he was despised by the aw-shucks Red Staters and their allies in the middle-America divisions of the company.
“I feel like I’m on The Price is Right again,” Prince Charming said.
Apparently that was an inside joke, because everyone other than Red State laughed.
“I’m seeing the mayor tomorrow at a reception. I’ll talk to him. He’s always more open to me after 8 p.m.” Here he was, being grilled by Red State, and he found a way to make a joke. Again, everyone laughed, including me. I loved his irreverence.
Then he turned to me and said, “With Dan on board, we should be able to get it done, right, Dan?” As if the perfect messaging would get the board to vote for that factory. He was mocking Red State.
“Oh, yes, of course!” I said. I hoped I didn’t appear to be playing along.
I did have a lot of experience getting land use projects approved in Northern California. As usual, my track record was frustratingly mixed. Earlier in my career, before Safeway, I worked for a firm that helped big box retailers. Once, when my boss was sick and couldn’t make a meeting, I single-handedly won a new client project by giving an inspired presentation to a group of Home Depot executives.
But a few weeks later, during the next presentation with the same group, Flip Side appeared out of nowhere, his arms bulging with muscles as he squeezed my head. I lost my words for “excited about,” “eager to start,” and “looking forward to.” The only phrase I could come up with was “lick my chops.” I told them I’d lick my chops three times during my ten minutes. After the meeting, my boss told me to never, ever use that phrase again. I was shaken, because I’d never used the expression before and didn’t even know what it alluded to at a literal level. Was “chops” the same as “loins”? Had I just told a group of executives that I was so excited to get started that I was going to suck my own dick?
“San Francisco believes it’s different from Tulsa,” Prince Charming continued. “We always knew it would take a while to get this done, but we’re on the right track.”
Left unsaid was the insinuation that Red State should know that by now.
Red State had what it wanted … Prince Charming on record, saying he could get it done.
I noticed how each side kept looking at the New York executives. They were positioned by the net, watching this prickly, passive-aggressive tennis match.
“Well, I guess the proof will be in the pudding,” New York said. “Let’s see how things develop. We will give you any support we can from our corner of the world.”
The conversation moved on. As a palate cleanser, New York said something about the San Francisco Giants and how they’d like to steal a couple of their pitchers and bring them back to the Yankees. Not a funny joke, but a good opportunity to pivot beyond the Red State/California dynamic.
I’d spent the meeting trying to figure out the incentives of the people talking. The internal politics were clearly more important than the project we were there to discuss.
I’d soon have to engage with these people directly. I was a thirty-nine year old professional with a lot of experience, but the whole vibe of that meeting and the people there felt like the purest form of classical corporate dynamics I’d ever seen. It felt like I’d just stumbled into the production studio for a television show featuring old-school corporate sharks going at it. I was an extra on Romper Room next door who had mistakenly sat my manchild-self down at their table. I knew I had Imposter Syndrome, but I feared I was a real-life imposter.
After the meeting I wandered around the office, meeting my new co-workers. They would invariably say, “Oh, the new Fourth Level. Nice to meet you.”
For the past hundred years, and still today, Acme has categorized employees by management levels, and it is everything. A person’s level determines salary, vacation, bonus, and the respect they’re afforded. Everyone’s always asking: Is she Second Level? What’s your plan to get to Third Level? Why the hell is he a Fifth Level? How much bonus does a Fourth Level get?
First Levels are the unmentionables. They are the ones who interact with the public: the customer service staff and administrative assistants. They earn a wage and don’t normally expect to rise any further.
Second Levels are frontline managers. They do a lot of the day-to-day work of the company. Young, promising Second Levels can earn respect, because everyone knows they can rise up fast if the spotlight shines on them. They might become a fashionable pawn for an executive who wants to show they have a tremendous eye for talent.
The older Second Levels who have been in their positions for years are like forty-year-old minor league baseball players. It is highly unlikely that they’re going to start hitting .400. Even if they went on a streak, there wouldn’t be any scouts in the stands to see it. No one is paying attention to the chronic Second Levels.
Third Levels are Directors, and they have the real glow of management. In some parts of the company, Third Levels are in charge of hundreds of employees and are treated like legitimate big shots. I met a number of them at Acme training sessions in Atlanta and Houston. They had all the trappings of an old-school business person: handsome rings, beautiful ties, carefully worded language, and crushing handshakes.
Fourth Levels are the real managers in my division. This was my level. I was told that Second and Third Levels are supposed to be master implementers and excellent at their jobs, with the ability, of course, to be strategic. But Fourth Levels were something special and a step above. They had the ability to “move the organization” and “see a few miles ahead.” Fourth Levels relish the opportunity to whiteboard the shit out of a problem in front of a big group, and can awe the crowd with their vision.
Fifth Level is where the real money flows. Big bonuses, huge options, mucho respect. Being a Fifth Level is like making partner at a law firm. Fifth Levels manage collections of teams. Each of them know the CEO, because they interview with him. If you have a Fifth Level on your side, you’re swinging a big dick. This is where I wanted to be.
Sixth Levels are officers of the company and are treated like dangerous celebrities. There were about eighty Acme officers when I joined, roughly one for every five thousand employees. They are considered so precious that the company pays for them to fly into a special clinic and undergo a day-long executive physical. They’re strapped into breathing and heart monitors to check their cardiovascular health. Their urine, blood, and feces are harvested for testing. A doctor with all the time in the world explains the findings and, I presume, recommends a diet to meet the specific needs of their feces.
Officers also receive a clothing allowance, as if they need it.
They fly all over the world on a whim. They make so much money that the company strongly recommends that they have their money professionally managed and refers them to a financial advisor. After a few years, they have enough money to retire, if they want to. Few ever let go until their position is wrenched from their cold, dead hands.
At the top of the food chain are the seven CEO direct reports. Each is in charge of a kingdom, like in Game of Thrones. There were a number of disruptions on the small council during my time at the company. Following the banishment or beheading, that person’s newly orphaned chain of command shook with downward cascading impacts. Divisions were ravaged and scavenged for talent. Projects were cancelled in midstream, simply because they no longer had an executive sponsor.
Another set of constituents has to be recognized, because they make everything so much more difficult, especially during critical campaigns: the Machines—Acme’s computerized systems, reports, automated processes, and other instruments of centralized control. The Machines are every employee’s first and continuing adversary.
The Machines enforce the rules at Acme. They are so bloated and unmanageable that no one, not even someone high up on the chain, can change them without screwing up the whole organization.
The Machines practice lifelike malevolence against human beings. They crash expense reports when they are nearly complete, losing all of your work. They require automated trainings on Sunday mornings due to glitches in the system. They generate bot-like emails demanding reports on your interactions with computer systems you didn’t even know you had access to.
