Business Proposal - Part 1: Murky Waters of Deception, Staged Demos and Pressure
The room was pretty much silent except for the keyboard strokes and rather abnormal hums and growls from Alice who was listening to some serious hard metal spilling over her headphones. The door access beeped and we heard tick tok sounds approaching us combined with loud shouts on the phone, a conversation blended with lots of laughter and a deep English accent accelerating command of business acumen. As she got closer to the room, an exotic aroma filled the air and on turning our heads to glimpse as if we were all programmed to the reaction, a majestic high class lady, tall, huge, oozing off class and with an original Hermès Ombré Birkin on her left hand, on the other hand, she held a huge smartphone to her ears, combined with a BMW key and what I'd imagined as a custom keyring, this was the CEO. She glimpsed at us, smiling and waving with the hand that had the bag, the ladies in the room were jittery with excitement, they all smiled and ogled as if they had seen their queen, she was after all any diva's mentor, the men however were blank, we did not know how to react but after she entered her office we laughed at Jayden whose reaction was more or less similar to the ladies', funny guy.
The phone call went on in her office for a while then silence, then another one and yet a final one. As if guilty of making all that noice, she peeped through her office door and whispered Jayden’s name, calling him into her office, I noticed some colleagues giving each other “the look” like some office secret that only a few could unravel, I cared less, I was a newbie on probation had nothing to input on this. The boss and Jayden had a chitchat for a while after which I they both walked out, the boss headed to the powder room while Jayden looked around as if deciding on whom to pick, he whispered Alice’s name who had to be tapped by her desk-mate for her attention, next he called me and we both followed him into the CEO’s office. “Hey people, would you be kind enough to take your notebooks and meet me at to parking exit?” Jayden asked, “Yeah sure!” we both responded and followed the instructions. It was a foggy morning, quite chilly, as we stood there with our coats we hoped we were not going to freeze there to death, hypothetically. An instant prayer answered, we saw a silver BMW X6 roaring from the belly of the underground parking bay, the rain drops made it look even more elegant and the tire curve melted my heart, daytime running light sliced though the mist like hot knife on butter, the majestic giant was here. I am a car person. The tinted car came closer to us and stopped, Alice jumped into the back left as if this was a routine, okayyy… I climbed onto the back right, still anxious and uncertain, on the drivers seat was the CEO with Jayden as the co-driver, she turned, smiled and called us by name requesting us to buckle up please. I was still in shock that she new my name.
A deep bass pumped from the BMW’s Harman Kardon sound system, my boss was listening to old school R&B, in steady speed we travelled for about forty-five minutes, the music was regularly being interrupted by business calls over the car’s bluetooth, I was however enjoying the comfort and music. We took a turn towards and industrial zone and suddenly Jayden turned to address the back benchers, “hi people, listen up, we are headed to a potential client dealing milk” Alice opened her notebook and started jotting down, I followed suit, Jayden continued, “what they require is an end to end system interfacing their production line system up to sales, fyi, we have that system and have integrated it in three companies in Europe, Brazil and South Africa”. He turned, facing forward as if nothing had happened, I was in shock over that last part, Alice looked at me and giggled, I didn't know what was happening, the session was over, I had to learn and learn fast, these are the ways of corporate.
We arrived at the parking lot of the industrial park, a milk processing zone, the CEO dialed someone, saluted him and told him we were here, in two minutes, a well suited individual arrived, greeted her in a familiar manner, both exchanging familiar pleasantries. We were just standing there, blank, awkwardly waiting for this to be over and soon enough it was, we were introduced as briefly as “Rajeev, meet my team”, Rajeev said hi, with a firm handshake and requested us to follow him, as his chitchat with the CEO continued, “the minions” followed in close proximity, silent and observing the buildings and environment, we went in and led to a lobby, well designed and decorated, looking nothing like the shell that surrounds it. “Feel free, the director is in another meeting and we shall soon start when he concludes, there is juice, tea, coffee, water and snacks at your disposal” said Rajeev as he pointed to a kitchen like setup at the edge of the lobby, he went away. I went in for some water and my colleagues for coffee and donuts, a few minutes later, a barrage of corporate team arrived, led by a heavily built short man with a shiny bald, he had an Italian beige suit, a Patek Philippe watch and John Lobb like boots, our CEO sprung up from her chair, carefully placing her unfinished juice on the side table, in almost a genuflecting posture she saluted the big man, “good morning Director!”, the chairman almost seeming like he was lifting her up from the posture responded loudly and happily, “good morning Olivia, how are you?”, the pleasantries continued into the boardroom, we clearly knew our place when we were not introduced.
As if we had been forgotten and found our way home, we slowly followed the last of the barrage into the boardroom and found our seats on the far end, second row. We sat down and I had a chance to have a proper look at the director, a moment of déjà vu, I had seen him on TV and newspapers, he is a public figure, this guy was the chair of all Co-operative Dairy Group Consortia, a farmer and an oligarch. He commanded the meeting to order after being the lead party horn with Olivia. “We all know why we are here, DrySoft Technologies are here to bring an end to our troubles, we want an auditable seamless end-to-end software solution, connecting everything from milk pumps to quality assurance to sales to real time notification and reporting, from my understanding they have this product already and they have implemented it across the globe, Olivia?” The CEO took it up, iterating on the sentiments and glimpsing at our faces for affirmation, Jayden was a natural, nodding his head as if we can deploy the system in a moments notice. It was obvious, we came here to stamp authority bestowed by the Chairman to his staff and whoever might have any doubts with us. We had the godfather’s blessings, no one dared question, instead a litany of praises and cheers followed the sentiments from our CEO, the chairman gave direction, commanding that we have two parallel work-streams, one for business contract conversation and this should be fast tracked and the other a technical one, we were to be granted all our wishes including access to the farms and office premise for purposes of deployment, the Chief Information Officer as if pressured by his expertise asked, “if I may ask, would you be kind enough to demo your existing solution to us in the course of next week?”, the room went quiet, the CEO as if awoken by her belief in us jumped in “Sure! let us know when you are free earlier next week for this.” The CIO nodded, the chair in conclusion jumped in, “this demo should not however stop the work-streams, especially the contractual part, we need this moving as soon as possible before the upcoming stakeholders meeting, Rajeev, I will need daily updates on progress of this from tomorrow”. There was grave silence again, his business team lead by Rajeev were however nodding and jotting. “Very well, if that is it, I will allow DrySoft team to leave as we align internally, thank you very much for coming, have a good day”. Our CEO arose and we followed suit, exchanging goodbyes as we left the room.
In the car, the whole auora of elegance had been expelled from my body, knowing very well DrySoft never dealt with such solutions, I was super stressed on the workload that lay ahead, furthermore, the demo to come in less than a week, Alice however was like whatever, scrolling her phone on LinkedIn jobs, she had clearly had enough of the shenanigans and was looking for a way out. Jayden was busy making calls rallying all the drivers to get all the key resources back to HQ for an urgent meeting, the CEO was quiet, smiling and giggling to herself, she was pressed to blubber, she could not take it any more, she spewed to Jayden, “Did you see their faces hahahaha, this is how the world works, I told you not to worry, when you have the King’s ear, even their kin doesn't not have a say”, they both laughed hard as Jaden smeared praises to her and she took it all in tapping the steering wheel to the tunes of Usher bumping through the speakers, she is actually human, a shrewd one at that, I thought to myself. Arriving at the office, Jayden instructed us to take a thirty minutes break and join him and the boss at the boardroom, the key resources were streaming in from the different client sites, all quite pissed on the obvious looming pressure, this was a norm more or less, high uncalled for pressure that dragged people from their work into a world of the unknown and sometime it never materialized, the philosophy is however, rewarding good work with more work and appraising loudmouths. One after the other we entered the boardroom which gave me traumatic memories of the interview I had a month ago, this reminded me of the decorated soldier who did not make it, iI whispered to the now new friend man in the middle, Léo was his name, “what happened to that neat looking brilliant fellow, why didn't you give him the job?” He laughed quite loudly, in a arrogance as if the CEO could not do anything to him, and obviously as I came to realize, she couldn't, this guy was one of the company’s brilliant minds, “Edith, Sam is asking why we did not pick Malik hahahaha”, they both laughed as he promised to give me the details after the meeting. (For the genesis of the brilliant fellow escapades, please read my post on First Job as a Software Developer, Not So Fast 😭😔💔). We all settled down gazing at the CEO, who now looked hungry and lethargic with Jayden tall by her side.
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