Web Clout Solutions

Cleveland, OH

Iused to enjoy interviewing for jobs that I wasn’t qualified for. “What’s the worst that can happen?” I asked myself. “You don’t get the job?” As it turns out, the worst that can happen is that you get the job. Then you show up Monday, meet everyone, and have no idea what to do.

During college I interviewed for a job as a network administrator. I was not and never have been a network administrator.

The firm was called Web Clout Solutions and I was interviewing with Doug, the owner and founder. He was personable, with a great sense of humor. He seemed to be an obvious eccentric, moving erratically between topics and changing voices weirdly. I very much enjoyed talking with him. We mostly discussed how to deal with customers and what we wanted out of life. Doug had a lot of buddies who were very high up in Cleveland manufacturing—steel plants and foundries and whatnot—and he had created this company to sell IT services to (essentially) his buddies.

The interview was going well, and then Doug asked Troy—the guy I would be replacing since he, Troy, was being promoted—to join the meeting.

“Troy’s going to ask you some technical questions, if you don’t mind,” Doug explained. “You’d be working directly under him.”

“Sounds great,” I answered energetically.

Troy entered, and this was his opening line: “How would you install a DHCP server for a company with over two hundred employees in five office locations?”

“Five offices?” I asked. Now, I should point out that, as I was asking Troy to confirm the number of offices, I had never heard of a DHCP server before and I had no idea what it does.

“Correct. Five offices,” Troy replied, “because, as you know, that will impact the design, right?”

“Sure will,” I responded, confidently.

I couldn’t admit that I didn’t understand the opening question, so I began building a response that would let me avoid it.

“What do you run here?” I asked.

Troy looked around, puzzled. We were surrounded by several computers, all clearly running Windows ‘95 which, at this point in time, was what about 90 percent of the companies in the world were running.

“We run Windows,” he replied.

“Damn it!” I bemoaned. “I only know how to do it on UNIX.”

Doug, the owner, nearly flipped out of his chair with excitement. “What? You know how to do it on UNIX?”

“As sure as the sun rises,” I answered.

I had never used UNIX.

In fact, I had never heard of it until that very morning when it was mentioned in an NPR segment on the growth of the internet. I was hoping that the good people at Web Clout Solutions would be equally unfamiliar with UNIX and, due to that unfamiliarity, would allow me to move on to the next question or, maybe, they would decide my “UNIX” skill set did not match with their position and I could exit the interview with some dignity.

Unfortunately, I had only served to pique Doug’s interest. “How many years of UNIX experience do you have?” he inquired.

I looked at the ceiling and asked, “Well let’s see... how old am I?” and I started a fake laugh, as if I had been using the platform my whole life (which I later discovered, to my amazement, was chronologically possible: UNIX was invented in the early 1970s at AT&T Labs). Troy, however, was a little more skeptical than Doug.

“Why would you apply for a Windows Networking position if you only know UNIX?” he wondered.

“I’ll have to level with you Troy,” I said, “I’m not a details man.”

Doug waved it all away.

“Frankly, this could be for the better!” he enthused. “Troy, I haven’t even had a chance to discuss this with you yet, but I was talking to Denny at Great Lakes Steelworks this morning and he wants us to start doing some UNIX mainframe support! I told him ‘sure thing’!”

“We don’t have any UNIX expertise,” Troy reminded Doug. Doug merely pointed to me and I smiled, “You do now.”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Troy worried aloud, “I don’t have enough expertise on UNIX to vet a candidate. We could have him take a test?”

“Great idea!” Doug hollered eagerly. “I know it seems impersonal, Sean, but since we know so little about UNIX, would you mind taking a test? We have a skill-set software package and I’m sure we could find a UNIX test in there. Could you do it right now?”

I grimaced, glanced at my watch, and then began shaking my head in frustration, as though the watch had told me bad news:

“I got a ride picking me up in three minutes.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t think I could take a test right now,” I explained, “my roommate drove me here and he starts his job at the Beachwood Mall in fifteen minutes.”

This was also a lie. My car—a 1987 Chevy Cavalier with no hubcaps and Chief Wahoo spray-painted on the hood—was sitting in their parking lot at that very moment.

“You gave yourself ten minutes for this job interview?” asked Troy.

“Well, I must have lost track of time,” I conceded. “Again: I am not a details man.”

Doug once again, waved it all off. “You know what? No problem. We’ll bring you back next week and do the test, then? OK? I’ll have my secretary schedule it.” He looked at both of us expectantly, to see if we agreed. Troy looked nonplussed, while I beamed my acceptance.

“Perfect!” I said, shaking both of their hands, “I look forward to that call and the test!”

They walked me to the door, where I saw a car driving by slowly. I decided to pretend this was my friend coming to pick me up. I began waving wildly, and when it continued past I started running after it, yelling back to Doug and Troy, “Gotta run! He warned me he wouldn’t wait!” I picked up my car from their parking lot about an hour later, sneaking into the lot from the nearby woods so no one would see me. I sped out of the lot and assumed, based on how suspiciously I had acted during the inter- view, I would never hear from them again, and would certainly never have to take that test. But early Monday morning my dad told me I had a call and it seemed important.

“Sean?” said a somewhat familiar voice.

“Yes?”

“It’s Doug from Web Clout. Remember how I told you about that company we were gonna start doing UNIX support on? They have an emergency with their mainframe. I told them we could fix it. Would you be willing to go on-site today and take a look? You’d be paid for it of course.”

At this point, I realized Doug loved bluffing employers even more than I did.

“So you’d be hiring me? You’re offering me the job?”

“Not quite yet,” Doug explained. “I think more discussions need to happen on that. Troy def had some questions after that job interview. For today, you would be a contractor. We can W-9 you for today. Or, if we do hire you and you accept, we could add today’s hours to your first week. We can work that all out later, but you would certainly be paid for today, regardless of what happens.”

“I don’t know, that sounds kind of like a tax headache.”

“Tell ya what: You come up and fix this problem, I’ll also buy ya as many beers as you can drink afterwards.”

“I’m walking to my car.”

I got into my car and, once on the highway, it hit me that I was driving to a factory to fix a UNIX problem, and it would be the first time I have ever used—or indeed, seen—UNIX.

Luckily I did have the foresight to go to the library the day before and, on the off chance Web Clout did call me back about taking a test, I read every UNIX book they had. So I felt, as long as this mainframe wasn’t in charge of pouring liquid steel or releasing pressure, I could probably fake enough commands to look like I had seen UNIX before and not break anything too important.

A voice in my head piped up: “What if the program is in charge of pouring molten alloys?” “Well, we will melt that bridge when we get to it,” I answered.

 

I parked about a mile away from the factory’s address and took the bus the remainder of the way down, as I did not want Doug and Troy to see me arrive in the broken-down Chief Wahoo Chevy Cavalier that had spent two unexplained hours in their parking lot the previous week.

Doug and Troy greeted me in the lobby and introduced me to the factory manager. She explained that they had bought a dozen or so new printers and they were unable to connect them to the office mainframe, and they needed them for printing shipping manifests.

“OK, so is your office mainframe stand-alone?” I asked. “Like, if something happens to it, your whole factory won’t explode, right?”

“What?” she blurted.

“It only runs the office, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s backed up? If anything happens?” “Yeah, we pay someone for that, a different company,” she explained. Then added, worriedly, “Why? This shouldn’t be a major thing, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” I answered.

I found a terminal and got started by running a few pointless commands on the mainframe—with Doug and Troy and this manager standing right behind me—just to prove I at least knew how to log in and type.

After a few commands, I swiveled around in my chair and announced: “OK, I can fix it.” This was a lie. I did not know how to fix it.

But, as luck had it, I had read about this exact problem over the weekend in one of the UNIX books I had crammed. So I knew what was causing the issue and, though I did not know how to rectify it, I sort of understood how a competent person might. But, as there were no competent people on hand at that moment, I decided to act like I was one.

“The issue is that the kernel doesn’t currently support enough printers,” I told them. “We have to at least change the config and, potentially, upgrade the kernel.”

“O...kay?” replied the factory manager, who seemed to be simultaneously reassured and unnerved by my tech-speak.

“My first question would be: Do any employees use this mainframe?”

“Of course!” she replied.

“OK, are they working on it actively?” I inquired. “Could they afford to lose some time while we reconfigure it and reboot it? And, God forbid—I mean, I am good, but—if something goes wrong and we have to keep it offline for a few hours while we restore? Can they take the afternoon off if things go bad?”

“Of course not! Our whole office runs on this thing.”

“Gotcha,” I said, adding in a chair-swivel for effect, “well, that’s the problem. It sounds like it needs to be solved during off-hours though. Sounds like I can’t do anything right now.”

The office manager was disappointed, and also a little suspicious of my explanation, but ultimately agreed to my plan and thanked us for our time.

So, Doug, Troy, and I went to lunch and started drinking beers. Around the fourth round, Doug got a call from the factory manager. Her UNIX consultant had arrived early and looked at the problem, and she wanted to share with us that he had agreed with my diagnosis and was particularly impressed that I talked them out of doing anything during business hours; he was also appreciative that I had asked a lot of questions about what else was connected to the system and if backups existed. Now of course what I was actually doing was stalling for time so as not to reveal my incompetence, but my desperate tapdancing had been mistaken for probity and caution.

A legitimate expert, it turns out, behaves much in the same way as a person who learned the skill two hours previously; the expert has seen some stuff and is aware of how many things can go wrong, so they approach each problem just as hesitantly as a novice/idiot does. Doug high-fived me and said it all went perfectly, adding, “They want to work with us because we can offer the same services, but get there quicker!” More beers arrived.
 

I woke up the next day in the top bunk of my younger brothers’ bed. I’m not positive how I got home the previous night, but know for a fact I did not drink and drive because I had a voicemail telling me that my car was in a tow lot in west Cleveland. A heavy layer of snow had blanketed the city in the days previous, and it turns out that when I parked a mile away from the factory (so they would not see my Chief Wahoo car), what I had thought was a perfectly legal, wide-open spot, was in fact an alley that had not been plowed. I had blocked people in four apartment buildings from entering or exiting, and the City of Cleveland probably towed me before I had my first beer at lunch.

This sort of thing happened all the time: My car was always being towed or booted, either due to tickets or because I didn’t pay attention to where I was parking; or maybe I did pay attention, but then I got drunk and had to leave it overnight in a restricted parking zone. When I talk to friends who have quit drinking, they always talk about the money they save by not buying beer or rounds at the bar and I always think: Well, what about how much you save in tow fees and missed flights?

Under-discussed in the cost of alcohol is how many fees you pay as a drunk. I’m convinced it approaches or surpasses the cost of the actual booze. You forget and lose credit cards and cell phones. You are never on time; rental cars and tuxedos are returned late. You break and stain things. My brothers and I were staying in a motel for a wedding in rural Ohio once when I ran into the dresser at 4 a.m. I then puked all over my bed since I couldn’t make it to the bathroom. I broke three ribs when I hit the dresser.

The motel charged us for a “biological discharge cleanup” on the sheets and damage to the drywall because I ran into that particular piece of furniture so hard, the corners smashed into the wall. When we checked out, I was tempted to deny the drywall fee and claim the damage was already there, but then realized I was in a sling and visibly injured. My claim of innocence was probably not hugely credible.

Instead I actually took the time to read the fee amount: $25. My God I thought, I was ready to tip them four times that, just to deal with the problem. The lesson being: if you ever need to raise hell in a hotel room, do it Troy, Ohio.
 

Two days after the factory visit, Doug called me to offer me the job. “We don’t even need to do a UNIX test,” he said.

“Doug, I really appreciate that and you have a great company,” I replied, “but, I’m sorry, I accepted a different job yesterday.” This was true; I had been interviewing at a few places and a place that paid more than Web Clout (and required fewer hours) had offered me a job, so it was a no-brainer.

“Would you reconsider if I increased the money?” he asked.

“I don’t think so, Doug. They offered a lot more, to be honest. It’s a much bigger company and, if we are being real honest with each other Doug: I think you can find someone that will be a better match.”

“OK, sorry to hear that Sean.”

There was a long pause, then Doug broke the silence:

“Sean, seeing, as we’re being honest, can I ask you one last question?”

“Of course.”

“Do you drive a Chevy Cavalier with Chief Wahoo on it?”