Large scale buyer's regret

I feel good about my decision to quit. This week I've been in a situation where I felt, briefly, like I have most of the last six or so months - a mixture of anger over a situation, dread over the consequences of pointlessly fighting it again, resignation - and when I realized that I didn't need to argue it, didn't even need to get worked up, all the tension left me.

I'm a little scared, obviously, that I'm stepping out on my job without having another lined up, and that I'm walking away from what used to be the best job I ever had, but I've been in good spirits all week, like I was when I was happy at work, and it's felt really good.

I don't know what I'll do if I decide to take another IT job in a couple months, especially how I ensure that I end up somewhere I can be happy for a long time, but I actually wish I'd done this a long time ago, when it was clear that things were bad and weren't going to get better for the forseeable future.

Life of a good idea

It looks like it's caught fire and things should happen quickly now. It might even happen a week after I'm out, which would be a shame. I wish there was a way I could stake my claim without giving the idea away, but I don't want to get sued into a smoking ruin.

Still -- Expedia, and an opening to take a lead in being green. Here's hoping.

And that clinches it

My iPod blew up today. What do they make these things out of, matches and gasoline-soaked tissue paper?

Why I quit, a summary

Generally: I have serious concerns about Expedia's direction as a company, and particularly the increasing view of the tech-side as not a competitive advantage or even a source of innovation, but as a cost to be held down. I come up with a lot of cool ideas, and one of the more depressing things I had happen to me was to email (say) the business owner for a line of business and say "Hey, I know you're trying to do x, and I have a couple ideas for how to do that - can I get half an hour on your schedule or talk to one of your people?" and have them ignore me entirely. Drove me nuts.

I feel like a startup would be a much better place for me like that.

Specific to my work, for the last six-eight months, I've been through a lot:
- I was one of two program managers at the head of a huge Expedia-wide battle over whether we should continue to have program managers or whether our project management functions should be taken over by project managers, our analysis-and-problem-solving functions taken over by product managers on the business side, and our work reduced to nothing. That was a nasty and bitter fight. I'll move on.
- I fought constantly with my business owner, and because I don't want to spike my blood pressure, I'm going to gloss over that except to say... no, I'm not going to say anything. I keep wanting to type things here and I'm happy I'm holding back.
- Over the course of this project, my manager's been a bad fit for me, and with 20 direct reports, he didn't have enough time to try and make it work, or to substantially support me in my constant conflicts with the business side.
- In order to build a more collaborative, team-oriented environment, they threw everyone in my group (of ~70) into two giant rooms with tables lined up, so you get about three, four feet of tablespace, and it's uncomfortable, loud, and generally unpleasant.

I hope that's sufficently informative while still reasonably polite and neutral.

It's left me burned out. People keep asking me where I'm going, and they're surprised that I don't have another job lined up, but I've been unhappy for a long, long time, and the great people I work with have kept me there -- Expedia's work force, with extremely rare exceptions, is made up of extremely bright, fun-to-work-with people from every place in the world, and it makes for a great environment to discuss problems, because there are so many ideas for ways to attack it. So I'm leaving my friends, and we'll see what happens.

Thirty five months in seventeen syllable increments

Thirty five months in seventeen syllable increments
An Expedia retrospective in approximate chronological order

Part one: Classic Custom Vacations

4662 – Luxury cancellation waiver

For a modest cost
Gary the super-agent
Clears trouble from way

4717 - Hotel preregistration in DaVinci

lines are for suckers
you, preregistered traveler --
go straight to your room

5021 – All-inclusive short term fix for DaVinci

everything paid for
except the really cool stuff
still, free drinks all week

5054 - Better SEM with redirects

our beautiful site
needs more people to visit
enter many many keywords

5276 - Automated competitive analysis for hotel rooms

you’re our favorite
hotels say with fingers crossed
soon we’ll check on that

5358 - Hotel rate investigation

at our fine hotel
cancel fees are one third your stay
except on full moons


5360 - Flexible vacation search

Oahu, sixth room
tired, the last five a blur
jaws drop, we say “wow”

Flexible vacation search is one of my favorite specs. It’s got ambition, a cool idea, humor, quotes, and everything

5403 (Bug 1968) – Same day advising bugfix

no shows or no rooms
the choice of our latest fix
is no choice at all

5436 - AVS checking for CC transactions

shave fractions of cents
the Great Wall is seen from space
built up from small stones

The spec was also prepared for the “but wait—“ reaction with a lengthy digression on whether the Great Wall could indeed be seen from space

5483 – (Citadel) Improve credit card security in the database

demo for net ops:
select star from c cardlog
but first, please sit down

5499- Mach-1 Ticketing and Fufillment

where do tickets sleep
blank and unsold, in drawers
dreaming of travel

5519 - The new luxury waiver

we happily announce
our waiver covers all air
with kids waived for free


5593 - Same day cancellation faxes

happy customers
were our first priority
now, time for money

5881 - Remove barriers to CCV network integration

working on Mainten
my connection slows, stops, dies
I curse Hydra-5

6006 - Move security credentials into database

my iceberg projects
calve off deep blue shards of work
that shatter themselves

6474 - Automated loads for Westin Rio Mar

net rate breaks are sweet
each booking worth more money
Classic makes profits

6519 - Ground system gap analysis

every call is slowed
and the pain of product load
can we please fix this?

6520 - Citadel 1.1

we sigh in relief
but the back door’s still open
also, the windows


Part Two, GPS (“Core”)

6377 - Change Credit Card Encryption to Use a Standard Algorithm
among pizza boxes
black hat frowns, scratches goatee
moves on to Orbitz

6645 - Cryptography Service
secrets passed in
returned as alien words
order is maintained

Part Three, APAC

6930 - Japan Point of Sale trip requirements
a flight, a cruise, a tour
a package, surfing, a car
together, apart


6929 - JPOS Authorization and Permissions
Please enjoy your stay
We’re happy to have you back
Can I see ID?

7174 - Ariadne: Search API
Travelocity
Orbitz, kayak, and priceline --
Eat our dust, suckers

The week in quitting

I'm a little torn about what to say about this week, since I don't want to slag anyone on my way out, but I've encountered a couple of dramatically different reactions:
- You're quitting, seriously?
- Oh crap, that sucks.
- Where are you going?
- I'd love to leave too, but I don't have another job lined up

I'm a little shocked at how many people came to talk to me about their own discontent. I'd bet in February, after everyone's annual-review stock vests, Expedia's going to see a huge number of resignations

And then from managers
- I just want to make sure you're doing what's best for you (but really I don't care and won't talk about that at all)
- I know there are serious problems here, but I'm not running away (by the way, if you're a manager out there, this is a really crappy thing to say to someone)
- Don't quit, come work for me on my team (several)

I know in some ways that this puts my boss/his boss on the defensive, because walking away without having another job isn't just a loss of a person, it's a pretty dramatic statement about how bad things are... I'll stop whining. Next week should be fun.

Quitting time

I turned in my notice today and it was an interesting experiment in informal networks. I went in early to prep (I had figured there was about a 25% chance I'd be escorted out) and sent my formal email to
- my boss
- my team leader (well, kind of, as much as Scrum has team leaders)

Then I let three of my friends know. Then I went out to the hall to talk to my scrum master, and *bam* someone a degree away walked by and he knew, despite me being with one of the three people that might have possibly told him.

That was the rest of my day -- ricochets. There's a program manager I used to work for in another group I have an immense amount of respect for (and feel like I owe a lot to) and I wanted to talk to personally after I'd given notice, but that was impossible as being a super program manager and having amazing powers of telepathy, she somehow knew immediately and sent *me* an email. I joked with her that the only way I could have managed to talk to her ahead of the news would have been to discuss it five, ten minutes ahead of turning anything in.

What's interesting, though, is that it reached a certain number of people and then stopped entirely. So a large portion of the people I work with know, and the rest don't, because it hasn't been formally announced yet (and no one reads this).

I wish there was a way I could have mapped the spread of the news. It would have proved interesting.

Training users to be thieves through copy protection

Really short rant:

When I buy a CD, it should play on my computer. I don't think that's unreasonable. I do most of my music listening on my boxes, often while working.

I haven't decided if I'm going to return these things and raise a stink, but what this really makes me want to do is go on the internet and find decent rips I can listen to. Is that really what they want to train me to do? Figure out how to get music for free to get around their retarded copy protection?

Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift

I loved and hated this movie, in much the same way I loved and hated the first one.

It's got amazing racing scenes, a pretty bad plot and some hoooorrrible dialogue. But seeing the racing on the big screen, it was absolutely worth it. As Roger Ebert wrote in his review:

"The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" is the third of the F&F movies; it delivers all the races and crashes you could possibly desire, and a little more.

There are some great funny scenes, some jaw-dropping driving scenes, and when it's not dragging through the plot, it's worth it.

The best part was that it was a return to using actual cars for much of the movie. CGI's got better and better, but there's nothing like the weight and impact of actual things: The Train gives me chills because that's a real train getting strafed by a real plane, or derailing.

There's still something plastic and unreal in even the best work, like the new Star Wars movies, that prevents the suspension of disbelief and really buying into the world (unless it's totally animated, and then you either can believe in the form or not). You can't refuse to believe that a train's crashing off the rails if John Frankenheimer crashes a real train and films it.

The benevolent order of bicyclists

Yesterday I was on a long (and hilly) Cascade Cycling Club ride and I blew a tire. As I was trying to change it, every group that went by -- and I was close to the front, and we'd been up a huge hill, which meant it was spread out -- asked me if I needed help, if I had everything I needed, and so on. It actually got kind of annoying, trying to fix it and acknowledging everyone.

After everyone had gone by, though, I realized that my piece-of-shit Performance CO2 inflator would not puncture the cartridge (short version: when you screw a cartridge in, there's a little fitting in there that punches the metal, releasing the pressurized air for use). I tried, I strained, and I realized that I was in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire and no way to fix it. I had spare cartridges, but no spare inflator (and why would I?).

I spent some more time struggling before I called home and asked for an extraction, even though I couldn't explain where I was. But I was saved! Two guys (not from the ride) came by, asked the question, and I said "do you have a pump I can use?" And soon, I'd given my cartridge to them to use in their non-Performance inflator (fun note: one of the guys had had the exact same problem with his Performance unit).

I then hauled back to the start point before disaster could strike.

I spend a lot of time bitching about stuff, but I love this about serious cyclists. There are cyclists who are jerks, ride inconsiderately, sure. But I'm as anti-social as they come and I ask "You all right?" every time I see someone, and I'd be happy to give whatever I can spare.

And I know too that had I taken a thorn today and had my pump explode, the next biker to come by would have helped. It's like a cool club, where everyone's looking out for each other.

This weekend's tally:
Saturday: ~29 miles, ~2,000 feet of climbing
Today: 95+m, ~3,000 feet of climbing

And I feel really good. If I can keep up this training pace, I may kick STP's one-day ass this year for the first time ever (having survived it twice before).

Open space

Soooo I don't hate it. Well, I do hate it. I hate some of it.

The hate:
- Can be really loud
- Gets even louder than that at times
- Hard to concentrate
- 3' of desk space means effectively no desk space
- Uncomfortable

The good:
- It is nice to hang out with the team I'm working with all the time. I really like them, and we seem to have a pretty good sense of humor
- It's good to be in on all the team conversations and decisions
- Bonding. Awwww.

Overall, it's really made me wish there was a compromise solution. I wouldn't mind an open space environment for a small team, with some meeting space. But this thing, where we've got... 30, 40 people in a huge room? This just isn't right.