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Val worked for a German electronics company that produced most of their hardware in an Eastern European plant. German wasn’t spoken there, but the plant employed translators to bridge the communication gap.
The first test units of Val’s major new product were about to hit production. His head engineer, Schwierigkeitmacher, would be visiting to the plant to ensure everything was in order.
In the early 2000’s, Eric worked for a small music retailer transitioning to “e-business”. The dot-com bust crippled it, and it wasn’t long before a larger predator gobbled it up. Eric now found himself in the employ of an electronics and entertainment giant. Amongst their weaponry were a huge catalog of songs, a line of MP3 players, and ample cash reserves- more than enough to squander on an acquisition they didn’t need. Eric and his group found themselves twiddling their thumbs for months.
Then iTunes reared its head, and suddenly Apple was a dangerous new player in the music arena. iTunes had to be driven to irrelevance, and the best way to do that was to follow them to market with a frantic catch-up music player and storefront whose mediocrity and compromised functionality would dazzle the world.
Eric was tapped to work on this “iTunes Killer”. The project kick-off was centered in Los Angeles, with a video conference spanning the rest of the world. Eric was “asked” to fly down from San Francisco to meet the project manager, Mr. Vernon. The two of them would be working closely together.
Jan 14