by Tdarcos » Thu Feb 22, 2024 8:07 am
From the book, Don't Break the Merger
Chapter 6
Deposition of George Maharis
-----“Hi. I'm William Black.”
-----“Nice to meet you.”
-----“Let's see, you're George Maharis, correct?”
-----“Yes.”
-----“Okay, for the record, you are aware that this interview is being recorded, and you consent to the recording.”
-----“I do.”
-----“I'm one of the interviewers for Entemann Enterprises. What I want to do is ask you a few questions about your job, what you do, what you've been working on, that sort of thing. Now, I want you to understand something. If we buy this company we're going to be spending over a billion and a half dollars. So, realize that nothing I'm going to ask you is a 'gotcha' question. What we are concerned about is, with us spending this kind of money, we want to make sure the company is healthy, that we know of concerns we have to deal with, there are no surprises of things that are expected to ship but in reality they won't, that we have product that customers will want to buy, that sort of thing. Understand?”
-----“Yeah.”
-----“First, the videographer is also commissioned as a notary public for the State of Winnemac and will swear you in, then I'll start. This page here has exactly what he wants you to say. Where the blank is, you state your name. So go ahead, turn and face him, raise your right hand, and read what this paper says, either the upper or the lower block.”
-----“'I, George Maharis, do solemnly affirm, under penalty of perjury, that the statements I will make in this interview, are, to the best of my knowledge and belief, to be true, correct, and complete.”
-----“My name is William Black, B-l-a-c-k, I'm an interviewer for Entemann Enterprises. Please state your name. Spell your last name, and state your title.
-----“George Maharis. M-a-h-a-r-i-s. My title is communications engineer.”
-----“Okay, tell me a little about yourself, how old you are, marital status, where you were born, what you do outside of work, that sort of thing.”
-----“I'm 33, single, I was born in Aurora, Colorado, it's a suburb of Denver. When I'm not busy with work I sometimes socialize. I don't do much social media but occasionally I'll get into conversations on interesting subjects. More-or-less ordinary guy.”
-----“Where was your last assignment before you worked here and what did you do?”
-----“I was a communications specialist with Zenith National Bank. I got hired by them to solve a problem they were having. They wanted to find a way to reduce the time necessary to process an ATM transaction, especially paying cash. So, I made some purchases of new network equipment, rewrote and reflashed the memory in the routing equipment, made changes to the ATM software to do better prediction of customer demands, and increased the speed of a transaction. By the time I got finished, I'd cut the time from when the customer pushed one of the Fast Cash buttons until the money is dispensed to one second. Zenith National Bank was able to advertise that it had the world's fastest ATMs, that you almost get your money before you even ask for it. I personally cut 4½ seconds off the original time it took for the machine to start dispensing cash.”
-----“Wow. Okay, what made you come over here?”
-----“They were having problems with the new ultra-high-speed switch and router. By changing the design, adding more auxiliary processors, and rewriting some of the processing software, plus a change in how the signal is fed to the optical processor, I cracked the latest bottleneck. In continuous burst mode, one way it can do 90 gigabytes per second. Roughly 720 gigabits. This is at least twice as fast as anyone else out there now. We're calling it the 'Soft-90' because it will do a soft 90 gigabytes per second burst one way, and a hard 65 gigabytes with dual fiber for two-way traffic. Even in two-way mode it's 50% faster than anything our competitors are offering. At least at this price point. The next faster one costs about twice what ours will.”
-----“Now, are you aware of any problems at the company regarding ability to ship promised product, like, is the sales department making promises that the engineering people can't keep?”
-----“They always do that. But I spoke to one of the sales people, and I told him to pass it around to all the other direct sales people that what is in the specifications is what we can deliver. If a customer has an interest in something then they can write it up, and I'll look at it, but don't promise the customers anything. First rule is we have to be able to ship on time and nice features that will be too complicated, that we don't have the time to implement right now, or in some cases, are impossible to do with the technology will be rejected. If you have a reputation of never overpromising when you can offer them something really great, sometimes you can just knock their socks off.”
-----“Have you heard any rumors of anything that might be a problem, even if you think they're wrong or unfounded?”
-----“No, I can't think of any.”
-----“Do you mind if I ask something personal?”
-----George thought (“I hope this guy isn't gay and likes me, he's not my type.”) Out loud, he said, “No, I don't mind.”
-----“So, what about you, George, what are you going to do with your option money if the merger goes through?”
-----“I haven't been here one year yet, I wasn't eligible to receive any options.”
-----“Damn, that's too bad.”
-----“I wasn't really that worried. As part of my contract I took a smaller salary in exchange for royalties on the stuff I design. Even if the merger didn't go through, the new company would still have to pay me for what they sold. If the Soft-90 does as well as I expect, I could conceivably see over $3,000,000 over the next two or three years. If not, there is a $50,000 buyout clause. The new company has to pay me at least $50,000 and must assign all rights to all patents back to me, although they still have the automatic license if they change their mind later. Plus, I will still make a decent salary as a hardware engineer. And if you guys don't buy the company, and it ends up being liquidated, I have an open invitation to go back to Zenith National Bank.”
-----“Well, that's good to hear. Anyway, back to business. I believe your boss said there was something important about the new switch?”
-----“We have good news. We have confirmations from Verizon, Comcast, Cox, AT&T, Time Warner, Bellsouth, Pacific Bell, Charter Communications, Frontier, Google Fiber, and Qwest that they all will be able to provide IPv6 connectivity direct to regular internet customers so we can now tell customers they can get direct access to any connection using IPv6 natively, so if their equipment supports IPv6 it can be pass-through routed on all of those networks, and if it doesn't, our device will provide a DHCP lease of an IPv4 address to their device and convert it either into an IPv6 port if they don't have multiple addresses, or it will direct translate to and from an IPv6 address.”
-----“And maybe you can explain that to me in plain ol' Galveston English?”
-----“If you have a computer, a phone, or a tablet, and you connect via Wi-Fi, if your device supports IPv6, the router will give it an appropriate IPv6 address. If it only supports IPv4, it will give it both an IPv4 address and IPv6 address, and translate if needed.”
-----Later, after more questions, they released George, who went back to his office. He thought the deposition was a bit unnerving, but what happened next was much worse.
From the book, [i]Don't Break the Merger[/i]
[size=150]Chapter 6
Deposition of George Maharis[/size]
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Hi. I'm William Black.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Nice to meet you.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Let's see, you're George Maharis, correct?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Yes.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Okay, for the record, you are aware that this interview is being recorded, and you consent to the recording.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“I do.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“I'm one of the interviewers for Entemann Enterprises. What I want to do is ask you a few questions about your job, what you do, what you've been working on, that sort of thing. Now, I want you to understand something. If we buy this company we're going to be spending over a billion and a half dollars. So, realize that nothing I'm going to ask you is a 'gotcha' question. What we are concerned about is, with us spending this kind of money, we want to make sure the company is healthy, that we know of concerns we have to deal with, there are no surprises of things that are expected to ship but in reality they won't, that we have product that customers will want to buy, that sort of thing. Understand?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Yeah.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“First, the videographer is also commissioned as a notary public for the State of Winnemac and will swear you in, then I'll start. This page here has exactly what he wants you to say. Where the blank is, you state your name. So go ahead, turn and face him, raise your right hand, and read what this paper says, either the upper or the lower block.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“'I, George Maharis, do solemnly affirm, under penalty of perjury, that the statements I will make in this interview, are, to the best of my knowledge and belief, to be true, correct, and complete.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“My name is William Black, B-l-a-c-k, I'm an interviewer for Entemann Enterprises. Please state your name. Spell your last name, and state your title.
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“George Maharis. M-a-h-a-r-i-s. My title is communications engineer.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Okay, tell me a little about yourself, how old you are, marital status, where you were born, what you do outside of work, that sort of thing.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“I'm 33, single, I was born in Aurora, Colorado, it's a suburb of Denver. When I'm not busy with work I sometimes socialize. I don't do much social media but occasionally I'll get into conversations on interesting subjects. More-or-less ordinary guy.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Where was your last assignment before you worked here and what did you do?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“I was a communications specialist with Zenith National Bank. I got hired by them to solve a problem they were having. They wanted to find a way to reduce the time necessary to process an ATM transaction, especially paying cash. So, I made some purchases of new network equipment, rewrote and reflashed the memory in the routing equipment, made changes to the ATM software to do better prediction of customer demands, and increased the speed of a transaction. By the time I got finished, I'd cut the time from when the customer pushed one of the Fast Cash buttons until the money is dispensed to one second. Zenith National Bank was able to advertise that it had the world's fastest ATMs, that you almost get your money before you even ask for it. I personally cut 4½ seconds off the original time it took for the machine to start dispensing cash.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Wow. Okay, what made you come over here?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“They were having problems with the new ultra-high-speed switch and router. By changing the design, adding more auxiliary processors, and rewriting some of the processing software, plus a change in how the signal is fed to the optical processor, I cracked the latest bottleneck. In continuous burst mode, one way it can do 90 gigabytes per second. Roughly 720 gigabits. This is at least twice as fast as anyone else out there now. We're calling it the 'Soft-90' because it will do a soft 90 gigabytes per second burst one way, and a hard 65 gigabytes with dual fiber for two-way traffic. Even in two-way mode it's 50% faster than anything our competitors are offering. At least at this price point. The next faster one costs about twice what ours will.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Now, are you aware of any problems at the company regarding ability to ship promised product, like, is the sales department making promises that the engineering people can't keep?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“They always do that. But I spoke to one of the sales people, and I told him to pass it around to all the other direct sales people that what is in the specifications is what we can deliver. If a customer has an interest in something then they can write it up, and I'll look at it, but don't promise the customers anything. First rule is we have to be able to ship on time and nice features that will be too complicated, that we don't have the time to implement right now, or in some cases, are impossible to do with the technology will be rejected. If you have a reputation of never overpromising when you can offer them something really great, sometimes you can just knock their socks off.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Have you heard any rumors of anything that might be a problem, even if you think they're wrong or unfounded?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“No, I can't think of any.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Do you mind if I ask something personal?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]George thought (“I hope this guy isn't gay and likes me, he's not my type.”) Out loud, he said, “No, I don't mind.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“So, what about you, George, what are you going to do with your option money if the merger goes through?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“I haven't been here one year yet, I wasn't eligible to receive any options.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Damn, that's too bad.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“I wasn't really that worried. As part of my contract I took a smaller salary in exchange for royalties on the stuff I design. Even if the merger didn't go through, the new company would still have to pay me for what they sold. If the Soft-90 does as well as I expect, I could conceivably see over $3,000,000 over the next two or three years. If not, there is a $50,000 buyout clause. The new company has to pay me at least $50,000 and must assign all rights to all patents back to me, although they still have the automatic license if they change their mind later. Plus, I will still make a decent salary as a hardware engineer. And if you guys don't buy the company, and it ends up being liquidated, I have an open invitation to go back to Zenith National Bank.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“Well, that's good to hear. Anyway, back to business. I believe your boss said there was something important about the new switch?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“We have good news. We have confirmations from Verizon, Comcast, Cox, AT&T, Time Warner, Bellsouth, Pacific Bell, Charter Communications, Frontier, Google Fiber, and Qwest that they all will be able to provide IPv6 connectivity direct to regular internet customers so we can now tell customers they can get direct access to any connection using IPv6 natively, so if their equipment supports IPv6 it can be pass-through routed on all of those networks, and if it doesn't, our device will provide a DHCP lease of an IPv4 address to their device and convert it either into an IPv6 port if they don't have multiple addresses, or it will direct translate to and from an IPv6 address.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“And maybe you can explain that to me in plain ol' Galveston English?”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]“If you have a computer, a phone, or a tablet, and you connect via Wi-Fi, if your device supports IPv6, the router will give it an appropriate IPv6 address. If it only supports IPv4, it will give it both an IPv4 address and IPv6 address, and translate if needed.”
[color=#FFFFFF]-----[/color]Later, after more questions, they released George, who went back to his office. He thought the deposition was a bit unnerving, but what happened next was much worse.