1988

A Single Line of Code

In mid-February the first 100 glucose data transmitter devices had been successfully tested, boxed and shipped to Mile Laboratories. There was a small celebration for the achievement, and it appeared that things were back on track when it happened, Rick called me into his office and told me there was a problem with the units.  As it turned out, of the hundreds of tests I had designed and documented in that three inch stack of paper that I personally signed each page to have been successfully completed, there was a test I didn’t think of, when the clock turned from 11:59 PM to 12:00 AM the device recorded it as 12:00 PM instead of 12:00 AM.  I thought of hundreds of situations, dozens of what are known as “boundary conditions”, but it never occurred to me to test the transition from midnight to the following morning. 

Okay, it can’t be all that bad, I thought, my mind already leaping ahead to the solution, a single line of code would be all that would be needed to fix the problem. I can have the programmer fix it in an hour, already planning to talk to him about the fix when Rick gives tells the bad news,  “Miles Labs is shipping all 100 units back to be fixed.” Rick had agreed to paying for the shipping, fixing, re-verification and reshipping back to Miles. Well, of course I thought, that is only fair.  Then came the REALLY bad news, Rick explained, the company couldn’t afford to keep me on, and I was being laid off. I sat there in silence for a moment and said, “I’m being laid off?” and Rick says, “Yes”. I ask “When?” and he says effective immediately, he would escort me to my office to get my personal things.  I was like in total shock, I didn’t have anything to say as Rick stood and I followed him out the door to my office. Along the way rumors had spread fast and as I passed by my fellow employees, one of them reached out and asked what was happing and I tell her “I was laid off.”, and she stared at me in silence as I followed Rick into my office to collect my things.  There was dead silence as I exited my office carrying a box of my personal belongings, as I walked past my fellow employees, I tried to look confident, assured, rebellious, but there was the shame as Rick led me out the front door.  I stood there outside in the hot summer sun of the parking lot for a moment, not fully understanding what had just happened, then walked over to my ’76 Chevy van, got in, and drove home.

down my box of personal office belongings and stood there, I just got laid off, what was I going to do, what was I going to tell Julie.  I don’t remember doing so but I probably smoked a joint or had a drink or both.  Anne returned home first, it wasn’t uncommon for me to be home early so I greeted her like everything was normal.  Julie returned a bit later having driven back from UCF in Orlando and she immediately noticed something was not right.  She looks at me and asks, “Is everything okay, what is wrong?” and I tell her what happened. She didn’t seem to be all that upset about it, even a bit glad, we had been talking about moving for a while and perhaps she saw it as an opportunity. 

I learned a couple of days later I wasn’t the only one laid off, they also laid off the hardware development manager for the project. I still ask myself to this day, “Was it my fault that there was a problem with the unit?” I designed and wrote all the tests I could think of, but can I, one person, conceive of every possible test?  And then I didn’t write the code, was it not the programmer who wrote the code ultimately responsible for “the bug”.  Yet it was I, with the responsibility of finding the bug, to be ultimately held at fault while the programmer remained to code another day, a lesson learned that management is laid off before workers.  Perhaps it wasn’t that I was laid off because I missed one test, but rather that the company just needed to cut costs and cutting management was the most effect way to do so, or least I rationalized so.

Of the things that hurt me the most about the whole situation was not being laid off, but I was most disappointed in Craig, who I thought was my friend, yes, he was the President of the company but was I not his friend?  He never once that day, nor since ever talked to me about being laid off that day, yet I was at one time close enough friend to him that I was with him in Key West when he proposed to his future wife.  No, I’ll never give it to him, I think as I look at the painting hanging on my bedroom wall.

Sometimes a single line of code can change a person’s life.  This was the first time I got laid off but not the last.

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