S03.E01: Founder Friendly

[ElectricBoogaloo]

After being unceremoniously fired, an angry Richard faces a tough decision: accept the diminished role of CTO, or leave Pied Piper for good. Erlich takes a shine to Jack Barker, Laurie's new choice of CEO, while Dinesh and Gilfoyle weigh their options in Richard's absence. At Hooli, Gavin tries to improve his image by admitting failure, and Big Head gets wind of major changes.

[Wouldofshouldof]

No comments yet?  Well, I'm glad they're back anyway.

[sjankis630]

Well I thought it was kind of meh. I did like seeing the great Stephen Tobolowsky in a new role!

On the other hand .... RIGBI!

[chocolatine]

Why is Gavin Belson still at Hooli? Didn't the board fire him last season after he lost the Pied Piper arbitration? And firing employees who have the un-enforcible non-compete clause is absolute bullshit; contracts have a severability clause precisely for that scenario. Oh, and since when does a mass layoff make a company's stock go up? Who wrote that shit?

 

And didn't Erlich sell his house last season? It may still be in escrow, but it wasn't even mentioned this episode. There'd have to be some moving arrangements underway, especially if he's planning to keep the incubator going.

 

Action Jack is a little too skilled at getting everyone to eat out of the palm of his hand. Mark my words, he'll turn into a raging asshole once everyone has settled in. And now that Richard has made one empty threat to quit, nobody will take him seriously if he does it again.

 

A weak episode for a season opener, IMO. I'm still in because it's the only show about my field, but I hope they have better episodes in store for the rest of the season.

[Brian Cronin]

I thought that they surprisingly undersold Richard's leverage. Almost to the point where it was like, "Just trust us, he has bad leverage. We say it right in the episode. Why would we say it if it weren't true? Just trust us!" He was so confident that Dinesh and Gilfoyle couldn't fix the issues with the company's code - two smart guys who helped create the code, so wouldn't he easily be able to threaten the investors with that point? I could easily see them convincing/tricking him into accepting a new CEO for the company, but not just outright dismissal. 

[numbnut]

A big Tobolowsky setup that will payoff over the season I hope. I got one good laugh out of Erlich's titanium hip line.

[Tim Thomason]

Yeah, Tobolowsky's Jack is a multi-millionaire CEO for a reason. I'm 99% sure he never even heard of Aviato before he learned he was to meet with Bachman. It might be fun to see this as an actually well-run (or traditionally-run) company for a minute, before Richard and the gang muck things up somehow.

 

I did enjoy Matt McCoy's reappearance (he should be their corporate lawyer, or rather unofficial arbitrator), and Laurie's line about how she was clearly overcome with emotion was the biggest laugh of the night. Other than that, though, the episode wasn't one of their best and not a strong opener at all. I hope that just means that the writers' are saving the bestest stuff for later on in the season.

 

The issues that chocolatine brings up do have me scratching my head. I didn't do a rewatch or really have seen any of Season 2 since it first aired, so my memory is fuzzy. I think it probably takes a little more politicking at Hooli to get rid of Gavin, and this episode was about him asserting his dominance and getting a win so that he couldn't be forced out. Perhaps he was expected to resign of his own accord, and that's when he fired the Nucleus team instead.

 

Mass layoffs should send the stock plummeting, but I think they "explained it" that the firings were provided by the contract loophole, and earned the company money (since all those employees held shares apparently that went back to the company). I guess the stock was already plummeting, but the dissolvement of Nucleus followed by "streamlining" the employees with bad performance reviews (I think they only terminated 20% of all employees with the contract, the ones who had below average reviews) might be enough to prove to big investors that the ship is being righted and all is good at the company.

 

I'm not sure what they're going to do with Big Head over the season. $20 million is a lot, although not a huge sum compared to what some of these other characters own. And he's proven before that he's not good with money, so I expect him to spend most of it in four or five episodes. Maybe just on one big yacht or a small private plane he can't fly.

[Princess Sparkle]

And didn't Erlich sell his house last season? It may still be in escrow, but it wasn't even mentioned this episode. There'd have to be some moving arrangements underway, especially if he's planning to keep the incubator going.

He didn't sell the house; the real estate agent found a buyer and brought them to the house, but after Jared gave him the speech about how exciting start-ups were, he slammed the door in her face and said he wasn't selling.

[Brian Cronin]

The "real" reason for Gavin not stepping down is that the writers changed their minds over the break. They initially thought he'd be funny to follow post-Hooli, but then decided that he was better in charge of Hooli. So there really isn't going to be a logical reason for him staying round. 

 

Therefore, they instead ended up with the joke that he keeps doing things that SHOULDN'T work, but do, I guess due to the sheer confidence he exudes. So yes, he shouldn't be able to pass the buck, but he does. The mass layoffs shouldn't result in the stock going up, but it does. It's sort of a riff on their Big Head story, about finding the humor in things happening that shouldn't. But also, it's a way to avoid big logic leaps. "Yeah, we know it doesn't make sense, but it still happened!" 

 

It reminds me of a joke from a Hulk comic where it looks like a character has died while aboard a space ship that exploded. He escaped, though, due to a parachute he keeps on his person at all times in case he has to escape an exploding space ship. When told that that doesn't make any sense, he explains, "Why? I did, didn't I?"

Edited April 25, 2016 by Brian Cronin

[candall]

I binge-watched the two earlier seasons this weekend.  Based on the number of times Richard has stumblebummed and stammered and self-effaced his way into disaster, I liked this episode a lot.  It was good to see him shut down Erlich's self-concern in the opening scene, manifest some righteous outrage, claim full credit for his own genius, take a stand and then consider a more reasonable approach after his meeting with sad, earnest Matt McCoy.  Richard, is that you?!?

 

Re selling the house, one of the best scenes from last season was Erlich hearing the buyers wanted his "incubator" for a tear-down, slamming the door in the realtor's face and rushing back in to churn out code during the PP emergency.  (After securing his hair with barrettes-LOL.)  First time they had Erlich demonstrate any character beyond greed and self-promotion.

 

My favorite scene in this episode was a throwaway.  Gavin says 20% of the Hooli employees don't perform up to par.  Four of the attorneys immediately tackle their reports while the fifth looks around and says, "What?  I wasn't paying attention."

 

Loved Stephen Tobolowsky glamoring Erlich with the subtle Japanese accent for "Aviato."  Loved the mustache app!  Love Jared's sweetness, always.

 

 

[Muffyn]

My favorite scene in this episode was a throwaway.  Gavin says 20% of the Hooli employees don't perform up to par.  Four of the attorneys immediately tackle their reports while the fifth looks around and says, "What?  I wasn't paying attention."

Then following this up with that attorney being gone in the next scene.  Brilliant.

[Cramps]

Loved Erlich's string of "you 're old" string of insults to the new CEO--particularly the "you eat at Perkins Pancake House" one. I always thought that was a regional Midwestern chain. So funny!

[sjankis630]

 

Loved Erlich's string of "you 're old" string of insults to the new CEO--particularly the "you eat at Perkins Pancake House" one.

I just loved the fact that he chose to basically string them all together at once instead of doing what any normal asshole would do which is try and tailor them to the situation.

 

[mcgett]

Oh, and since when does a mass layoff make a company's stock go up? Who wrote that shit?

 

And didn't Erlich sell his house last season? It may still be in escrow, but it wasn't even mentioned this episode.

 

It is very common for a company's stock to go up with a mass layoff as investors are all about the future.  This is seen as a reduction in expenses going forward and the acknowledgement that management has taken action against unprofitable portions of the business thus generating more profits due to lower expenses and lower losses.    The discussion around stock options however was a bit murkier.   Currently, the extreme vast majority of stock option grants are not RSU, Restricted Stock Units, and these cause an expense at the time when they vest unlikely the older traditional options that cause an expense when they vest.  I'm not sure if the standard options isn't exercised due to the option price being higher than the stock price or the employee leaving the company if a the expense can be recouped.  Not have the future RSU expenses would be a positive.

 

Erlich never actually sold his house.  He never agreed to the offer when he found out that the buyers wanted to just tear the place down and he was on an emotionally high from the condor rescue video streaming success.

Edited April 25, 2016 by mcgett

[NitneLiun]

My favorite scene in this episode was a throwaway.  Gavin says 20% of the Hooli employees don't perform up to par.  Four of the attorneys immediately tackle their reports while the fifth looks around and says, "What?  I wasn't paying attention."

 

Did you notice in the next scene with the lawyers, that attorney's seat was empty? I thought it was a nice subtle touch.

 

 

[Traveller519]

Interesting that they went with the call back to the fall out on all the other contracts from the lawsuit.

 

I guess as I read it, all the employment contracts containing the non-compete clause, were rendered null and void. Thus all those Hooli "employees" could either be re-hired with new contracts or simply dismissed. Though I'm not sure how their options returning to the company gives them a ton of money, since the company doesn't pay anything out on options, unless it immediately repurchases the shares on exercise to avoid dilution, and had a reserve set up.

 

At any rate, it appeared that the uptick in the share price came from the news that Nucleus, a bad division, was being shut down. The arbitration wouldn't have been public record, so likely could have been managed from a PR perspective.

[Should Be Working]

They had to find reasons (lame or not) to keep Gavin around as Hooli CEO, despite what seemed to be his certain ouster at the end of Season 2. With Peter Gregory so sorely missed, he's one of the only amusing billionaire characters in this series.

 

I know tech geniuses are often not too bright when it comes to other life challenges, but doesn't 26 year old Richard have the ability to step away from his own stressed-out ego for one second and look at his dismissal as PP CEO from Reviga's point of view? Coming off the amazing come-from-behind win at Tech Crunch Disrupt and PP's immediate attractiveness to so many venture capital investors, his leadership and executive decision-making skills during all of Season 2 were abysmal and almost destroyed or lost him the company several times. The man is as tense and panic-prone as an injured lamb amongst a pride of hungry lions (not that far from the truth, valley wise), yet he'd rather quit Reviga and take his ball and play CTO at Flutterbeam or some other company than stick around and prove himself with Reviga and his original crew. 

 

Speaking of Flutterbeam, you'd think that its CEO, who wooed Richard so enthusiastically to be his new CTO, would have been around when he went there to "interview." Instead of sticking him with a couple of distracted 20-something developers who rushed him through a silly three minute demo of their amazing  3D holographic mustache product and then abandoned him. 

 

I know they had to get the Season 3 storyline started, but the entire first episode felt forced and unimaginative, as if the show's creators and writers were on still on hiatus and post-Season 2 automatic pilot. Here's hoping for an improvement next week.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Should Be Working

[qtpye]

I know tech geniuses are often not too bright when it comes to other life challenges, but doesn't 26 year old Richard have the ability to step away from his own stressed-out ego for one second and look at his dismissal as PP CEO from Reviga's point of view? Coming off the amazing come-from-behind win at Tech Crunch Disrupt and PP's immediate attractiveness to so many venture capital investors, his leadership and executive decision-making skills during all of Season 2 were abysmal and almost destroyed or lost him the company several times. The man is as tense and panic-prone as an injured lamb amongst a pride of hungry lions (not that far from the truth, valley wise), yet he'd rather quit Reviga and take his ball and play CTO at Flutterbeam or some other company than stick around and prove himself with Reviga and his original crew.

 

You know I think this is the point that the writers were trying to make.  Even though the company stems from Richard's weird genius, he sucks as a CEO and everyone can see that besides him.

 

Actually, I think Richard realizes this as well, but he is too hurt to truly comprehend it.  Richard is smart, but he is not a chess player (at least not yet).  He also seems to have trouble understanding business concepts.  The fact that he did not understand that Pied Piper's lawyer was not his own personal lawyer was just one example.

 

The truth is he would be a fantastic CTO, but he is not at CEO level.  I think the audience was supposed to agree with Raviga, instead of looking at them as the big bad investors that were trying to screw the little guy.

[Traveller519]

I don't know a lot of about these types of deals in Silicon Valley. But it would seem to me that they would likely have left Richard as "President" in addition to being CTO, with Jack being the CEO. Richard remains as founder, and the idea man the company is attached to, but there is professional management there.

 

One other little piece I remember liking was Ron setting up this whole "gun" metaphor and then having the payoff be a pistol whip.

[Muffyn]

"You're the belle of the ball and these are all of your swains looking for a glimpse of ankle."  "Jared", never change. 

 

"RIGBY fuck him!"  So glad they're friends. 

 

I was really hoping the stagbot was going to charge. 

 

I enjoyed the Flutterbeam mustache app purely because I meet too many people working on apps that are about as meaningful. 

Edited April 25, 2016 by Muffyn

[RCharter]

A big Tobolowsky setup that will payoff over the season I hope. I got one good laugh out of Erlich's titanium hip line.

I almost spit out my food when he said "a good piece of fish"  that was so spot on.

[hincandenza]

So, an unsteady but slightly optimistic season opener.

 

Pros:

By episode's end, Richard has apparently come to his senses, and we're going to be moving forward from the stumbling-CEO era to something new.  Maybe during the off-season, Judge and the writers took the criticisms to heart and realized they need to progress the story before people tune out.

 

Cons:

I didn't really laugh that often, even at the usually reliable Dinesh/Gilfoyle, and most of the episode I just wanted someone to slap the hell out of Richard.  Reviga has made the funding official, holding 10-15% of the company.  Richard meanwhile still holds the lion's share at 60-70%, so on paper he's already valued at $30-35M, Erlich at $5M, and I think the rest of the gang got like 3% each so $1.5M.  Seeing how much he absolutely hated being the CEO last season, he should be thrilled about being able to sit back and let the experts make him rich while focusing on the tech- not throwing childish tantrums that jeopardize his own very real wealth, and that of his friends.

 

They had to find reasons (lame or not) to keep Gavin around as Hooli CEO, despite what seemed to be his certain ouster at the end of Season 2. With Peter Gregory so sorely missed, he's one of the only amusing billionaire characters in this series.

 

I know tech geniuses are often not too bright when it comes to other life challenges, but doesn't 26 year old Richard have the ability to step away from his own stressed-out ego for one second and look at his dismissal as PP CEO from Reviga's point of view? Coming off the amazing come-from-behind win at Tech Crunch Disrupt and PP's immediate attractiveness to so many venture capital investors, his leadership and executive decision-making skills during all of Season 2 were abysmal and almost destroyed or lost him the company several times. The man is as tense and panic-prone as an injured lamb amongst a pride of hungry lions (not that far from the truth, valley wise), yet he'd rather quit Reviga and take his ball and play CTO at Flutterbeam or some other company than stick around and prove himself with Reviga and his original crew. 

 

Speaking of Flutterbeam, you'd think that its CEO, who wooed Richard so enthusiastically to be his new CTO, would have been around when he went there to "interview." Instead of sticking him with a couple of distracted 20-something developers who rushed him through a silly three minute demo of their amazing  3D holographic mustache product and then abandoned him. 

 

I know they had to get the Season 3 storyline started, but the entire first episode felt forced and unimaginative, as if the show's creators and writers were on still on hiatus and post-Season 2 automatic pilot. Here's hoping for an improvement next week.

 

Yeah, I'm kind of okay with Gavin sticking around, if only because he's a great character, but that was an obvious between seasons "do-over" if I ever saw one.  I hated the reasons Hanneman was introduced in season 2, but he was undeniably hilarious during his time on the show.  I kind of hope Bighead is being written off now, since they don't do much with him other than laugh at his improbably meteoric and wholly undeserved rise.

 

Totally agree on Richard: we spend an entire season watching him stumble and fail to a level that transcends mere awkward nerdiness into a probable case of severe brain damage, all while clearly hating being a CEO.  Now, he wants to quit his own company- which has just turned him into a paper millionaire with a decent chance to be a billionaire- simply because he thinks CTO is a demotion?  It's not at all a demotion; in a tech-heavy company like this, CTO means a lot.  He gets to focus on leading the entire tech side, which is the one thing he's good at, actually enjoys, and for which he is rightly respected by everyone.  Leave the schmoozing and business agreements and money to the experts, who could rightly turn Richard's angry and arrogant "you couldn't possibly do what I do" speech to Dinesh/Gilfoyle against him based on his ineptness in season 2.  

 

I agree that we the audience are supposed to see Richard as clueless and in the wrong here, but it gets hard to laugh when your characters are so willfully stupid and blind.  That's why I'm actually a little optimistic that they've apparently wrapped up his pointless indecision, and PP's constant financial woes, for the time being.

 

 

"You're the belle of the ball and these are all of your swains looking for a glimpse of ankle."  "Jared", never change. 

 

"RIGBY fuck him!"  So glad they're friends. 

 

I was really hoping the stagbot was going to charge. 

 

I enjoyed the Flutterbeam mustache app purely because I meet too many people working on apps that are about as meaningful. 

 

The RIGBY thing was one of the few highlights, although Gilfoyle read as strangely angry- he's usually so perfectly chill.  Jared continues to cement his position as a key pillar in this show's dynamic; he's sooo great in all his fawning obsequiousness, he's close to supplanting Bachman as the reliably funny character. I think I root for him to ultimately succeed, more than any of them.  :)

 

I think Flutterbeam's mustache thing was a direct rip on Snapchat (again!), since that's a big new feature in the last year, the real-time overlay effects on the face.  It's what this show does well: skewering these bright minds all focused on solving something as pointless as the mustache app without a trace of self-doubt or perspective.  For example, Richard's funnily snide "guy who can't even cure cancer" line, since I know in my own techie circles we often used to say "Eh, it's not like we're curing cancer!" whenever some web deployment went awry.

[biakbiak]

I don't know a lot of about these types of deals in Silicon Valley. But it would seem to me that they would likely have left Richard as "President" in addition to being CTO, with Jack being the CEO. Richard remains as founder

A lot of tech companies (many non tech companies) no longer have a position of "President," there are a ton of different corporate structures but a lot of companies don't use that title.

Edited April 26, 2016 by biakbiak

[Skyfall]

On April 25, 2016 at 0:18 AM, chocolatine said:

Why is Gavin Belson still at Hooli? Didn't the board fire him last season after he lost the Pied Piper arbitration? And firing employees who have the un-enforcible non-compete clause is absolute bullshit; contracts have a severability clause precisely for that scenario. Oh, and since when does a mass layoff make a company's stock go up? Who wrote that shit?

 

And didn't Erlich sell his house last season? It may still be in escrow, but it wasn't even mentioned this episode. There'd have to be some moving arrangements underway, especially if he's planning to keep the incubator going.

 

Action Jack is a little too skilled at getting everyone to eat out of the palm of his hand. Mark my words, he'll turn into a raging asshole once everyone has settled in. And now that Richard has made one empty threat to quit, nobody will take him seriously if he does it again.

 

A weak episode for a season opener, IMO. I'm still in because it's the only show about my field, but I hope they have better episodes in store for the rest of the season.

1. He was not fired, they shuttered the entire Nucleus (and I think XYZ) arm.

2. No he didn't sell. Remember he told them to fuck off so he could help with coding?

3. Action Jack is Playing a long con.

4. It wasn't weak it was just light on laughs.

[RabbitEars]

Help me out: Why are they offering such an enormous buyout to Bighead? I can understand offering him a buyout, just not that huge of one. 

[Should Be Working]

Quote

1 hour ago, RabbitEars said:

Help me out: Why are they offering such an enormous buyout to Bighead? I can understand offering him a buyout, just not that huge of one. 

 

But this is Silicon Valley, where app-makers whose startups don't make a profit for years (until recently) received very generous funding. Recall how Bighead was actually deliberating about whether or not to accept what he thought was a $2 million contract buyout because the terms prevented him from spending anymore time with (and going to the nearby Arby's with) his pals on the Hooli roof. Who in God's name would say "no" to that much money for such a lame reason? 

Granted, they could have jettisoned Bighead for less than $20 million. But Gavin wanted his charmed ass gone ASAP.

[RabbitEars]

Oh, I understand that valuations in SV are off the charts. But there seems to be no reason to offer $20 million to a do-nothing employee who was hired for his supposed inside knowledge of Richard's algorithm and whose utility to the company is zilch. I figured the offer was so huge because he is considered a threat, but I'm unclear why he remains a threat. 

[hincandenza]

It doesn't exactly make sense- especially since Gavin just initiated an effort to purge 1/5th the work force to save money.  But pondering it, I suppose the thinking is that he wants Bighead gone- he was after all just an unwitting pawn in a power move against PP- but had also made the mistake of building him up as the next big thing, to the point of magazine covers and gushing press speculation.  So they couldn't just axe him like a regular rank-and-file.  

Maybe $20M is their standard Principal Distinguished Senior Engineer Partner buyout, since Bighead had been elevated to a top-tier position in season 2.  There are probably enough top-tier people in the valley, and at Hooli, that setting a precedent of a much smaller severance package would cause unnecessary ripples among the remaining elite- so fuck it, that $20M is a pittance compared to the piles of cash they saved by firing a bunch of people and reclaiming unvested stock.

Which really, is the lesson of the real SV that this show could probably focus on more: how, despite all the "meritocracy" claims, it's not really different from the way wealth has operated in every industry since, well, the invention of money.  The elite take care of each other- sharing board seats, golden parachutes, absurd stock/compensation- regardless of actual value, while Richard Hendricks and his friends are seen as nothing more than playing pieces on a giant game board.  When one of those peons stumbles across a billion dollar idea, you either buy them off, steal it (go read about Philo T. Farnsworth if you want to be depressed), or welcome them behind the velvet ropes. 

[Should Be Working]

2 hours ago, hincandenza said:

Which really, is the lesson of the real SV that this show could probably focus on more: how, despite all the "meritocracy" claims, it's not really different from the way wealth has operated in every industry since, well, the invention of money.  The elite take care of each other- sharing board seats, golden parachutes, absurd stock/compensation- regardless of actual value, while Richard Hendricks and his friends are seen as nothing more than playing pieces on a giant game board.  When one of those peons stumbles across a billion dollar idea, you either buy them off, steal it (go read about Philo T. Farnsworth if you want to be depressed), or welcome them behind the velvet ropes. 

There's a lot of truth in what you point out here. High tech is often portrayed as the last real bastion of authentic meritocracy in this country. And having worked in the industry for several decades, I can agree with that popular assessment up to a point. However, I think it says more about the inexcusable absence of real merit-based hiring in other American industries than it does its prevalence in tech. Yes, the key engineering/development positions  in computer tech (the analytical and creative geniuses of the outfit) usually go to the best qualified persons, and they get well-compensated for their contributions (both to reward them and, more importantly, to deter them from going elsewhere). 

But then there's that special elite you refer to. The CEOs of the larger firms, their favorite venture capitalist cronies, and of course the cross-polinated boards of directors gigs, earning perks that make even the most talented valley programmers look like humble and compliant drones. These are the fortunate few who attend the industry galas where the corporate big wigs intermingle with the big wigs of the entertainment industry, Washington's political elite, and other corporate masters of the universe. They shuttle between their opulent and secure summer, fall, winter, and spring estates in their corporate jets while the rest of us buck daily traffic gridlock and save up for short family trips to Hawaii or ski vacations to Colorado. And, like their mega-mansions, the elite are well protected in all ways: extravagant salaries, unbelievable stock option grants, golden parachutes, and even special treatment by local law enforcement. That's why Marissa is going to get $55 million for overseeing the final dismemberment of Yahoo, while tens of thousands of dedicated employees will get a few months severance and medical insurance once they hit the streets, if they're lucky. And Steve Jobs, that sadistic narcissist (may he RIP) could speed up and down the freeways of the south bay area sans license plates without ever being pulled over, then pull into handicapped parking spots just because he was so very special.

I've seen quite a few of these valley elite types up close, and while they all share a pathologically high opinion of themselves, many of them are complete morons. They just happened to luck into that exclusive club. And after they've mismanaged another company into the ground and finally been forced out, they'll collect their pre-negotiated multi-million dollar payoff and write a book or two before they weasel their way into another company they can destroy. 

Meanwhile, all those well-educated and very hard-working tech drones just keep on truckin', day after day, taking crap from their shark-eyed bosses, dutilfully paying the high mortgages for their pricey 2000 square foot Palo Alto ranch homes, scrambling to get their kids into decent schools, while those visions of eventual stock options payoffs keep dancing in their heads and keep them going.

Mike Judge and crew should be giving some though to these realities while they storyboard their next equine sex scene or encounter between the perpetually frazzled Richard and CEO Action Jack and his clueless sales team.

Edited May 4, 2016 by Should Be Working

[Should Be Working]

6 hours ago, Should Be Working said:

There's a lot of truth in what you point out here. High tech is often portrayed as the last real bastion of authentic meritocracy in this country. And having worked in the industry for several decades, I can agree with that popular assessment up to a point. However, I think it says more about the inexcusable absence of real merit-based hiring in other American industries than it does its prevalence in tech. Yes, the key engineering/development positions  in computer tech (the analytical and creative geniuses of the outfit) usually go to the best qualified persons, and they get well-compensated for their contributions (both to reward them and, more importantly, to deter them from going elsewhere). 

But then there's that special elite you refer to. The CEOs of the larger firms, their favorite venture capitalist cronies, and of course the cross-polinated boards of directors gigs, earning perks that make even the most talented valley programmers look like humble and compliant drones. These are the fortunate few who attend the industry galas where the corporate big wigs intermingle with the big wigs of the entertainment industry, Washington's political elite, and other corporate masters of the universe. They shuttle between their opulent and secure summer, fall, winter, and spring estates in their corporate jets while the rest of us buck daily traffic gridlock and save up for short family trips to Hawaii or ski vacations to Colorado. And, like their mega-mansions, the elite are well protected in all ways: extravagant salaries, unbelievable stock option grants, golden parachutes, and even special treatment by local law enforcement. That's why Marissa is going to get $55 million for overseeing the final dismemberment of Yahoo, while tens of thousands of dedicated employees will get a few months severance and medical insurance once they hit the streets, if they're lucky. And that's why Steve Jobs, that sadistic narcissist (may he RIP) was able to speed up and down the freeways of the south bay area sans license plates without ever being pulled over, then pull into handicapped parking spots just because he was so very special.

I've seen quite a few of these valley elite types up close, and while they all share a pathologically high opinion of themselves, many of them are complete morons. They just happened to luck into that exclusive club. And after they've mismanaged another company into the ground and finally been forced out, they'll collect their pre-negotiated multi-million dollar payoff and write a book or two before they weasel their way into another company they can destroy. 

Meanwhile, all those well-educated and very hard-working tech drones just keep on truckin', day after day, taking crap from their shark-eyed bosses, dutilfully paying the high mortgages for their pricey 2000 square foot Palo Alto ranch homes, scrambling to get their kids into decent schools, while those visions of eventual stock options payoffs keep dancing in their heads and keep them going.

Mike Judge and crew should be giving some though to these realities while they storyboard their next equine sex scene or encounter between the perpetually frazzled Richard and CEO Action Jack and his clueless sales team.

[guilfoyleatpp]

Let me just address the layoff issue - during the bad old days (2000 - 2008ish), when I was in tech, quarterly layoffs were a thing. Companies used them in a lot of ways - to slim down a company to better position it for acquisition by someone else, to get rid of problem or underperforming employees, to trim a budget when sales projections were not met.

And every quarter's layoff resulted in a surge in stock prices. You can clock on it.  The company is doing well, doing ok, they lay off a number of people, their stock price goes up. It's somewhat sickening, but to investors it signals a fiscal conservatism that is appreciated.

It's also short term thinking. I saw the sole person supporting an acquired technology laid off by the purchasing company. The product had not been end-of-lifed. You might get laid off for being an underperformer, but maybe you also just pissed someone off, weren't visible or vocal enough, or were too visible or vocal. It's sort of like war or a tornado...there's often no rhyme or reason.  I worked at a company that had some issues and was getting ready to sell off some acquired technology and in one day they laid off 50% of the staff. The message after the layoffs was something like "we are sorry for our lost staff, but you're the lucky ones, so get back to work."

The Hooli layoffs seemed totally legit to me for that reason. Nucleus was a disaster, a waste of money, so Hooli makes a bold move to cut staff to get back some of that money.

I really liked this episode.  And Jack is slick as fuck. That's a good CEO. 

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 4/25/2016 at 7:43 AM, candall said:

I binge-watched the two earlier seasons this weekend. 

Maybe that's the secret to liking this episode.  I binge-watched Season Two and had just this first episode of Season Three, and liked it a lot.

Or maybe it was the reflected glow from the opening, where Richard hit the Bambot.  Ehrlich exclaiming, "Fucking Stanford robotics!" as he got out of the car, and the students creeping out from the woods on the side of the road, and then that damn antlered deer continuing to get up after being kicked.  

I left that scene on the DVR to pull up in the future when I want a belly laugh.