No Way Back Read Online Free PDF

I can’t do that. Not to her. I say, more quietly than I mean to: ‘Not very good. But we’re going to try. I have a lot riding on this, personally. I really have to make it
work. I don’t have a choice.’
    I’m thankful when she doesn’t ask what I mean, but instead just nods and says, ‘Yes,’ as if what I told her were perfectly obvious.

CHAPTER 3
    I spend the rest of the day walking around, getting a feel for the place. I introduce myself to people at random, catching them as they pass through the bullpen, or dropping by
unexpectedly at their desks, or even – in one case – stopping them as they finish their business at the urinal. My introduction is always the same. ‘Hi, I’m Jim,’ I
say, with a smile and an outstretched hand. (I neglect this last bit when I meet the kid at the urinal.) ‘What’s your name? What do you do here?’ And then they tell me. And then I
respond that I’m pleased to meet them, that I’m excited to be at Tao, and that together we’re going to make the company succeed.
    Despite my enthusiasm, their responses range from indifference to fear. The indifferent ones tend to be older – corporate veterans. They’re outwardly friendly enough, but I can read
their faces: they’ve seen turnaround attempts before, the parachuting CEO
du jour
, the grandiose announcements, the high hopes that never pan out. No doubt these are the ones
surreptitiously crafting their résumés on Tao workstations, keeping an eye over their shoulder in case management should pass behind them. I don’t resent this. As someone with a
dim view of managerial competence myself, I’d probably be firing up the word processor too if I were in their shoes. It’s my job to prove them wrong.
    Around lunch time, I wander over to Randy Williams’s cube. His desk is on the ‘engineering side’ of the building, near the foosball table and the Ms. Pac-Man arcade game. I ask
him to arrange a product demonstration for me.
    ‘A what?’ Randy asks.
    ‘A demonstration. Of our product.’
    Randy looks at me, suspicious. Am I unaware of the company’s plight, or am I cleverly testing him? He answers carefully. ‘Jim,’ he says, slowly, as if tiptoeing across a career
minefield. ‘The product isn’t...
finished
yet.’
    ‘I know it’s not finished yet,’ I say, affably. ‘If it was finished, I wouldn’t be here. Right?’
    Randy smiles at this very reasonable answer, but then realizes that we’re talking about his own incompetence, and so he shouldn’t grin. His smiles fades. ‘Right,’ he
says.
    ‘But I would like to see what we
do
have. Even if it’s not completely done.’
    Randy sighs. He pushes back his chair, stands up. He calls to someone sitting in the next cubicle over. His lieutenant, no doubt. ‘Darryl,’ he says.
    There’s no answer. From my vantage point, I can’t see into Darryl’s cube. Frustration clouds Randy’s face. He leans over the cube wall, plunks his hand down. When he
lifts it, he’s clutching an empty pair of headphones.
    ‘Hey!’ a disembodied voice shouts. ‘What the fuck?’
    Randy says into the cube: ‘Jim wants to see a demo. Can you set something up?’
    The voice snorts. ‘A demo? Of our piece of shit product? That man is one stupid motherfucker!’
    Randy’s smile peels from his face like old paint. ‘Jim’s right here,’ he says quietly.
    ‘Oh.’ Chair casters squeak, and a head pops over the cube like a prairie dog from a burrow. A kid – he can’t be older than twenty-three, I guess – with long,
stringy hair, and pale skin that indicates time spent mostly indoors, looks at me and smiles. ‘You want a demo?’
    ‘That would be nice,’ I say.
    ‘Give me ten.’ With that, he’s off, bounding across the cubicle farm with a merry step.
    Randy looks at me. ‘He’s a good programmer,’ he explains.
    ‘I hope so,’ I say.
    Ten minutes later, Randy, Darryl, and I are crowded into a small room with no windows. There’s a barnyard