MemeMachineGo!

Once upon a time, there was a funky little Berkeley ISP called DNAI. And I worked there as a web developer for Rael Dornfest (since gone on to fame and fortune at O'Reilly.) And the pay was somewhat substandard but the environment was great, and my co-workers were great, and the management was great, and we had a great time. Then we were bought by RCN (cue thunder and lightning.)

The pay was still substandard but the managers were idiots, my new one in particular the spitting image of a pointy-haired boss. He insulted my abilities on our first meeting without having any basis for evaluation — some kind of dominance display, I guess. When I said one of the things I liked about my position was the variety of my tasks, he told me I could expect to be required to specialize so I would make a better cog in his machine. Then there was the loss of control of my computer environment so IT staff could administer my box (you know, for efficiency, not to mention the ability to monitor my keystrokes).

They were disorganized enough that it took some months for the corporate bullshit to really trickle down to my level. The very day it did, in the form of my boss trying to require me to attend their big expensive corporate meeting where they'd strap us to chairs and wire our eyes open to watch executives beat their chests and tell us how happy we should be to working for a company that had millions to blow on this bullshit but couldn't grasp what a competitive salary was, I quit on the spot. I have no tolerance for groupthink. This being the tail end of the boom, I took a long lunch that day and had a new job.

RCN is still making news.

RCN Corp., which provides cable, phone and high-speed Internet connections in the Putnam County area, lost $1.05 billion during the second quarter and cut back on expansion and capital spending plans.

The net loss was equal to $10.46 a share, compared with a loss of $7.38 a share, or $639.3 million, during last year's second quarter.

And they'd been trying to pull the put up with your sucky salary and idiot bosses because of our generous stock grant gambit, too.

I got this link from the DNAI alumni mailing list. In the ensuing discussion, someone sensibly pointed out that it'd be more useful and fun to spend some time talking about what was good about DNAI instead of trying to find how many ways we could say RCN sucks. And that was a good point.

But, y'know? I still like saying it. RCN sucks. RCN sucks. RCN sucks.