Monday, January 27, 2025

Going Above and Beyond

I need to get this off my chest, as we live in a world where negatives are accumulated for social media clickbait. This one is positive but is also illustrative of what can happen when people do the right thing.
A customer of mine was a fabless semiconductor startup in Silicon Valley. It's one of a few that has achieved over $100 billion in market cap. Back in the day, they were pre-revenue. On a Friday night, their go-getter test engineer, called me up out of the blue. I considered ourselves friends but she was married, so I was surprised as it was Friday night, and their team was working (not surprising, according to silicon valley culture). I was in a social setting, but I took the call anyway.
She said they had a deadline to ship their first products to their first customer ever three days later on Monday. Their problem was the test and assembly subcontractors had no test capacity, as they were fully booked, serving other bigger, more important fabless customers. This also wasn't surprising as the late 90's experienced a huge tech boom, and supply chains were stressed with record orders.
In my fun mode, I casually passed it off as "hey, Christine Deutsch, just wait until Monday to get your parts tested and we will all be fine." She sternly interrupted me and said, "no, everything is not fine. You didn't hear me, this is our first customer ever and we need to ship these parts Monday."
To which I retorted, "what do you want me to do? We're not a chip manufacturer--we merely sell chip testers. I have no machines to help you. Our testers are manufactured in Boston--you know this."
To which she replied, "you have that tester in your San Jose field office."
To which I logically mocked, "Christine, that's a demo tester in a field sales office! It is not a production floor!"
She meekly explained, "well, our test engineers can re program it to make it a production tester--because they are sharp."
Which I replied, "yes, I know your test engineers are smart, but how do I transform a big iron supercomputer demo unit, and turn it into your production floor? Are you crazy?"
She then waved the hail Mary, "Can you get your field installation engineers to help us set it up into production mode?"
At which point, I yelled, "Christine, I'm a little tipsy right now, and it's Friday night, and I can guarantee you my field engineers are more drunk than I am or having downtime with their families, ON A FRIDAY NIGHT. They are salaried--they don't receive overtime compensation."
"Greg, can you please, please try and call them?"
"Dammit Christine, you're putting me on the spot, but yes, I will try."
So I called my colleague John Glazzy, to get Greg Kinoshita's and Daryl Gee's phone numbers, to convince them to come into the office, and work all weekend, and I also had to get their manager's approval, Mike Keith. Greg K and Daryl G are super nice guys, but this was way above and beyond their duties. I had no idea how I did it, but to their credit and sacrifice, they came in that weekend and worked around the clock alongside the Marvell test engineers, and by golly, Marvell shipped their products that Monday to their first big, important customer.
Marvell's VP of Operations Steve Zadig, openly acknowledged the Teradyne team for enabling them to launch their product line, but I have a feeling our team members didn't get their full acknowledgment. Marvell wasn't even John's customer--they were mine. After talking to Mike just this past year, that account scenario, allowed our field office to be open for customer access and turn it into a revenue producer. I also want to acknowledge my manager Kevin Miles for giving me the autonomy to make the call and trusting me to make decisions that weren't PnL positive.
So I wanted to acknowledge Christine, John, Mike, and Steve, but mostly to thank Greg and Daryl because they were the true heroes. They literally helped launch that small, but promising startup into a $100 billion silicon valley juggernaut. The moral of the story? Think outside the box and see the big picture. I initially failed at it, because of the conventional status quo, but thanks to Christine's coaxing, she helped me realized when you do the right thing, you don't need to apologize for "misallocating resources."
They don't teach these principles in business textbooks, but somewhere, sometime out in the enterprise universe, entrepreneurs and employees alike are grinding away outside the spotlight, looking to make this world a better, safer, healthier, and more prosperous one. They are the true heroes.