There is a story that was written by Ed Janeczek called “glug…glug…glug…” in the early days of Citrix. From the date of the email, it would have been written about 4 years after the company was founded.
I have seen the story a few times during my career. Just recently I realized that it would make for a good topic in a post. Sometimes I also worry that it will get lost or deleted. I’m sure it will not based on its survival to this point but it still makes me feel better that it is now available to a wider audience. Thanks for sharing it Brad. 🙂
Keep in mind that this just a story and should not be taken too seriously. Like Edj says, he’s just poking fun at a few different characters involved. In this vein, he has made it difficult to figure out the actual names of the people in the story. I am not going to make it any easier. I hope you enjoy this story inspired from real Citrix history. More parts will be posted in the future.
[14] From: edj at CITRIX 2/10/93 7:10PM (11394 bytes: 191 ln)
To: alc, andys, chrisl, georgev, gregg, kurtp, markb, mikeh, randyw, richa,
scottk, billc, edj
Subject: glug…glug…glug…
——————————- Message Contents ——————————-
DISCLAIMER:
This document evolved over a period of years. It is intended
to poke gentle fun at the Citrix experience. If it offends
anyone, I aplogize in advance.
(PART I: Circa 6/91 or so)
I have discovered a portion of the infamous ‘rowers’ memo
that was left out of the Wall Street Journal article…
(NOTE TO NEWBIES:
The WSJ article referred to contained a joke/parable about IBM
and MS that went something like this:
IBM and MS decided to have a boat race (rowing sculls). MS had
ten rowers and one person calling the strokes. IBM had one
rower and ten people calling the strokes. MS won the race
(no big surprise). The IBM callers got together and decided,
“We need to get that guy to row harder.”
END OF NOTE)
Some of the IBM rowers decided to leave and form their own
team, called Citr!x. They took up a collection to get money
to buy a boat and oars. Some of the audience agreed to give
them the money if they would put on a show that
those members of the audience liked and they got first-row
seats in the boat. They couldn’t afford a boat anywhere as
big as the other two boats, but they knew their boat was
leaner and meaner. The Citr!x crew put a big plank across
the front of the boat for those members of the audience
(also called the plank) to sit. The Citr!x rowers were
among the strongest rowers from the IBM team, and they
wanted very badly to prove that they could row very well
without so many captains on the boat. The plank members
were used to the old way of doing things, so they and the
first few IBM rowers went out and found a few more captains.
The first one they found wore electric puce bikini briefs
and came HIGHLY recommended by the captains of a sinking
ship. Another one they found was basically lazy, thanked
himself a lot, and spent a lot of time making sure the
people on the plank were as happy as possible. He brought a
friend of his who had a sailboat along. The plank members
made the first rower to leave IBM a captain, and gave him
two hats. This rower (now the top captain) had a shadow
that followed him everywhere who pondered greatly on
momentous issues and nodded in a very thoughtful manner when
not wearing his neck brace.
The captain in the electric puce bikini briefs was given the
task of making sure Citr!x had lots of spectators who would
buy tickets to see the event. This captain spent a lot of
time stroking Two-hats and thinking up excuses. The rowers
worked very hard. There weren’t as many as on the Microsoft
boat, but more than were on the IBM boat, and they were
doing more.
Then came the day of the first race (race 1.0). The
captains of the Citr!x team yelled frantically (altho not in
perfect rhythm) and the rowers stroked mightily, however the
Citr!x team came in last and sold hardly any tickets.
Puce-briefs said it was because of newspaper articles about
big waves in small bodies of water, and anyway they couldn’t
expect a new team to get a big audience for the first race.
The people on the plank accepted this answer, and gave the
captains some more money for their boat. The captains knew
there was a really big race coming up in the future (race
2.0), and they decided to run in that one after trying a
smaller race with an international audience. The captains
thought it would be a small trial race, but in reality it
turned out to be a huge worldwide race that they were ill
prepared for. Once more they sold few tickets, but
Puce-briefs said that was because the newspaper articles had
finally gone round the world. At this point, the rowers
were all very unhappy with Puce-briefs, altho some of the
captains felt the same as ever about him. Eventually
Puce-briefs left and the rowers felt more hopeful.
(to be continued…)
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