Building it because it needs to be built

[infrogmation]

Amazing account of how a mathematical killer ap of the 1990s was created covertly by programers working without pay, sneaking into Apple labs without authorization:

The Graphing Calculator Story by Ron Avitzur

Excerpts:

"I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive."

"There were plenty of empty offices. We found two and started sneaking into the building every day, waiting out in front for real employees to arrive and casually tailgating them through the door. Lots of people knew us and no one asked questions, since we wore our old badges as decoys."

"In October, when we thought we were almost finished, engineers who had been helping us had me demonstrate our software to their managers. A dozen people packed into my office. I didn't expect their support, but I felt obliged to make a good-faith effort to go through their official channels. I gave a twenty-minute demonstration, eliciting "oohs" and "ahhs." Afterward, they asked, "Who do you report to? What group are you in? Why haven't we seen this earlier?" I explained that I had been sneaking into the building and that the project didn't exist. They laughed, until they realized I was serious. Then they told me, "Don't repeat this story." "

A tip o' the powerbook to mmcirvin for alerting me to this. I wonder how many things get done this way.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Sneaking into your former contractee's offices to finish a project is, I think, pretty uncommon. But I do think that many good things start out as informal skunk-works projects done on obsessive software engineers' free time, which is why so many companies have onerous employee agreements designed to ensure that the company owns it all.