Paul Elliott needed a new car, but finding time for car shopping was all but impossible while working at Cerent and then Cisco. Over the years, Paul relied on his small, aging Toyota pickup. Bob Bortolotto described Paul’s truck as “a real beater.”
One day, in late 1999, Paul arrived at the office and realized he had a midday meeting with a number of Cisco colleagues in San Jose. Paul’s truck was too small to accommodate five Petaulma-based engineers who wanted to carpool to the south bay meeting. Instead, everyone crammed into Bob B’s BMW 5-series car. Since Paul was the biggest guy of the group, he rode "shotgun." The other three engineers, cramped in the back seat of the beamer, moaned and complained over their discomfiture for two hours all the way down to Cisco.
Solutions are something engineers come up with once the complaining is exhausted. Someone proposed that since Paul had the lousiest vehicle, as well as the most money from the Cisco acquisition, of the five traveling engineers, it was up to him to buy a new car while the group attended the meeting in San Jose. Their brainstorm, although Paul will argue it was his idea, was to drive the proposed new set of wheels back to Petaluma ensuring it would be a more comfortable ride for the three engineers occupying the back seat.
Paul had already been talking for months about how he’d like to buy a BMW 750Li, the model that was the longer version with more back seat legroom. After some egging on by his colleagues, Paul, after the Cisco meeting, placed some phone calls to a number of car dealerships. He found the right model and color at Sonnen BMW in San Rafael and asked the dealership to prep the car in one hour for pickup. The cramped five stopped at the dealership, about halfway home, and after a two-minute test drive Paul approved the car.
Bob says, “It was the fastest car purchase I've ever seen.”
Paul had already been talking for months about how he’d like to buy a BMW 750Li, the model that was the longer version with more back seat legroom. After some egging on by his colleagues, Paul, after the Cisco meeting, placed some phone calls to a number of car dealerships. He found the right model and color at Sonnen BMW in San Rafael and asked the dealership to prep the car in one hour for pickup. The cramped five stopped at the dealership, about halfway home, and after a two-minute test drive Paul approved the car.
Bob says, “It was the fastest car purchase I've ever seen.”
Time is money and when you have the money, you can save time. Two of the complaining engineers drove back with Paul and the other one rode “shotgun” with Bob back to the office. Bob chuckles, “We offered to push Paul’s pickup into the creek, but I think he kept it for a while.”
Paul, a big fan of great movies nicknamed his new car the "cruising vessel," in honor of the flick, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Scott Adams, in his Dilbert comic strip, has a lot to say about engineers as entrepreneurs . . .
Paul, a big fan of great movies nicknamed his new car the "cruising vessel," in honor of the flick, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Scott Adams, in his Dilbert comic strip, has a lot to say about engineers as entrepreneurs . . .
Moral of Paul’s story? It doesn’t matter what you drive - an automobile or an engineering team - as long as you are innovating and collaborating.
[1] Here are Paul’s own humble words on his contributions to the ‘454’: “I was not the person who came up with the ‘454’ idea, or many of the system requirements. However, I was instrumental in figuring out how to implement (or design) the product, and managing the intersection of desired features, and what was actually possible (or what we figured would be possible inside of a year). Other than that, it's mostly true [what’s listed in your complimentary sidebar,] but there were certainly many others on our team who made critical contributions to the product architecture and design.”
Moral of Paul’s story? It doesn’t matter what you drive - an automobile or an engineering team - as long as you are innovating and collaborating.
[1] Here are Paul’s own humble words on his contributions to the ‘454’: “I was not the person who came up with the ‘454’ idea, or many of the system requirements. However, I was instrumental in figuring out how to implement (or design) the product, and managing the intersection of desired features, and what was actually possible (or what we figured would be possible inside of a year). Other than that, it's mostly true [what’s listed in your complimentary sidebar,] but there were certainly many others on our team who made critical contributions to the product architecture and design.”