ePrize: No Limits

"No Limits" Nominated for Webbys

2011-04-01T11:11:00.002-04:00

I'm proud to announce that the ePrize: No Limits blog has been nominated for Best Cultural Blog by the Webby Awards (www.webbyawards.com). The official announcement comes out on April 12 but I wanted to let folks know now so they can spread the word when it comes to voting. I know that I've got a lot of enthusiastic readers here and that everyone loves the blog so be sure to vote early and often! In the past the Best Cultural Blog has gone to behemoth blogs like Mashable and 1000 Awesome Things. I know it's cliche but I'm just honored that ePrize: No Limits has been nominated! Thanks to everyone who nominated us!

The Way They Do It

2011-02-18T08:51:00.001-05:00

I love the outtake at the end.

Like Wildfire

2011-01-18T15:51:00.003-05:00

Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events but we just got our asses kicked, pal!

It's like Sweepstakes Express but smarter... I'm talking about the Wildfire Promotion Builder that looks and acts like Caffeine on caffeine. The best part? It's all about the Facebook, baby. This is a definite game-changer.

Okay, ePrize... what'cha got?

Hardcore Pawn

2010-08-19T09:47:00.004-04:00

Thanks to a reader of the blog who tipped me off to the TruTV show, Hardcore Pawn. It stars none other than Ashley Gold who's known in some circles as Ashley Gold-Broad. As in Jordan Broad--as in his wife. Maybe Jordan will have a cameo on the show sometime. We can only hope.

And Away We Go...

2010-05-13T10:20:00.002-04:00

Looks like our new ePrize CEO Matt Wise proved his namesake when he finally lowered the boom on ePrize EVP of Delivery, Jordan Broad, yesterday. This was one of a few firings and a couple of demotions yesterday -- all of them at the top of the house from where most of the company's problems stem.

I don't know what ePrize will do without Jordan. His input and work has been an invaluable part of the last decade at the company with all of the things he did such as... well... um... scoping out pictures of his female coworkers on FaceBook? And, um.... looking important in his office? And then there was this one time when... wait... what the hell did Jordan do for the last ten years at ePrize other than collect a fairly fat paycheck?

Keep up the good work, Matt. That was probably the best first step you could have taken.

Totally Looks Like

2010-04-08T12:20:00.002-04:00

This was pointed out to me today. The Qatar diplomat who just grounded a flight because he had to catch a smoke sure looks familiar...

Odds & Ends

2010-03-11T11:42:00.002-05:00

ePrize is featured in an article about "cool companies" in metromode. Oddly, what metromode calls out as "cool" is what I found the most annoying at ePrize: "Multiple floors all done up in greens and purples, with a contemporary design and an open floor plan conducive to conversation and paper football.".

Despite rumors of a real management cleanup at ePrize, Jordan Broad is still listed as Executive Vice President, Delivery on the ePrize website. The title is as nebulous as the work he does.

Josh Linkner Steps Down

2010-02-08T12:36:00.005-05:00

Mirror mirror on the wall... is Josh Linkner the greatest CEO of all?

Josh, you are fair, 'tis true, but there is another fairer than you.

Today Josh Linkner announced officially that he's stepping down as the CEO of ePrize, LLC. His replacement, Matt Wise is coming in from Chicago's Q Interactive to take over the reigns. Though Josh will stay on as "chairman" -- focusing on innovation and sales -- it'll be interesting to see how he interacts with Wise. Will he chafe under Wise's "full operational control" or will he take a back seat? Or will he only he be a figurehead? The details of the deal Linkner made with the Board of Directors has yet to be revealed.

I find it very difficult to believe that Linkner went to the Board and humbly told them that the mirror told him he couldn't cut it as the CEO of the company he wanted ePrize to be. I find it much easier to swallow the the Board finally put an end to his rampant spending and maybe even curtailed the skirt-chasing.

Despite the claim that only one offer had been made for the CEO position, inside sources say that a big baller from the East Coast, George Russel, was the first person to whom the CEO offer was extended. Brian Hermelin (CEO of Active Aero in Belleville) and Gary Shiffman (CEO of Southfield-based Sun Communities) begged Russel to take the job. His response? "There's no value in trying to save this company." Zing!

Apparently, Wise must feel that there's still life in the old Purple, Red and Green monster. He'll be officially taking over on March 1st, the start of ePrize's eleventh year. Good luck, Matt, you'll need it!

What Color Is Your Parachute?

2010-02-02T13:23:00.004-05:00

The rumors have been confirmed, long time leader of ePrize, Josh Linkner, has been asked to step aside by the company's board of directors.

There has already been one offer made to a potential CEO (who subsequently turned down the position -- perhaps after scrutinizing just how poorly the company has been run in the last few years) and another set of negotiations ongoing with a new suitor.

With any luck, Josh will stick around until March 1, 2010 to see the eleventh anniversary of the company he founded before strapping on his golden parachute and taking a giant leap out of ePrize.

In related news, Ivan Frank recently turned in his resignation. This has been a long time coming. It was always a puzzler how Frank got into his position and maintained it for so long.

This only leaves Jordan Broad as the Questionable Employee of the Decade. Working with Broad never fails to leave people flailing to figure out just what he does at ePrize other than take up space.

More news to come.

At Least They Did It Via Email At Eprize...

2010-01-30T20:44:00.002-05:00

I was reminded of ePrize's tally of "hot women" when I read this story on CNN.com today.

At least at ePrize the upper management did their evaluations via emailed spreadsheets - not public boards. I mean, it's deplorable, just not as much so.

Executive of the Year

2009-10-20T11:43:00.003-04:00

Big ups to Josh Linkner for being named the Detroit Executives Association's Executive of the Year.

In other news, the sinking ship of ePrize continues to bleed out talented employees into the Detroit market. The churn rate climbs with the Interface Developers taking a major loss recently of one of their longest-term developers.

The Inside Dirt

2009-10-06T13:15:00.002-04:00

To answer my recent question of "What's up at ePrize?" the "ePrize Tattler" sent me a missive from the perspective of the inner sanctum.

According to "Tattler," there's some major dissent amongst the ranks with much of that stemming from problems at the very top of the house. The problems began around 2006 or 2007, when things started falling apart at ePrize. Lying to customers and taking on work that never should have been done, just to put money in the bank. This stopped being sustainable and ePrize experienced the first real growing pains, that led to "Project Gold Medal." This dismal failure brought about a change of regime and the addition of Gerry Miller to the ePrize "team."

At one point there was discussion of turning the reigns over to Miller completely. Unfortunately, this golden boy was quickly tarnished. He did the unthinkable; insisting on results rather than lavish spending. Monies went to a book, parties, conferences, etc. The total spent estimated at $100 million, resulting in some close calls getting emergency funding for inconsequential stuff like, um, payroll. "Yes, the champagne is paid for but the employees are not..."

Sales numbers slipped and the Board of Directors turned off the money faucet. Miller stepped into the role of sacrificial lamb. As per the usual at ePrize, all blame was heaped at the door of the person who left (or was fired) last. You could be the best employee in the world but your reputation goes in the shitter once your feet hit the bricks.

And when Miller could no longer be blamed for ePrize's failures, the economy "fortunately" turned, giving "Leadership" a song to sing from the hymnal. Forget poor salesmanship and so-called leadership. Tattler writes, "We are being out-planned [...] by stronger, better companies. We're being beaten at our own game."

Add to all of this some other dirty laundry like extramarital affairs, sexual harassment, drug use (?!?), unchecked egos, and other unwise investments and it sounds like ePrize is in need of a shake-up... all the way up to the top. Until then, more people are going to continue to be thrown under buses as a diversion for mismanagement.

What's Up?

2009-10-04T15:38:00.004-04:00

Things have been fairly quiet on the blog, that's because there's been little information coming out of ePrize of late. No word about the big decade anniversary, no further firings, nada. The only thing that seems to be coming out of ePrize these days are resumes; folks looking for new employment. Keep those resumes coming folks. There are a lot of links on the right side of the page to other Detroit agencies, contract houses, etc. where you're sure to be better appreciated and paid a lot more.

Another Suggestion

2009-07-24T14:59:00.003-04:00

A little over two years ago, I made the suggestion that the ePrize "secure image" needs to be updated to be made more accessible to include a way of hearing the code. Refreshing it would also be nice. I noticed today that the ePrize blog -- an "out of the box" solution undoubtedly -- has this functionality while the ePrize promotions still use the original "get_image" stuff that Sugar Bear created way back in 2003.

Despite all of the grousing from employees about ADA regulations/508 Compliance, little has been done to ever make this dream a reality. Perhaps a lawsuit might help?

Fuzzy Math

2009-07-20T14:56:00.004-04:00

Maybe I'm missing something. I've misplaced my abacus and just can't seem to get these figures to add up:

Back in July, 2008, the Oakland Business Review reported: "The company has 350 employees, 275 of which are in Michigan."

Meanwhile, Crain's Detroit on July 13, 2009 reports: "The company has trimmed about 50 staffers since last summer" and "The company now has 275 employees."

The math there between the two reports just doesn't add up to me. Meanwhile, I've read of a total of 55 firings. I'm not sure about the churn rate of the company (which used to be incredibly low). I guess that the error can come from the loose phrase "last summer."

Mar 6, 2009

Jul 20, 2009

22 More Go

2009-07-09T17:01:00.004-04:00

Off they go, 22 more souls leaving ePrize today. And it sounds like the message that they need to remember is to stay away from PrizeLogic. Good luck folks. With Chrysler and GM coming out of bankruptcy, there should be some positions opening up at agencies that deal with them. Otherwise, there's still a list of job posting places on the blog.

One Big Happy

2009-07-09T09:17:00.002-04:00

Thanks to a fellow eXprizer for the following tale of woe:

Seems a former ePrizer went to work for PrizeLogic in a different role than they held at ePrize. This person has a wife and kids to support, but that didn't stop ePrize from suing him and his employer for a breech of a non-compete clause!

Can you imagine, in this economy, those fuckers would actually deny a man the ability to provide for his family? Hey, didn't Josh Linkner always refer to ePrize folks as "family"? I guess he has no care if they starve.

The Days of Whine and Poses

2009-04-22T20:04:00.002-04:00

I read on Twitter today that there are more bad times happening at ePrize. I don't tend to put much stock in tweets but felt obliged to report to see if anyone could substantiate or refute:

"no bonuses at eprize and monthly commission delayed.

Not sure what kind of "bonuses" to which this refers -- perhaps the quarterly performance bonus that was always so easily snatched away? -- but delay of commissions is pretty bad. Of all the people you don't want to piss off, your sales force is close to the top of the list.

Happy Passover

2009-04-09T11:36:00.000-04:00

Enjoy the office while it's quiet!

No Alibi

2009-04-09T10:53:00.004-04:00

Wow. I'm a little flabbergasted. The creative for ePrize's Bluefly promotions has been bad in the past but I think that the latest one really goes above and beyond.

Now, I'm assuming that this is in no way the fault of the creative folks at ePrize but wholly on the shoulders of Bluefly's agency. They apparently have yet to learn anything about this thing we call the Internet. Take a look at the homepage for the promotion:

I'm all for good use of negative space but this is abuse. And the pages are all about built out tall -- so tall that they get cut off even at high resolutions (game page: 1114 X 800). It's obvious that someone has a really big monitor and doesn't give a damn about the common user base.

Apparently, they also don't care about people understanding their contest. The actual "instant win" screen is fairly obtuse with no instructional text of what's going on. It took so long to load that I was scrolled down at the bottom of the screen looking for something (anything) to click when the flash loaded above. For some odd reason, the game page's footer is different than all the other pages.

In short.... "B-L-U Fly, you ain't got no alibi, you're just ugly."

Smirch Engine

2009-03-24T12:11:00.003-04:00

A lot of the issues that have been brought up on this blog recently about anonymity and ruining reputations via online libel was brought up in this week's "On The Media". Check it out.

Adios Weesh!

2009-03-19T15:07:00.003-04:00

I heard a sad story the other day that ePrize's marketing maven... the sizzle on the steak... the toothpick in the cake... is heading for greener pastures. Best of luck!

I Wasn't In

2009-03-09T13:06:00.007-04:00

I've referenced this event in previous posts but someone was kind enough to send me some pix of it for me to relive (and begin my nightmares anew). Here are some pix of the 2006 kick-off event where upper management dressed up in superhero costumes, danced around, and generally acted like fools. That was the same day I started looking for a new job...

Promotions 101

2009-03-06T13:41:00.003-05:00

There's a new, funny video up on ePrize.com -- at least it's new to me. It's a little ditty about why ePrize is so great.

My favorite part has to be this one:

CMS Suggestion

2009-02-17T20:23:00.003-05:00

Trying to find out if the London office of ePrize is open or closed, I've come to the conclusion that ePrize would really do itself a favor by instituting a CMS across their various sites. ePrize has a lot of pokers in the fire these days -- "The Power of e", the ePrize Blog, eprize.com, eprize.net, etc -- and it would be smart to give these sites a bit of a cohesive look as well as consistent content.

That would probably help prevent differences in the footer from one site to another. For example -- the "Power of e" site still has London in the footer:

An update to the ePrize.com site, overall, is desperately needed. The back end may not run on the same technology (ASP) but it's still a crappy table-based layout with graphical text. Worse, it's the same antiquated front end interface from 2003. Meanwhile, the few updates that are visible leave a lot to be desire. I'm still harping on the slipshod RSS feeds on pages like the portfolio feed which is sorted alphabetically rather than historically, invalidating the whole RSS idea of updates. If anything, there should be a CMS in place for easy updates of news, promotions, contact information, etc. with a simple transform that could make sections into RSS feeds where applicable. Likewise, the blog and other sites could be folded into one umbrella with a cohesive look and codebase.

Regardless... what happened to the London office?

Facebook?

2009-02-14T17:54:00.002-05:00

If anyone's interested, I started a group on Facebook for ex-Prizers. Click here to see. I don't expect the turn-out to be tremendous, despite the growing number of potential members.

Great Culture!

2009-02-12T13:00:00.003-05:00

This video is so great, I had to bring it back. Can someone give me an accurate headcount of hour many exPrizers there are in this video?

More Job Cuts

2009-02-08T15:00:00.005-05:00

Just got this message:

FYI: Round 3 of cuts just hit on Friday (2/6/09). Another 13 people let go. All free pop gone and lunchbox subsidy is canceled. They will of course still have lunchbox to keep the sheep at their desks but now everyone has to pay full price.

I can't wait to find a new job and jump from this sinking ship. What a mistake it was to ever come here.

No word yet if these were more "underperformers" or if Linkner will ever be able to live down his comments about the July firings (20). He managed to keep his foot out of his mouth with the December round (13).

Back in July, 2008, the Oakland Business Review reported:

The company has 350 employees, 275 of which are in Michigan, and the layoffs amount to less than 5 percent of the workforce. Those laid off received severance packages, and there are no plans for more layoffs, Linkner said.

Laid off? Does that mean they'll be called back any time now? There's an interesting discussion of that topic here.

Does this mean that ePrize is down to 324 employees or 304... or have others quit without the press? I doubt (m)any were hired. And, what's the deal with the two sets of firings of thirteen people? It's enough to give someone triskaidekaphobia.

And the idea of severance at ePrize isn't much to sneeze at. Typically it's two weeks pay (at their low rate) and your signature on a document that dispenses of all your rights. I still regret signing mine and encourage anyone who is presented with this document to get it reviewed and amended by a lawyer.

The Big Idea

2009-01-18T15:30:00.002-05:00

Without a nod to Donny Deutsch, ePrize is shilling for a "Big Idea" with their latest internal promotion.

To quote the site, ePrize is "giving away $1,000 to one lucky winner among all who submit their ideas. Give us your best shot – you may only enter once."

Now, let's not go into the poor copywriting of that section but focus instead on the strangeness of this skills-based promotion. Are the creative coffers at ePrize so empty that they're reaching out to the world for ideas? Has the employee-base become so sycophantic that fresh thoughts are in such short supply? This just seems like a bizarre move for a company that touts its creative edge.

Special thanks to Anonymous for pointing this out!

Prize Logic Website Live

2009-01-18T14:46:00.002-05:00

Slither... er... Prize Logic has its website live. Pretty slick. Check it out here.

Stay Up to Date with Layoffs

2008-12-16T14:54:00.003-05:00

Wondering who in the area is getting canned and where sending your resume might not be the wisest idea? F*ckedCompany.com is so 20th Century. It's time to get all "Web 2.0" and follow the news with Twitter. Sign up to follow the firings at twitter.com/adagencylayoffs.

Here's another fun link to visit.

I Think I Just Threw Up In My Mouth

2008-12-08T10:48:00.003-05:00

This video is rather disturbing to me.

Thanks to the commenter who turned me on to this inspirational poster:

Slither Returns?

2008-12-06T17:19:00.005-05:00

Let's continue to flog a dead horse and bring back Slither... our imaginary rival company. It's not like PrizeLogic isn't a real company that's out there eating ePrize's lunch, is it? Despite what Linkner says in this Fast Company article, there are real threats to ePrize's viability. To deny this is folly.

Here's a link to the PrizeLogic sweepstakes for NWA. Note that to enter you need to enter your WorldPerks number to begin. Doing so eliminates the need for putting in a user's information in for registration. I seem to remember suggesting this same thing about, oh, four years ago. It's always nice to see one's ideas come to fruition, especially when they were deemed "impossible" by one company and made possible by their rival company.

The Unemployment Mambo

2008-12-06T16:58:00.003-05:00

It's no big news these days that a Detroit-based company is cutting its workforce. It is surprising when it's a company that claims to be doing as well as ePrize. Despite cuts made in July, they've undergone another round of pruning this week.

The real surprise comes when, out of the settling dust, comes the name of some of those folks summarily dismissed. Amongst the score of people let go are at least three people that have been there three or more years, including one employee who helped extensively retool and build upon the infrastructure created by the last guy who did the same thing (before he was fired). Also amongst the bodies was an employee who came in with huge ideas that were warmly embraced by the company, displacing rogue elements... like me. Between him and another useless ass-kissing joker, this was almost a karmic sacking.

That these guys were longer-term employees may lead some to posit that this was more of a cost-saving measure to dismiss those who have higher salaries in favor of keeping lower priced hires. Yet another sign, too, of the lack of loyalty from the top all the way down the line. It seems that even if you're part of the family or a long-term hire, you can't count on ePrize sticking with you.

To all the folks fired - You may be devastated by the disloyalty and disservice from ePrize but, believe me, this is the best thing that could ever happen to you.

Are You Passion?

2008-10-01T21:18:00.002-04:00

Check out the video over at the ePrize Facebook Fanpage

And, no, Robb Lippitt, I will not be your Facebook Friend.

Sorry, This Has Been Bothering me

2008-08-08T15:43:00.005-04:00

I know that there are a lot bigger fish to fry but I have been monitoring the use of RSS on the ePrize site for over two years now. While I was happy to see certain sections get RSS-enabled, I'm not too happy with how shoddy this implementation has been.

The idea of signing up for updates to promotions has been tossed around for years (I believe Keith Simmons brought it up). Once the "Portfolio" page got an RSS feed, I threw it onto my iGoogle and have been looking at it ever since. Unfortunately, whoever (or whatever) is spitting out that feed doesn't seem to realize what RSS is all about. The list should be in order of last to first chronologically, not alphabetically. That is, when new promotions go up, the list should be updated with those new things. Also, a description would be nice as well rather than just a link. And, best of all, the RSS should be VALID.

Valid code and ePrize haven't been friendly for years. Looking a the table-bound ePrize site should clue you into that. But, gosh, how hard is it to make a simple XML file? Pretty tough apparently. Look at how nasty the code comes out when running a simple validation against the feed. This is even a Feedburner feed and they probably cleaned up some of the mess. So, you get an A for effort but an E for execution. That averages to a solid C for contemptible.

Speaking of C....

Today is Your Lucky Day! Massive Layoffs!

2008-07-02T11:45:00.007-04:00

Time for the ePrize bus to let off a few more passengers. How humiliating for the people fired to be described publicly as "underperformers." But, then again, tact was never an ePrize strong suit.

Is it a bad sign that a good number of cuts came from the business development sector? And howasbout losing the COO? In all, over thirty people have been terminated in the last month, one of the biggest purges in a while, though I'm not sure how that compares with the attrition rate. The churn rate used to be something that ePrize could boast about in their sales deck but now I doubt it gets mentioned.

PS... Looks like it's time to update the website.

The ePrize Fund

2007-12-13T14:30:00.001-05:00

Per a comment yesterday, it almost sounds like Dwoskin was in charge of this year's Holiday cards... This year recipients received notice that a donation has been made in their name to the ePrize Fund.

Afraid that this was akin to George Costanza's "Human Fund," I did some googling and found these links:

ePrize: a true SE Michigan success story
"The company also recently launched its ePrize Fund, a nonprofit charity intended to promote and help grow creativity and entrepreneurship in the area and around their other offices, located in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and London."
E2newsletter · Issue No. 11
"This year, we started the ePrize Fund, a 501(c)3 charity that provides fund and volunteer time from our team members to local organizations that support the ePrize philosophy by fostering creativity and entrepreneurship."

That's quite a bit different from the usual ePrize year-end gift of piñatas and bats or other garish tchotchkes of years past. I'm curious if ePrize employees got any kind of holiday bonus for 2007. Also, I'm wondering if there are any holiday pink slips being put into the stockings hung with care... that's been a long standing ePrize tradition. "Get off the bus!"

Video Time

2007-12-11T14:45:00.000-05:00

As promised, below is the video for the MEDC commercial spot. Indeed, it is rather embarrassing.

And here's a recruitment video for ePrize disguised as a clip about the Schoolcraft college Flash event that they co-sponsored a few weeks ago.

Odds & Sods

2007-10-24T09:19:00.000-04:00

Good news, the "toothpick in the cake" line has been removed from the ePrize "Careers Page." Glad that cooler heads have provided some fairly well-written job descriptions.

In other news, I hear that there's a harrowing TV commercial on the air featuring Michigan native Jeff Daniels touting the benefits of Michigan businesses. The commercial also stars ePrizer Alesya Opelt. I have yet to see the spot but have been told that "once you see it, you'll be scarred for life." I'm hoping that this makes an appearance on the ePrize Blog soon!

And, a fond adieu to the big group of Quality Assurance staff that were let go recently. Maybe this explains the existence of some broken links and items that otherwise should have been caught... (Psst, lots of broken links on the "In The News" page of the site -- 9/10/2007 CNNMoney.com, 8/4/2007 Detroit News, 7/31/2007 Detroit Free Press, etc). I'm sure everyone that was canned so gracefully will land on their feet. They're always a need for quality assurance.

The Wonderful World of Javascript

2007-10-15T09:16:00.000-04:00

It's with great fun and a small amount of irony that developers utilize javascript like it's going out of style at my current place of employment.

While javascript was used for some rudimentary form manipulation here and there at ePrize during my tenure there, any and all "heavy lifting" was done via the back end "toybox" framework. Whenever anything more was being asked of a front-end script the immediate hue and cry from the crowd was, "What about users who have Javascript turned off?!?" This may be a valid argument... or not. There was little-to-no metrics support of our sites at the time, especially in regard to javascript/ECMAscript acceptance. This eliminated all options for AJAX, et cetera.

Ironically, this would also have eliminated the "brilliant" "vision" of some who proposed much more "robust" javascript usage (basically, using MooTools) which was to "revolutionize" the interfaces of ePrize promotions. These were to be the "sizzle on the steak," as our PR person would say ad nauseum. So, which is it? Javascript or not?

Going through the promotions that are currently live, I see little-to-no sizzle and a lot of gristle. For example; pulling up the first promotion I caught on ePrize.com (your favicon has gone missing), Scott® Common Sense Community Spook-tacular Halloween Sweepstakes, I would certainly think that the jack o' lantern so prominently displayed on screen would have a little candle glow associated with it. Animated gif, simple swf animation, something to make it shine (pun intended) just a little. If the argument comes back, "There's not enough time to do that," then welcome to my world circa every day during my tenure at ePrize. Those kind of things are "nice to haves" and not the kind of snazzy stuff that the sweatshop mentality/workload allows.

Competition Coming?

2007-10-11T21:52:00.000-04:00

Good news, folks. Looks like there's some healthy competition coming to Detroit for ePrize. Looks like Slither can be retired as a new player enters the arena.

Get those resumes ready.

Three out of Eight Ain't Bad

2007-09-19T16:10:00.000-04:00

Back in March I suggested a list of eight items that ePrize could/should do. I just can't help but still provide feedback to the company that once nursed at my breast. Call me a nurturer.

Lo and behold, several items on the list have come to fruition. There is now an ePrize blog as well as the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds on both the Portfolio page as well as the News page. Both of those pages should have calls to the RSS feed in the <head> of the page but it's a start!

Three down and five more to go, folks. Still no closer to being standards compliant (528 lines for that home page? Please! Could be something to do with this... <meta name="generator" content="Adobe GoLive" />). Keep it up!

Adios Caffeine

2007-08-24T17:42:00.001-04:00

Caffeine™ has gone the way of SweepsXpress, it seems. The team was dissolved this week. Curious to know what the real reason for this was (not enough support/marketing?) versus the official spin.

Personally, I don't think that it was given enough of a chance. It's only been alive for a few months. Again, had they spun it out as a separate business arm and not associated it with ePrize at all but treated it like a different business (rather than cheapening the ePrize brand), it probably would have had legs. Here's hoping that everyone on the team (that deserved it) lands on their feet.

Couple Updates

2007-08-02T13:02:00.001-04:00

Seems like since <ding dong> the wicked witch has passed that things may have actually gotten better over at "The Prize." At least, the grapevine has quieted down quite a bit over the last few months (heightened restrictions on outside communication?).

Half the people I talk to say that things have gotten better (the established employees) while the rest say that things suck (people hired in during the last month). And, the glow seems to have gone out of the MePrize blog.

So, like all good "internet journalists" (an oxymoron), I rely on rumor and conjecture. One thing that looks somewhat suspect is the latest promotion from NWA.com. Built with .NET and not bearing the "nwa.eprize.net" URL, it looks like ePrize isn't the AOR with Northwest any longer. Even sadder, the flow and presentation of this NWA Dream Trip promotion is terrible. They fall into the same traps that I used to rail against; a horrible losing experience and having to fill in my user information when NWA should already have that info on file.

Meanwhile, looks like Jackie Trepanier is looking good in this blog (with an overly large header image -- the blog, not Jackie).

Pay Only For Performace

2007-05-15T13:43:00.000-04:00

QA, where are you?

ePrize Jeopardy

2007-04-03T17:19:00.000-04:00

I swept the board. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Play ePrize Jeopardy. Note that the host is annoying as heck, but what do you expect with that name?

Down on the Cube Farm

2007-03-22T12:01:00.000-04:00

EPrize CEO builds culture of creativity

I'm not quite sure of what to say about the article in today's Detroit News written by and starring ePrize CEO Josh Linkner. Of course it's self-congratulatory but it seems a bit self-obsessive as well.

Personally, there were times that I would have liked to have had a ho-down on a cube farm rather than sitting at a card table.

Intense or Just Tense?

2007-03-16T17:02:00.000-04:00

I'm currently working with a former ePrizer and, strange to say, it's only been at this new place that I've ever seen her smile. The ability to smile is one of those things that one sacrifices in such an intense workplace. I think that all spouses, significant others, friends, and family members of exPrizers would say that they're much happier people now than they were then.

It's odd. There are dozens of people that I used to spend hours on end with every darned day of the week that I've managed to lose all contact with. They're either too darned busy or too darned pissed off to maintain any kind of links with me or any other exPrizers. The pace is just too fast and furious to worry about things like absent friends. Out of sight and out of mind. Worse, exPrizers are often demonized after their departure. All things wrong becomes attributed to them and their names are cursed with abandon. Upper Management doesn't do much to help stem this situation. Rather, they pile on and have been known to out and out lie about departed souls. "We talked to them several times..." "They were on a sixty day improvement plan..." "They just weren't 'A' players..." and other rote excuses come too easily when pressed about the departed.

If you're not spoken ill of, you're not spoken of at all. Letting anyone know that an ePrizer has "crossed over" is poo-pooed if not outright verboten. Sending out an email to wish people well and provide new contact information is the exception and not the rule. When one manager sent out a note to say his farewell to a team member and bid him good luck for the whole company to read he was later called on the carpet.

Thinking back on how intense everything was and how tense everyone was at ePrize it doesn't surprise me that we get some amazingly hot-headed comments from current employees here. But, more importantly, this has made me consider what I was like during my tenure at ePrize and I've come to the conclusion that I probably wasn't as nice as I could have been. I knew what was best for my department and for the company -- based on the information I was given. That said, I pursued things doggedly and waxed dogmatically. This didn't always lead to me coming across as the most perfect ray of sunshine. If I stepped on you along the way, I'm probably sorry but I'd have to evaluate that on a case-by-case basis. Just know that outside of ePrize, I and all of the other exPrizers that I've had the pleasure of knowing, are much more prone to smile and be polite than we used to be.

SweepsXpress Gets Press

2007-03-09T17:12:00.000-05:00

You're Like a Toothpick in the Cake.

2007-03-09T09:21:00.000-05:00

ePrize Blog - Ideally, this could be Josh Linkner's baby where he could post any articles he's written, talk about his speaking engagements, and generally inform folks of what he and ePrize have been up to. A great PR tool and, perhaps, it might bump blogs like this one out of the ranks of search engines.
News Page as RSS - Create a back end system to allow the ePrize PR maven to cut, paste, and format articles that would feed into the ePrize news page as XML to be parsed out as XHTML. Allow users to sign up for this as an RSS feed or as an email update (a la Feedburner). This would eliminate production time as well as increase SEO while also showing that ePrize can handle current technology.
Promotions Page as RSS - Likewise, maintaining the list of current promotions via a tool that could tag promotions as the handful of categories (Automotive, CPG, Media, etc), sort them and utilize the promotion end date to pull any "dead" promotions could make this an automatic process rather than a manual drudgery. Likewise, if these could feed out as an RSS feed where users would be notified of new promotions would be ideal. Eliminate manual processes and increase visibility, sounds pretty good to me.
Skin 404 Page - As I was surfing I hit a 404 page on Eprize.com. It was very ugly. This doesn't have to be the case.
ICO across the board - The <link REL="SHORTCUT ICON" href="images/e_box.ico"> tag should be on every page, not just the home page.
Become Standards Compliant - The ePrize.com site is a mess of Flash and Table-based HTML. It's time to actually make this site as advanced as the compliant coding ePrize used to use on all of its promotions. This will increase flexibility, SEO, and make it look like the company actually can use web technology as it should.
Fire Copywriter - Get rid of whoever wrote up the job descriptions on the Careers page. "You're like a toothpick in the cake" is some of the worst copy I've ever read. It's up there with "You're the sizzle on the steak." These Cole Porter wannabe lines are the cream in my coffee.
Use Meta Tags on Promotions - I sent this one to a software engineer over a year ago and it doesn't look like it took hold. There's nothing more annoying than Googling "ePrize" to come across scads of expired promotion pages. Proper use of META tags would help keep promotions out of the search engines. Of course, there are some major promotions that would have done well with proper SEO and meta information (Palm, Pampers, etc) but those "one and done" promotions don't really need to live in perpetuity, do they?

Found on MySpace

2007-02-28T15:51:00.000-05:00

Sorry, just had to share this ad I found on my MySpace page today -- I thought for sure that ePrize had taken out banner ads on there.

Word from the Zoo

2007-02-03T18:25:00.000-05:00

The word from the Detroit Zoo is that the latest departure from the ePrize fold is COO, Mickey Mouse fan, and leagal eagle Robb Lippitt. Was it a coup for the COO or a more-friendly departure than when Keith Simmons flew the coop? The verdict is still out. It's a sure bet, though, that Lippitt leaves fat with cash for greener (not greener, redder, and purpler) pastures.

Details are a bit sketchy on the new COO waiting in the wings. Former Microsoft exec and not much else is known at the moment. It's only said that he's one hell of a singer and can do Sudoku puzzles with lightning-speed.

F'd Companies by Philip J. Kaplan

2007-01-27T22:35:00.000-05:00

Despite having lived through the "Dot Bomb" years of 1999-2002, I'm still fascinated by the overindulgence and rampant bad ideas that venture capitalists poured their dollars into before the bottom fell out of the market.

Better known as "Pud", Philip J. Kaplan was the brains behind FuckedCompany.com. This website was a "must read" as it chronicled the abuses of employees and general wrong-headedness of countless start-ups. Sorted and collected in F'd Companies, this 2002 book gives a few paragraphs to hundreds of dot com companies that burned bright, aimed for an IPO, and imploded taking millions with them when "the bubble burst."

Filled with far too many masturbation and auto-fellation jokes, CAPITALIZED RANTS, and cross-references, this thin tome still manages to provide some valuable insight and successfully captures an era of American capitalism. It's amusing to read about the original myspace.com (a file storage location) and see the ideas that just won't stay dead (Yahoo Answers is the current incarnation of a zombie-like internet idea). A good afternoon read, F'd Companies is lesson for all still working on the web.

Staffing Services - Are They Worth It?

2007-01-22T21:23:00.000-05:00

I’ve got resumes on file at all the staffing services (aka Freelance Houses) I could find after I parted company with my last company. Overall, they didn’t do me a lick of good. Has anyone else had good experience with them?

I got a lot of talk, some smoke and a few mirrors. I took some tests and proved my mettle but nothing ever came of it. The same thing happened the last time I was between jobs (or about to be between jobs), which leads me to believe that they’re just not for me.

BTW, I'm not in the market. This is an older post that I hoped would spark some commentary but it seems like the blogosphere is dead lately. Almost makes me miss 'eprizer'.

Googlicious

2007-01-22T20:59:00.000-05:00

The 25 Secret Perks of Working at Google.

Google’s coming to town (Ann Arbor, that is) in a big way. Before you apply you should know a few things. First off, they’re not the best place to work if you’re a woman. Secondly, it’s not a place to work unless you’ve got a “big name” on your college diploma. I’m waiting for the day that someone sues them for discrimination based on education. Apparently, if you’re up for a promotion or even a perk and the other person in line has a “better” education (that is, a better name on their diploma such as Stanford, Harvard, etc) then your ivy league competition is going to leave you in the dust.

Applying to Google isn’t going to do many folks too much good when they make the move to Ann Arbor, I reckon. They’re probably just going to tap into UofM, hiring college kids for slave wages with just a few open positions for managers to try and sort out the younglings. That’s my theory, anyway. Needless to say, I won’t bother sending over my resume any time soon.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

2007-01-17T21:51:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry, I just can't help it. After reading the description of "ePrize 2007 Space Odyssey" I just couldn't help but try and imagine the unveiling of this year's company theme. I picture a huge purple, red, and green monolith surrounded by upper-management dressed in ape suits, beating each other with bones. Cue Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra" and kick off the big party with lots of chocolate covered coffee beans ("Get it, Caffeine!!" cackles the marketing person who quickly earns the new nickname 'Captain Obvious').

That probably wasn't the case but it sure makes me smile to think of it.

By the way, I find it very ironic that so much time, money, and effort were poured into ePrize having a proprietary analytics tool and I see that there's such a thing as "emetrics.eprize.net" but I'm also seeing Google analytic code on the Caffeine homepage. Are the rumours of an ePrize and Google partnership true?

There are some other surprises on that page such as a lot of empty tags (<div class="bulletImage"></div>) and some strange uses of <br /> tags for vertical spacing (<div align="center"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>). Now, don't quote me, but I think that <dig align="center"> has been depreciated for a while now, though I suppose this is okay as the Caffeine site isn't done in XHTML and doesn't pretend to be W3C compliant. Just call me "Captain Code-Nazi."

Fan Mail

2007-01-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to share this note I got today:

I really hope that this bellyaching blog is written by Mike White. It would just make it so right. He made it through all of the firings in the early days of ePrize because he's the biggest kiss ass in the company's history.

White was so about conformity and towing the company line that he used to rally to have the entire SE staff fired when their supervisor stuck up for them for being round pegs in a company of square holes. He was passed over for promotions quite a few times and just didnt' get the hint. Ass kissing can only take you so far before you actually have to have talent.

The company's only gotten better since White got fired. Coincidence?

What's So Wrong With Peace, Love, Understanding & Bagels?

2007-01-10T18:50:00.000-05:00

ePrize never was one of those "bubble companies" like those we used to laugh and dream about being at when reading FuckedCompany.com. There were no on-site masseuses, champaign wishes, or cavier dreams. The biggest perks we got were some snacks and five-cent soda. When things got tight when Rare-Medium pulled out funding the snacks went away but we always kept the cheap soda. The one thing we didn't have was bagels.

One of the project managers was determined that giving employees bagels on a regular basis would be a tremendous morale booster -- not that he ever brought (m)any in on his own. My boss scoffed, if not openly mocked, this notion. Even years after this PM departed you could still hear my boss chuckling to himself, "Bagels... Ha... what a crazy idea... Nice..."

The funny thing is, I was talking to a former coworker of mine who has come to work for a company that does a regular weekly bagel day. Without prompting he waxed romantically about those perk those little, round, dense, chewy, doughy rings of goodness. I guess sometimes those little things do matter. Food for thought.

Caffeine Is Nearly Here

2007-01-08T09:48:00.000-05:00

The all new SweepsXpress is nearly here. Now called Caffeine", the idea-that-never-dies behind this new branch of ePrize is the creation of DIY (do it yourself) sweeepstakes that tie into the pooled... well, here; I'll let Shaun McCormack and Christopher Heine explain back from their March 8th, 2001 article in the Detroit News titled "ELotto Program Dangles $1 Million Carrot":

Marketers can showcase tickets on their home pages, in banner ads, in pop-up boxes, through e-mail messages or on e-commerce pages.

SweepsXpress lets marketers launch a fully licensed and legal sweepstakes promotion on their site in 24 hours.

"This normally takes 30 to 60 days," Linkner said.

SweepsXpress is a prepackaged Internet promotion designed by ePrize. Marketers need $950 to launch a sweepstakes as well as one line of HTML code in order to integrate it with their site, Linkner said. The cost includes technology, sweepstakes licensing and prizes.

With SweepsXpress, several marketers take part in the same promotion and can share the cost of one expensive prize. Sweepstakes entrants can come from any Web site, but there is only one winner.

"Odds of winning are spread across multiple sites, so it reduces the cost to marketers," Linkner said.

SweepsXpress promotions run for 90 days and attract consumers using a three-year lease of a Porsche Boxster, a cruise for two to Hawaii, a Sea Doo GTI personal watercraft or a year of mortgage payments up to $1,500 per month.

"We feel the best way for marketers to break through the clutter is to offer big, sexy, exotic prizes," Linkner said.

The key difference appears to be that Caffeine will run on Flash rather than HTML. I wouldn't be surprised if the good brains of Terry May are behind the architecture there as he's frighteningly smart. Going through one of these promotions for Fathead.com, I would only advise that the page loadtimes even on a T1 are pretty darn slow. Hopefully that gets addressed before the official launch.

Though Caffeine has been in "Development Hell" for ages, it looks like key players are pulling it out of the Stygian depths for an immenent and successful launch. Congrats!

Amusing Comic

2007-01-06T18:22:00.000-05:00

Thanks "Year of the Chump"! BTW, I'm curious to hear what the theme of 2007 is! I hear that the holiday party is coming up. It's a little after the Holidays, isn't it? Or is this a pre-Tu B'Shevat party?

The ePrize Video

2007-01-05T23:08:00.000-05:00

Wow. I can't recognize 95% of the folks in this video. The hiring boom continues. Are all of the folks featured here still working at ePrize? Glad that Matt and Jeremy are on the poster frame. :)

"Maybe you should seek therapy"

2006-12-31T10:40:00.000-05:00

Move on with your life. I just don't understand why you are so obsessed with the place...

What some don't seem to understand is that this blog is my therapy. One may choose to participate in it or not.

Undoubtedly, those who feel that I'm unduly "obsessed" with this place so long after my departure have never been betrayed by someone they love. To put it metaphorically, think of it as coming home to your loving wife of many years to find her in bed with someone else. She professes that she's never truly loved you and that the life you've been leading is a lie.

After an experience like that one may find oneself dwelling on the past and trying to sort out truth from fiction. I find there are times when I knew that there was deception afoot but, as the song says, "I'd rather go on hearing your lies than to go on living without you." But other times I get angry about the betrayal. I think I have a right.

The online therapy will continue, no doubt, thought it is lessening. As news develops and certain dirty tricksters still play out, though, I plan to post about it.

One notes that the holidays are a time of reflection and redoubling of effort. Happy New Year, everyone.

We Save Lives Every Day...

2006-12-28T14:37:00.000-05:00

When I was working hundred hour weeks and weekends I felt inspired. I felt like I was doing something important.

I didn't know any better.

Branching out into the real world of advertising agencies it's funny to me how much sweepstakes, games, loyalty programes, et. al. are treated out here. They're an afterthought. They're a good way to get some traffic due to the "sweeps whores" of MyInstantWin but those oh-so-valuable names and addresses that are collected are viewed as being completely unviable. Yes, even those from people who "opt-in" to promotions, electing to be marketed to. We get the data... and then we don't do anything with it. They are simply "Unqualified Leads" and tossed out with the refuse.

So, while I felt like I was answering a higher calling by giving my blood, sweat, and literal tears to Online Promotions, I wasn't doing anything earth-shattering or that needed to be treated like brain surgery. Just thinking about this on my week off from work and thinking about how it was of dire importance that I needed to work on Christmas last year when I was still at "The Prize". Ahhhh, sweet memories.

Who shot J.R.?

2006-12-23T16:45:00.000-05:00

Been hearing some strange rumors about the old homestead lately. Talks about hygene at meetings aimed at stinky IDs? And then I read this today: http://frogboy3.livejournal.com/.

The author discusses his aggressive recruitment and, subsequently, that ePrize went incommunicado. He turned down a job in the interim only to get mixed messages about being hired versus there not being a Dallas production office entirely. Add to this the HR director at ePrize resigning and you've got a very troubled lad and a very perplexing situation.

HR director leaving? No Dallas office? What's happening over there? It's funny these days as I interview people and mention my background I get a lot of unsolicited criticism and concern about the old red, purple and green. Looks like I'm not the only one not getting any phone calls, letters, or emails returned when trying to get in touch with folks over at 404 East 10 Mile... unless the people I'm trying to contact have been fired. 'Tis the season!

Addendum: Word on the "ex-Prize grapevine" has a key Dallas player being benched recently. Seems that the extra-marital behavior of "Mister Odd" finally caught up with him.

Resolving Workplace Conflict: An Exercise

2006-12-23T13:51:00.000-05:00

Got a great e-mail the other day from a former ePrizer who saved this document:

We are currently in a state of flux here at ePrize. The schism of the DT role into Technologists and HTML specialists has been a source for confusion, consternation, and concern.

The following is an example of dissent among the ranks. Please read through this carefully:

Is this your fabulous writing? “Functionality--Viral Error -- I am unable to refer friends, apparently. Being given a butt ugly page that has two headlines and two sets of body copy that says I'm missing either my friends name or friends email. That text is VERY awkward as it should be either "Friend's name / friend's email" if they've referred one friend or "Friends' name / friends' email" if they've screwed up more than one. We don't have the ability to check this so I would recommend rephrasing those headlines.”

Yes, that's mine. The Butt Ugly gave me away, I imagine.

I'm going to type this and not say it out loud for your benefit: Don't ever feed stuff like that to the PMs. Ever.

LOL! What part was objectionable? The functionality assessment or my concern about apostophes?

I hate to break it to you, but I'm not laughing about it. I'm sick of your charade. There's a fine line between constructive criticism and attacking someone's work. And you continually cross it and aren't taken to task for it. Don't ever do it again.

Woah, woah, woah. What's the criticism? I'm so not seeing what the problem was. No charade intended -- please explain your complaint to me as if I were completely in the dark -- because I am.

Well, I'll use the Sony promotion and this as my examples. The words you use are completely uncalled for. "butt ugly", "WTF," etc. You need to watch how you say thing, because they are easily misinterpreted and it's going to take you quite awhile to live down the Sony e-mail.

If you're going to harp on older mistakes that I felt have been rectified, we'll never get anywhere. Is there such a thing as Tabula Rasa to you? That "butt ugly" comment was aimed at the HS, not the Technologist.
As we both know, the HS is the person in charge of the "prettiness" of a promotion -- I am 99% sure that this page was not complete -- nor was the promotion -- when handed to me for review. That was a way to call big attention to it for the HS who worked on it next to get on it pronto. Not a personal attack on you. Or a professional attack on your work.

Whoever said everything was an attack on me?

You're acting that way. The "charade" statement. When I write to my team, I use very brusque language. I was unaware that the "butt ugly" thing would be assigned to you -- you need only worry about the functionality, I would think.

It's assigned as a technologist task in the breakdown.

And I'm responsible for that how? Again, sorry if I offended -- that comment was not intended for you but for whichever HS was assigned those changes -- even if it were me.

I'm sure that the PM assigned it to you due to the functionality issues, not breaking it into parts as it should have been. I'll be sure to phrase any functionality problems in a nicer tone.

Questions:

What is the nature of the conflict?
Has this conflict been resolved?
How could this conflict have been avoided?

There's no doubt in my mind that the "conversation" documented here is real. I'm just not sure that the questions that followed it are. It was presented to me as if it were a worksheet of the conversation with three follow-up questions. My comments are the ones here in italics. The rest came from the word doc I was sent. Sorry, tough to communicate this via the limited formatting.

Incommunicado

2006-12-06T22:36:00.000-05:00

Something to remember if you ever go from being an ePrizer to an exPrizer -- your email will be filtered into your former coworkers' SPAM folder in Outlook, so good luck getting a message to anyone there.

While this is probably a precaution against people dropping inappropriate emails on anyone, it's quite a bite when you're writing to anyone in HR trying to get information on your benefits or any other loose ends that weren't tied up before your departure.

It's not you -- it's the filter. Just let your fingers do the walking.

Behind Closed Doors

2006-12-06T21:38:00.000-05:00

I'm having a bit of a crisis of faith... My current employer recently hired one of my former ePrize colleagues. He's finally in a position that he wanted to be in at ePrize for years but never managed to get into.

I worked with this person for years. When he came in, he pretty much formed an entire department by himself. After that, he was put under someone from a completely different department with the typical excuse that he was a good "worker" but not a "leader". Despite this major slight, he kept on. After a while, he wanted to move to project management (why I'll never know).

At this time I was having one of those meetings I've written about before; a lunch with the leadership team. Upon hearing that this guy wanted to make a move from his department to project management one of the big wigs said (with surprising force), "He will NEVER be a project manager here." I never found out the reason for this reaction or prohibition.

Rather than being a PM, he was moved into another fledgeling department. "Either he makes it there or we let him go," came the word. Talk about setting someone up to fail! But, he didn't fail. Instead, he came in and rocked the house.

At another manager's lunch his new boss was beside himself, "I don't know what to do! He's been in my department for six months and he's already far more advanced than [the guy that had been there for over a year]!" As if tha was a problem? To him it was. Better to have two semi-compitent workers than a superstar and a guy with a "good heart" but not much of a head on his shoulders. The superstar might make him feel bad.

That was where it stood when I left there. And now he's at my new place of business, hired in as a PM. So, do I tell him why he was never given this chance before? Or do I just bite my tongue and keep the backstabbing and backroom politics to myself? Perhaps if I knew why there was such a negative reaction to the thought of him being a PM... It's not like it was such a position of prestige. After all, that was the place for cousins and babysitters of The Purple Gang for a while; and the perfect place to put someone if you want them to fail.

Time will tell if I hold my tongue or not, I suppose.

Just Because You're Paranoid...

2006-12-01T19:44:00.000-05:00

A recent federal ruling changes and clarifies requirements for companies to produce their e-mails (and other electronic data). According to an Associated Press story by Chrisopher S. Rugaber, "The new rules, which took effect Friday, require U.S. companies to keep better track of their employees' e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents in the event the companies are sued."

In this way, ePrize has really stayed ahead of the curve.

Of course, your Jabber conversations are open for reading, but how about your other IM programs? Yes, those too. Even when you're at home -- if you're connected to the VPN. Ask-Leo.com reports: "If your company has you establish a VPN or Virtual Private Network connection to the corporate network in order to access your email, while you have that VPN connection established then it's quite possible that your IM conversation is hitting the corporate servers, and possibly being logged."

The site lists some good rules of thumb:

Use different IM accounts for your personal and business conversations. Keep the conversations to their appropriate topics - business or personal - and use only one at work, and the other at home. Don't mix.
In any case, but especially on your business account, don't say anything you wouldn't want your boss to read. Or his boss. Or the entire IT department.
Connect to your company's equipment from home only when you actually need it.

Keep it real.

Everybody takes a beating sometime.

2006-10-29T21:14:00.000-05:00

This is one of my favorite quotes from GOODFELLAS:

You might think you know who we are, but we know who you are.

...And Sometimes The Project Manages You

2006-10-27T22:15:00.000-04:00

Doing something "differently" doesn't always translate to "better." However, it's remarkable to see how differently project management is done at other companies and where the boundaries of that position lay from one place to another.

Project Management at ePrize is a pretty tough yolk to bear. Among other responsibilities, PMs interact with clients, modify wireframes, write copy, deal with production resources (also known as SEs, IDs, MMSs, QA, etc -- some of whom can act like bratty children), oh, and manage projects.

A byproduct of this is the boilerplate / cookie-cutter nature of wireframes and copy decks. This used to frustrate me to no end, reviewing a promotion that should be strongly branded only to find that same tired old "We're Sorry! You forgot to enter the following fields:" language. It was only when dealing with clients or third party vendors that employed writers on projects that would strip out or modify the boilerplate enough to make the text relavant to the item being promoted.

Meanwhile, some of our clients would actualy pay attention to the site map that came along with their wireframes. Pity those poor fools. Sitemaps were an afterthought at best and rarely reflected the actual flow of pages in a promotion. In other companies, these sitemaps and wireframes might have gotten a little bit of attention from an internet architect.

Again, that's not to say that other companies that use dedicated writers and internet architects are necessarily better but it's just interesting to see how many roles the poor PMs at ePrize play. Couple this with the fact that these PMs are often straight out of college and given a terrible wage -- usually promotion from Associate PM to full PM doesn't include an increase in pay, only in title -- and it really becomes something else.

We Care A Lot

2006-10-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

With all of the predictions given to the media of humungous growth of the company, it's surprising (if not altogether puzzling) that ePrize would move their headquarters into a building that had such limited parking. Even with re-striping the main lot, the parking situation was ideal for the lean, mean company of early 2005 but abysmal for the behemoth of 2006.

Even in the summer of 2005 the situation was tight. I was recommended to Upper Management (I refuse to say "Leadership") that they park in the side lot over on 10 Mile and walk the extra few yards in order to show that they were giving the "primo" spots to the regular working stiffs. Wow, what solidarity! What example!

Eventually it was decided that off-site parking was needed. Inconvenient? You betcha. And as these winter months engulf us, I can remember the cold biting into me as I would stand waiting for the bus that would take me over to the Detroit Zoo (with the other animals) at the end of the day. Through the Michigan darkness I could still make out the empty parking spaces all around me in the main lot. Despite getting in later and leaving earlier than we poor saps who took the bus, that whole thing about Upper Management volunteering for slight inconvenience / self-sacrifice went out the window once the bus to the off-site lot started running. Wow, what solidarity! What example!

Not only did they park in the main lot, but — on those days that we might get out on time (to go home and work that night) — we got to take in the sight of a certain BMW conspicuously occupying a handicap spot as we stood in the cold and rain. This is the same spot that my pregnant coworkers were denied use of since they weren't "officially handicapped."

What's In A Name?

2006-10-24T16:43:00.000-04:00

A rose by any other name still smells as sweet, correct? While reminiscing with some fellow exprizers today, we got to talking about the poor Interface Developer group. Those guys went through quite a identity crisis over the years.

When I first started at ePrize, the group of four or five guys were just getting used to being called "Interface Developers". Some people were against this title change as it sounded too much like "In Your Face." Um, "Get A Grip."

Apparently, it was quite a struggle to come up with "Interface Developers." This was the final entry in an endless list of names.

Before they were "IDs", they were "HSs" -- Doesn't roll of the tongue, does it? That stood for "HTML Specialists". As far as I'm concerned, they could have just as easily had been called "Code monkeys" and had more respect. They were branded with that name in order to "keep them in their place." Before they were "HTML Specialists", they were more jacks of more trades. By "calling them out their name," they were being told to not do the things that they were capable of doing and leave this up to "the experts."

This controversial moniker replaced their original job title: Design Technologists. That was a pretty fair name. In their original role, the DTs (not to be confused with "delirium tremens") were partially responsible for look-and-feel and also for creating the back-end of promotions (created via a relatively simple fill-in-the-blanks interface).

Why didn't they go back to "DT" after their period of punishment as "HS" was over? You've got me. To make things even more confusing, they eventually split into "IDs" and "MMSs" -- MultiMedia Specialists. I suppose that "Flash monkeys" would have sounded too harsh.

One Big Happy Family

2006-10-22T15:27:00.000-04:00

I recieved another email today with this attached to it. It's a very rough sketch detailing some of the relationships behind the scenes at ePrize. I won't swear to either it's validity or accuracy but it does explain a few "how did he get hired?" and "why is she still working here?" scenarios. Feel free to post any corrections or clarifications.

Muddah, Faddah kindly disregard this letter.

2006-10-22T09:16:00.000-04:00

Well, gosh, don't I have egg on my face? Here I was ragging on how ePrize is but I found out that it's all peaches and herb now. Via email I recieved a missive in which I was informed that ePrize is now a worker's Utopia.

Enough employees (and all qualified) for the workload, increased morale, locked down processes, rewarding folks for a job well done. It's practically the land of milk and honey!

Gosh, I'm sorry if I brought anyone down. I don't want to harsh your cool, man. I didn't realize that there had been such a radical shift in the last few weeks. Bravo! Enjoy the halcyon days!

Ours Is Not To Reason Why

2006-10-21T13:43:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I often wonder why exactly I was dismissed from ePrize. The reason I was given during the dismissal process was, um, less than illuminating.

When I think about it, I often come back to a few things that may have contributed:

My Wall Quote: See last post.
My (Percieved) Antisemitism: One of my friends still insists that I was targetted as being a bad egg when I was joking around with the company's resident comedian, comparing Jedis with Jewish people due to the midichlorian versus bloodline connection. It's true that, for a comedian, this guy had no sense of humor. So maybe my joke offended. (No one ever bothered to find out my own background on this...)
My Private IMs: It was only a matter of hours after I confided in one of my oldest coworker pals that my recently-appointed supervisor was being more of a hindrance than a help to our department due to his substandard coding skills that I was shown the door. Could all those rumors about our Jabber convesersations being an open book to anyone who care to read them be true?
My Oldest Coworker Pal: Maybe I had misjudged just how good a friend this guy was. After all, he was the hatchet man and had been the messenger when it came to my autumnal demotion.
My Seeking of Greener Pastures: As Jabber was an open book, so were our emails. Any sending of resumes probably set off some klaxons. Likewise, my appearance on Monster and Career Builder undoubtedly popped up on the radar. It was akin to sin to even think of playing the field. As one guy who had his job offer rescinded was told after he asked for a day to think over the two offers on his plate, "ePrize doesn't play second fiddle to anyone."
My Concern For Others: I was always the guy who asked "uncomfortable" questions at meetings in order to make sure that all of our bases were covered. I brought up risks and ran possible worst case scenarios just to ensure that we might avoid pitfalls. Thus, I was occasionally seen as not being a team player. This was most noticable when I queried about a person's stock options if they ever became an ex-employee. I asked this with a problem ex-employee who demanded an optional bonus after they were dismissed in mind. How ironic, then, that I would be the ex-employee...
My "Fear of Change": I was the fly in the ointment; the monkey in the wrench. I was a friggin' boy scout at work -- loyal, trustworthy and true -- but I was constantly bumping heads with my immediate supervisor who saw me as some kind of naysayer. During my time there he promoted someone over me (who later crashed and burned), and hired two potential replacements (both who crashed and burned -- one of them before he was moved into my position, one after). Add to that my caution when it came to adopting asinine technology and I was on the minus side of the spreadsheet.
My Suggested Goal For 2006: Each year we're asked to provide a goal for the company's "top eleven" list. For 2006, after not having had a raise in 18 months and knowing how little my team members and I were making, I requested that a survey be made of all local agencies and that our pay rate be adjusted according to industry standard.

Okay, that's it. Usually when it comes to performance there are things that come up on a review or that you get sat down and talked to privately about. I didn't have these discussions -- no clear cut "we have a problem with these two or three things" lists. I had one panicked talk after I asked about the stock options for ex-employee thing but that was before I started actively seeking new work. If anything, that conversation might have been a contributor to my need for a new employer (that and the "No Limits" campaign).

My dismissal came out of left field. With every employee that I had to let go, there were several discussions and, often, these were well-documented. When I had a problem with people, I didn't want any grey areas. I listed out examples of the behaviors I needed modified and provided examples of less-than-stellar performance. I also made sure to have weekly check-ins with folks. None of that happened with me.

In other words, it was an exceptional experience -- in many senses. At least I got a huge severance package for my many years of loyal service, right? Think again. I got no more than if I had been working there five weeks. And Unemployment? Yeah, they tried to fight it. Luckily, the State found in my favor -- perhaps for that aforementioned lack of any kind of paperwork or warning.

I was surprised that there wasn't a paper trail a mile long that I wasn't privy to, however, since I had been instructed to keep a diary of any "problem employees." If that diary happened to be, um, generated after the fact... them's the breaks.

Quote Unquote

2006-10-21T11:20:00.000-04:00

When you read articles about ePrize you often come across passages describing the "inspirational quotes" that line the walls of the Pleasant Ridge location. From George S. Patton to Seth Godin to Abraham Lincoln with even ePrize luminaries like chief investor (and Rock Financial magnate) Dan Gilbert; the walls resemble a John Bartlett fever dream.

When you're a cog, you expect to get moved around a lot. The wheel keeps on turning so you keep on moving desks -- usually to a smaller and smaller location. Luckily, I never had to sit at a folding table, I managed to snag a desk each time in my dozen or so moves.

With my last move I had my workspace reduced be half. The, uh, "good part" of this is that I got to sit in a newly renovated portion of the factory. That meant all new quotes to stare at every day.

Out of breath from my trips up and down the back stairs to move my stuff -- half to my tiny desk, half out to my car -- I was just starting to unpack when the CEO wandered by and asked me something. It took me a while to figure out what he actually said but I thought he asked, "Any quotes today?"

"Yeah," I said, thinking of trying to pack up all of my things and fit them onto my new desk, "Here's my quote: 'It's like packing ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag.'"

What he had asked was my opinion on the quotes on the wall -- as if I had had time to read them. I often wonder if this was one of the moments that contributed to me being dismissed a few weeks later.

In retrospect, the quotes weren't so bad as having those darned "Hang in there" kittens or those crappy Zig Ziglar-inspired (and Gary Busey-quoted) "TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More" / "FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real" posters.

I didn't know just how self-satisfied Upper Managment was with these quotes until I heard that there was actually talk of trying to get some of them into Bartlett's next edition.

Wherefore Art Thou, QA?

2006-10-18T15:29:00.000-04:00

A former ePrizer sent me a link to a current Instant Win promotion for Harrahs. Wow. I'm curious what happened in the short amount of time since I'd been at ePrize when everything on the front end looked tight. In my earlier posting about ePrize reverting to "old school" table-based HTML. At least with that the front end looked okay, even if it wasn't optimal from a back end perspective.

This Harrahs promotion, though, whew! It stinks on ice. Take a look at the homepage.

Not only is there no font face specified in the CSS (desipite tons of span tags that refer to an undefined "textTimes13" class) but there are also these funky line breaks all over the place. Taking my font down from its "natural" setting on Firefox makes the text line up correctly but there are hard-coded <br /> tags all over the place. That's just the first page. Let's not even talk about the placeholder "Back" link on the error page that is referred to as a "Back Button" despite it not being a button. And then there are the monstrosities disguised as pop up windows for the FAQ and Rules pages...

I can only say that neither the Interface Developers (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) nor Quality Assurance caught this and raised a fuss. I remember hearing horror stories of how stringent QA could be and I just don't see the folks of old allowing such slop to get through to the public.

Beware the Ides of March

2006-10-17T20:25:00.001-04:00

I wasn't invited to this reindeer game so forgive me if I get the details slightly incorrect.

One of the things that I found most distasteful at ePrize wasn't (insert roster of gripes here) but a little something I found out about much after the fact. Apparently during March Madness, there wasn't simply one bracket going around the office but two. One was the typical playoff flowchart of college basketball teams while the other was some kind of sexist configuration of "the hottest chick at ePrize."

Boys will be boys but you'd think that this idea would be poo-pooed if not outright squashed by anyone in Upper Management that got wind of it. You'd think that, but the truth was that at least one of them endorsed the idea via his participation. Knowing that he was being a very naughty boy for this behavior, he was able to deny culpability by engaging members of the IT department to submit his brackets for him. No sense in leaving a paper trail!

As I write about this, I feel my stomach turn yet again. Objectificaiton, humiliation, sexism, and harassment. These are the words that roll through my mind in time with my gut. I'm done. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Iron Sulfide

2006-10-16T13:01:00.000-04:00

Do I think you're a fool if you still work at ePrize? No, not at all. This Blog is not meant to insult the finer folks trapped in the purple, red, and green prison in Pleasant Ridge. That'd be like making fun of the cons in Folsom Prison.

Sometimes you just need to shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Likewise, sometimes you just need to take a job that's going to pay you lower-than-industry-standard wages to perform an insane amount of work at a breakneck pace. Added benefits include giving up your tedious family and doffing your self worth.

ePrize is a terrific job for kids right out of college. They get a taste of the corporate world (disguised as a "we're just a big happy family" mom & pop shoppe) and get an addition to their nascent resume. They also get some war stories to tell around beers at the local brewpub and maybe enough scratch to get an apartment.

The biggest challenge that these young pups will face is finding the time to update that resume. Often job hunting can be a job in itself.

So, no, I don't think that you're a fool for sticking around. I realize you're busy. I only think that you might deluding yourself if you feel that you've got a career on your hands. It takes a very specific cut of person to fit into the tribe of "lifers" there. Even those folks can make the mistake of resting on their laurels for a moment and find themselves kicked to the curb without ceremony -- or a decent severance package.

Content To Be A Jerk

2006-10-14T22:37:00.000-04:00

"...[W]hy are you obsessed with bashing the company? Was it because your attitude sucked while you were here and you [got] fired for it?"

I used to be a Kool-Aid addict. Not only did I drink it, but I'd put a few drops behind my ear each morning. I even sold it. I parroted the Company Line like it was gospel. Like Paul of Tarsus after his experience on the road to Damascus, I was a zealot.

"We only hire A players..."
"This isn't a nine to five job..."
"We value the ideas of every employee..."
"Someday a company's going to come along and put us out of business..."
"We want to get the right people on the bus..."

I preached the Company Line to employees old, new, and potential. I was the calm, little center of the world. The danger of such an ethusiastic Kool-Aid addict? I was so fervid in my dedication that I was a powderkeg of loyalty. My love was like oxygen.

All it took for to set it off was betrayal. When I found out that the Company Line about "hard work deserves rewards" was a fallacy I became disillusioned. My undying allegiance soured. Alas, alas, alas.

Thank goodness for dizgruntled who opened the floodgates, demonstrating that blogging is a terrific form of therapy. Likewise, it's validating to read about the experiences of others and find that we shared so many of the same traumatic episodes.

I guess it's difficult to not come across as bearing a "victim mentality" when you've been victimized. :)

You Shall Know Our Velocity

2006-10-12T20:58:00.000-04:00

Even if you leave on good terms, don't worry. You'll soon be vilified by your former fellow employees. There were a million little things you did that were wrong, if not criminal. You may have been Employee Of The Year but you'll be remembered as being a surly prick. Scorn will be heaped upon you and you will be burned in effigy.

If you didn't leave on the best of terms, this will only be worse. Heaven forbid if you were terminated. You can count on lots of lies to be told about you: "We gave them plenty of warning and had spoken to them on numerous occasions."

That could be true. Or it could have been that it just came a time when upper management just decided, "This Friday we're going to let some people go. Let us know who you'd like to see go." I wish I was lying, but... (see comments)

Don't let this fear of being the brunt of aspersions or having your good character maligned keep you from doing what you may need to do. You can either take the abuse now or just be scapegoatted after you're nothing but a bad memory.

Idea Factory

2006-10-12T10:48:00.000-04:00

When I first started at ePrize I thought that the coolest thing going on was the "Idea Meeting" that the ID team lead each week. It was a no holds barred gathering of people who were paid to be creative as well as Sales assistants, PMs, QA guys, and Sales people. Even the secretary would show up. Other than one blowhard IT guy, the eclectic (and ever shifting) group thought outside of the box (much like the ePrize logo).

The format of the meeting was simple. Each week various Sales people would come in with a handful of clients and they'd give a bit of background on who they are and what they wanted to accomplish. From there it became a freeform riff that dipped into the arsenal of already developed tools ("How about a scratch-n-win where we had...") as well as completely off the wall (and usually brilliant) ideas that would have pushed the envelope. As the head Sales guy always said, "The bigger the idea, the bigger the budget." We were encouraged to think big.

The coolest part of that meeting was the aftermath. Here we were throwing around ideas for a client one month and building our ideas the next. I got to see some of my ideas used in national campaigns! Moreover, it was a great team building exercise as our brainstorms were fueled by the energy and creativity of one another.

I wasn't paid to be creative. That wasn't in my job description. But here I could be as creative as I wanted. I even did some sketches! And I wasn't the only one spreading my wings. I mentioned the secretary being there -- she often came up with some of the best ideas!

Sadly, this revelry didn't last for long after I got to ePrize. This meeting was taken away from the ID team and given to a newly formed department -- Strategy.

"Department" is kind of a strong word for Strategy as it was one guy running it -- the COO's cousin. The weekly idea meetings carried on briefly and then suddenly stopped. After that there was the only occasional meeting, usually for a larger client. Gone was the big group brainstorm -- we were split into groups and cast into different areas of the building. And, after a few of these, the idea meeting stopped altogether.

By the time we moved from the Farmington Hills location to the Pleasant Ridge location the Strategy team had expanded (to at least two) and only grew after that. Oddly, the most Strategy people we got, the less we heard from them. We would get a random email newsletter that pretended it was sent on a regular basis. There were also some "Lunch And Learns" (another excuse to have to stay at the office for lunch) where participants were subjected to dull power point presentations of facts and figures that were seemingly related to our business model but never quite fit.

During my last few months at ePrize I can't recall seeing, much less interacting, with anyone from this mysterious department of misfits. I don't know where the ideas came from anymore but there seemed to be a dearth of them.

We've Got The Neutron Bomb

2006-10-12T10:38:00.000-04:00

Just a word of warning to anyone that might be employed at ePrize... If your boss ever tells you that they've got a plan for you and your career path: run. Get that resume out and start pounding the pavement (I know, I know, it's hard when you're working 100 hours a week to find time to interview or even put a CV together).

"A Plan" can take shape in several ways:

It's a carrot. If you do a good job with this, we'll create a new position for you or move you to the department you want.
It's a set-up. We want to put you in a position where you're destined to fail so we can get rid of you.
It's a bluff. We want to keep you around so we'll tell you that we've had you on a career path you weren't even aware of.

Condolences

2006-10-11T23:45:00.000-04:00

Despite the chanting (see "Beginning of the End" post), it looks like ePrize is, indeed, running in place. They're at the same place on the coveted Promo 100.

Out of curiosity, did Ray Clark send any smarmy notes when this announcement was made?

Chariots of Fire

2006-10-11T22:21:00.000-04:00

In the pursuit of beating a metaphor horse while it's dead, I'm going back to the "running in place" idea.

The quote from Amanda Cooper's Entrepreneur Magazine article of November 2004 has been said ad nauseum in the hallowed halls of ePrize: "Some day, a company will come along and put us out of business, so it might as well be us."

Of course, some at ePrize are so full of themselves that they feel they are completely alone in their field; alone without competition. To that end they made up a fake company to motivate employees (as if the constant fear of firing and sweatshop mentality isn't enough).

Says CEO Josh Linkner in Leigh Buchanan's Inc magazine article of September 2006: I decided if a nemesis doesn't exist, let's create one. I made up a company called Slither. Slither is our head-to-head arch-evil enemy; its CEO is Gordon Gekko. They never have a down quarter. They have better clients and margins and employee retention than we do. They're more efficient and are growing faster.

Lame Wall Street reference aside (at least it wasn't Severus Snape), it wouldn't take a Slither to ePrize out of business -- that is, to shed the old skin of a promotions company (where "eSweeps are made Easy") where the latest innovation is a rehashed idea for the early days of the company (SweepsXpress) and branch out into new, cutting edge technologies.

In a company that touts ideas as being their most important asset, a sometimes a great notion gets tossed out on its ear in favor of sticking to the safer ground. Every time I see a commercial, promotional spot, print ad, or even supermarket standee that says "Enter for a chance to win... Text ______ to ______ and..." I think of one of the Project Managers at ePrize who tried to champion TXT/SMS/WAP as the next great frontier of interactive promotions.

He was poo-pooed for months. After he put together a terrific presentation of the presence of TXT in the U.S. (don't forget that TXT is far more popular in Europe where ePrize struggles to make a splash) and the potential of TXT in the industry... not a lot happened. There were and are a few odd promotions that tie into TXT but if there are more... I'm not seeing them.

Personally, I always felt that it was silly to outsource or utilize vendors for some of the simpler tasks that could be internalized. And, here again we could provide more services and more customized solutions to clients.

"The NEXTEL promotion generated over 2 million SMS messages generated in a 10-week period." Oddly, this fact was removed from "The ePrize Factor" page of ePrize.com

Who knows how many other ideas died on the vine or went unnoticed despite the alleged desire for feedback (see Project Gold Medal post). These are the ideas that could "put ePrize out of business." Undoubtedly, these are the kind of things that Slither can offer to its clients.

After the first press release from the fictional Slither company, there were reactions like: "Who are these guys? I checked out their website and couldn't find it.". What Linkner may not realize is that he did too good of a job selling Slither. The report I got from several employees (most of them ex-employees now) was that they started looking for Slither's website to see if they were hiring!

I'm surprised that there wasn't a fake website with a fake "employment" section in order to entrap disgruntled employees. Knowing that putting one's resume on Monster.com is a "red flag" to an employee's loyalty, the lack of this refined shiftiness shocks me.

Project Ostrich

2006-10-11T11:48:00.000-04:00

Of all the lunch meetings I had -- and these were anywhere between four and five a week -- one of the two that I actually looked forward to was the gathering of all the discipline leads. Once a month this would also include upper management. When upper management wasn't around the leads managed to hash out some differences and create processes that made work life a bit smoother. This was also the time to openly bitch and see if anyone else was having the same issues or problems.

It was theraputic and productive.

However, when upper management was in the room I was surprised that there wasn't a folding card table set up for the leads to sit at like Thanksgiving at Grandma's. "You team leads sit over at the Kids' Table."

When the grown ups were around the discussion became rather one sided. We were being told what to do, not asked. Odd things would come up, usually around the "dis-employment" of an employee.

In one meeting it was kind of halfheartedly tossed out that the company would be firing one of its PMs who "just wasn't working out."

Rather than placidly taking this comment in stride, there was a tension immediately introduced to the table. I was first to break the silence. "Wait... I thought we were moving him to another position rather than getting rid of them." (The whole "putting the right person in the right seat on 'The Bus' being a key idea to the person proposing the firing).

Another person spoke up, "Right, if we were firing him, why did I go to all the trouble to test out his skills for my department?"

A general murmer of discontent rounded the table. It was made more ironic that the person proposing this firing had just been chiding "the kids" for not being clear in their communication and here he was with a completely different message than any of us had gleaned in previous conversations -- and assignments.

Believe it or no, but we went around the table to get the general concensus of the group. "Did you think that we were firing him or moving him?" All but our intrepid upper management representative was under the (mistaken, of course) impression that we were moving this employee to another position in hopes that his skillset would mesh better and that he would be able to bloom in a new role.

This person moved to the new role and was summarily fired six months later -- no discussion that time.

These leads meetings eventually were kiboshed altogether. This happened after one lead -- who had been bucking to get into upper management -- decided to pick a fight during this meeting with the wrong person; me. He started ragging on my team and talking about how inefficient they were. Likewise, he wanted to offload some of his teams' responsibilities onto the shoulders of my team members. I wasn't having any of this. I kept asking that if job task X, Y, and Z were being done by my team, what the F would that leave his team to do?

Apparently, though this was a lively discussion, it wasn't deemed to be "productive" enough and, thus, five minutes after the end of this meeting a cancellation notice went out. We never had another leads meeting again.

Oh, and four months later this person that was bucking for an upper-management position got it. He demoted me and heaped those aforementioned tasks onto myself and my team.

Company by Max Barry

2006-10-10T21:33:00.000-04:00

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program [...] I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. -- Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) from The Matrix.

What if the creators of The Matrix had started their own company rather than designing the ultimate virtual reality? In Company, author Max Barry describes the too-typical American company, Zephyr. A holdings company with no clear purpose or source of profitability, Zephyr is a behemoth of mismanagement and corporate dogma. We witness the lunacy of Zephyr through the eyes of Jones (first names promote unnecessary fraternization), a new employee who dares to ask difficult questions such as, "What does Zephyr actually do?" The answer he gets most often is to not rock the boat.

Barry does a great job capturing the idiosyncratic quirks of all the expected archetypes, Catch-22 logic, and overused buzzwords (“You want me to de-prioritize my current reports until you advise of a status upgrade?”). In long screeds, Barry describes – among other things -- the psychology of upper-management, the self-loathing of employees, and the desire to outsource (“The truly flexible company [...] doesn't employ people at all. This is the siren song of outsourcing. The seductiveness of the signed contract. Just try out the words: no employees. Feels good, doesn't it? Let the workers suck up a little competitive pressure. Let them get a taste of the free market.”)

Highly recommended.

Not to sound like Mr. Pink...

2006-10-09T22:05:00.000-04:00

I'm a consumer whore. I admit it. I'm a sucker for drive-through service and overly processed foodgoods. But there's got to be a place where I draw the line. I'm not sure how much the baristas at Star Bucks make but I just can't bring myself to tip them more than the change from my order, especially as the ones taking my drink order are usually surly.

But I just can't bring myself to tip when I use the drive thru at Star Bucks. I'm already paying upwards of six dollars (!) for a damn cup of coffee and a muffin. And they want a tip on top of that? Worse yet, I couldn't reach the tip jar unless I was Reed Richards.

"I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I'll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job."

A Fun Game

2006-10-05T19:16:00.000-04:00

Here's a fun game. How many employees in this picture from July 26, 2006 are still employed at ePrize?

Note the Kaizen poster in the background (back, left)

RUNNING TH3 NUMB3R5

2006-10-05T18:33:00.000-04:00

I've never one for stating the obvious. Moreover, I've never been one to write a report to state the obvious. But I've done it. Oh, yes, I've done it.

Before the well-publicized hiring frenzy at ePrize it was pulling teeth to get new bodies into the Production Department. There were arguments, there were justifications, there were pleads, and there were reports.

I was told by my boss that, according to one weekly report that our comptroller provided, my department should be running at 75% efficiency. As it was, the overworked and underpaid group was running at 110% on average. That means that more than every hour of their days were billable (lunch isn't billable, remember). So, I broke out my abacus to cypher the correct number of employees to put people down to 75%. I was so proud of myself, I even figured in vacation time for the current amount of employees plus the time allotted for any new folks (though piddly it be).

I gussied it up, threw in some charts, and all that jazz and presented it formally to my boss.

Again with the punchline: "We reconsidered that number last week. We actually think that people should be working at 85%."

Okay, so even at that amount, we need more employees. "Write it out and submit it. We'll think about it."

Worldflukes

2006-10-04T23:02:00.000-04:00

Two things always stuck in my craw when it came to data integration. Certainly there's always security concerns but why would I, as a user, want to put in my information when registering for a Yahoo or NWA promotion when they already have my info? If I have a Worldperks number, that means that NWA has my name, address, et cetera. At most they should want to ask me to opt-in for more information or reminder emails if the promotion has multiple chances to win. Alas, each time a user registers for an NWA promotion, they have to enter in all of that info time and time again.

The real shame, I suppose, is that we managed to get buy in from Yahoo that a user can enter in their Yahoo ID and, if it validates, their registration form will be pre-populated. None of that re-registering malarky. The sad part is that we invested so much time and money making this happen only to apparently never do another Yahoo promotion!

And, to go back to NWA, I found a lot of broken pages when doing research for my blog entry from the other night. Apparently, I missed NWA's "BIG 2-0" promotion. But the fine folks at FlyerTalk (great info for ways to score upgrades and mileage for NWA and other Frequent Flyer programs) definitely had some problems. For more info click here.

Project Gold Medal

2006-10-04T15:33:00.000-04:00

It's funny to think that there's an intiative at ePrize to 'reduce the suckiness'. I was just thinking back to the times when upper management would occasionally ask for suggestions via email. During one of those times I was lucky enough to snag a copy of everyone's emails. I went through with a fistful of highlighters, picking out common threads and putting them in the same color.

There was one overwhelming suggestion -- Project Teams. That is, grab one PM, one SE, one IE, and maybe even one QA (a common designer would be used) and utilize these cross-discipline folks for a pre-determined set of clients. There were variations on this theme -- breaking the PM group into smaller, bite sized pieces and assigning a team of Production workers to them so they'd always know who was assigned to their projects and bruilding a rapor not only between PMs and Production but also between PMs and their clients. There had been a precident set with the Engagement Managers and clients so why not carry that mindset throughout the production cycle.

Page after page I saw this. My yellow highlighter was just about dry by the time I made it through the sixty-odd pages of ePrizer constructive criticism and outright bitching.

The funny part? While discussing the employee feedback with my boss I remarked, "Wow, I sure saw a lot of people wanting Project Teams!"

His response: "Really? I hadn't noticed that." Unfortunately, he wasn't joking around.

When something like Project Gold Medal comes about, then, it makes me wonder what's making it through the haze. When 80% of the company says basically the same thing and the message neither gets through nor gets adopted, will something like Project Gold Medal -- a "project" with the goal of company improvement -- be effective at all?

Happy Yom Kippur!

2006-10-02T10:31:00.000-04:00

I know that smart ePrizers will not be looking at this blog from work today as I'm sure that it's being monitored (like Monster, Career Builder, your jabber conversations, your email, et cetera) and I know that all folks working Production jobs are in today. Regardless, sometimes it's nice to work on Yom Kippur as there are a lot fewer requests and people to be in the way as 90% of the management team out of the office (OOTO) today. Try to enjoy it!

One step forward, two steps back, run in place.

2006-10-01T21:05:00.000-04:00

I helped to implement quite a bit of change at ePrize, including pushing us from HTML 1.0 “table based” layouts to fully standards-compliant extensible HTML (XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) driven websites. This was done via consensus building (rather than mandate setting as done by the former “leader” of the team). We proved out that our web audience was finally to a point that would support this technology and showed that adopting it would save us a considerable amount of build time while making invariable client changes far easier and faster to do. In a business where every minute counts, any kind of time-saving is appreciated.

Before I was left ePrize, it looked as if my team were on their way out. In a bold move, one of my coworkers seized power of his group by promoting the idea that the entire company would move from HTML-based promotions to Flash-based promotions. This plan included an entirely new technology to build architecture for these promotions utilizing some “bleeding edge” uses for Flash, PERL, and XML. Luckily, he and his team had just the right guy to do this; one of those almost scary computer geniuses.

The irony here is that after my departure it was deemed necessary to utilize several outsourcers in an attempt to replace me. I’m not sure how many people it finally shook out to equal one of me but I do know that these folks were unable (or unwilling) to use the XHTML+CSS. Thus, they were allowed to take two steps back and go old school with HTML tables (or they’d overcode their XHTML+CSS leaving a mess of <div> tags peppering their work).

Exampls:

Sara Lee -Tailgate at Home and Win
Copenhagen-Click, Spin, Win*
Caspian List & Data Management LTD
Unilever - Essentials of Life Instant Win
TESSCO's Match and Win Game - not in tables but the text is in graphics.

* No "Enter for a chance to", just "Win".

Meanwhile, there were a handful of Flash-based promotions and the idea of this quickly went the way of the dinosaur. There just weren’t enough developers who could handle the new technology (and they eventually migrated to other companies). Eventually, this technology was hacked apart and put to nefarious ends by making a “one stop shop” application for sweepstakes. Some of the new folks working there don’t know that this is simply a resurrection of an older, contentious idea that lived a short life and died a painful, lingering death like a cancer victim.

They’re running in place while I’m the one fearing change.

Hand on a Hot Stove

2006-10-01T19:28:00.000-04:00

If I could have snuck a peek at my personnel record from ePrize, I’m sure that everything could have been encapsulated with two simple words, “Fears Change.”

I had been at the company for years, seeing it grow from a typical “Internet Startup” to a booming ad agency. I had survived scads of firings and waves of hirings. Moreover, I had initiated countless programs, created processes, and actively participated in making the company a success. If I feared change, then I was at the wrong place. I would have been petrified by the daily growth and rapid transformation. So, where did I get the bad rep?

As far as I can glean, it all came from an exchange that occurred after I’d been at the company for about a year. There was an emerging discussion about redoing the company’s website. The site that online when I was interviewed was nearly enough to tell this company to shove off. It was a garish collection of concentric circles that looked decidedly broken in Netscape 4.x, my browser of choice in those days.

When it came time for the site’s refresh, one of the software engineers started rallying that the site should be redone in Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Meanwhile, another coworker was running Flash up the flagpole to see if anyone would salute. It became my obligation to put things in perspective for everyone.

Problems with coding DHTML technologies WILL occur as long as each browser creates its own proprietary features and technology that is not supported by other browsers. A Web page may look great in one browser and horrible in another.

For our company website – the site that our potential customers were going to peruse – we should utilize the technology that we were using for all of our current sites and not rely on technology that either needed Third Party plug-ins or that were incompatible with half of the world’s web browsers. Yes, DHTML, CSS and Flash were cool, but they were impractical for our purposes at the time.

For the next few years my semi-annual reviews all said, “Unwilling to learn new technologies.” It didn’t matter that my boss didn’t even know what DHTML was or why I didn’t want to adopt it, he only saw me not jumping feet first into a new (albeit impractical) area. From then on, I was a marked man. Whenever I would bring up a point of caution I was viewed as being some stick in the mud who was throwing up roadblocks to progress (“You may not want to put your hand on the stove burner, it’s hot.”)

The Beginning of The End

2006-10-01T13:31:00.000-04:00

When I got back from lunch there was a smoke machine by my desk. I practically tripped over the bulky wires from the makeshift sound system and had to dodge the seven stands that were draped in green butcher paper.

The office had been decorated the night before in our garish company colors; red, green, and purple. It was time for our annual roll-out of the new catch phrase. In late 2004 our space was transformed into something resembling a Chinese whorehouse with paper lanterns, dragons, streamers, and so many fortune cookies that we were snacking on them into June of the following year. That was “The Year of the Client,” the bastard child of Jack Mitchell’s Hug Your Customer and Kenneth Blanchard’s Raving Fans. In a nutshell, YOTC (or “yutz” as it was often called) gave a phrase to the “you’ll do it and you’ll like it” mentality of bending over for our clients. Late nights, weekends, whatever it took.

I didn’t have a clue as to the new theme. It probably related to our book club again. It seemed that whenever upper management read anything, they immediately bought into it. It was the “any kind of change is a good change” mentality that threw us into some pretty precarious spots, only saved by the figurative blood and literal sweat and tears of the peons that pulled us through those poor leadership choices. The rumour had been that our fall read, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat was the clarion call of outsourcing, and judging from the rampant use of freelancers (esp. Romanians), there seemed to be a grain of truth to that proposition. But where would a smoke machine fit into all of that? Unless I was to take it that this would provide the smoke and that mirrors would be brought in later when the management team showed up.

The smoke machine belched out a putrid cloud while music bellowed from the sound system. Running into our midst, like a pack of wild idiots, came our entire management team. They were all dressed in black t-shirts, black pants, sunglasses, and purple capes. Like something out of an episode of “Batman” or my darkest nightmare, they all began posing and mock fighting for what seemed like forever.

The theme to 2006 was revealed. "No Limits." It was some kind of superhero theme with valuable corporate buzzwords associated with various caricatures of employees associated with ideals such as "Creativity" and "Kaizen". WTF is "Kaizen"? Good question.

Kaizen, it turns out, comes from Six Sigma (considered by some to be a "codification of mediocrity") that is defined as: Japanese term that means continuous improvement, taken from words 'Kai' means continuous and 'zen' means improvement. Some translate 'Kai' to mean change and 'zen' to mean good, or for the better.

After revealing the various "super heroes," our fearless leader went over the company's (rather, the leadership team's) eleven top ten goals for 2006. When one of them was moving from #3 on the "Promo 100" list to #1, the COO began chanting, "We're number one, we're number one! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!" People joined in... the room became filled with droning, almost desperate, cries of this mantra. I could only think of Homer Simpson when he chants, "U.S.A!" Eyes askew, Homer personifies mindless patriotism. "In your face!"

While they put on this display, I pulled up Monster.com and began to search for new employment.

Everybody's Working On The Weekend

2006-10-01T13:05:00.000-04:00

Some Project Managers at ePrize would fight long and hard to avoid having people come in and work on weekends but, eventually, the fight would be taken out of them. Defanged, they knew that this was an inevitability -- something as certain as the sun rising tomorrow.

Yesterday was my first Saturday that I worked in all of 2006. In 2005 as an ePrize employee, I worked 35 weekends; many of these holidays including Labor Day and Christmas. I also worked countless evenings. I'm not talking an hour here or there. I'm referring to full shifts plus some. A typical workday at ePrize for me started at 8AM, paused at 6PM, started again at 7PM and continued on until 12AM. There were occasional bathroom breaks along the way.

While some workers recieved "bonuses" (I use that term with trepidation) for working a weekend, they were pittances. The most ever paid out for a full weekend of work was $1,000 US but that was the exception (an employee was told that his raise was greater than Human Resources was told due to a math error and this was the "make up" for that) and not the $200 US rule (that's roughly $12.50/hr when ePrize charges clients quite a bit more for man hours). Each week, leaders of various groups would have to come to their people and truckle to their team, "Hey guys, we've got some weekend work coming up... any volunteers?"

The secret shame of ePrize came from the fact that if those employees didn't step up to the plate the work was invariably done by the team leader who, due to their "lavish" position (some of them made far less than their employees by $20K a year in some cases) wouldn't receive a red cent. That's right... since they were "leadership," they were denied the bonuses (albeit tiny) that their teammates earned. Same work. Same hours.

All right, I'll be fair. Sometimes it wasn't the same work. After a while ePrize moved skilled laborers out of leadership positions in various Production teams and replaced them with "bumbling boobies." This meant that any weekend work they did was invariably re-done -- or at least patched into a limping semblance of better work -- by their "underlings." It's always a challenge to keep your mouth shut when you know more than your boss; having to fix your bosses mistakes at all times makes that silence even more difficult to maintain.

Seth Godin Say Relax

2006-10-01T10:20:00.000-04:00

I was reading Seth Godin's Small Is The New Big this week.

The author of several books that were highly influential to ePrize (Unleashing The IdeaVirus, Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, et cetera), Godin was a keynote speaker at the second ePrize "Summit" in Las Vegas, 2006. The whole permission maketing idea -- offering people a chance to win in order to gather handraisers (or opt-ins) is the crux of the ePrize business model.

The irony to this tale is that in Small Is The New Big, Godin write a condemnation of companies with the sweatshop mentality that ePrize exemplifies. In his "rift" titled "Relax," Godin decries companies that value long hours over time for one's family. He extolls the values of working "smarter, not harder" and how shallow those "war time" memories of all-nighters and emergency deadlines are in retrospect.

A buzz term that comes to mind is "managing expectations." There is little of that at ePrize. It's much more of a "promise the moon" mentality that keeps workers practically chained to their desk. The mantra there is, "This is not a nine to five job." At least there's truth in advertising here. When Godin describes those companies where employees jeopardize their health and marriages for the sake of work, he's talking about ePrize.

Let's hope that, like other books read and treated like the gospel by ePrize's upper management, that Seth Godin saying "Relax" might manage to sink in.

It's Just A Jump To The Left

2006-09-27T16:36:00.000-04:00

It's tough to not keep up with a company when you made so many friends while working there and continue to speak to them. The lastest from the "Oh my god, you're not going to believe this" file is hearing about what could only be considered "Project Chameleon Pt Deux".

Project Chameleon was the brilliant idea to take two managers and have them switch spots in some kind of "your department is running okay while yours is fucked up so lets see if it's the manager or the department" experiment. Consider it "Project Freaky Friday" without the comedy or field hockey.

Despite the results of this, it's happening again but on a larger scale. Consider it "Project Rocky Horror" where gads of managers are taking a step to the right and taking over another department. Sales moves to Fulfillment, Fulfillment to Project Management, Strategy to Sales, and so on, and so on, and so on. Is this one of those classic "bus moves" of getting the right people in the right seats on the bus? Is it one of those pragmatic "anyone can do anyone else's job because we're so skilled and diverse"? Or is it a move of desperation; a band-aid for some broken departments?

Regardless, the shuffle (52 Pick-up?) means that that a lot of jokers (gotta keep the card metaphor) continue to rise to / stay at the top while some hard working people remain where they're at. This is nothing new, of course. There's a finite number of upper management positions and a finite number of family/friends to take these slots. The only "break" comes from unexpected firings. Though, from what I hear, at least one other member of the upper management team might be feeling the cold shoulder rather soon. A "discard" as it were. That will leave a spot open for another nanny, cousin, brother, et cetera to fill the role. So, if you're a hard worker that's in line for a potential promotion, well... don't hold you're breath.

And then a step to the right.