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From Brian Rogers, Software Engineer:

We're better than Netscape! We're better than SGI!

Or so said our visiting Internet community development consultant yesterday over lunch at the Chef's Hat, a local down-home country diner that we frequent. Many of us here go out to lunch most every day. Sometimes it is just a few people going out to talk business, sometimes it is a whole department (all of six or seven) doing the departmental bonding thing. And sometimes it is a random jumble of whoever is around when the call of "lunch" wafts it's way through the palatial (or cavernous or something like that) Tripod offices. Yesterday was one of those times. It was a post-meeting pilgrimage nine strong (five editorial types, one designer, one site manager, one community development consultant, and me, a tech-guy, as we are so fondly referred to), and we had to push tables togther.

Six short months ago, having just completed a bachelor's in computer science, I was working at a very large, flourescent-lighted, gray-fabric cubicled company of old computer types (I'm talking COBOL here). Lets just say that all too often the daily Dilbert strip hit a little too close to home. It was in no way a job I wanted to keep long. I thought I, like many of my classmates, would be headed to Boston — or the supposed light-at-end-of-tunnel which is the Bay Area.

Somehow I ended up at the Chef's Hat in Williamstown, MA with a pretty far-flung bunch of Web heads. When I interviewed at Tripod, I saw a small, young, energetic, company with tons of potential (read: exact opposite from my other job). However, after going to college in Providence, RI, I fancied myself a city person, and wasn't sure how I would get along deep in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. But, with no other really promising job leads, I followed the call of the mountain (bike), and headed for the hills.

When I got here, I was happy to find others of my ilk; urban types, who, for reasons they too are often unsure of, ended up in this rural setting. So there I was, sitting at the Chef's Hat with an assortment of them, laughing and joking, and getting served a pretty close approximation to what we had ordered. The community development consultant (I'll call her Jen; that's her name), mentioned working with and visiting companies like Netscape and SGI, the kind of companies my classmates and I (so I thought) were headed towards. Her description of them seemed not too unlike the faceless job I left to come here. Maybe a bit younger, and more energetic, but just as big, and gray, and flourescent, and corporate. At one point she did say outright that we are better (or cooler, or more fun, or something) then Netscape and SGI.

Sure, the Berkshires might not be my idea of utopia. The nights are already dipping well below freezing, and you might not always get exactly what you ordered, but there are some great people around, the fall foliage is sure pretty, and so what if your burger is a little over-done, when the waitress remembered to bring you that hot choclate that you always have, without you having to ask for it. At some point I'm sure I will start to feel a bit claustrophobic in this small, quaint community, and will need to move on to other things — but I have come to realize that those epicenters of computer technology probably aren't exactly the utopias that I used to imagine them as either. Maybe Tripod San Fransisco will have expanded by then...

Have a good one,
Brian Rogers, Software Engineer (10/31/97)

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.

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