Chris Prince- The Smartest ex-Dot Commer of them All ?

Last updated: 7/3/2002; 4:39:13 AM

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Chris Prince: The Smartest ex-Dot Commer of them All ?

NOTE: This turned out to be way longer than I expected it to be since I had to set up the context, explain the players and such.  I think you'll find it very, very amusing.

You know how there are people in your life that you just lose touch with and then when you do meet up with them again, you're just plain surprised?  I ran into this with my buddy Chris Prince recently and I have to think that he's, well, the Smartest ex-Dot Commer of them all.  Here's what happened…

Once upon a time, in an era of huge corporate dysfunction and silly ass expectations of instant millions, in a moment of insanity, I joined a dot com and became a whore for money – NOT ever a good choice.  And, while it was one of the worst experiences of my professional life, I met lots of good people (not the management team, not at all, repeat not at all, the people who did the work).  People like my partner Gretchen, my friend Derrick (hardest working man I know), Craig the designer and Chris Prince.  Here's the deal with Chris Prince.

At Mascot I came in as "Senior Director of Product Marketing" and a member of the Executive Team.  When it became apparent that the current person in charge of Engineering wasn't scaling to the task (and it was a big damn task), I was asked to take over.  After giving it clearly too little thought, I agreed, renegotiated a generous compensation package and attacked the problem with my normal excessive degree of energy. 

In any development team there are always a few key members and one of the most important is the Lead Engineer, the one guy who knows almost everything.  And, just as a good lead engineer can make a project, a bad lead engineer can kill a project.  Chris was my Lead Engineer.  And he was awesome.   I've had lots of lead engineers over the years and he was in the top 10 for sure.  Like all the good lead engineers I've ever had, Chris didn't have a fancy pedigree.  He went to Suny, did a stint in the Navy

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