Soon there was a dramatic increase in the number of IBM-only meetings, both one-on-ones and group gatherings, and the tension in the Design Center was thick enough to cut. Behind closed doors, my team argued that working for Microsoft was a conflict of interest for them and for their Sony and Toshiba friends, who were unknowingly designing and verifying logic that would be going into their competitor’s product.
“Do you think Intel worries about delivering the same chip to Dell and to Gateway?” I said. “It’s up to those companies to provide product differentiation. We just have to change the way we’ve been thinking about our core and, to be frank, we’ve been living a fairy tale. It was nice while it lasted, but now it’s time to get real. IBM is entirely within their rights to market the PowerPC core to multiple customers. You’ve been at all-hands meetings where Akrout and Kahle showed a number of products, besides the PlayStation 3, that will carry this chip in the future. Well, the future is here, and its name is Microsoft. So get with the program.”
It was a hard line to pull, but I knew that I had to get the team past the emotional upheaval. I was already tired of coddling them. We were wasting time with all this yakking about something we couldn’t change. It was time to move on, to get back to work.
One young, idealistic engineer came to me with tears brimming in his eyes, completely stressed out by the Microsoft deal, an unwilling participant in what he considered unethical shenanigans. He was one of our very brightest engineers, and the last thing I wanted was for him to become so disillusioned that he left the company. I moved him to an area where he would only be dealing with STI work. That seemed to work for him, but he continued to be a vocal (almost belligerent) opponent of our work on the Xbox chip. He reveled in bringing up touchy topics in mixed company—in other words, in front of our Sony and Toshiba partners—just to watch us squirm as we tried to keep the lid on Pandora’s box. Mickie and I frequently had to rein him in before he pulled others down that rabbit hole yet again. Jim Kahle could have taken lessons from this outspoken young radical!
Things really got exciting when Microsoft launched a travelling roadshow to kick off the Xbox 360 project at the various design sites. I dreaded the day they came to Austin, because we couldn’t exactly invite the whole core design team to the meeting. It would really liven things up to invite the Sony and Toshiba partners to the Xbox kickoff meeting, wouldn’t it? These were strange times at IBM. Akrout agreed to allow Steve Curtis’s team to go to the meeting along with a handful of my core IBM designers. We hoped it would be enough critical mass to convince Microsoft that we really had a dedicated design team. They, of course, still had no idea that the PlayStation 3 team was developing their core. It still seemed deceptive, not being able to invite the entire core team to the meeting. Here I was again, caught in a strange, international spy drama.
The roadshow invitation arrived via e-mail, vaguely indicating 10:00 A.M., 1st floor, Building 908, which was a neutral building in the same complex as the STI Design Center. Realizing I still needed to find the specific meeting room, I took the short hike over from my office and arrived a little early. I wandered around the first floor and poked my head into some conference rooms, but I couldn’t find anybody I recognized. I soon wound my way into the main cafeteria. There was a large, open space in the back of the cafeteria that often doubled as a conference room for large audiences. The room was already two-thirds full, and people were still gathering. A group near the front was setting up the video presentation for the Xbox 360 meeting. I almost choked. This was an open meeting room. Many of the Sony and Toshiba engineers from the STI Design Center ate lunch in this cafeteria every day and would most certainly stumble onto this meeting!
I grabbed the first manager I could find, someone from Steve Curtis’s organization whose name escaped me.
I gripped his arm and stepped in close, bringing our faces nearly nose to nose. “Are you crazy?” I whispered. I know he sensed the urgency in my voice, because he turned a shade paler. “You can’t have this meeting here. You need to find a conference room where you can close the door for privacy. The Sony and Toshiba engineers cannot be exposed to this!”
The manager stammered, “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
That pushed me over the top and I marched to the front of the conference room area. With a little yank, I unplugged the overhead projector. I pointed to the gape-mouthed manager and said, “You. Grab that projector.” I faced the crowd and waved my arms until I got everyone’s attention. “Folks, we’re moving this show to another conference room. Follow me.”
I led the way to the second floor and (luckily) found a large, empty conference room. The bewildered group of engineers tagging along behind me grumbled and whispered, but I ignored it. I assigned people to collect more chairs, arrange the room, and set up the projector, all before our Microsoft guests entered. The meeting was a success, but I made a few enemies among the IBM folks. There were a lot of “who do you think you are” stares, but I couldn’t let it bother me. I had to protect IBM’s interests as well as those of my Japanese friends.
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