This week I met 11 friends for happy hour. I had worked with most of them about 25 years ago at a startup company called Ocular Networks. Ocular developed optical network hardware and was a fun place to work despite the long hours required by most startup companies. Eventually our company was purchased by Tellabs and that caused a clash of corporate cultures which made work less pleasant.
A few of us were asked to visit corporate headquarters in Illinois where we discovered an unexpected corporate shrine. It was a small meeting room containing little more than a large painting of the founder/CEO of Tellabs. That painting struck me as weird and I was struck by an urge to make fun of it. I got one of my friends to take a picture of me "worshipping" at the CEO's portrait. We got odd looks from people who passed us in the hallways which made it more fun.
I didn't last long at Tellabs after that trip. It became increasingly obvious that I wasn't cut out for that type of environment.
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