Did you go into the current office or were you in the basement?
TL;DRMike Jones says he started near the end of the overcrowded basement era, with minimal infrastructure and a leak-prone server closet, and he helped physically move the company's core data to the new office.
Oh, I started in the basement, and it wasn't a hoot. Because by the time I started, it was closer to the end of the basement. And so it was overcrowded. And if I had to deploy a PC, you put it up over, because otherwise there's not enough room. You can't carry things around in there. Oh, the stern looks I'd get from certain devs if I bumped their chair leg or something. I came to the company right around the time that we launched the hangar module for the very first time. And we didn't really have much in the way of infrastructure. We had, I think, two tower servers. That was it. That's what ran the company. And there was no server room. I was introduced to my office, which was really a Harry Potter-style under-the-staircase office, or closet, and this is also the server room. And I have to tell you this funny part, because you're fresh in a new job, you want to make a good impression, but it's not making a very good impression on me, because they have this black contractor tarp over the top of the servers. And I wondered, why is this? Well, they pointed out that that's because the sewer pipes go over your head, and if they leak, we don't want that getting on the servers. But I didn't get a tarp. Anyway, that office, we got out of there pretty quick. I'd like to say that I was instrumental in moving the company to the new office, and literally the physical act of moving. So one of my first hires, a man named Chris, I had worked with him before, and I brought him down from Canada to help me with this move. And he did such a great job, the company asked for him to stay, and he moved his whole family down. But he and I carried the core of the company, like all of our intellectual property, source code, everything. And I'll never forget, because he would always say, slow down, we're coming up on a curve. You don't want to lose Perforce. That's the company back there. Be careful.