At the end of the month, the founders received their first paychecks, for $1, suitably framed for hanging in cubicles.
By then, they had begun work in earnest on their first product. It was to be a multiprocessor parallel computer, meaning that a number of microprocessors were to be put into one box and linked together with software and hardware. Although other companies had put more than one microprocessor in a box before, each microprocessor had been dedicated to a particular function. Sequent's machine was to be the first in which the microprocessors could work either on the same task at the same time or on different tasks at the same time. The low-end configuration (2 processors) was to be competitive with workstations. The high-end (later determined to be 12 processors) was to be competitive with superminicomputers, and even, it turned out, with the low-end of Cray Research -- type mainframes.
Powell and his crew believed that they could carve out a significant market for their computer, but to do so, they had to get there first, with a quality machine. The pressure to produce was intense enough to strain any culture. Yet unlike so many other start-ups. Sequent never lost sight of the kind of company it had set out to build.
People took great care with recruiting, for example, and refused to change their style just because their need increased. "We saw a few people who fit our technical needs, but didn't really fit in," says Roger Swanson, the software director. "There was one case I remember very well. I was in need of a particular kind of engineer. Our schedules were beginning to slip because we didn't have the people. Larry Wade and I had a long talk about one fellow. I really needed this person. And Larry said, you know, it just doesn't feel right. This fellow was just too laid back. And I said, Larry, I have to agree with you when I think about it. But it was really hard to make those trade-offs."
The concern didn't stop once a person signed on. Periodically, Barbara Gaffney, Sequent's unofficial minister of culture, led workshops in which about 20 employees would spend the day talking about whether the company was living up to its values.
One of those values dictated that there would be no walls between departments. Everyone, not just the managers, was expected to walk around the building to find out what was going on.Marketing people were expected to show their faces in engineering, engineers in manufacturing. People were expected to serve on cross-functional task forces, and got graded on cross-functional interactions during their performance reviews.
Scott Gibson -- vice-president of operations and finance, and inventor of the red-light process -- put his desk on the manufacturing floor.
At a cost of $2,500, Sequent installed a terminal in every employee's house so family members could talk to one another all day -- and so employees could go home for dinner or to tuck in their children even when they had to work until midnight. There were family parties, camping trips, ski trips, and picnics. On weekends it was not unusual to find children crawling around on the carpets.
The company started a yearbook, written mostly by employees' spouses, with sections on people, kids, culture, and the year's significant events. The 1983 edition includes the bicycle story, complete with photo of Sequent's jar of nickels.
In order to foster a sense of shared responsibility, employee involvement in even the smallest decisions was encouraged. Barbara Gaffney once came back from a conference to find her office stacked with ice chests and cans of pop. It had been converted into a soda-tasting stall. It seems that as the company had grown, the percentage of vending-machine slots dedicated to natural drinks had declined, and one day a software engineer had rebelled. To find the best natural sodas to occupy the available slots, Dave Rodgers, the vice-president of engineering, had organized a blind tasting. (The winner: Ol'Bob Miller's Natcherly sodas.)
Powell, meanwhile, played the symbolism of small events instinctively. Even at Intel, he had been the kind of manager who delegated operational and strategic responsibilities to top managers he trusted, leaving himself free to wander around the cubicle maze or the manufacturing floor or to make his own coffee. Now that he had his own company, he was as apt to talk about not leaving coffer rings on the furniture as to comment on the schedule. People could walk into his office any time -- like everyone else, he had a cubicle with no door -- and offer him a cookie, or sell him a mug to raise money for the year-book, or tell him they might not finish a particular task on the appointed day. Powell could bear down on a problem, but he would always offer to help, and then he would do what he said he would do, whether it was bringing in a pizza for the people who were working through dinner or buying an expensive engineering tool. Then he would let the people know that the life or death of the company depended on them getting their piece of the machine done on time.
It all added up to a carefully cultivated message that this company really cared.
What no one knew was, would it make any difference when the going really got tough?
By the fall of 1983, the walls had been painted, the floors carpeted, and the loaner furniture replaced with desks and chairs in the company colors -- gray and cranberry. The head count had doubled, and the company name had been changed from Sequel to Sequent because of a trademark conflict. As people settled into a routine of working 60 to 80 hours a week, start-up life seemed to be living up to its promise -- except that the hardware group was missing some of its deadlines. Not by much -- a day here, a week there, two weeks somewhere else -- the kind of slippages that were said to go with the engineering territory at larger, more established companies.
