A strange feeling came over to David as two of the most distinctive landmark metal memorabilia's from his short lived stints in the Vancouver high-tech companies. After joining the work forces in the area since the beginning of 2000, at the tail-end of the dot com bust, David noticed two urban legends among Vancouver technology professionals: 1) there are unusually high percentage of Internet geeks in the area thinking technology advancements of the World Wide Web are primarily powered and propelled by pornographic industry; 2) unusually large numbers of employers like to use "looking for a brand-new start" as excuses to help employees with their resume -- in other words, ax them out after getting through with them. And David had not been and was not interested in playing the game, because he was no longer interested in building his resume in this bleak and distressed high-tech community. The Greater Vancouver area has about 2 million populations in the region, but has not even one Fortune 500 company header-quartered in. Same thing can not be said about equal or even smaller sized metropolitan areas in the United States, such as Boise, Idaho; Omaha, Nebraska; Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio; Hartford, Connecticut; Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Bentonville, Arkansas. . . If technology is fueled by anything, David knew fortune was a much more powerful fuel than sex.

David, like many of his fellow Chinese immigrants usually ran out of interests in finding another high-tech job in Vancouver area when close to getting their Canadian citizenship. And the Canadian citizenship along with airline tickets can help them travel the world. For citizens of the third world countries, the world is a funny place these days. Airline tickets are easier to buy than travel friendly citizenships.

With pauses dotted in his initial conversation, David started "strategizing" his responses to B. B. Geenick: "why do I want to tell other people that I am leaving on my own, when in fact I am forced to leave? If it is for the moral of the team, I will cooperate. I have preached to other developers about always thinking as a team player, so I will do whatever it takes for the good of the company . . .". Jenny Lee opened her mouth "David . . ." but, Geenick quickly interrupted her voice and cut in "OK, that's OK if you want to tell other people that you are laid off. Ah… Yeah, that's fine. I just want you to know that Ankur and I, Ah…, the entire company, we are all appreciative of what you have done for the ENS especially on the Nord Kia project. I hope you have no hard feelings and wish you good luck in your future career endeavors. Because of your hard works and great contributions in the past, we will not escort you out of the building like we did when we let other employees go. You will have two weeks to prepare from today and make necessary transitions. That's really all I have to say. You know, it is not easy to say this sort of things. Do you have any questions for me at this point?"

David felt a block of unease colliding with every cell of his internal organs as if diving into a swimming pool and landed in the wrong position. He had been preparing for this particular moment of the impact. But when the impact actually came, it still hurt quite a lot nevertheless. With voices becoming clumsy and tardy, he said: "ah . . . no, no questions", last time he was laid off in US, he had to ask about immigration status with worries that he had to pack his luggage and sell his house at the price of a moving sale. But now he no longer had such worries because, like most people, he immigrated to Canada as "permanent residents", like "green card holders" in US that can choose to shop at the mall after unemployment as long as money in the wallet permits. Without a green card, if a certain unemployed worker without working visa chooses to shop at a mall for too many days, he or she would become "illegal".

David would lose his job along with -- as Ronald Reagan once put it -- "dignity and common decency", but he did not have to sell his house or become "illegal" before becoming "bankrupt". Geenick extended his right hand for a friendly handshake and David indifferently obliged. Then he shook hands with Jenny Lee before leaving the HR office.

Walking outside of the HR office along with David, Geenick continued to mumble about what a great contribution David has made to Electronic Navigation Systems and the Nord Kia project: "Ankur and I sort of want to show our trust in you, and we believe your integrity and professionalism. You know what happened to the previous laid-off employees and I ask Ankur not to escort people out of the office any more. It was somewhat humiliating, don't you think? And it did not show them the trust. We want to get you some time to prepare for the transition and also prepare yourself, for your future employment and so forth".

Every time Geenick talked to David in private, David always got the impression that the humble Mr. B.B. Geenick was telling him that he, David, was the best manager and the right-hand man of Mr. BBG. But every time when Geenick talked in public, it is a different story. Another office savvy Geenick would show up, and vanity always get hold of Mr. BBG, and made him want to show off his "strong leadership skills" in front of a crowd. At these moments, the "Geenick comments" filled with flashy and buzz words would splash out of his mouth, including criticizing colleagues left and right. And the comments might come with different forms, but were invariably expressing one thing "It was somebody else's fault. The problems happened, because I was not there".

Geenick and Ankur Kumar -- CEO of ENS -- went way back. At one time, they both worked for a local small startup company DDI, which manufactured electronic navigation guidance hardware and software for transportation industries in Vancouver, British Columbia. DDI was later bought by the famous US Fortune 500 company MHP, with different treatment for Geenick and Ankur. Ankur was kicked out and worked for another startup firm, until eventually struck out on his own and founded ENS --Electronic Navigation Systems, which later prospered. Geenick stayed with MHP until later started his own company also. Both Geenick and Ankur would tell everybody that they were the VP of marketing or director of engineering of the Fortune 500 Company MHP instead of VP and director of DDI when introducing themselves. Ankur's company became more successful later on, while Geenick's company only performed sub par and was acquired by someone else. After a cash settlement somewhere with somebody, Geenick jumped ships to come to work for Ankur as a director of software development.

The appointment of Geenick presented an odd wedge in ENS because all the software developers and managers already had a supervisor -- "VP of software development" named Mark Greenburg. David along with his development team labeled Ankur as the "Boss (number) 1", Mark Greenburg as the "Boss 2", and B. B. Geenick as the "Boss 3". Then came 5 software development and QA managers in a small department of less than 40 developers spread out in UK, India and Canada. For David and other software development managers, trying to side with the correct boss at the correct moment, were the interesting challenges for their little careers. It was funny but true that Ankur regarded his 150 employee company as a "large enough company" now that he needed to install bureaucracy and office politics -- oh, "leadership" as he called it. Geenick was brought in.

Mark Greenburg was a native British Columbian, who always worked for eight hours a day plus or minus 5 minutes, except some very rare occasions when Ankur was talking to him around 5 o'clock. He was a registered professional engineer, who was very efficient and methodical with his worker. He reads a lot about new ideas in technology, not for adopting them, but for resisting what he viewed as "unnecessary changes". He almost always brought in his lunches and ate at his desk during lunch hours while squeezing in additional one minute or two into his work day. He strongly opposed to asking any type of over time before a deadline from his subordinates and resent being asked to do so by Boss 1, and later Boss 2. He also strongly opposed to handing pink slips to employees until economy went really south after 9/11. If his beliefs in protecting labor were not out of a kind heart, or the strong BC union ideology, at least he firmly believed that any maltreatment of developers is not a feasible way of sustaining a technology business over the long run. Contrary to his "soft heart" inside, his words were often harsh and sarcastic when talking to developers. For instance, a statement such as "You shouldn't have done that" out of Mark Greenburg's mouth would turn into: "You've done that?" with a wide open mouth and an astonishing look as if questioning "Are you an idiot?" written in his facial expressions.

Very soon after Geenick was wedged in by Ankur, Mark Greenburg started to be regarded as the odd man out by most developers, because 1) Geenick and Ankur were buddies; 2) Geenick ate lunch with developers whenever possible and his popularity among developers sky rocketed like real estate prices in the West coast of the entire North America. Hanging out with developers at Friday lunch, was something Mark will never do unless mandated by Ankur. Mark hated the manager who brought in the Friday lunch routine and thought of it as a waste of two hours worth of productivity each week.

At one Friday lunch, developer Leo asked B. B. Geenick what his ancestry was, because nobody could correctly guess it out based on his last name. Geenick replied his ancestors were from Armenia. He is in fact first generation immigrant, growing up in Iran and didn't come over to Canada until he was in high school. One developer from former Czech Slovakia, now Slovakia -- Jozef Chkovsky said: "Oh, Armenia! I know many Armenians when I lived in New York. I used to live in New York City and there were many Armenians selling, crafts, artifacts, rugs … they are all very clever. Very smart business men indeed! People said ten Jewish can not outsmart one Armenian". "That really depends on whether it was a Jewish who made that comment", Geenick smiled, apparently not pleased with the Jewish and Armenian comparison.

Back in the ENS office though, everyone could tell that there is this contest of wizardry going on between two wizards -- Mark Greenburg and B. B. Geenick, one Jewish and one Armenian descent. In one meeting, Geenick would suggest that everyone work overtime for two consecutive weekends to speed up the delivery of the additional requests from Nord Kia management, and Mark would make a superior grim and say "You can't do that forever" while shaking his head as if saying "idiots, idiots, idiots". In the next meeting, Geenick would criticize the existing QA bug tracking system, saying "Why are we focusing on the "priority" of these bugs when "severity" of the bugs is something more relevant to a development unit? In my mind "priority" is the sort of criteria for customer service department to focus on". Then Mark would enter a remark at the time of dead silent after a pause, "then what do you do when Nord Kia did request that we fix a bug that is not so severe, but they have to have it, just for the heck of it? Or else, they will just not sign the acceptance on that feature. You can't control these guys' behaviors" Then the two wizards will go on at it and pulling stuff from their rear for another 15 to 30 minutes, discussing how to use QA to guide development.