Chinese Version
05-19-2021, Friday, Sunny.

2001 was a very busy year, because I had joined eBay after Thanksgiving in 2000.

At the beginning of 2001, Jim, my boss, assigned me to work with Vicki on several very important projects to learn the already very complicated eBay system, because Vicki knew eBay system very well.

Before the summer of 2001, the Internet bubble began to collapse. Many Internet companies started to lay off their employees, many of them were software engineers. eBay was one of the few thriving Internet companies in Silicon Valley at this time.

Software engineers were often overloaded with tasks at eBay in 2001. My tasks were as follows: everyday I needed to quickly switch between seven or eight different visual screens on my single PC frequently: new product development screen and its webpages, debugging source code screen and related webpages, QA environment webpages, the bug reports, highly engaged email threads, and Instant Messenger, highly visible chat rooms for representatives from all product-related departments….

In contrast, for previous three years in Lattice Semiconductor, while occasionally using the mouse to switch to another screens, I used one screen on my PC to develop the company’s only desktop product, most of the time.

In fast-paced development and releasing cycles of eBay, working on multiple products at the same time, I realized that it was too slow to switch screens using the mouse. When I watched Vicki quickly switch screens on her PC, I was stunned. Vicki taught me a shortcut for switching screens: Ctrl-Tab. Today, using this shortcut reminds me of Vicki, a smart beautiful engineer from the early 2000′s eBay.

While working together, Vicki and I enjoyed small talks. Vicki once joked: “Lots of software engineers are at home without a job now. It is a good thing to have a job, a busy job is even better than a normal job.” This may have well represented the common mentality of many software engineers who worked tirelessly in a workplace loaded with escalation of little issues. Our workplace was well reflected by the statement: “I started to think about escalation even when I heard escalator.” written by Terry, the PjM (Project Manager) for eBay Store project, in her farewell email. Issues that would delay the delivery of a project needed to be escalated to management, by its PjM, because many projects were cross depended on each other. The PjM needs to convince management that the issues were unforeseeable so more resources will be allocated to deliver the project on schedule, otherwise the PjM would take the blame.

In July 2001, I started to design and develop the eBay first generation of Checkout, as the lead developer. Because Paypal was gaining popularity among eBay sellers, the Checkout feature was designed to ease buyers to use BillPoint, eBay’s own payment solution, so eBay could beat Paypal.

In the middle of the Checkout project, The September 11 attacks happened. eBay executives wanted to assist sellers to donate their profits from selling on eBay to charities for 911 victims, an emergency product, which required the immediate eBay and BillPoint integration, came up. Developers were quickly pulled into this project. Because my project touched BillPoint, I was also pulled into the emergency project, working on eBay and BillPoint integration for a few days. After 20 years passed, in Waltham in Massachusetts, far from Silicon Valley,I still remembered the flood of e-mails that popped up day and night in the few days, I still felt the spirit of solidarity and cooperation across divisions, the essence of work culture in 2001 eBay; I remember those days was the only time I closely witnessed the working style of Lynn, our VP, who frequently appeared in different email threads with important and related questions.

I returned to the checkout project after working on the 911 emergency project for a few days. Because management still wanted to launch the Checkout as originally-planned schedule, I had to work overtime in the office at nights to catch up on the lost time.

In 2001, providing free dinners for employees who were working overtime was unheard of. Lilian, the PjM for Checkout, therefore often brought fruits to our desks in the evening.

One afternoon in late September, I cleaned up my desk, turned off my computer, and was ready to leave. Lilian brought grapes to us and asked: “Miss Jean, how is your project going?”

I said: “Still working on it. We will deliver a stable build for QA testing soon.”

“Are you going to work from home tonight?”

“No, not tonight. It’s my son’s birthday. I am going home to celebrate his birthday.”

After pausing for a moment, Lilian asked: “How old is he?”

“He turned 3 today.”

“Please say happy birthday to your boy for me then.”

Lilian became one of my favorite PjM since then.