Company: Maier Marketing Synergy
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Industry: Marketing
Duties: ASP.Net, Visual Basic Script, JavaScript SQL
Oh, the beautiful, sexy, beginning of the dot-com era. God, I miss those days, those companies, the deadlines, that feeling of imminent doom. I don’t know if it was the era or my age, but I loved the businesses I worked for back then, and I willingly sacrificed my health to do whatever they needed to be successful.
Maier Marketing was a crazy place. The owner clearly had some kind of bipolar disorder. Sorry if you’re still alive and reading this, but you were a trip. The 1990s was filled with startups run by drug-fueled men with mental disorders who lived for their business, and if you weren’t as excited as they were, you were fired, or at the very least, sidelined.
Every day at Maier Marketing was like working at a new company. The owner first brought me on as a software development consultant, but quickly coached me on how to get out of the contract so he could hire me. I worked mostly on web development, at first an in-house program for the sales people, then on large public systems. This was the first time I ever had to travel for a job. Holy crap, I love sales people, and I loved working with them in the field. It’s sad how the corporate world changed. I blame, and hate, Venture Capitalists.
As with most startups in the time, competition and innovation caused money issues. In a desperate plea to stay relevant, to stay alive, they merged with a larger marketing company. That bigger corporation neutered our owner and sucked the life out of our workplace.