How deep is the rabbit hole?

Why this blog?
The reason behind this is the desire to spare others from a disappointing experience at the Foundry. There's certainly more than meets the eye and some things must be told. Of course, the reader must take note of the author's subjectivity and is encouraged to compare the following information with some from other sources.

The official story
Quoting from their website:
"SigEx Ventures, Inc. is a private investment fund focused exclusively on the emerging Enhanced Communications industry. Using funds raised from individual (angel) investors, SigEx Ventures funds projects for the Foundry’s development programs. Thus, SigEx Ventures, in conjunction with the Foundry, enables fully-funded, viable structures for business R&D to address alpha-beta development projects for strategic customers that include global telecommunications carriers, network equipment manufacturers, information technology companies, and digital content providers. The projects developed by the Foundry are all pre-funded by the SigEx Ventures investments fund for a period of 12 to 18 months. The most successful of these may become sustainable ventures."
SigEx is led by Cristopher Cantell and Frederic Artru.


Now the facts:
In the summer of 2006 I got a mail from Frédéric Artru, with a proposition for a 2 month internship at the Foundry, in Pau, France:

Paris, August 1, 2006
Subject: Offer letter – Freelance Contract
I am pleased to announce that you have been selected for a freelance project at The Foundry in Pau, France for a period of 8 weeks for: Linux Network Application Development. Your assignment will be to take rapid responsibility, perform and excel in your area of expertise contributing to SigEx Ventures Telecom's global advanced telecommunications network. The details of your assignments willl be provided on site. Conditional on your successful performance and continuous delivery, you may be selected to be hired for a permanent position or offered a contract to travel to one of the European locations to support staff and teams around various projects. Your freelance package includes full living acommodations in Pau, a travel allowance of 300 Euros (paid on receipt, half at the end of the first week, other half upon completion), and a 150 Euros per week paid one week after completion based on your timesheets. This offer is official as of the date we receive your acceptance and will be processed based on the date of your arrival on a first-come first-serve basis.

It's worth mentioning that I have my own business, but given that the summer is a pretty dead season for IT (at least in Eastern Europe) and that I had plenty of financial resources to support myself for 2 months, I decided to take it, hoping that I would meet some interesting people from the IT scene. At best, I could establish new business contacts and possibly make some deals. At worst, I was going to see a new country (I hadn't been to France before).

Once I got there, after travelling for 24 hours, I was welcomed by Frédéric Artru at the Pau train station. He led me to the apartment they had rented for me. On the way to it, he gave me a brief of the Foundry. The basics were these: "lots of people come, but the vast majority bail out before the first month of the internship ends". I was about to see why. We finally reached the apartment. It was very small, but quite cosy. As I had arrived there early in the morning, I had the day off to rest.

The next day I went to the office. It was at the top floor of a steel and glass building located in a fancy area of the town. As Frédéric Artru told me on the way there, it was part of the investment the town city hall had made in the SigEx business. Yes, they were given money to start the show. 30 million Euro, if I recall correctly. The investment covered the office space and a network infrastructure interconnected with Pau's own infrastructure (which is very nice, actually). The office seemed to have looked nice in the distant past. The air conditioning didn't work. There was no kitchen. Instead, they had a small storage room filled up with water cases. In a corner there was a small coffee filter. Luckily, the restroom was OK.

Meeting the people was somewhat surprising. 90% of them were Romanians in their early 20s, with no significant previous work experience. A few of them had just graduated tech faculties, but their skills were obviously far from industry standards, even for interns, while others had diplomas in social fields so the best they could do was browse and use instant messengers. I would say there were around 20 people altogether.

Next, I had the honor of meeting the headmaster, the brain behind the whole business, Christopher Cantell. I would describe him as the typical American manager, with an ego big enough to fulfill China's requirements for 50 years. For two hours he told me about what great things he had done, without mentioning a single business name from his past. I can vouch that the words he loves most are "return of investment", "ballpark figures" and "stock". He would be a winner in any buzzword bingo contest. After these two hours passed, the first interesting piece of conversation took place:

• Cantell: "Have you read my CV?"
• Me: "Yes, but this elloquent presentation you've made certainly outperforms any written piece. How about you? Did you read mine?"
• Cantell: "Err, no" Me: "Then how do you know I'm fit for the internship? What if I totally lack skills?"
  
• Cantell: "You'll get all the skills you need here."

This got me thinking. Anything would go, by this guy. Great. What's next? Oh yes, he didn't forget to tell me who his associate, Frédéric Artru, was:

• Cantell: "Fred here is my employee, I bred him. He was an engineer at Apple."
• Me: "Why isn't he one anymore?"
• Cantell: "Because he could do better, he now works for me."

Ok, the egos were even bigger than my initial estimations. Next thing Chris Cantell handed me a notebook. I was supposed to use it for writing down all the things he would tell me to do, put them in a thick square and write in boldface "Action Required" above the square. I was a bit confused. Having had used gadgets like KNotes and all sorts of reminders, I'd forget very few things. But then again, we all have our own methods. This guy sounded like he knew what he was doing.

My first task was to deploy a callback mechanism using Asterisk. I was verbally handed the task by Frédéric Artru, after which his phone rang and he promptly disappeared. I was alone in my office, staring at my Apple computer, on which I didn't even have an account. Needless to say, I hadn't been given access to any kind of resources whatsoever. I was lost. So I went on a small stroll around the office to see who I could ask for an account on some development/testing machine. It turned out that all managers had gone to lunch leaving everybody behind. So I waited. For 3 hours. When the 3 hours passed, they finally returned from lunch. I was quickly asked for a status report. I hadn't anything to say but ask for resources. This is the first time I saw how the (in)famous notebook was used. I had to write down on the first page what I needed, put the square around it and write "Action Required" above it. Since Chris Cantell wasn't satisfied with the thickness of my square, he decided to show me how it's done. Enlightenment. The good thing is that I got access to a machine. The bad thing was that it was behind NAT and outside calls couldn't reach it without port forwarding. Of course, I had nobody to ask for setting it up for the next couple of hours, at the end of which Frédéric Artru came and did it, after logging in to the web interface of a SOHO router that seemed to serve the entire office. Pretty strange, I would say, given the huge amount of technical resources they pretended to have. Well, life goes on...

The next day I came back to the office to finish setting up Asterisk. It was one of the least productive working days I've ever had, due to the standups held by Chris Cantell with sheer grace. For my readers that don't know what a standup is, it is when the manager comes to you and asks for a status report. "But it ain't so bad", one may say. Sure, it certainly isn't. As long as it doesn't happen every 15 (yes, fifteen) minutes. You do the math: 15 minutes of work, 10 minutes of standup. Not very efficient...
After fixing the NAT problem, I went ahead and wrote a Perl plugin for Asterisk to do callback. I was supposed to connect two Vonage accounts by callback using my Asterisk server as a relay. As one could already guess, I wasn't given a Vonage account. So I had to wait some more. Of course, afterwards, another standup took place, this time with Frédéric Artru.
I forgot to mention that during the previous day I had been told that at the Foundry they wanted the interns to think before anything. They wanted to stimulate creativity. They could even afford leaving unfinished tasks as long as the intern brainstormed (yes, I find it strange too). So back to standup, it came with a novelty: I was yelled at. Why? Because:

• Artru: "here at the Foundry we don't brainstorm, we do things. I don't care how you do it,you just have to do it."
• Me: "Hm. That's not what I had been told a day before. Good engineering needs good planning and that no successful project existed without a decent roadmap"
• Artru: "I think your attitude isnt' the proper one. You're not here to tell us what to do.
• We tell you what to do. Got that?"

I didn't insist. The guy was obviously on a management authority demonstration spree. The most interesting part of the day was about to happen after this standup. Chris Cantell came by, he brought us all in the "big room", an oval shaped room with several desks, to do a "build". Before I go on with speaking about what a "build" is, I should spend a few moments to describe what the project that the whole business went around was:

Are you ready? Ok, here goes. SigEx's revolutionary product is a crappy peer-to-peer platform written entirely on Flash, which is ugly as your mother-in-law and slow as her donkey. For a taste of it you can access http://www.sigex.com (it now is http://www.thefoundryschool.tv). If you're wondering what the purpose of this platform is, it is, according to Chris Cantell's words, meant to revolutionise the Internet and make it more interactive. People are supposed to access it and exchange all sorts of media with eachother. Word of advise: don't try it, it will most likely bring your PC on its knees. That's how "fast" it is.

Going back to the build: the build is the process through which each intern (yes, including me, the supposed engineer) visits video.google.com, youtube.com or some similar sites and looks for videos on a particular theme. Then, he/she copies the links to these videos and submits them to the SigEx platform. The system downloads and archives them. Perhaps you're wondering what the purpose is. I asked Chris Cantell the same thing and he didn't give me a straight answer I was eager to know who were the visitors exchanging that "marvelous" information and when. According to the statistics I saw, me and the other interns were the only users of the miraculous platform at any given time.

One of the most difficult things about staying there was eating. The French are extremely cautious when it comes to doing any kind of work, so the shops, cafeterias and even the banks are only open from 10 to 12 and then again from 14 to 17. Being in the office most of the time, I didn't even have time to go to the local supermarket to fill my fridge. I usually went to the gas station, the only place open at evening or night, and I got water and cold sandwiches. This turn of habits led to one of the cutest conversations I had with Frédéric Artru. We had gone out of the office at the end of the day and I started it:

• Me: "You know, we have a problem. These "flexible" working days really make me starve, because there's simply not any way for me to get to the shop and buy food. We have to either leave the office earlier or use catering services while we're there."
• Artru: "Well, you see, this internship isn't just about technical matters, it's also about that you wouldn't get bored."
• Me: "Well, yes, the view is great but I got kind of bored of being hungry."
• Artru: "Sec, I gotta call my wife ..."

The next day was going to be even more entertaining. After the usual 15 minute working sessions interrupted by the standups, after two "builds", I decided it was time for me to go home. It was 9 PM, on a Friday. I had been in the office from 8AM, because I had decided to go earlier so I could leave earlier, hoping that I would catch a movie in the evening. Neither Chris Cantell or Frédéric Artru seemed eager to leave, they were very happy doing the "builds". It seemed that they would spend the whole night there. Their reaction when I suddenly stood up and said "I'm going home" was one of the most hillarious ones I ever saw:

• Cantell: "What do you mean, you're going home?"
• Me: "I mean I'm going home, I've been here for 13 hours, I've some health issues and I also have some personal ones that I'd rather not speak about that I have to take care of."
• Cantell: "But I'm in a build here, you can't walk out!"
• Me: "Look, I know where my physical limit is. I know where the common sense limit is, too. And this moment is way beyond both. I really feel tired, I didn't eat anything all day, I'm done. It's late, I'm going home."
• Cantell: "Err, can you come back after you finish dealing with your issues, later on?"
• Me: "Sure, when do you want me back? Is 3-4 AM OK?"
• Cantell: "Mhm, nevermind, just go home."

This conversation took place in everybody else's presence. I couldn't help noticing the smiles and satisfaction in the eyes of the other interns. For some strange reason, I was the first one ever doing that, standing up against the crappy management and treatment. Next day, on Saturday, I strolled around Pau, getting souvenirs for my close friends. Around noon, I went to the office to spend some time online because we weren't allowed to use the Internet at home, for fear it would distract us from the important duties we had at the Foundry. Soon after I went in, Frédéric Artru showed up. He imediately pinged me:

• Artru: "We need to talk."
• Me: "Yep, we sure do."
• Artru: "What do you think of this place?"

I smiled a bit, then went on:

• Me: "I think it's a terrific place for newly graduates to get their feet wet with technical challenges, where they can find answers to all their questions. A place where they can do anything they've ever dreamed of."
• Artru: "No, I mean what do you think of us, the leaders."
• Me: "I think you're very friendly and you have good intentions, I really admire what you're doing."
• Artru: "Are you bullshitting me?"
• Me: "No."
• Artru: "Look, we think you have a problem, why are you here? You seem to know everything better, you have an attitude problem. You don't judge what we tell you, you just do as we say. So again, why are you here?"

At this point I already was a bit pissed, so I said:

• Me: "Well, I'm here because I hoped to face some challenges. So far the only challenge I've had was not starving. As for the technical matters, I don't see a plan, I don't see any specs, I don't see a product, I don't see anything. I just see potential good engineering skills flushed down the drain with standups that take more than the actual work. I see lots of money spent and no result at all. It smells fishy."
• Artru: "We really think you have to go."
• Me: "So do I."

So he led me back to the apartment I lived in, I packed my things, after which he was kind enough to drive me to a hotel. I stayed there for one night, then I took off.

If you read the resumes of Chris Cantell and Frédéric Artru, you may think of them as brilliant entrepreneurs or scholars. I'll have to disappoint you. Frédéric Artru doesn't know what the UNIX kill command does. I found this out while speaking to him about signalling another process from PHP. PHP has a kill function that does just that. It sends a signal to another process. Mr. Artru recommended himself as a PHP guru. I even saw he subscribed to some PHP newsgroups. I would expect a man of his stature, with his kind of tech skills, to know at least that. After all, he was an Apple engineer. He is also mentioned as the leader of several companies, one of which was bought by Cisco. My googling skills failed to help me find any reference to any product of these companies. In fact, I beg the reader to submit any kind of information on this matter. Furthermore, he had a really funny solution to the problem that their web harvesting PHP code couldn't properly use all the bandwidth they had so he started several scripts at the same time instead of seeing why a single one couldn't behave properly.
As for Chris Cantell, he stars as Christopher M Cantell in a hilarious case from Massachusetts. He basically tried to squeeze some money from a company without a written contract. You can see how big of a capitalist he is here.

The funniest part is that, 5 months after I returned home, I got another call from SigEx Ventures. The miss on the other end of the phone was Romanian, as they are trying to do the same thing now in Bucharest. Here's an excerpt of our conversation:

• Her: "Hello, we would like to ask you if you're interested in a 2 month internship at SigEx. You will be doing some extreme programming."

Did you laugh? I did. "Some"."Extreme"."Programming."

• Me: "What precisely is this extreme programming thing?"
• Her: "Well, you know... programming extreme things."
• Me: "No, thank you very much."

I'm quite confident that the Foundry is a very good cow to milk. Nothing has ever come out of their "labs". The profile of the interns they take is extremely low. Two years ago their website was in the exact same stage it was when I paid them the visit. It seems to have changed in the meantime. Judge for yourselves: http://www.sigex.com