I worked at Blackboard, from the spring of 2000 to the fall of 2005. In that time, I had the privilege of working with some very talented people. For myself, it was a supercharged learning experience in Linux systems administration, large scale systems management, data center operations...you name it. We constantly rose the each challenge and conquored it. For everyone involved, there was blood, there was sweat and there were tears and in the end, we were a dominating force. That domination has also caused me to form some deep-rooted hatred for the company.

When Blackboard 5 was released, it had some serious bugs in it, a result of not respecting sound development practices. We apologized profusely to our clients while Support and ASP worked their asses off mitigating problems. Development formed a special team to address the bugs. At our annual conference, Chasen and Pittinsky apologized profusely for the crappy release, saying [paraphrased] we learned our lesson. Then we released Blackboard 6 and did it all over again. Support and ASP dealing with screaming clients, Development diverting resources for a special task force team to clean up the crap, Management apologizing at the user conference - so much for learning a lesson. This total lack of respect for good software development left a real bitter taste in everyone's mouth and, frankly, I was embarrassed to say Blackboard was an "enterprise" product. I fully blame management for this.

The second reason I have disdain for the company centers around stock options. Options are very common in the tech industry, especially with startups - they get thrown around as a means of attracting talent. I had several contracts for a decent amount of stock (not enough to make me a millionaire but enough to have a nice 5-digit value.) In the weeks leading up to our public offering, management had us whipped into a silent frenzy. We were constantly bombarded with emails about keeping silent, not even hinting at going public, how to handle press inquires, what the "friend and family" buying process was, blackout periods, etc. Shortly before listing day, they herded us into conference rooms and almost cheerfully told us that they decided to do a reverse split on all options contracts - half the shares at twice the price, and tried to pass it off as "it's the same." It doesn't take a genius to figure out it most definitly was not the same. I used to have 2 sticks of gum at 50 cents each, now I had 1 stick of gum for a buck. I don't claim to know all about the inner workings of the stock market, how companies are valued, how an initial public offering is done. In truth, none of that matters because it has no bearing on the future selling price of a stock. What I do know is that when I sold my stock, I ended up with a lot less money than I would have had if I had my original number of shares before the split. Stock options are, in my opinion, a promise by the company - X shares at Y dollars per share. They went back on that promise, which resulted in them taking money out of my pocket.