The New CEO#
Editorial note: Rank: A-. This is the only chapter that gives Marcus interiority, which makes his reasonableness — and his ultimate failure — more tragic. The email establishes his credentials and optimism. The scene shows genuine effort and Jeff’s total obliviousness to the social contract. Marcus has a legitimate point about documentation. Jeff’s “I am the documentation” is perfect — both true and catastrophic. The Allbirds detail is characterization, not caricature. The ending (“cooperative relationship”) is bureaucratic irony at its best.
From: Marcus Webb mwebb@matthersseismic.com To: All Staff Date: January 12, 2023, 9:47 AM Subject: Introduction & Exciting News
Team,
I’m thrilled to join Matthers Seismic as CEO. For those we haven’t met yet, a bit about me: I spent the last six years scaling infrastructure companies, most recently as VP of Operations at NearView Analytics, where we grew from 40 to 300 employees. Before that, I earned my MBA at Stanford, focusing on organizational transformation in technical environments.
I’m here because I believe Matthers Seismic is poised for something extraordinary. You’ve built the gold standard in seismic assessment. Clients trust you. Cities rely on you. But growth requires more than excellence — it requires scalability, documentation, and systems that outlive individual expertise.
Over the next few months, I’ll be meeting with each of you to understand your work and how we can support you better. My door is always open.
Looking forward to building the future together.
Best, Marcus
Marcus arrived early on his first Monday. The Matthers Seismic office occupied the second floor of a renovated warehouse near the deep-water port. The building smelled faintly of sawdust and wet concrete. His Allbirds made no sound on the polished floor.
He’d read Jeff’s file three times. Founder. Sixteen years with the company. Zero formal computer science training but somehow responsible for the core prediction system. The due diligence report had called Jeff “brilliant but insular” and flagged his work as a “key person dependency risk.” Marcus’s job was to de-risk that dependency without alienating the talent.
Jeff arrived at 8:47 AM carrying a canvas messenger bag and a steel thermos. He was shorter than Marcus expected. Forty-seven, graying beard, flannel shirt tucked into khakis. He looked like someone’s uncle who fixed lawnmowers in his garage.
“Jeff,” Marcus said, extending a hand. “Great to finally meet in person.”
Jeff shook. His grip was firm, workmanlike. “You’re the new CEO.”
“I am. Got a few minutes? I’d love to understand your process.”
Jeff nodded and led him to a back office that smelled like coffee and printer toner. The desk held three monitors, a stack of engineering journals, and a mug that said ASCE Annual Conference 2011. No personal photos. No plants.
Marcus sat. Jeff remained standing.
“So,” Marcus began. “I’ve been reviewing the system architecture. Your prediction model is the backbone of everything we do. That’s incredible. But I’m concerned about the bus factor.”
Jeff frowned. “The what.”
“Bus factor. If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, how many people could maintain your work?”
“Chen could,” Jeff said.
“Just Chen?”
“She’s the only one who needs to.”
Marcus leaned forward, trying to project collaboration, not confrontation. “That’s exactly the risk I’m talking about. What if Chen also got hit by a bus?”
“Then the system would degrade slowly,” Jeff said. He said it the way someone might say the sun rises in the east.
“Right,” Marcus said carefully. “Which is why I’d like to bring in a documentation team. Not to replace you. To codify your expertise so the company can scale.”
Jeff looked at him for a long moment.
“The system is documented,” he said.
“Where?”
“In the code.”
Marcus paused. “I mean external documentation. Design specs. Decision logs. Something a new hire could read.”
“Why would they need to read it?” Jeff asked. “If they’re competent, they’ll understand it from the implementation.”
Marcus felt the conversation sliding away from him. He recalibrated.
“Jeff, I’m not questioning your competence. I’m talking about institutional continuity. Companies need documentation so knowledge doesn’t live in one person’s head.”
“It doesn’t live in my head,” Jeff said. “It lives in the system.”
“But you built the system.”
“Yes.”
“And nobody else fully understands it.”
“Chen does.”
“But if she left—”
“She won’t.”
Marcus took a breath. This was like arguing with a load-bearing wall. “Okay. Let’s try this differently. Our clients are asking for compliance reports. FEMA wants audit trails. The city wants transparent risk modeling. We can’t send them your code and say ’trust us.'”
“Why not?” Jeff asked. “The code is the model. If they don’t trust it, they don’t trust physics.”
“They trust explanations,” Marcus said. “They trust documentation. They trust processes they can verify.”
Jeff’s expression didn’t change. “I verify the processes. That’s my job.”
“Jeff.” Marcus kept his voice level. “You’re one person. We have forty-three employees. We’re bidding on state contracts that require ISO compliance. That means documented workflows, version control, third-party audits. I can’t tell the state of California that our secret weapon is one guy who doesn’t write anything down.”
“I write everything down,” Jeff said. “It’s called the commit log.”
Marcus closed his eyes briefly. He’d led teams through acquisitions, through pivots, through crises. He knew how to manage egos. But this wasn’t ego, he suspected. This was something else. Jeff wasn’t posturing. He genuinely didn’t understand what Marcus was asking for.
“Let me be direct,” Marcus said. “The board hired me to professionalize this company. That means structure. Accountability. Documentation. I need your help to do that. Will you work with me?”
Jeff considered this.
“If it improves the system,” he said.
“It will.”
“How?”
“By making it sustainable.”
Jeff picked up a pen from the desk and clicked it twice, a small, unconscious gesture. “The system is sustainable. I sustain it.”
Marcus felt something cold settle in his chest. It wasn’t anger. It was recognition. He’d seen this before at his last company: the indispensable engineer who’d built everything, who believed the work spoke for itself, who couldn’t see that the world had changed. It always ended the same way.
“Okay,” Marcus said, standing. “I appreciate your time. Let’s circle back in a few weeks.”
Jeff nodded. “Sure.”
Marcus walked back to his office and opened his laptop. He drafted an email to the COO with the subject line: Key person risk — higher than reported. Then he deleted it and wrote instead: Need external audit of core systems ASAP.
That afternoon, he ate lunch at the Philz on Broadway. The barista wrote his name wrong on the cup. Outside, the banner across Courthouse Square said CLIMATE BEST BY GOVERNMENT TEST in cheerful block letters. Marcus looked at it and wondered if anyone actually believed that.
He thought about Jeff’s face when he’d asked about the bus factor. No defensiveness. No anxiety. Just certainty. The kind of certainty that didn’t bend, and didn’t suppose it needed to.
Marcus wasn’t a villain. He’d spent six years learning how to scale teams, how to build systems that survived turnover and growth and market shifts. He believed in what he was doing. He believed structure wasn’t the enemy of genius — it was the only thing that let genius outlive the person who created it.
But Jeff didn’t believe that. Jeff believed he was the structure.
One of them was going to be wrong.
From: Marcus Webb mwebb@matthersseismic.com To: Jeff Matthers jmatthers@matthersseismic.com Date: January 12, 2023, 4:18 PM Subject: Follow-up
Jeff,
Thanks again for the conversation this morning. I know change can be uncomfortable, but I’m confident we can build something great together.
As a first step, I’d like to schedule a working session next week with you, Chen, and a technical writer. Goal: produce a high-level overview of the prediction model that we can share with clients and auditors. Nothing that compromises IP — just enough to demonstrate our methodology.
Let me know your availability.
Looking forward to a cooperative relationship.
Best, Marcus