Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

someone who best represented the antithesis of the Hacker Ethic, he would havebeen hard-pressed to top his former boss. The act was akin to someoneacknowledging that he was sick, and perversely choosing the worst-tastingmedicine as a restorative.There was something more insidious in the choice as well. One reason why Kenhad left Informatics several years earlier was that Dick Sunderiand had told him,"Ken, you have no management potential." The idea of being Dick Sunderland'sboss, therefore, appealed greatly to Ken's affection for toppling the establishedorder.For Dick Sunderiand, the prospect of working for Ken Williams initially struckhim as absurd. "Come up and run my company!" Ken had chirped to him over thephone from this mountain complex near Yosemite. This was no way to recruitexecutives, thought Dick. There is no way, he told himself, I am going to getmixed up in a deal like this. Dick was completing an MBA program, a movewhich he felt would put him in line for the very top positions at Informatics. Butby the time Ken called him a second time, Sunderiand had been worrying abouthis future at Informatics, and had been thinking of the booming microcomputerfield. In early June, Dick drove up, and had lunch at the Broken Bit with themotley crew of Oakhurst retreads and college dropouts that made up Ken's uppermanagement. He looked at the venture capital deal and was impressed. Eventually,he came to think that On-Line, as he later put it, "had a hell of a potential,something I could work with. I could bring what was missing cohesive leadershipto make things jell." Dick realized the home software industry was "new, like clay... you could mold it and make it happen, make a winner ... BOOM! It was theopportunity of a lifetime for me."On the other hand, he would be working for Ken Williams. For over a month, Dickand his wife April would spend hours sitting in the backyard of the Los Angeleshouse they had carefully decorated over the years, kicking around this fantasy thatwould mandate their evacuation from the house, and it would be clear that thenumber one risk was the personality of this wild programmer-tumed-softwareczar.Dick consulted professionals to discuss what it would be like, a carefulmanager working for this reckless entrepreneur; he spoke to management experts,even a psychiatrist. Sun-derland became convinced he could handle the KenProblem.On September 1, 1982, Dick Sunderland began as the president of On-LineSystems, which coincidentally was also changing its name. Reflecting theproximity of Yosemite, the company would now be called Sierra On-Line, and thenew logo had a drawing of Half-Dome Mountain in a circle. A change toaccommodate the new age.