Interlude - Index of

150 | Grown-Up Company
computers? It is hard to reverse course when you’ve argued a
point of view so many times in public.
Nevertheless, James argued that we should support SAN.
James has a habit of being right but is often quiet about his
views: he’ll state them once, to see if anyone listens, and then
keep quiet if they don’t. Sometimes I’ve joked that my job is
Spokesman for James, because he comes up with great ideas
and says them once, and then I repeat them over and over
until people pay attention. I’ve learned that disagreements
with James often occur because one of us knows something
that the other does not. Usually it’s not something obvious; it’s
a hidden assumption. Sometimes you have to keep digging—
keep arguing, but I mean that in a friendly, searching-for-thetruth
kind of way—to figure out what the hidden assumption
is, because once you expose it, then the right answer suddenly
comes into clear focus. Given this experience, I was comfortable
disagreeing with James, fully expecting that we’d eventually
work it out. In this case, the discussion went on for many
months. (This willingness to cooperatively disagree, working
together to try and get to the right solution, is an aspect of our
culture that I try to promote.)
My argument was that the NAS market was growing fast
enough. Many of our employees joined NetApp because they
believed in NAS. We represented the new, not the old. Our
sales staff depended on SAN is Bad to sell. Also, the marketplace
for SAN was big and crowded. We would be coming in
as the newest and smallest producer—never a good place to
be—and we would be playing catch-up for a long time. The
resources invested in SAN would be better spent improving
NAS. Why risk our edge and our culture to do something we
knew was inferior?