The motivator behind finally telling this story is Martin Baron’s memoir, Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and THE WASHINGTON POST. In chapter 18, “Uprisings”, Baron explains what he considers to have been his failure, as the Post’s editor, at resolving the disconnect he felt with Black staffers in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder in 2020.
Ted was hired, and after attending a week of employee orientation he joined my group. The job required a decidedly mixed skill set. It was split between a lot of hands-on technical work and teaching classes on how to use the system. (My most difficult challenge in doing that was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C.)
Someone who wasn’t comfortable with frequent air travel, technical troubleshooting under pressure, or public speaking wouldn’t have been qualified. Ted seemed suited to the job. He liked electronics, he was well-spoken, and his personality reminded me of the DJ’s I’d worked with in radio. In fact, Ted had a side gig as a club DJ.
The technical aspects of the job required a lot of time to learn; one year for basic proficiency. So the goal for new hires was to get them up to speed as quickly as possible, to start traveling and to provide the onsite training.
Everyone in my group needed to be able to fill in for one another to do the traveling and the training. For the technical work, I tried to give each of them their own specialty.
For many years I was the go-to guy for customer data communications problems. Dealing with the confounding aspects of serial interfacing and data flow control in the Universal 7-Part Data Circuit model was a big part of my job. (Thank you Intel, for implementing unidirectional XON/XOFF flow control in your modems!)
Ted had an interest in, and aptitude for, data communications. Which made sense to me, because just as I had been a radio DJ, Ted was a gear head with his own DJ setup. I welcomed the chance to train Ted and offload some of that datacomm work.
