I worked in the early days after Ewan left, and I must say Ewan only worked on Circe to my knowledge. I dont think he had anything to do with Full Throttle or Alien.
That's right, I was brought in right at the start when Andy was still living at the house with the pool. It's true what Dave was saying, the annex wasn't even remotely close to being livable. Apologies if this is rehashing old ground so skip this message if this all sounds familiar but I feel I may as well tell my story as everyone else is doing it. I have the dubious honour of being the 'first paid employee' of HP.
Back in 2011 I did a presentation on FreeWPC at the UK Pinball Party, which was some software I was working on with Dominic Clifton and headed up by Brian Dominy. Brian had written the huge majority of it and me and Dom were working on code for TZ and Corvette respectivally. A couple of months after that I moved abroad.
Then in June 2012 I got contacted by Andy asking him if I wanted to join his company to help create Circe, I would be bringing to the table my 8 years experience as a pinball tech and my software experience of FreeWPC, which the Circe prototype used. This was quite exciting for me and a dream job, so I hopped onto a plane (Andy paid half my fare, roughly £300 IIRC) and came to work for him in Rhymney. For the first couple of months I was staying at the house with me, Dave, Andy, his then girlfriend and the constant stink of cat ****.
It stunk of cat **** because Andy lived near a busy road and I don't think he would ever let his cats out of the house. Consequently the whole place stunk of cat ****.
In any case, it rapidly became clear that Andy had no ****ing idea what he was doing, both in terms of managing people and in technical terms. As an example of his lack of technical knowledge, I have this email I sent to one of colleagues in early July 2012:
One thing that came up when chatting to Andy tonight was the subject
of flippers. I think he was expecting to use 'Gottlieb' style with
50V EOS switches to switch to the holding voltage. I explained the
problems with this approach (high voltage wearing down the contacts,
the need for maintenance) and how Data East/WPC handle it (digitally
controlled switching). Personally I feel that we should be doing it
the solid state way, I take it this would be your preferred method
also?
This was on the eve of him going to go speak to a board manufacturer, on his own. A lot of money was wasted because Andy refused to listen to his technical advisers and had no ****ing clue how a pinball machine worked internally.
At the end of July 2012 I remember having a massive argument with him and walking off the job. This was primarily due to him refusing to sort out a contract as up until this point I had been working without one. When I asked him to get one sorted, he gave me a boatload of excuses, saying he'll have to get one written up by his lawyer, that it would cost him hundreds of pounds of money to do so. I flat out refused to work for him unless we both had signed contracts and he took this as some kind of insult. If you want to see an example of Andys narcissistic behaviour, here's an excerpt from an email I received from him after I left:
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26/07/2012
Hi Ewan,
To be honest, I am still shell-shocked by what happened yesterday and in particular, by the things you said to me.
The problem is, that you have made it very difficult to come back from this position. If you go to ANY company in the land, and say to the boss:
1. You have NO confidence in him or his ability to deliver a product
2. He is living in a big house with a pool so he can afford to pay more wages
3. He should start selling his assets if he is serious about building a business
Well, I think you know the answer to what 99% of bosses would say or do.
Also, you do not know my relationship with Dave so to suggest that I am using him or abusing him is, quite frankly, untrue. Dave and I may butt heads, but we have been friends for 2.5 years and know each other very well.
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But even then it was clear to me that he was a serial bull****ter and the way he was treated Dave was bordering on criminal. So I left and refused to come back until he paid me for the work I had already done and presented me with a contract we could both sign. The amusing part of this was that he had an NDA ready for me to sign and constantly badgered me to sign it, but couldn't find the time to get a contract written up.
To his credit, it took him about a week after I left for him to pay the ~£500 he owed me but it took him another couple of weeks to get a contract written up, which was amusing seeing as it didn't even cover 2 sides of A4 paper. IIRC it was for around £11k / year, although he first tried getting me on a zero hours contract and offering me shares, which I declined.
Once he had a contract ready for me to sign, I started working for him again, which would have been just before the UK Pinball Party in August 2012. I was expected to babysit the prototype machine for the event and generally help out, but Andy was expecting me to pay my own travel costs and accommodation. This to me was unacceptable and Andy could not understand why I would deserve to be reimbursed for my expenses. Again this was indicative of the fact Andy had no clue about managing people and just expected people to do things for him 'for free'. Andy did eventually agree to reimburse me but IIRC it took a couple of weeks of me pestering him for it. Bear in mind this figure would have been around £200, considering how much money he had just raked in it shouldn't have been a problem.
Constantly trying to manipulate people out of what they were owed by him seems to be his forte, he'll try every trick in the book to make it seem like it's your fault he owes you money and that you don't deserve it.
In any case, it was pretty clear to both of us that my continued employment with him wasn't going to work. He wasn't listening to my technical advice and his general attitude was that unless you said 'Yes boss, that's a great idea' then you weren't any use to him. I remember him saying at one point that 'A business is not a democracy', whilst that may be strictly true, it's indicative of his lack of ability to listen to what more knowledgeable people are telling him. I have plenty of other stories along these lines but I'm starting to ramble here, so I'll start to wrap it up.
In early September I stopped working for him and moved back home, which was a mutual agreement between me and Andy. I had one weeks notice written into my contract, I asked him at the time if he required me to work my notice period and he said no. I have written evidence of this which came in handy later. When I received my final paycheck I noticed that he had failed to pay me my notice period. When I asked for this, he went bat**** mental and flat out refused to pay it, as he couldn't understand why I should be paid for work I haven't done. This was highly indicative to me that he had no clue how to run a business and never had people working for him before. I ended up taking him to an industrial tribunal to recover those funds, 3 days before we were due to go to the tribunal he finally relented and paid me 75% of it.
All things considered, I got off lightly. All I had lost was a good job in another country that I had left to work for him, my reputation in the UK pinball community and about 6 months of my life.
