The title was VP Engineering. The job was finding somebody to pull Cat5.
Reonomy was moving offices, and the new space needed low-voltage cable before it could behave like a technology company. Laptops and servers were useful only after the rooms had a network running through them.
Normally I would have handled the referral earlier. My mom died right after somebody gave me a name. I dropped the ball and went back to Indiana to handle family matters. By the time I returned to the office move, the request was urgent.
I sent a cold note with the plain version. Here is who I am. We are moving. We need help pulling cable. I know this is short notice. Can you get in as soon as possible?
There was no point dressing it up as infrastructure strategy. Somebody needed to measure the runs, get cable through the space, terminate it, and make sure people could plug in when the office opened.
This was familiar work even if I was trying to find someone else to do it. Long before product roadmaps and executive meetings, I had spent years around networks, racks, office builds, and the physical parts of technology people stop noticing once they work.
The contrast was still a little absurd. I had recently been promoted. I was leading engineering and product work at a growing startup. My inbox covered APIs, data, hiring, releases, and the office move. The immediate blocker was cable in the walls.
Startup titles do not protect anybody from that kind of task. The work lands where it lands, especially during a move. If the right person is unavailable, the VP sends another email and keeps calling until somebody can show up.
Family had properly taken me away from it. The move had not waited. I did not try to rewrite that collision into a better excuse. I said I had dropped the ball, explained why, and asked for help.
We needed the office connected. The rest of the title could wait until the cable was pulled.