Ballad of D.Q.

Chorus:
The pressure was real high
with the 2.0 release,
meant to fix all bugs, or die,
tech support would have some peace.

Engineers worked day and night
studying their code,
product managers counted bytes
in pizza-eating mode.

And D.Q., the boy from Alameda,
who put start-ups on the map,
he grabbed a slice of pizza
saying, "Don't give me any crap."

Until deadlines are met,
he promised to stay in the trenches,
software QA'd, security tested,
no one sitting on the benches.

Each week D.Q. e-mailed
a variation of the old,
his message never failed:
keep all new features on hold.

Marketing never heard,
only knew what they had to know,
they'd already given their word,
the product was scheduled to go.

The hour it came for the product to ship,
a month before the big holiday purse.
"Where was D.Q? Can you believe this shit?"
Maybe he had the flu or something worse.

But let me tell you what I saw
I'll give you the entire poop,
when I took the elevator down to the 31st floor
to meet with the core technology group

There was D.Q. telling the marketing folk
to extend the deadline, or be a fool,
he slipped a skateboard beneath his coat
saying, "Good-bye. It's been real cool."

So next time you walk down Mission Street
running to catch the bus or the BART home,
the kid zipping up pavement on his feet,
could be D.Q. on the roam.

The kid who got tired of programming,
tired of deadlines, tired of being a sap,
the head geek who's surfing
on a skateboard, and never coming back.