Sublime

West had a saying: “The game around here is getting a machine out the door with your name on it.”

At one point, Jim Guyer said: “We didn’t get our commitment to this project from de Castro or Carman or West. We got it from within ourselves. Nobody told us we had to put extra effort into the project.” Ken Holberger burst out laughing. Guyer raised his voice. “We got it from within ourselves to put extra effort in the project.” Laughing hard, Hol

Some of the engineers closest to West suspected that if he weren’t given a crisis to deal with once in a while, he would create one. To them he seemed so confident and happy in an emergency.

“It doesn’t matter how hard you work on something,” says Holberger. “What counts is finishing and having it work.”

“With Tom, it’s the last two percent that counts. What I now call ‘the ability to ship product’—to get it out the door.”

“The way West was with us, it provided a one-level separation—someone far enough away to lay blame on.”