Profiles

From my Interview with Marshall Mosley

(July 18, 2025 - Cave Creek, Arizona)

Famous writers from Profiles

Profiles was this weird intersection. Don't know why it happened, but a lot of later famous writers wrote there. David Gerrold was established before he wrote for profiles [Profiles, July 1984]. He wrote the screenplay for Trouble with Tribbles, for the original Star Trek. He wrote [the novel] The Man Who Folded Himself. He wrote the Chtorr series.

Robert J. Sawyer, at the time, wrote for us.

Jack Nimershine. Ted Chiang. He wrote The Story of Your Life, and it was made into that movie [Arrival], with [Amy Adams].

Marshall getting hired at Kaypro

First night there, it's December, and I'm like, it's California, it's December (1983), it's 75 degrees. Yeah. So I went to the hot tub, the apartment had a hot tub, and sat in the hot tub, and this woman comes and sits in the hot tub, and she's mid to late-40s. And we're chatting, and she says, what are you doing? And I explain, I just arrived, and she said, so you're looking for work? And I said, yeah. And she goes, well, I'm an employment counselor. And I was like, oh, that's wonderful. She said, what can you do? And I explained, at my most recent job was in a warehouse driving a forklift. And she said, well, not 200 yards from here is this new company, Kaypro Computers.

And if you go in there the first day and ask to apply, they'll turn you down. Go in the second day, ask to apply, they'll turn you down. Go in the third day, they'll hire you. And it was like, I don't know why she knew this magic formula, but it was exactly as she said. And so I became what at Kaypro was called a material handler.

The guy who came down and talked to me was a guy named Alan Ogden. He was the head of material handling. I'm sure he must be passed away by now because he was almost 60 then. But he was just a sweet guy, a former hippie. Really thoughtful, really quiet, but very decisive.

Myself and another guy named Kai Sorenson were the only two Americans in material handling. There were like 12 people. And none of the Mexicans spoke English. And Kai was like right out of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. He was like "dude". They must have videotaped him or something. Assembly would just order stuff. And I'd go down and get the pallet and drive it up for a couple months.

The warehouse doesn't exist. They're assembling, I believe, in three separate areas [of the original buildings].

But there's board manufacturing, which is what was next to [the] profiles [office], where they had the vats and the dip and the whole thing. Then they had what I believe was called ICs, where they populated the boards with all the integrated circuits. Then they had assembly, which is where they put the computers together.

I was driving hard drives, sheet metal, and everything up. Andy Kay hired a guy named Gene. I wish I could remember Gene's last name. Gene was like 75 years old, and he wore, in hot Southern California, gray wool slacks, a plaid shirt, bow tie, the jacket with the patches on the elbows, you know, and seemed very patrician.

He hired Gene to create and run an inventory department, because they were losing inventory, they couldn't keep track of it, and so he came down to material handling, because I handled inventory all day long, and he interviewed me and Kai, and he pulled me out of material handling to be in the inventory department.

It was basically a method of inventory called cycle. Cycle counting. The goal was, you count 5% of your total inventory every day. It's a different 5% each day. So, as time goes by, like after three to four months, you have a very accurate view of your inventory.

I did inventory with like three other people, and very quickly, Gene said, well, Marshall, we're going to make you the department head. And I said, I thought you were the department head. He goes, no, I'm the supervisor. Because he would just love to sit at his desk and look out the window. But he was a very bright guy, and he would take all the information, and he had these big ledger books, like you see in the old West movies. After a few weeks, I was like, Gene, we're a computer company, why are we using ledgers? He said, because I know how to use ledgers. Here, I'll tell you what. You come in at 8, instead of 9, and you work from 8 till noon, teaching yourself how to computerize our inventory. And then you do your counting. I'll talk to you in a few months. That was the single thing made my life, made my career.

To computerized the inventory I used Dbase II on a Kaypro 10. The way it worked out is Andy Kay wanted the inventory reports every morning so the whole inventory department was oriented around producing those reports for him so that's what I did for over a year.

I taught myself programming, I went to UCSD, I took a Pascal course, I also learned a little electronics in high School, but I went down to the repair department, and I learned how to do repair, because I thought it was something I needed to know.

Andy Kay calls me up one day, and he's like, why don't you come down to my office, you're going to meet with me. He was there with a woman who was the head of accounting, she was big, she was mean, and she didn't like anybody, so I come and I sit down in his office, and he's says, "We're missing $10 million." Your inventory is showing 10 million less than accounting is showing and I said I'll go over it with you and I went over it with him and she was very challenging she was very aggressive and I said look I'll break it down the point if you want to look at the programming I'll break it down for you and she was like no.

They figured out someone had stolen a truck full of Kaypro 10s. On the south of the Kaypro campus was just a hillside right where they had cut into the hillside and they forming a semi-circular bands of 4 trailers and that's where they stored integrated circuits, sheet metal, and finished computers. And they figured out that what happened is one night someone pulled up, hooked up the truck and drove out.

At the time I had just turned 24 and I was like, I had that experience, I was like, I'm so out of my league. You know, it's like, my software was right, she was wrong, but I was like, I'm punching way above my weight. And I never had any interest in being a corporate, inventory guy.

So I went down to the woman who ran publications, her name is Paula White and she was four foot nothing, and she was like in her late thirties, and she was very cheerful, very chipper, very nice woman, tough as nails.

I said, "Can I come and work and be a technical writer?" She said, "Yes". So I transferred, I handed over the inventory department to the woman who ran accounting. And I went and became a technical writer.

Went to UCSD, took technical writing classes. That's was what I did for like another year.