What Happened to Lee

What an ignorant I was. March last year (2019), I wrote an email to Lee Holloway asking him how he could bootstrap such a great company. Now I know why I haven’t received the answer.

EDIT: I found an email:

Dear Lee Holloway,

Excuse my curiosity, as an Engineer I am not writing this kind of emails a lot, but I have read the blog series by John Graham-Cumming about the company, and it would really help me if you can answer my question about the constant flow of engineering innovations from your company.

I am a security engineer from Europe and would like to know how is it possible, that security team will start producing such a stream of innovative things like Keyless SSL, CFSSL, SIDH implementation, Red October key management server and many more your company already published?

When the "lift and shift" from the open source or vendor stops and internal building start to happen within an organization? Is it a cultural thing where only a small startup can succeed and scale later? Is it about the budget or is it a cultural shift that is non forcible upon them? Is a prerequisite to the innovation, that almost everything is developed in house? That came to me as a contra productive strategy. I have read Skunk Works and other books, but I am still impressed how that happens regarding to the modern leading IT/infra companies.

Thank you for your time,

...

Re: What Happened to Lee

#7

Post by kick » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

This is horrifying.

Conversations soon became impossible. Lee started chattering in repetitive, unceasing loops. He would tell Kristin: “We met at Cloudflare. We got engaged in Rome. We got married in Maui, Hawaii.” He repeated it hundreds of times a day. Then the loops got shorter, more cryptic. He spoke fewer sentences, instead muttering sequences of numbers or letters.

At the same time, given the flashes of lucidity pointed out in this article, you have to wonder if others talking about his condition so much might make him feel like a walking corpse when those hit.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#8

Post by jc01480 » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

The idea that we’d eventually come to a day when we can no longer see ourselves. That is hell for most, a gift to few.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#9

Post by eastdakota » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

kick wrote: post #7

This is horrifying. Conversations soon became impossible. Lee started chattering in repetitive, unceasing loops. He would tell Kristin: “We met at Cloudflare. We got engaged in Rome. We got married in Maui, Hawaii.” He repeated it hundreds of times a day. Then the loops got shorter, more cryptic. He spoke fewer sentences, instead muttering sequences of numbers or letters. At the same time, given the flashes of lucidi…

It was incredibly sad to watch. The last time I saw him while he was still speaking — he is still alive but doesn’t speak or seem to recognize me anymore — he would repeat the same questions from the same conversation in the same order on a 30-minute loop. Over and over.

I’ve really struggled to wrap my mind around his condition. I don’t think it’s frustrating for him. He seems to have lost the emotion to be frustrated.

I think we all have a sense of Alzheimer’s because we’ve all forgotten something. This isn’t that. Lee’s memory, if anything, seemed to improve and he’d bring up little details from when we first worked together I’d long since forgotten. What seemed to go away was his ability to process those memories into something more.

It’s hard to imagine losing the ability to imagine. And, as his friend and colleague, it was incredibly frustrating when we just thought he was checked out. And then devastating when we learned all this time he’d actually had a disease.

I do wonder if some of his genius came from his ability to shut down some of the other noise in his life. And if the disease, for some time before it became debilitating, was almost a superpower. I’ve never met an engineer like him.

I miss him every day.

Re: What Happened to Lee

#10

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

It's a tragic story. In some way, he'll live on in his contributions to a better and safer internet, for whatever that's worth. Thank you for your contributions, Lee, and I hope you have the best life you can.