The Silicon Jungle

by Shumeet Baluja

  Stephen was pretty certain Molly had reached her threshold for tech talk; he wasn’t about to press his luck talking any more about viruses, her new computer, or Ubatoo. He did, however, readily agree to dinner.

  “Just make yourself at home,” Molly said as she went to order the food. “I’ll be right back.”

  Stephen stood uncomfortably next to the computer he had set up, not sure what to do next. All he knew for certain was that he wanted to literally move away from the computer. Of all the images he wanted to leave in Molly’s mind, him next to a computer, having just talked about hackers and firewalls, was lowest on his list.

  So what should he do now? Considering the favor he had just done, he assumed it would be okay to sit down and turn on the TV. On the other hand, given the amount of time they had known each other, it was probably best not to make himself too comfortable yet. He shook his head side to side, a little embarrassed, and frankly displeased with himself for thinking about this so much. He decided on a compromise. He would sit on the sofa, but not turn on the TV. Dare I eat a peach, too? he recalled, a line he had read years ago. Why all this thought? It had been a long time since he’d paid this much attention to his actions, and it was not at all obvious that any of his actions were ever worth so much thought.

  Having made the monumental decision to sit, he absentmindedly looked around the cluttered coffee table, and piled together a few Xeroxed pages that were fluttering in the breeze from the open windows. Underneath the glass table top, five stacks of Xeroxed pages revealed themselves—each reaching up, at least a foot, from the floor to the table.

  He couldn’t help but be intrigued. Anything even remotely academic was a souvenir from a life he knew years ago as a graduate student. From the headers of the photocopied articles, he could see they were from publications such as The Journal of Political Science, Urban Affairs Review, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Politics and Religion. His next thoughts came as a bit of a surprise to him: four years had passed since he had been a graduate student—and he missed it.

  He remembered the pride and sense of accomplishment he had felt whenever an article he had written describing his latest research was accepted for publication into an academic journal. It was a testament to his discovery of something new, something that his peers, other scientists, found worthy of preserving and ensuring that future scientists had a chance to read about as well.

  With these thoughts, though, also came the memories of what reality was for a graduate student. These fanciful ruminations were far from the day-to-day life of an academic. Reading volumes of academic papers and publishing regularly would simply be expected, not cherished. It would be little more than a concrete measure by which to confirm he wasn’t simply wasting time.

  Nonetheless, there remained a not-so-small twinge of jealousy in him as he surveyed the articles. With the same adoration that compelled some to covet and collect books, he looked at messy stacks of academic articles. Having them around was like having access to raw knowledge, waiting to be understood. Even if they were from fields outside his own line of study, it was reassuring that the world he had left behind still existed.

  Dinner, and the hours of easy banter afterward, had been far more engaging than either could have anticipated. To start, Molly was a graduate student at Brown University in Anthropology and Political Science, doing part of her field work in Silicon Valley. How she wound up here he still didn’t quite grasp, but there would be time for that later. That she was a graduate student immediately gave them a large set of shared experiences to draw from in their conversation. The fact they were both now at GreeneSmart provided even more fodder for the evening’s exchanges. It wasn’t until 5:30 in the morning that they decided to call it a night.

  Thankfully, the night hadn’t turned out anything like Stephen had imagined it might a few hours earlier. As he was leaving in the early morning, she implored him, even before it should have rationally had any impact on him, to at least sign up for the intern contest at Ubatoo. She was more certain than ever, she said, that he was underselling himself at GreeneSmart and he could be doing so much more.

  But being an intern? Hadn’t he just built up his own company, and managed a large team? he argued. No, she reminded him, what he had just done was waste two and a half years at GreeneSmart. His own company, she went on to state, was long gone. She certainly wasn’t lacking in candor. In addition to the obvious realities she had pointed out, Molly also stated others he needed to hear. He had taken care of his employees better than anyone could have expected. He also needed to take care of himself.

  However, in the six hours since Molly had first mentioned the Ubatoo prospect, the idea never left him, always rising up again in the few pauses between hours of conversations. Perhaps more pertinent was that, in the light of any budding new relationship, promises were all too easily made. Of course he had agreed to enter the contest; the only person who ever thought he might not was himself.

  What Trisha could not have known just a few hours earlier, but would happily take credit for, was the instrumental role she had played in putting Stephen and Molly together, even if all she had really wanted was to avoid several hours of staring at a new computer in Molly’s tiny apartment.

  -TOUCHPOINTS-

  September, 2002.

  In 2002, Atiq Asad would have described himself as a modest man. He was rapidly approaching a tenured professorship in UC-Berkeley’s Computer Science Department, his students were obtaining positions in the most highly regarded and prestigious academic institutions in the country, and his research in the emerging field of data mining was winning accolades and honors from his peers. There was good reason to be proud, though he would never talk about any of his accomplishments aloud for fear of being too boastful.

  On average, Atiq received about one call per month from recruiters at startup companies in Silicon Valley that he had never heard of. To avoid common courtesy being mistaken as interest, he didn’t normally bother responding in any way. But the latest company to contact him, Ubatoo.com, was not completely unfamiliar. When the recruiter called his cell phone for the third time, on a whim, he answered.

  Within the first five minutes, he had already exhausted his patience, along with his usual cadre of excuses: “Really, I’m quite happy at Berkeley,” or “I’m not in the market for a new career right now.” It had been a mistake to answer the phone; the recruiter wasn’t taking his not-so-subtle hints.

  “Dr. Asad, just hear me out,” the recruiter pleaded. “We’ve already assembled a stellar team of 40 people. We’d like you to come and create your own research group, as large or small as you like. I have to be honest with you, Dr. Asad—you have quite the reputation around here. At last count, five of our most senior scientists asked specifically that I recruit you. As far as they’re concerned, you walk on water.”

  “Like I said, I’m flattered. But I’d like to meet those five delusional scientists sometime. Personally, I’d be leery of anyone with such a high opinion of me,” Atiq replied, trying to cover his impatience.

  “Dr. Asad, what are you looking for? Freedom to do your own research? Brilliant peers to work with? Is it money? Whatever it takes to get you here, I’ll try my hardest to make it happen.”

  The words could be enticing if he let them linger. Focus. “In nine months, if all goes well, I’ll be granted tenure at Berkeley. I can’t give up on years of work when I’m so close. Thank you once again. I really must go now.”

  “I don’t suppose telling you the salary we’re offering could sway you? Or maybe telling you that the number of Ubatoo’s stock options we’re granting you is more than I’ve ever seen before? How about if we keep this offer open for you even after you get tenure? That will give you some time to think about it, too.”

  “Okay. Let’s talk again in nine months, after the tenure decision is behind me,” Atiq agreed. Finally, a polite end to the conversation. Besides, in nine months, these shimmery words would have already
tempted the receptive ears of their next hiring targets.

  The recruiter didn’t call again.

  The trouble for Atiq was that Ubatoo had insinuated itself in his life from every direction. Whether he used Ubatoo’s search engine for finding academic papers, or whether he used it to buy Christmas gifts for his wife and kids, Ubatoo had become the single destination for finding all things on the Web. He was beginning to use their other services, too—e-mail and online credit cards, and occasionally their instant messaging service to chat with his son and daughter, both of whom insisted this was the only sure way for them to communicate. With each flash of the Ubatoo logo, it was difficult not to imagine what the recruiter might have offered had he not been so quick to close the conversation.

  Ten months after the initial phone call, and a month after the long awaited tenure had been bestowed, the recruiter returned in person, with five friends. “Dr. Asad,” the recruiter, and the only man wearing a tie, began, “As you requested many months ago, I’d like to introduce you to those five delusional scientists.”

  Atiq scanned their faces—faces he vaguely recognized from a few years ago, when he had taught them as graduate students. They looked like they had never left Berkeley’s Soda Hall—worn-out jeans, faded t-shirts, scruffy faces, dirty hair, and the unmistakable aura of sleep deprivation. He reached out to warmly shake each of their hands and invited them into his office.

  The small talk lasted only a moment before the recruiter steered the conversation back on track. “Have you given Ubatoo any more thought? Ubatoo has more than tripled in size since we last spoke, and we need you as part of our team more than ever. The offer is still open.”

  “Gentlemen, it’s wonderful to see you all again. I can’t possibly tell you how rewarding it is to have you all here like this, but I can’t give all of this up.” Atiq motioned toward the shelves of papers, books, and numerous framed award certificates haphazardly scattered amidst the mess. “I just received tenure. Let this old man enjoy it.” He did feel old, very old, in the presence of the five sitting in front of him.

  The recruiter spoke before any of the others had a chance. “Dr. Asad, we would never ask you to give up your position here. Just work with us for a while and see if it’s a good fit. Keep your position as a Berkeley professor as long as you like. We’re willing to share your time.”

  One of the five, the one in a crumpled old Berkeley t-shirt, stopped his furious typing on the laptop he never left home without and chimed in nervously, “Dr. Asad, listen. Don’t you want to see how well your research works in the real world? We’re facing all the same problems you studied and published about in dozens of your papers. This is what you’ve waited for; it’s no longer just speculation and theory to ponder and write about. It’s real. It’s tangible. We live, breathe, and swim in the data every day. More data than you can imagine.” He took a moment before continuing, his eyes wandering over the crowded shelves on all sides of the office.

  As he started again, his gaze returned to resolutely focus on Atiq, “I know you use our search engine at least a dozen times each day and you use our e-mail constantly for sending personal messages. In fact, you checked it less than 45 minutes ago, just before you left your house to come here, right? I know you use our instant message service to talk to your kids, which I’m willing to bet was on their insistence. You probably talk to them more through instant messaging than you do in person considering the long hours you put in here. And last week, you used our credit card four times. This week, you’ve only used it once, yesterday . . . And that’s just what I found from a few minutes of poking around our data while you were talking. Think about what you could do with this information on all our users.”

  The recruiter stepped a few feet forward and tentatively placed a thick sealed envelope on Atiq’s desk, marked only with his name, the ubiquitous Ubatoo logo, and the words, “Welcome Aboard.” The recruiter shifted his eyes from the envelope to Atiq, saying quietly, “I think we’ve probably said enough.”

  No one moved—all awaiting Atiq’s response. He was subtly nodding his head up and down as he considered these five scientists, these kids, in front of him. He thought about the magnitude of what they had stumbled upon, wondered if they possibly understood what they possessed, or even knew what they should do with it, or could do with it. Then his eyes too wandered over the piles of books and dusty awards that engulfed him. “You seem to know me pretty well,” he said as he reached one hand toward the envelope. “Tell me, have you figured out how to get all of your data to reveal what I am going to do now?” he asked with a smile, while deliberately smoothing a wrinkled corner of the waiting envelope.

  The recruiter tried to step between Atiq and the scientists before any of them started talking again. But two of the five answered in perfect unison, as if this show had been perfectly choreographed just to deliver the final punch line: “Not yet. That’s what we need you for.”

  September, 2008.

  Walking into the Ubatoo office building in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley, was just as overwhelming for Atiq back in 2002 as it is for those who visit Ubatoo today. Immediately he had felt the palpable energy in the offices, the vibrant animated discussions transpiring in front of whiteboards brimming with more equations and Greek symbols than words, and the furious clicking of keyboards punctuated only by rapid excited exchanges. But most of all, what he sensed—as clearly as if his eyes saw it—was the raw focused brainpower at work.

  Six years later, Atiq was a vice president at Ubatoo, a company that had grown its ranks to 12,000 employees. Although he still held his Berkeley professorship, the vast majority of his waking hours, as well as a few of his sleeping ones, were spent on Ubatoo’s sprawling grounds. Like Berkeley, there was no shortage of interesting and challenging problems to tackle. Unlike Berkeley, Ubatoo had the added thrill of allowing one’s work to affect the lives of literally hundreds of millions of people within minutes of its completion. Change one thing on the web site and immediately a large portion of the world’s population saw its effects.

  Atiq’s data mining division specialized in finding trends and patterns in massive repositories of raw data. All the data Ubatoo collected from every site on the Web, as well as each of the enormous number of interactions that any one of its users had with Ubatoo, were analyzed by some portion of the data mining group’s computer programs. These programs ran all night and all day, every day, looking for patterns to better understand what the user was doing, what the user was trying to accomplish, and what Ubatoo could do to better serve the user’s needs. And for his success, Atiq had been rewarded beyond his most spectacular dreams. His rewards ensured that his children would be able to support their children and maybe even their grandchildren without worry. The recruiter’s exaggerations had proven true—the package, the people, and the work here were indeed extraordinary.

  He thought about all of this today, in particular, since today was the day Xiao Ming, Ubatoo’s CEO, would officially reveal Atiq’s most ambitious initiative, Touchpoints, a project that had been over two years in the making. Atiq had waited patiently, and implored the rest of the Touchpoints team to be just as patient, until everything was completed before letting Xiao announce it to the rest of the company. Now, with the system’s first round of tests completed, he was comfortable with the accolades he knew his team would surely receive. And though his intention was never to seek praise, it was impossible to deny his own tiny desire to have his work recognized by his peers at Ubatoo. It was because of these thoughts that he wondered if he could still accurately describe himself as a modest man.

  The auditorium where Ubatoo’s “rally the troops” meeting was held was overflowing, standing room only. Xiao Ming had taken the stage fifteen minutes earlier and was reviewing the previous quarter’s financial results and the latest technical milestones. The 1,000 employees who could fit in the auditorium were enjoying the elaborate aperitifs and hors d’oeuvres made by Ubatoo’s master chefs in prepar
ation for the event. The other 11,000 employees, scattered in buildings throughout the Palo Alto campus as well as offices in Tokyo, Beijing, Melbourne, London, Rio de Janeiro, Bangalore, and Moscow, watched Xiao’s live video broadcast from the comfort of their desks—a small window on their monitors open to the video, and most likely a larger window still open to the project they were working on and were unwilling to interrupt.

  Lynn Wiser, a recently appointed vice president at Ubatoo, who was easily recognizable by her disdain for business attire and penchant for loud colorful baseball caps, made her way to Atiq. “Atiq,” she started. “Xiao’s going to talk about your project today. I saw the slides before he went on.”

  Atiq couldn’t help but feel excitement well up in his chest.

  “I don’t think Xiao is too happy,” Lynn said worriedly.

  Panic. “Why? What could he not be happy about? We’ve been working so hard. All the tests are working beautifully. What more could he want? What else could we possibly—”

  “It’s his usual rant, Atiq. He just wants more. He doesn’t like that you kept the Touchpoints group so small. He’s not satisfied with the job you’re doing hiring, and thinks that’s why the project isn’t even further along.”

  He would have complained to Lynn, but what was the point? If Xiao was a reasonable man, Atiq could point out all the amazing things the Touchpoints team had done in just the last six months alone. But he knew Xiao would hear none of it.

  “How bad is it going to be today?” Atiq asked reluctantly.

  “Oh, it’s the usual Xiao, damning us with faint praise. You know him—ever the diplomat. Sorry about this, Atiq. I know you were probably expecting more out of today, and God knows, you certainly deserve more.”