The Silicon Jungle

by Shumeet Baluja

  -MARATHON-

  June 2, 2009.

  “Good God, Stephen. That sounds horrible,” Molly said.

  Stephen had stopped by GreeneSmart to see her on his way into work. He realized only after he’d begun telling her about his first day that everyone might not see it in the same light he did. “No, no. It wasn’t horrible, it was amazing. I can’t believe how much we did in one day.”

  “You’re worse than I am. I’ve lost you to Ubatoo, haven’t I? We’re never going to see each other, are we?” Molly said, enjoying her dramatic words and exaggerated swoons.

  “We’ll see each other all the time. We’re moving in together on Sunday. I know you haven’t forgotten that!” Stephen replied happily.

  She stopped laughing too quickly.

  She took his hand in hers timidly. “No, I haven’t forgotten.” She lowered her gaze so that she wasn’t looking at him anymore. “But I think we need to talk about Sunday.”

  This was coming out of the blue.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she started. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

  He held on to her hand tighter. She squeezed back, but not for long enough.

  “I don’t know about Sunday,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea . . . I don’t know . . .”

  Stephen reached for her other hand, too. But she wouldn’t let him hold it. She pulled it back gently, but resolutely. They were facing each other, he looking at her, and she looking at the floor. He hadn’t expected this. He should have known something would happen. Too much was going right. Whenever things started going well, something always happened to bring it to an end.

  “I mean, I think—” Only silence.

  Go on. Say it. Get it over with. “What’s wrong?” he said, finally unable to wait any longer. His voice cracked, letting on more than he wanted.

  She just stood there, looking at the floor. “I think . . . I think Saturday would be better?” she said without a hint of smile.

  Stephen stopped. With her face lowered, her eyes looked up at him through a veil of messy hair, waiting for a reaction. He let out a loud groan while she broke out giggling.

  “That was completely uncalled for, you know,” Stephen said, as the weight of what could have been lifted. The conversation flowed easily from that point. Though, after finding out that everything really was okay—better than okay—Stephen’s mind didn’t take even a full minute to turn back to Ubatoo.

  A normally shy and exceptionally mousy woman in her self-reported late thirties, Mary listened for a few moments with the devilish satisfaction that only comes from hearing something she wasn’t meant to hear. The conversation coming from one aisle over from where she was standing—it sounded like this girl was breaking up with her boyfriend. He probably deserved it, she thought, satisfied with the parts she heard.

  Mary was working her way back and forth through the store to kill a few minutes before she had to run her next errand. She’d been careful to avoid all those aisles holding the colorful snacks to which she was so readily drawn. No candy aisles; no aisles with the yummy fruit drinks. She would not put herself in a place of such temptation. Just stay away. She walked to the books instead and picked up the first diet book she saw with a glitzy cover, vowing to read it the moment she got home.

  Her problem wasn’t severe. A few pounds to lose. Maybe a few more than a few, but still not severe. Any number of excuses rationalized her current weight, and they all applied equally well: no time to find something healthy; portions are too big everywhere; there’s no time to cook; money is tight and it’s too much stress; it’s what happens when one gets older; no time to exercise; and so on. But Mary wanted to change; the mirror wasn’t as friendly as it once had been.

  Now that she was home, how to start? She had a book. But that was a lot to read and she wasn’t nearly as motivated to read it at home as she had been in the store. Besides, from looking over the back cover, it looked like a lot of steps to follow. Surely someone had found an easier way? What’s the latest in dieting breakthroughs? she asked herself. She walked to the computer in the family room, and searched on the Internet. “Diets,” “successful diets,” “latest diets”—all these search queries led her to more information than she knew what to do with. But she was diligent in her pursuit; she needed to lose that weight.

  Mary scanned through the list of web sites returned looking for nuggets of truth among all the claims. She knew better than to trust all of them; some were probably just lies. She clicked a few links, believing the promises they flashed, but they didn’t go anywhere she needed to be. After all, she wasn’t looking to lose that much weight. The people on those sites had real problems. Not her.

  Maybe she should just start with something easier, maybe just a beginner weight loss program. She searched again using “weight loss programs,” and voilà, numerous suggestions. But which one was right for her? There were so many to choose from.

  Another search: “Weight loss program reviews.” There she found what she was looking for—in-depth reviews of the programs, along with links encouraging her to join support groups associated with those programs. Maybe there she would find people with the same set of problems. She joined. Finally! People she could relate to. All of them were more than willing to respond to personal questions so they too could share their stories and be helpful. She wrote to one of them, a man who lived, coincidentally, in Los Angeles, a place she had always wanted to visit. He seemed particularly trustworthy. It was a short e-mail, little more than “how do I get started” and “congratulations, you’re an inspiration to me.”

  She signed up for the diet plan the man swore by, even used an online calendar to schedule what she should be eating every day and when to eat it. The man strongly suggested finding a doctor, too, a nutrition specialist, to make sure this diet was appropriate for her. Good advice, she thought. Good man. She searched again for “nutrition specialist, doctor.” The first link returned was a doctor in her area; she wouldn’t even have to drive that far. She scheduled an appointment with him as soon as she could and set a reminder on her calendar to make sure she didn’t forget. She was ready. Let it begin.

  Despite trying his hardest to stay away from work until at least 10:30, by 10:15 Stephen found himself back in Building 11. The intern pit was crowded. More than three quarters of the desks were occupied. The interns from outside the data-mining group were staring rather absent-mindedly at their screens or talking in hushed voices with each other. They had nothing to do yet except wait for their next orientation class.

  The four data-mining interns, though, were in an entirely different state of mind. They were eagerly looking over the work they had done last night. It was only 10:30 when Jaan walked by. Since all four were present, the meeting started early, and he called them all back into another conference room, Despereaux. Both Aarti and William, who sat next to each other, were acting as giddy as school girls sharing hushed secrets about boys. Aarti looked tired, but William looked like crap. He had coffee stains on his shirt with matching drips on his pants, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was an assortment of greasy clumps that he had obviously been pulling at for hours. Worse, he smelled as bad as he looked.

  “So, want to tell everybody what happened last night?” Jaan said from the head of the table. “Or should I?”

  William quickly spoke up. “Aarti and I spent the night here with Jaan. I think we came up with something pretty awesome. It’s not just about their social groups like we had been thinking all along. It’s about what they do when they’re not online.”

  Aarti stepped in. “The people who are the most desperate for help with their weight problems are going to be the ones we want. They’re the ones who buy the diet pills we’re trying to sell, right? We need to find the desperate ones, not just the talkers in the social groups. There might be a correlation, of course, but we can do better. We only had to look at their—”

  William took over again. “—at their calendars
. If you make an appointment with a doctor to do something about your problem, wouldn’t that mean you’re probably going to do anything that might help, like buying the latest pills?”

  “How did you find what’s on their calendar?” Stephen asked.

  Aarti answered Stephen directly. “Ubatoo launched an online calendar almost a year ago, Stephen. Don’t you use it?”

  Stephen grimaced. He didn’t use it, or for that matter, even know about it.

  “How did you know that the appointment was for a weight problem, or even for a doctor?” Kohan asked.

  “Not an issue,” said William. “For every appointment on every calendar for the past year, we just checked if it had the term ‘doctor’ or the letters ‘D’ and ‘R’ in it. Then we just looked up that doctor’s name, and found whether there was a match geographically close to the user. We searched for the doctor’s name on Ubatoo, like everyone else does, to find out what type of doctor he was. See? Easy.” He was beaming, having impressed himself. Then he added for flavor, “This is all predicated on the fact that nobody, fat people especially, wants to travel far to see a doctor if they don’t have to.”

  “Charming, William,” Stephen almost said aloud.

  William was still speaking, “Overall, though, I think the lesson learned is that the calendar is definitely a pretty strong clue, especially when you know where someone lives.”

  “The calendar was what I came up with,” Aarti said, “but as you’re about to say next, Stephen—” With that, Stephen perked up. He really wasn’t about to say anything. “—the set of people who actually use our calendar is pretty small compared to all the people Ubatoo has profiles on, right?” Aarti stopped, but just long enough to catch her breath. “This is when William’s social group profiling from last night actually became useful. For the people who had appointments with weight loss doctors, we examined who they talked to most often on the phone, or who they sent e-mails to most often, and which self-help groups they joined. If their friends also had appointments with doctors, they were probably both feeding each other’s desperation. Come to think of it, just imagine all those people we found who had two or three friends who had appointments with weight loss doctors. Those could be prime targets for—”

  “It’ll work fine just the way it is,” William interrupted impatiently. He was annoyed that Aarti was speaking so much and even going off on a tangent they hadn’t yet explored. “Okay, okay,” Jaan broke in. He could see the deer-in-the-headlights look Stephen and Kohan shared. “This is fantastic. First things first, we’ll let India finish applying your findings to each and every one of our users. I’m sure we’ll unearth some excellent targets with your approach. Later today, we’ll start our first live trials. If everything still looks good, I’ll pull some strings and see if we can’t bypass the rest of testing—meaning, we could have a full-scale deployment running by tomorrow.”

  Jaan continued, “But guys, remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. These are some early interesting results. You tried something new and innovative, and it looks like it’ll pay off. If we can get a win this quickly, that’s great, but we have plenty more difficult problems to tackle. This is only your second day. So, good job.” After a small pause, he concluded with, “To all of you.” With that, Jaan opened the door, and they filed out.

  As they reached their desks, Jaan called out for Aarti and William to join him. As the three were walking away, he could be heard saying something about “face time” and “sharing their findings with Atiq.” Becky, Atiq’s administrative assistant, who had been sitting at her desk waiting for Aarti and William to catch up to Jaan, led them into Atiq’s empty office. There, a video-conference with Atiq, who was waiting to hear the good news, was ready.

  It was the second day at Ubatoo, and already Stephen had lost any vestige of his former position as the leader of his own company. At that moment, he became just one of the struggling interns hired for the summer. Marathon or not, everyone was sprinting.

  -THE LIFE AND SOUL OF

  AN INTERN-

  June 5, 2009.

  Two thick envelopes rapidly found their way through the miles of inter-office mail stations onto the desks of Aarti and William. The envelopes proudly displayed the Ubatoo logo and the words “Welcome Aboard,” for anybody and everybody to see. Aarti and William were offered full-time jobs the day after their diet pill breakthrough was officially deemed a success. Advertisements for “miracle pills,” “diet of the year,” and “no exercise needed, burns the fat for you” were reaching the most susceptible demographic faster than ever, and the meticulously targeted audience was vigorously buying everything they were selling with renewed hope. The advertisers were ecstatic.

  Before they had unpacked their belongings in the “intern pit,” Aarti and William found themselves seated in their own offices close to Jaan. Whether their good fortune was a reflection of their impressive work or the desperate need for Atiq to hire wasn’t clear. But one fact remained—in the first week, they had received what the other interns would struggle to obtain throughout the rest of the summer.

  June 22, 2009.

  Walking through the doors into Building 11, it was impossible for Stephen not to instinctively peer into the offices he passed, hoping that one of the occupants would be serendipitously looking up at just the right moment and would engage him in conversation about their latest project or even inquire about his. But that didn’t happen. If Aarti needed something, she found Stephen herself, Jaan’s only communication was through e-mail, and William—well, he was better left alone in his office anyway.

  Despite the lack of communication with those three, Stephen had little to complain about. In exchange for every last bit of his ability to think, Stephen’s waking hours were taken care of entirely. A typical day’s schedule deviated little from the previous day or the next day, and consisted of the following:

  8:00–8:30 a.m.

  Wake up.

  8:30–8:45

  Walk to Ubatoo.

  8:45–9:15

  Get omelet, cappuccino, or fresh smoothie on way to desk.

  9:15–11:45

  Work.

  11:45–12:00 p.m.

  Gather group of other interns for lunch, and debate about the best café to try.

  12:00–1:15

  Lunch

  Get sushi at least two times per week.

  Get lobster if featured.

  Get veal if it’s on the menu.

  1:15–1:30

  Walk to a far cappuccino stand to get a bit of exercise.

  1:30–2:00

  E-mail/chat with other interns about work.

  2:00–3:00

  Meet with data-mining team to get updates.

  3:00–5:30

  Work.

  5:30–6:45

  Dinner (Any café other than where lunch was eaten).

  6:45–8:30

  Goof off.

  8:30–12:00 a.m.

  Work.

  12:00–1:00

  Walk outside with Kohan and any interns who want to join.

  1:00–2:15

  Late night snack and coffee at desk while working.

  2:15–2:30

  Walk home.

  2:30–3:15

  Hang out with Molly.

  3:15–8:00

  Sleep.

  Between meetings and dedicated work time, more than eleven hours a day were spent working. It wasn’t that Ubatoo demanded this schedule; distractions, if desired, were ample. A few weeks into the internship, the annual intern versus scientist baseball outing was held on a perfectly manicured field on the grounds. When Kohan and Aarti left to join the others, Stephen promised to catch up later. He knew he wouldn’t, though. The similarity between these events and a senior citizen three-day all-inclusive cruise with perky, vacant, over-zealous “fun-directors” relentlessly reminding everyone how best to have fun was inescapable. He had just spent the last two and a half years in a too comfortable, too easy job—he had no need
to relax now.