The Big Disruption
Page 8
Just then, Sven’s phone rang. His eyes rolled as he picked it up, mouthing “mom” to Arsyen. He muttered a desultory greeting in Swedish as he left the cubicle.
Arsyen heard something move behind him and turned to find Jonas standing there, arms crossed.
“Despite your lack of guidance, I went ahead and programmed part of the hookup feature,” said Jonas, pointing to his screen. He had chosen a handful of key attributes to generate the pickup lines — car type, model, color, passenger gender and age. He showed Arsyen a list of computer-generated interactions between Car A and Car B.
I think women in Cadillacs are interesting and compassionate.
I did not know women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four liked Cadillacs.
Where did you buy your 2015 blue Cadillac ATS? It is the best of affordable luxury.
I want to put my key in your Cadillac.
Arsyen reread the pickup lines. They didn’t strike him as particularly compelling.
“Seem okay,” Arsyen said.
“Okay?” Jonas said. “I ask you for use cases and you disappear. Then I show you what I have done and that is all you say?”
“You very good at job,” Arsyen smiled. “You better than roadmap.”
Jonas’ face tightened. “You said you were at Galt before this and that you had also worked at Stanford and other startups. Is that correct?’
Arsyen nodded. He noticed that the enormous, pulsing boil from the previous day had heaved its way farther across Jonas’ nose.
“I spent last summer memorizing all the computer science professors and students in America’s top ten PhD programs. I also memorized the names of everyone in the San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Cupertino phone books in the event I might meet them one day. I do not recall your name from any of these exercises. ”
“Maybe you forget name?”
“It is next to impossible that I would have forgotten a name, and even less so, a Pyrrhian one.”
Arsyen shrugged.
“What was the name of one of the products you built?”
Arsyen tried to think of his video games and gadgets, or any of the Valley software he had heard about, but instead his head filled with images of his old Stanford broom closet, the supplies under his kitchen sink, the soaps in his bathroom.
“Clorox,” he blurted out.
“Clorox?”
“Cloroxy,” said Arsyen, scrambling to remember his product management reading. “Young, new, hot startup, Cloroxy. Problem remover. Removes all problems. We get power users. We make API. We use social graph and provide real-time solutions for gamification. Machine learning explosion.”
“Arsyen, I know you are lying. In fact, I have proof that you are lying.”
Arsyen lowered his head. The game was up.
“I will expose you,” Jonas said. “You will not make it past this week.”
Arsyen remembered then what his father had said right before surrendering to the Embrian king: It is ignoble to fight an obvious defeat. Bish lena, bish lena.
He knelt to grab his backpack, and a piece of paper on the ground caught his eye. It was a blueprint for something unrecognizable, almost like a sea creature, with intricate blue lines intersecting at right angles, forming tentacles radiating from a central oval body.
Arsyen crawled out from under the desk and studied the thin blue paper again in the light. He decided it wasn’t an animal but an arm, with fingers extending to the edge of the page. The fingertips were purple and green, just like the Anahata logo.
“Where did you find that?” snapped Jonas, drawing closer. He reached for the paper, but Arsyen swept his hand behind his back. He was keeping this for himself — it was all he had to show for his one week at the greatest company in America.
Jonas’ face hardened.
“So this is how you want to play it?” His pimple pulsed with anger.
Arsyen shook his head. One day he would have Jonas decapitated, but for now, there was no point in further conversation. He moved to the side, but Jonas blocked his path.
“You know I know. And I know you know,” Jonas said.
Arsyen shifted to the left and again tried to move past him.
“You do not seem to understand.” Jonas’ scrawny arm executed a surprisingly strong push against Arsyen’s shoulder, and he stumbled back into his desk. “You cannot tell anyone about this. This is an incredibly important part of the project.”
“The project…,” Arsyen repeated Jonas’ words, his mind racing to keep up. Jonas was worried Arsyen would say something about…something. The blueprint? Social Car?
It didn’t matter — this was an opportunity.
“Don’t fire me, and I keep your secret safe.”
“Fine,” Jonas said immediately. “Your incompetence is a small price to pay.”
Arsyen clapped his hands.
“Thank you!”
Visions of piles of cash, a new apartment, and long lunches with Jennie filled Arsyen’s head.
“We will not discuss this again,” Jonas said. “Put the paper on my desk and I will see it is returned to its rightful place.”
Jonas stomped back to his computer and threw on his headphones, turning his techno to its highest volume as if to ensure no other thoughts could trespass.
A rsyen couldn’t make sense of what had happened with Jonas, but he spent the final day of his trial week trying to thank him for what he hoped was his complicity. But Jonas had a funny way of showing his support, muttering “imposter” and “fake” each time Arsyen drew near.
Fearing the worst, Arsyen began to browse job sites for janitorial jobs. None came close to his extraordinary Anahata salary. It would take him decades to save enough money to raise an army and storm the imperial palace. By then, his nemesis, General Korpeko, would be waiting for him in some fancy laser-shooting wheelchair, and Arsyen would be done for before he could even dismount from the only old, decrepit donkey he was able to afford.
A little red icon blinked at the bottom of his computer screen, desperate for his attention. Although he had ignored its persistent signal for days, Arsyen clicked it this time.
It was his Anahata email account.
More than nine hundred messages were waiting for him — from mass email lists to product mocks and notes from Roni. Arsyen didn’t know where to start. He opened the message at the top of his inbox:
On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness.
He saw that the message had been sent to the random@anahata.com alias, which Jennie had explained was an open forum where anyone in the company could post anything they wanted about any subject that wouldn’t fit into the other company lists (of which she said there were about sixty thousand, running the gamut from anahatanews@ and bug_testing@ to westernbuddhists@, fatahatas@, tallahatas@, and cafeteria_complaints@). Although the message had been sent at eleven o’clock the previous night, there were already two hundred responses. Arsyen scrolled to the original message that had kicked things off.
To: random@anahata.com
From: Chuck Smoop (smoop@anahata.com )
Subject: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
A plague is upon us, Anahatis! Every time I go to the cafeteria, I notice an increasing number of barefoot employees. It doesn’t seem to matter to this dirty band of marauders that they are bringing their foot diseases close to the food I eat. They seem to revel in this act as though it were a Dionysian orgy of verucas, fungus, and foodstuffs.
Do they lack money to buy shoes? Am I punishing the weak for something they cannot change?
No, my friends. They are simply…engineers. It seems the “launch” of shoelessness started as a simple 1% rollout, with our engineering friends limiting the cool breeze between their toes to just our cafeterias. But now, over the past two weeks, these barefoot creatures have taken their practice beyond our hallowed food halls. Now I see bare feet in the bathrooms. I see bare feet in the meeting rooms. I see bare feet in
my nightmares. My brain is getting athlete’s foot just thinking about it.
Please, engineering colleagues, please can you wear your shoes? It is not so much to ask.
- Chuck
* * *
To: smoop@anahata.com, random@anahata.com
From: Charles Chen (cchen@anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
Chuck, you seem to be assuming that because your feet are disgusting, everyone else’s feet are too. Grow up. My feet are pristine. I would eat off my feet if I were more flexible. It is my right to take my feet where I will, in whatever state I wish them to be.
Smell my feet. They smell like roses.
Charles Chen
* * *
To: cchen@anahata.com, smoop@anahata.com, random@anahata.com, hr-all@anahata.com
From: Rob Joobs (joobs@anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
I can’t believe I work at a company that allows this.
There should be a policy against this. Adding the HR team to this thread to clarify.
- Rob
* * *
To: joobs@anahata.com, cchen@anahata.com, smoop@anahata.com, random@anahata.com, hr-all@anahata.com
From: Mahali Chowdhury (mahalic@anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
I came to this country because it promised me freedom. And now you bureaucratic, idiot salespeople are trying to take that freedom away from me.
My Anahata contract says I must show up to work at a reasonable hour, perform tasks as described by my manager, and not do various illegal things like pirate software or look at porn on the job. Nowhere in my work contract does it say I am required to wear shoes. I could further build out the argument as to why your logic is ridiculous and explain why this would never legally hold up under current Anahata employee guidelines, but I have too much real work to do and I suspect your brontosaurean sales brains wouldn’t understand what I wrote anyway.
Mahali Chowdhury
* * *
To: mahalic@Anahata.com, joobs@Anahata.com, cchen@Anahata.com, smoop@Anahata.com, random@Anahata.com, hr-all@Anahata.com, legal-all@anahata.com
From: Susan Jacobs (susanjacobs@Anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
+ Legal team so they can tell us whether or not this is legal.
Thanks,
Susan
* * *
To: mahalic@Anahata.com, joobs@Anahata.com, cchen@Anahata.com, smoop@Anahata.com, random@Anahata.com, hr-all@Anahata.com, legal-all@Anahata.com, recruiting-all@Anahata.com, susanjacobs@Anahata.com
From: Gerry Manhelmer (manhelmer@Anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
If you want to complain about bare feet, then I should be able to complain about the different hiring standards used for our sales team. I know for a fact that you all have easier hiring standards than we do in engineering. No matter what your mothers may tell you, you are at best “above average.” Adding the recruiting team to this thread to confirm this is true.
One of the great travesties of the past century was not that apartheid occurred. It’s that it didn’t occur involving the right populations. Salespeople should be quarantined.
Gerry
* * *
To: manhelmer@Anahata.com, mahalic@Anahata.com, joobs@Anahata.com, cchen@Anahata.com, smoop@Anahata.com, random@Anahata.com, susanjacobs@Anahata.com, hr-all@Anahata.com, legal-all@Anahata.com, recruiting-all@Anahata.com
From: Pete Joffe (pjoffe@Anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
Speaking of apartheid, I was on safari in South Africa last year, and I remember being taken to a village out in the bush. The villagers had lived in the same place for centuries and knew everything about the world surrounding them. And yet the one thing they didn’t understand, and no number of UN officials could convince them of, was that their practice of building their huts with all their livestock in the center posed a serious health risk and was responsible for many of the eye and skin diseases they had contracted. The purpose of the livestock in the center was to protect the animals from lions and other predators, and the villagers believed their sustenance was more important in the end than a worm in their skin.
So the question is do we try to educate our engineers? They are a much more primitive people than those villagers (who also differentiate themselves from our native group here in their abilities to bathe themselves, hold conversations with the opposite sex, play sports, hunt game, and survive in the wild).
- Pete
* * *
To: pjoffe@Anahata.com, manhelmer@Anahata.com, mahalic@Anahata.com, joobs@Anahata.com, cchen@Anahata.com, smoop@Anahata.com, susanjacobs@Anahata.com, random@Anahata.com, hr-all@Anahata.com, legal-all@Anahata.com, recruiting-all@Anahata.com
From: Petra Nichols (petra@Anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
Pete, can you tell me where you went on safari? I’ve been wanting to go and am looking for recommendations.
Thanks,
Petra
* * *
To: pjoffe@Anahata.com, manhelmer@Anahata.com, mahalic@Anahata.com, joobs@Anahata.com, cchen@Anahata.com, smoop@Anahata.com, susanjacobs@Anahata.com, random@Anahata.com, hr-all@Anahata.com, legal-all@Anahata.com, recruiting-all@Anahata.com
From: Tico Yamada (tyamada@Anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
Pete, I find your email really offensive. I’m adding a whole bunch of other people to this thread to confirm my opinion.
Tico
* * *
To: tyamada@Anahata.com, pjoffe@Anahata.com, manhelmer@Anahata.com, mahalic@Anahata.com, joobs@Anahata.com, cchen@Anahata.com, susanjacobs@Anahata.com, smoop@Anahata.com, random@Anahata.com, hr-all@Anahata.com, petra@Anahata.com, legal-all@Anahata.com, recruiting-all@Anahata.com, freespeech@anahata.com, libertarians@anahata.com, anarchists@anahata.com
From: Gary Truman (gunsandfreedom@Anahata.com)
+freespeech@
+libertarians@
+anarchists@
tico — your email is the kind of sentiment that is dragging this company to an early grave and sending our engineers to galt. you’re ready to shoot anyone for expressing anything that might possibly be construed as offensive. is that how the internet (or anahata) was built?
NO!!
the internet was entirely built on offensive content, porn, conspiracy theories, spam, and gambling.
don’t kill what made our company great.
don’t kill free speech.
don’t kill pete or safaris.
T he thread continued for hundreds of messages, cutting across racism, poverty, travel tips, sales IQs, and various engineering grosseries, but frequently returning to the issue of bare feet — the battle line falling clearly between sales and engineering. Sales currently seemed to have the upper hand, if only because they woke up earlier. The engineers’ ranks wouldn’t fill out until noon. This gave sales the chance to pile on the anti-engineer vitriol, with little more than a whimper in response.
Arsyen heard Jonas stirring to his right and turned to discover his co-worker sniffling as he read the same email thread on his computer. Jonas lowered himself in his chair and stretched his legs toward the wall, where his shoes sat unoccupied. Using his toes, he dragged the shoes toward his chair.
“I wasn’t made to wear shoes,” Jonas whimpered. The boil on his nose sizzled under his tears.
Arsyen felt a sudden flash of pity for Jonas. Even a boy genius needed to know what it was to run in the fields, to wear shoes — or not wear them — to do as he wished. Instead, Jonas had been forced to work in America at age fourteen, doomed to live as a preteen among a bunch of adults who could drink, date, and surf the internet without parental controls.
Arsyen turned his fingers to the keyboard and began to release the poetry that filled his head: a story of injustice, of choices, of freedom, and Pyrrhian military history. But after five minutes, he hit the table with his fist. His English simply could not capture the words that came so naturally in his native tongue. He deleted his message and started again, settling on something much simpler.
To: engineering_all@anahata.com, sales_all@anahata.com, warriorone@Anahata.com, thedungeonmaster@anahata.com, papage@Anahata.com, thedude@Anahata.com, sevendwarves@anahata.com, robobo@Anahata.com, coolhands@Anahata.com, kapuscinski@Anahata.com, ilovejuice@Anahata.com, ninjas@Anahata.com, doris@Anahata.com, marionetti@Anahata.com, nihilists@anahata.com, tyamada@Anahata.com, petra@Anahata.com, romansch_speakers@Anahata.com, pjoffe@Anahata.com, furries@anahata.com, manhelmer@Anahata.com, swingers@anahata.com, mahalic@Anahata.com, joobs@Anahata.com, swing_dance@Anahata.com, cchen@Anahata.com, impressionist_painters@Anahata.com, smoop@Anahata.com, gunsandfreedom@Anahata.com, libertarians@anahata.com, anarchists@anahata.com, freespeech@anahata.com, existentialists@anahata.com, random@Anahata.com, hr-all@Anahata.com, legal-all@Anahata.com, recruiting-all@Anahata.com, everyone@Anahata.com
From: Arsyen Aimo (arsyen@Anahata.com)
Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness
Sales team suck.
- Arsyen
“Hooray Arsyen!” Jonas cheered, throwing his shoes across the room.
A few minutes later, Arsyen received an email from Roni.
“Awesome response. You’re a real Anahati now! And congrats — the team’s just spoken. You’ve made it past the first week!”
A few minutes later, someone from the HR team appeared next to Arsyen’s desk to hand him his permanent badge.
Arsyen floated through the rest of the day. He walked taller down the corridors and lingered crossing the lawn, flicking his new white badge as he walked, no longer afraid of any passing engineer. He even tried his hand at firing a red badge–carrying newbie, which was even more delightful than he had anticipated.