【老万】I Left My Tech Lead Post at NB Corp
上周写完《我从NB公司技术带头人的位置上离职》后，有读者索取文中那几封邮件的英文原件。由于我已经离职无法访问NB公司的邮箱，于是便和 ChatGPT 4 合作翻译完成了你现在正在看的这篇英文版，力图还原真相。ChatGPT 再现马克⋅吐温语言风格的能力是我望尘莫及的，有些用法还让我始料未及。因此，我暗暗祈祷吐温先生的后人没有订阅“老万故事会”，否则他们可能会上西雅图法院控诉我二十年前在康涅狄格州读书期间作为间谍潜往吐温先生的故居盗取了他的手稿，那可是比我从NB公司离职还要糟糕一万倍的事。
我这里写的一切都是我自己的胡编乱造。但要是你发现故事和身边的人和事有任何相似之处，也没啥好奇怪的 - 不用说那一定是他们剽窃了我的原创。
～～～～
Before today, I was the head honcho for a core group of techies at NB Corp. I reckon I’d been doing a fair job, despite only occupying the seat for a couple of months. Today’s departure, therefore, hit me like a stray bullet, precise and unexpected. But on second thought, there were subtle signs, glimmerings of a sort.
Here’s how it played out: it weren’t yet past 10 in the morn, I was just settling into my adjustable perch, the office’s free coffee was still a tad too hot. I was mid-way through a letter from Tom Johnson, an engineer from our collusion group. Tom was once again blessing us with his insulting remarks on our system, while I was mulling over how to perfectly and appropriately rebut him. Just as I was deep in my ponderings, my boss Mark Andersen, with the stealth of a cat, snuck up behind me and tapped the back of my chair. Startling a man deep in his element can be a deadly business, I tell you. Nearly spilled my scalding Joe all over my pants. Turned around to see my boss, face as grim as a tombstone. Looked like he swallowed a toad for breakfast and couldn’t stomach it well. No, more precisely, it looked like he turned on his HDR mode, his complexion turning the bluish-grey walls warm. “Old Wan, come to my office,” he said.
Holding my Joe aloft, I followed behind the boss. The stray strands of hair hinting at a man who’d not found time for a shower. The signs weren’t promising. But considering my performance at work lately, it didn’t bother me much.
Once inside, with a swift kick of his leg, he shut the door. The grace, the precision, all signs of plenty metric tons of practice.
“How you reckon you’ve been doing as the tech lead?” he posed.
I had to mull over this one. Based on my seasoning, these questions rarely carried the literal weight. What was the boss trying to angle me towards? If I said I did well, he’d probably rebut saying it was not his understanding, questioning my self-awareness, comparing me to an old rooster thinking itself a phoenix.
On the flip side, if I admitted I was falling short, he’d probably agree, saying we had common ground. That won’t bode well for my prospects.
After much contemplation, I decided to deploy a judo move, deflection, then strike. “I figure there’s always room for improvement, boss. With your vast experience and knowledge, I’d be much obliged for your guidance.” A flattery always hits its mark, can’t be denied.
Mark huffed from his nostrils, “Room for growth? I think your meanderings are misplaced. Judging from your apparent confidence, if the whole NB Corp was given to you, it’d probably fall short. Take a look at Leroy Wang, your new teammate, I’d asked you to welcome him with a warm, heartfelt letter.”
Relieved, I replied, “You can certainly rest easy on that account, boss. I already penned that letter, with great warmth I might add.”
“Certainly, your warmth isn’t debatable,” boss jeered back, “Now let’s take a gander at what you’ve actually written.”
He pulled up his inbox, revealing the letter I had cc’d him on, that read:
“What’s the matter? I poured my heart out in that letter, sincere as the bond between liver and gland. Ain’t this the kind of overflowing passion and heart-warming sincerity you asked for?”
“Sincerity, my foot!” The boss slapped his sweaty bear paw on the table, sending a stapler bouncing. It ended up under the table and I, quick as a wink, stooped to retrieve it.
Boss man went on, “How’d you wind up as tech lead with a gourd for a brain? Don’t you know never to spill your heart out completely? I asked for warmth and sincerity, not brutal honesty! Before you tame a wild boar like Leroy into a gentle pig, you’ve got to stroke them in the right direction. Feed ’em some smooth talk so they happily buckle down. But now, I hear Leroy is sniffing around the Eng Prod team next door for a spot. I’ve told you time and again, only when your staff are middle-aged folks with no recourse but to remain on the job can you afford to be blunt or do as you please. Lord Almighty, if this plain truth escapes you, don’t bother sticking around! Heck, don’t think about other companies either. Maybe back into your good ma’s belly to undergo a retuning!”
Must admit, the boss’s allegories couldn’t have hit closer to the bullseye. I humbly replied, “Boss, I might have misinterpreted your intent on this matter. However, even if I goofed up, you need to see how the team sees me. Hearing only one side of the story might leave loved ones in pain while enemies roll around with glee.”
“Alright, alright, good reminder. Guess I was about to forget how highly your colleagues speak of you. But, between you and me, sounds like they all might be speaking in codex.”
How could that be? “On my first day in this position, you told me to keep a certain degree of flexibility in teamwork, slippery as an ol’ eel, to not give folks a grip to latch onto. I’ve never let that slip, not even a mite!”
“Slip, my aunt! I said to tread lightly and keep any hooks off you. But what about the laughing stock you made of yourself? Look here, last week when our system had a hiccup and went to slumbersville for two days, Thomas Lee from the neighboring team had sent a patch to help us solve it. And you, how did you handle that?”
Hmm, I’m well aware of this Tom Lee character. Thinks he’s the bee’s knees and is as obstinate as a mule, loves to point fingers with only a skin-deep knowledge like he’s the only person who can pen elegant code. I’d wager he fancies himself so adroit that even Google’s Jeff Dean would drop his ol’ pal Sanjay Ghemawat like a hot potato to become bosom friends with ‘im. So, when such a cocksure fellow offers a patch to our system, it’s only right for me to toss him a monkey wrench. Let him weigh if he’s got enough grit to fill this trench next time he wades into murky waters.
The boss pulled up the code review UI. “See here, Lee’s patch of 20 lines of code was countered with over a hundred retorts from you. You’ve hit him where it hurts, to the point of being worth less than a red cent! It’s got him so riled up that he’s threatened to take his grievances to CEO Nusk. What’s your defense on this?”
I gleefully said, “Boss, I’ve been unswerving in my focus to our code quality, night and day. You know, and I know, and you know that I know, and I know you know I know that our spectral system is on a tinderbox’s edge. Oh, it’s as perilous as a house of cards in a hurricane! Tom’s patch here seems like a bug fix, but what he doesn’t know, and I won’t tell him, is that our system has five, six key logics hinging on this bug. Eliminate the said bug rashly, and you’ll have a cascade of key logics tumbling down, releasing bigger, nastier bugs. Wouldn’t simply be crashing every other day then, but a scarce occasion when everything does work out. And even then, we’d have to count our blessings. So, how could I let easy-going Tom squash this bug so breezily? He was truly too simple, sometimes naive, so I just had to give him this subtle cue to back off. Who’d have thought the tough-looking fellow had such thin skin to petition his grievances to a higher authority. Shouldn’t you, boss, be taking my side here?”
“Taking sides, my eye! Do you always talk this way at home? With your wife too? Is this a family tradition or something?”
“Fine. So, you’re saying I have to treat Tom Lee like my wife?”
Thud! When the boss hit the table this time, the thunderous sound could shake heavens and startle ghosts. A stack of print papers slid and scattered all over the floor. I quickly put down my Joe, stooped down, and started picking up pages, stacking them back on the table. “I’ve checked thoroughly, these blank pages are sorted alphabetically. Please go through. If there are any errors in orientation or order, I assure you corrections will be made posthaste.”
Surely, a carefully placed gag like this should defuse the tensions in the room. Alas, the boss didn’t register any response. Looks like this storm won’t be passing soon. What should be done? If he’s the stronger one, might as well let him steam off. All I had to do was refrain from butting heads with him, right?
At that juncture, the boss chimed in, “You sure have a knack for guarding the home turf. So, what’s your relationship with the Flint team?”
Flint is the new backend of our inventory system. You’ve got to understand, there ain’t no software system that sits idle in thin air. It must have a bedrock system propping it up, like turtles all the way down, fulfilling the distance from terra firma right up to the azure canopy. Flint is our team’s turtle, so to speak.
Used to be in the good old days, Blink was our turtle, but their head honcho got a taste of the loftier branches and left the system’s improvement in the lurches. Poor turtle been in a sorry state, thin as a rail — if turtles could get thinner, that is. That’s when the Flint’s chief knocked on our door, full of promises. Swore that if we use their system as our foundation, the throughput would triple while the resource consumption would halve. The kicker was their band of engineers hadn’t tasted promotions last year, so they weren’t likely to jump ship, meaning no worries about system upkeep.
We got bamboozled by his sweet nothings, thinking we’d seen a silver lining streak across a dark cloud, and made the system switch. They had their feather in the cap and a batch of their engineers got their desired promotions. But it wasn’t long before we found the system’s stability had plummeted two orders of magnitude. Used to be that one or two little hiccups a week, which we could manage with our years of experience and savvy, but the inaugural week of the new system saw our engineers jolted out of their slumbers for six out of seven nights handling emergencies. Now, catastrophes don’t travel solo — when hail’s raining from the sky at dawn, you can bet a flood’s coming before supper. And that’s the predicament we’re knee-deep in.
Boss calmly said, “When liabilities come knocking, it’s best to toss the blame as far as possible, leaving no room for bigwigs to question our competency.”
“So, I strictly adhered to that, boss.”
“Pish-posh, have you done as told? Oh, you indeed tossed the blame, but who taught you to toss it upwards? It came back and landed squarely on my head, shattering itself all over the place. Now, Flint’s pack of barbarians from Texas are going round calling us the worst clients they’ve ever had. They are laughing about how we couldn’t even handle a simple distributed streaming system, didn’t bother to read their fucking manual, and had the audacity to blame their system for the problems. It’s downright preposterous. They’ve sworn not to work with our team anymore, promised to ignore any future requests from our end. Moreover, they will insult us personally whenever they see us at the headquarter. They say something about how ‘two tigers can’t share one mountain,’ except in male and female pairs. For heaven’s sake! Their leader is a bona-fide, aged male, and as I know, I have no plans to change my sex. So, aren’t you basically making it impossible for me to stay in this company? Look at what you’ve been writing to their leader! If you have an ounce of self-awareness left, you should make a right turn out the door, buy a shovel, and dig a hole three feet deep in the parking lot. Make it two feet wide and five feet long, and then bury yourself in it. Then, I might consider setting up a tombstone for you, saying ‘here lies Old Wan, the former technical lead of the inventory system project team in NB company. He demonstrated the importance of teamwork with his life.”
To be honest, his continuous sarcastic comments hit my self-esteem like a hammer on the head. For all my experience and resilience, I had to respond, “Boss, do you want me to deduct the shovel money from the project’s fund? It’s kinda tight recently, you know?”
“Screw your shovel! Look, which team, after hearing your senseless gibberish, would still keep their cool? They would either think you’re going nuts or they are going nuts, or both!”
Then he began to read the letter I wrote to the Flint team last week:
After reading, the boss lifted a foot and kicked his computer case. The case fell with a boom, pulling the attached monitor off the table. I have to admit our procurement department didn’t shirk their duties this time, these monitors are indeed remarkable, they still displayed normally after falling from a three-feet-high table.
I silently righted the monitor. “Any further instructions, boss?”
“Instructions? Dare I instruct you? You can instruct Michael now, why would it be my turn to instruct you?”
Michael is our big boss, my boss’s boss, to be precise. I did have the chance to represent our team in a meeting to him a week ago. But I couldn’t fathom what could possibly be the problem — in fact, I was impeccable, I think. I even opened a bottle of champagne in celebration when I got home. I don’t understand how I might have rubbed my boss the wrong way this time. Was it because I outshone him before the big boss?
The boss said, “This is the recording of your time at the meeting. Let’s take a look.” Saying so, he started playing a video clip. I squatted down on the floor and watched myself articulate fervently. I have to say, my hair was well-coiffed that day that I’d wager even the king of Spain hadn’t seen such orderly locks. My checkered shirt was also starched to perfection, giving me the responsible, dependable Technical Lead look.
I listened to myself say,
Michael responded that he would give my proposal due consideration, but he had an urgent meeting to attend and couldn’t give an immediate answer. The recording stopped here.
“I thought you suggested we should increase our visibility and fight for resources, boss. Didn’t I do a good job?” I said sincerely.
“Increase your visibility, my foot! Don’t you know the company is promoting the ‘Happy Employee’ policy right now? Now, thanks to you, we’ve suddenly become the negative example for the whole company! Everyone is saying we run a sweatshop, that we’re giving the company a bad name! My foggy-headedness is to blame here, allowing an incompetent bloke like you the chance to deliver the report to the big boss!”
At this point, I said, “Perhaps there has been some misunderstanding about me within the company. I’ll endeavor to clear this up in my future work. However, sometimes when one is too close to a situation, they can’t see it clearly. Have you ever thought from the perspective of our clients whether as a technical lead I truly am helping them solve problems and creating good impressions of our company?”
“Balderdash! Have the audacity to mention the clients! Look, customer complaints about you have reached Nusk.”
“Where did all this nonsense spring from? To my knowledge, Nusk never deals with customer service. He believes customers to be big dumbos who don’t know what they want, and the first step in creating a great product is not to take customer feedback seriously.”
The boss retorted, “Just look at this. This was a response you sent to a customer two weeks ago.”
I reckon there isn’t a more empathetic customer service than me in this wide, wide world. “So, did she withdraw the complaint?” I enquired.
“Withdraw, my foot!” Mark roared. “Do you even know? The plumber of the stepson of the ex-husband of the mother of Ms. Alexandra is the father of the third maternal uncle of the second paternal aunt’s elementary school classmate of a former girlfriend of Nusk. His old flame got wind of this and threatened to disclose his youthful misdeeds if he didn’t help, so he passed the buck to me. This Alexandra is also an online sensation, with 1.2 million followers on her TikTok account. Do you even realize the catastrophic blow our company’s stock took when she released a video lambasting our company last week? Her proposed solution is a tenfold compensation for her losses and firing the daredevil who had a show-down with her. Perhaps then she would consider withdrawing her video.”
“Heavens, is this the reason behind our company’s stocks stumbling last week? I assumed it was due to the exposure of our fraudulent financial reports.”
“Oh, yeah, Lord Almighty, save this clueless soul! Just what sins have I committed in my past life that I’m stuck with a dumbass like you for a subordinate? No, I owe an apology to the ass. I shouldn’t insult their assy dignity and intelligence in this manner. Now scram, disappear from my sight! Today, tomorrow, the day after — forever!”
Then, an unthinkable thing occurred: he grabbed the rolling chair and hurled it straight at me. Luckily for me, growing up in one of the top ten violent cities in China, my street-fighting reflexes kicked in. Before I even realized, my body instinctively lay low on the carpet, and the spinning chair just whirled right above my head, smashed the full-length window behind me, and fell into the parking lot from the third floor.
With things having run their course beyond recall, I finished my coffee in one fell swoop and walked out of the office with my head held high. Had I known things would turn out this way, I would have opted for the extra large cup this morning. But small-minded quibbling ain’t in my nature, so I didn’t trouble myself to swing by the kitchen for a refill. I trust that one day my boss will realize what a foolhardy decision he made today, and losing me would be his life’s greatest regret. Of course, I won’t expect him to have the bravery to admit his mistake. So what? The loss is his, while all I’m rid of is a chain. These high and mighty bosses will never understand the painstaking effort an earnest employee like me puts in for the sake of the company, mistaking my dedication for donkey lungs. Enough. I refuse to waste my prime on him.
Dear friends, if you know about any openings for an experienced, resourceful, team-loving, farsighted tech lead, do get in touch. I eagerly look forward to joining hands and starting our collaboration — I’m confident it’ll be a memorable journey for the both of us.
～～～～～～～～～～
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～～～～～～～～～～
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