The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, places, or events in the real world is purely coincidental. It is definitely not autobiographical.
You are a film director creating a documentary about life at Big Tech Co. You have a busy day ahead of you: 5 grueling on-site interviews.
Your first interview is with the CEO. The film crew sets up a camera and attaches tiny microphones to your shirt collars.
“Big Tech Co. has always been obsessed with our employees,” proudly announces the CEO. He is dressed in a black business suit, blue button down shirt, and no tie, as if to plead, “I’m a tech executive, but I’m still cool, right?”
“Internal surveys show that our employees are very happy, wonderfully collaborative, and highly productive. If we’re going to win the AI race, we need to attract and retain the best talent in the world.” The CEO’s measured confidence hints that he has given this speech many times before.
“What makes AI so important to you?” you ask.
“AI is incredibly important to Big Tech Co. In fact, I cannot think of anything that is more important. It touches everything: marketing, product development, sales, the menu at the company cafe, you name it. How did we ever think that it’s possible to serve buttered toast without AI?” The CEO smirks with the confidence of a WWE announcer.
You nod in agreement.
“In fact,” the CEO continues, “AI is transforming how everyone in the world is creating and consuming information.”
“For the better?” you inquire.
The CEO frowns for a moment, looks at the camera, looks back at you, and flatly replies, “Yes”.
You nod. You look down at your notepad.
“What’s the most difficult decision you’ve had to make in the last year?” you ask.
“That’s easy,” the CEO smiles with the tranquility of a yacht on Lake Tahoe. “We recently acquired an AI company to bolster our capabilities in the AI space. It was a massive investment: 5 billion dollars. But bringing this new AI company into Big Tech Co has truly accelerated our progress in the AI race. It has been incredibly transformative.”
You nod politely. You glance at the clock. 40 minutes until the next interview.
Your second interview is with an engineering director.
“Good morning, film director,” he greets you with a clever smile. He is a tall man with a short, no-nonsense haircut dressed in crisp slacks and a Patagonia sweater vest.
“Good morning, engineering director,” you reply. You are the same person you always are, wearing the same things you always wear.
“Can you tell me more about a typical day at your job?” you ask.
“Of course!” the engineering director beams. “I spent the first hour of my day approving requests for office supplies. Headphones, mice, things like that. After that, I typically lead an all-hands meeting. I always give as candid answers as possible. Transparency is crucial.”
You nod, motioning him to continue.
“I typically have my ABP bring lunch to my desk while I read Harvard Business Review. Then I review feature launch requests.”
“Tell me about a launch that excited you,” you inquire.
The director thinks for a moment.
“You know, there was this fascinating feature for our flagship product. It was codenamed ‘Narwhal’. The Narwhal team worked on it for over a year. Initial feedback from users was fantastic. Narwhal was almost ready to launch, and the team just needed my approval. Then we advanced our amazing bet. The team was disappointed, but we needed to optimize our resources. It was tremendously exciting!”
“Disappointed?” You wonder aloud, incredulous. “I thought you said it was ‘advanced’. Why would the Narwhal team be disappointed that their project launched?”
“Oh!” chuckles the director. “When I said ‘advanced’, I meant ‘canceled’.”
“Why would you cancel Narwhal?” you ask, confused. “It was almost ready to launch and it sounded like users would have loved it.”
“Well, the organization had an OKR to launch 10 new AI-powered features last year,” explains the director. “Narwhal didn’t have any AI. We weren’t going to spend our time trying to satisfy user needs when there are OKRs to hit. So, Narwhal was canceled and we announced a reorg.”
“A reorg?” you ask, raising one eyebrow.
“Yeah!” exclaims the director with the excitement of a 15-year old boy who just found out that he was about to get some mozzarella sticks. “The reorg really simplified decision-making and brought teams closer together so they could execute on the highest priority workstreams in the org. Everyone is really happy with the new team structure, so I’d say things worked out pretty well.”
“How did your team take the reorg?” you ask an engineering manager in your third interview.
“It was rough,” she answers plainly and looks down at the floor. The engineering manager sits on a comfortable couch in the quiet section of the open-plan office. She is wearing blue jeans, white sneakers, and a plain blouse.
“Two of my engineers were laid off without warning. Another one quit Big Tech Co. to become a digital nomad in Southeast Asia. We had no budget for travel and no budget for raises. Imagine trying to motivate a distributed team when the best you could do is to tell them that ‘a 0% raise is a good thing’.” She stares off at the microkitchen and sighs like Jay Gatsby staring at a lantern across Long Island sound.
The engineering manager continues. “I fought hard for my team in performance reviews. I even helped one of them get promoted last year. And last year was terribly hard. That was the only case in our org that got through. I think that engineer would have left Big Tech Co. if he wasn’t promoted.” The engineering manager puts her head in her hands. She sighs, partially in relief, and partially in exasperation, like a general who won a costly battle but failed to halt the enemy’s advance. So the war continues.
“You’ve been through a lot,” you remark. “And yet you and your team are still here. What makes you and the others stay?”
“It’s all about the people,” she gestures with her hands. “Projects come and go, but the people stay. I’ve spent evenings and weekends doing everything that needs to be done for my team. I’ve cleared the path for them so they could grow in their careers, and as people.”
Your motion for her to continue.
“It’s hard to find the right project for someone: They need something that will align with their interests and skills, be challenging enough so that they have room to grow, but not so difficult that they fail and cause the team to miss our OKRs. I just want them to have enough space to develop new skills and shine. I want them to be happy and effective.”
You pause and observe the silence.
“What about you? What do you want out of your career?” you ask, gently.
“What do you mean?” The engineering manager asks.
“You do so much for other people. Are you angling to become a director or VP one day?”
You notice tears forming in the corners of the manager’s eyes.
“I don’t know,” she sniffles. “I no longer have aspirational goals.”
“Hey bro,” Chad extends his arm for a fist bump. Your face scrunches as if to say “I’m not your bro” as you reluctantly give him a fist bump in return. He is wearing a crumpled company t-shirt, shorts, sandals, and sunglasses, even though you’re indoors. His biceps and quadriceps suggest that he makes liberal use of the company gym.
“I feel like I bring real masculine energy to the team,” Chad boasts. His desk is raised to the highest setting so that everyone at the office can figuratively and literally see that he is above them. He cracks open a cold one. Someone from HR hears this, walks over, recognizes that it is Chad, and turns around.
“What’s your role on this team?” you inquire.
“Bro, I’m a full stack developer,” Chad smiles proudly and gestures outward with both hands, as if it was obvious. “I think of new features, then I build them. Today, I’m L4, but I have L7-9 vision. Everyone at Big Tech Co. knows me and how smart I am. In fact, I was the only one in the org who got promoted last cycle.” Chad takes a swig from his bottle.
“Also, bro, I fix outages in my spare time. In fact, last week there was a terrible bug in prod, elevated error rates and all that, some business metrics were down, blah blah blah. It was a super tricky bug because–”
Chad’s phone chimes.
“Sorry, bro. I’m late for my ping pong match.” He gives you a fist bump and hustles down the hallway.
“It’s so great to meet you!” squeals the intern. She is beaming with delight. It is your last interview of the day, and you are beginning to feel tired.
“I’ve always wanted to be in a movie,” she remarks cheerfully. You exchange pleasantries and settle into the interview.
“Why did you decide to take an internship at Big Tech Co?” you ask.
“I heard it was really cool working here! And hopefully I can get a full-time job at Big Tech Co, too. I want to change the world!” she smiles.
You nod politely.
“What’s something you’ve learned during your internship?” you ask.
“Well, my host told me to create a small service to serve 5 terabytes of data. It turns out, there’s a lot that goes into starting up a new service! I sent a changelist to my host and he didn’t approve it. I said, ‘Why can’t I serve 5 terabytes?’ and my host was like, ‘Do you think our users are scum? You need integration tests.’ and then I said, ‘What’s wrong with my SliceFoxtrot integration tests?’ and then he said, ‘The SliceFoxtrot framework is deprecated. Use Bophades instead.’ So I did some research and it turns out that Bophades won’t be in general availability until Q4. But my internship ends in 3 weeks. So in the meantime my host told me to write some unit tests in Python for Chad’s project. But I don’t have access to the project design doc and Chad is always busy.” The intern shrugs.
“That must be incredibly frustrating,” you state with the tranquility of a Buddhist monk.
“Yeah! At least it’s a learning opportunity,” the intern continues. “I was talking to someone from HR and it sounds like there aren’t that many entry level positions open in the fall. Unless you have a PhD in AI.” She shrugs again and asks, “What do you think of AI?”
You are a little surprised because it is the first question that anyone has asked you all day.
“Me? Oh, I think it’s quite interesting,” you remark and wave your hand. “But it will never fully replace human creativity.”
“You don’t think so? Creativity is just about trying new things! Computers are really good at that.”
“Let’s stay on task,” You look down at your notebook. “Tell me about the project you’re most proud of.”
“Sure!” chirps the intern. “For my PhD thesis, I created an AI agent that generates memes. I used robot accounts to submit them to different social media platforms, and used user ratings as feedback for the model. It was pretty cool. One of my robot accounts had millions of followers, enough to get monetized. I earned enough to pay off most of my student loans before my accounts got shut down for violating the terms of service,” she shrugs again. “Then one of my professors recommended I apply for an internship at Big Tech Co. With a personal project like that, it was easy to get a recruiter’s attention.”
You spend the rest of the interview pleasantly listening to fascinating stories from the intern.
The hot sun sets on Silicon Valley. You stumble back to your hotel after a long day at Big Tech Co’s main campus. You are mentally exhausted but happy that the interviews are done.
You meet your editor in the hotel’s bar for some passion fruit LaCroix. The two of you discuss how you’re going to craft the day’s footage into a coherent narrative for your documentary.
You open your laptop. Your editor suggests asking Big Tech Co’s AI assistant to write a first draft. You remember the intern’s advice, “Creativity is just about trying new things.” You are skeptical, but you try it anyway.
Within seconds, a script is being spit out in front of your eyes.
“Hmm,” you sip a cocktail of skepticism and curiosity. You read through the AI-generated script. The narrative is perfect. Your editor agrees. There is no more work to be done for the day.
You close your laptop, return to your hotel room, and struggle to fall asleep.
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