She got home before Derek. She’d gone in so early, they couldn’t commute together anyhow, so he probably didn’t expect her to be there. She ordered from his favorite Italian place, adding a couple extra dishes just to be decadent. And to not have to cook tomorrow. She then walked downstairs to the corner grocery to grab a bottle of bubbles to stick in the freezer.
She kicked off her shoes and laid back on the couch, considered playing some Call of Duty, but then, exhausted, put on the ballgame. She shut her eyes just for a second.
Then she was wide awake, her phone vibrating madly on the glass coffee table.
“Food’s here,” Derek said. He sat across from her on the sectional, smiling at her. The Prosecco was sitting on the table, and he poured her a glass. Then he stood and walked to the door to meet the delivery guy.
He put the boxes on the table.
“How long was I out?”
“Ask your phone. I’ve only been here five minutes.”
“And you went right for the Prosecco?”
“How many bottles have exploded in the freezer? I always look there when I get home.”
She nodded ruefully and helped open and spread out the boxes. They served themselves plates overflowing and sat back on the couch. The dinner table was too buried by paper and electronics to be eaten at.
“So, what’s the announcement you texted me about?” He gestured at the food and bubbles. “Vegas?”
“Silly, the quarter has barely started. No, this is much bigger.”
“And scarier?” He looked into her eyes. They had dated for eight years before they’d finally gotten married three years ago. He knew her like no one did. Or would.
She blew air through her lips, a silent whistle. “I dunno.” She took a sip of Prosecco. “I dunno. Hon, I’m the general manager. Of QuiltWorld. I got promoted.”
Derek gave her a quizzical smile. “This is what you always wanted, right?”
“Yes.” She smiled but couldn’t smile all the way.
“You said you didn’t want to start your own thing until you got a shot at leading. Well, you couldn’t have a better shot than this!”
She blinked. Yes, she had said that. Years ago, Derek had asked her when she’d start her own company. He believed in her. And he also thought that if she became a boss, she could build a company with a better culture than the one she was currently experiencing, one that would allow her come home for dinner.
Then when she’d taken a job at notoriously miserable SOS, he’d asked her why she would join that sweatshop. She’d said so she could learn to lead under stress. SOS was big enough you could get promoted and she could get mentorship. And now that it had happened? “I’m terrified.”
“Why?”
“It’s all wrong. I thought I’d get to take over a little game, or an older one first. I thought it would be a smaller team and a much smaller P&L. This is one of the most important games in the company.” Her voice was higher; she spoke faster. She could feel the tension grip her throat. “I’m a great right-hand man.”
Derek snorted at that. “You’re a terrible feminist, hon.”
Allie ignored him, continuing. “Right-hand person. I can make just about anything happen. But I’ve never had to be the one to decide what should happen.”
Derek moved slightly back, as if to take in all of her. He smiled comfortingly.
“Oh, you’re putting on your HR face, I see!” she teased. More like his husband face, when he looked at her like that, eyes shining with faith and admiration.
“You are overdue to step up.” Derek’s lips smiled, but his eyes said he was serious. “When we moved here from Austin, you said you wanted to start your own thing. That was eight years ago.”
“Startups are hard. The game business has not gotten any easier.”
Derek took her hands in his. “It was hard when we moved here. Don’t let the jacked-up culture at SOS keep you from remembering your goals. Today, you made a huge step forward toward them. The general manager is CEO of the game studio. Sure, the stakes are higher than you expected. But at SOS, you’ve got a support system in place. You’ve got recruiters, more experienced peers who can mentor you, and a great bench of talent to pull on. This is perfect—it’s the role you want with training wheels. You’ll be fine. In fact, you’ll be better than fine. I know you, babe. You can do this.”
Allie gazed past Derek, out the window of their condo. Squirrels frolicked in the leaves, flirting and collecting food. She missed the simplicity of her days waiting tables sometimes. You came in, did your job, and left without looking back. You never took your work home. And when you were at work, everything was understood. You knew how to greet, how to take an order, how to serve, how to close a check. There was enough variety in the people that it was never boring, yet the routine was profoundly relaxing. It had been years since work was like that.
“Yeah, I get training wheels, but my bike is on a narrow bridge over a pool of piranhas swimming around waiting for me to fall off my bike so they can eat me alive. Every GM of a lesser game has been waiting for George to step away. They know he’s a starter, not a finisher. They all want my job, so they can enjoy the glory before the numbers collapse. They’ll be watching me every second.”
“Then they’ll see you succeed.” Derek was not budging. He took his role as husband seriously, including unwavering support.
He was right; she’d left Blizzard for a reason. She wanted to up her skills and explore this new game platform. She wanted a chance to work with and meet top game designers and engineers and get what she needed to step out on her own. She had chosen this life. She had to remember she was aiming at something better than SOS. She would leave this place with the knowledge she needed, and she would start a company that treated people right and built games players loved. This had been her promise to herself when they moved out here. She would keep that promise.
“So how is the new gig?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Pretty cool. Right now, I’m running a harassment training marathon.”
“Welcome to big company life!” Allie laughed. “It’s CYA all the way.”
“Actually, it’s not. I mean, this training is not just so they can check off the ‘did I warn people to not make lewd jokes in meetings.’ The training has been incredible. They actually bring in professors from Stanford to teach us methods for supporting our employees.”
“Well, they print money there. I guess it’s nice they spend it on you?” Allie looked at Derek. He had his glowy I’m learning face on.
“Agreed.” He grinned. “I got the coolest model today. Can I share?”
“Can I stop you?”
“No!” Derek reached for a notebook from a stack of papers he had piled on his end of the couch. The giant sectional was fifty percent sitting room, twenty percent electronics, and the rest piles of printouts and books. Lifetime learning was a survival skill in the Valley.
“Okay, it’s called GROW. It’s an acronym.”
“Of course it is.”
“Shush. It’s for coaching. So, this tennis coach guy realized his coaching style could be used for coaching anything, because he just got people to coach themselves.”
“Very Zen.”
Derek leaned back toward his pile of books and papers and pulled out two books. “Here.”
Allie took them. One said The Inner Game of Tennis and the other said The Inner Game of Stress. “I can certainly use this one,” she said, waving the second in the air.
Derek gave her a quizzical look. “Yes, actually. Keep that one.”
Allie sighed dramatically.
Derek continued. “Okay, so GROW was developed by this guy Whitmore who took the ideas from the tennis guy and codified them.”
Allie gestured for him to get on with it.
“It’s how you run a coaching session. G is for goals. You ask people what their goals for the session are. You want to try it?”
“Sounds like therapy.”
“Oh, come on, Allie, if I try it out, I can learn it better.”
“Okay. My goal for our session is to get you naked instead of talking about work.”
“Allie. First the work, then the reward. You just got promoted, and you look like you ate a lemon! I know there is something you’re freaking out about.”
Allie shook her head. There were so many things running in circles in her head. So many things that were fucked up about her situation. “I don’t even know where to start. I have so much to do. I shouldn’t even be sitting here. I should be working.”
Derek’s face fell. She suspected she’d hurt his feelings, but she wasn’t sure how. She could guess, though. He’d been a work widower so long, and now it was about to get worse. She had better give him some quality time. And if he wanted to play coach, why not? “Okay, hon. I need to figure out how to sort out the studio. It’s not just that I don’t know how to manage. It’s that George took all the good people when he left to start this new game.”
Derek nodded. “Okay. R is for reality. What are the factors that are making this so difficult?” He took her hands.
She smiled. “Are coaches allowed to hold hands?”
“Husband coaches are.” He sat very still, very quietly watching her. Silence was one of Derek’s superpowers. His silence was like a warm blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
Allie’s stress and fear that she’d been holding at bay came flooding back. She was safe enough with him to be insecure. “I don’t even know what to do.” She felt her throat close, a sign tears might be on the way.
“Just tell me what is going on.”
She recapped her day for him. “And I feel so overwhelmed. I don’t even know what to do first. There is so much. I have at least three positions I need to hire for yesterday, I’ve got people who aren’t doing their jobs, I’m not doing my job, I don’t know what my job is, George isn’t helping, Rick will demote me or worse the moment I mess up, and everyone is just waiting for me to prove I’m not good enough so they can grab my job.” She wasn’t crying yet, though the tightness in her throat was still there. Maybe she’d learned to hold off tears until she was private.
Derek was watching her still, perhaps trying to decide if he should keep coaching or hug her. His warm hands still held hers firmly. She could see his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. “O is for options. What do you think you can do in this situation?”
Allie nodded. Problem solving felt better than wallowing in helplessness. She felt her throat loosen. “I have to hire. Period. I need to get job postings out. I might need to pull a George and steal from other studios.”
“What are the pluses and minuses of that?”
“Fresh blood can be great. Get folks from other companies to increase our body of knowledge. But it’s slow. And it’s harder to get honest references. Inside the company, I can buy someone a cup of coffee and get the skinny.”
“Okay,” Derek said.
“My current team is a mess. Mick makes everyone angry just by walking into the room, Noam is smart but won’t make a decision unless he talks to me three times, I swear, Kendra is a sweetie, but she is no game designer, Jheryn is a mute. . . .”
“An actual mute?”
“No, I just mean, he never talks to anyone. You ask him to work on something, he does it, and he never even tells you when it’s done, and God forbid he gets stuck because you won’t know until you go talk to him. He just stops working and starts playtesting the latest game.”
“So, you’ve got some feedback to give.”
“Yeah, no kidding, but I need to get on hiring first. No amount of feedback is going to make an orange into an apple. And I have got to sort out the conversion drop. I have to get the numbers at least stable before the next numbers review with Rick or we’re dead in the water. I was looking through the new set of numbers I just pulled. . . .”
Derek looked like he was bursting with something to say, but Allie was on a roll. She went deep into the analytics work she was doing until Derek had to unhook his hands to lay a finger on her lips.
“Hon, can I please make a small suggestion?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I know the tech stuff is boring.”
“No, not that.” He smiled. “I think you really need to focus on the people problem. You don’t scale. If you can get these roles filled, you can live a sustainable life. You can’t just keep working longer hours.”
Allie knew he didn’t want that. He’d changed jobs to get rid of his commute so they could spend more time together. She hadn’t asked him to. And now she was going to work even longer hours, and they both knew it. She felt guilty.
Derek said, “The W is for ‘What will you do?’ Knowing what you know about the reality of the situation, and your options, what will you do to meet your goal?”
Allie thought he was asking more than that. He was asking when life would become normal. She left the elephant in the corner sleeping, though. “It’s triage time. I need to get these roles hired, but until then, I need to make sure I keep our numbers stable. Otherwise we chance getting written off by Rick as a dying game, and then he’ll start taking away head count and it’s all over. I’m sorry, but before bed I do need to do some work tonight.”
She didn’t tell him it was going to get worse before it got better. They both knew.