Mondays were for the QuiltWorld numbers meeting. It felt strange to be receiving reports rather than giving them. She sat at her desk, giving the team a moment to set up. She knew from experience letting them have a couple minutes to settle was a good thing. She wasn’t exactly raring to go herself. Yosi, Kendra, and Mick had sent their updates to her to collate into a deck, and it wasn’t looking good. She was about to hear why and how bad, and wasn’t excited for that adventure.
When George set the studio’s objective only a few weeks ago she’d been thrilled to launch a groundbreaking expansion. The objective was a crazy stretch goal, but crazy stretch goals were what her team had been doing since day one. The key results involved press attention, reactivating lapsed users, and revenue. Always revenue. George and Pete’s departure changed the studio’s ability to accomplish anything, but Rick had a hard-and-fast rule about never changing an OKR set once it was finalized. Which he had reiterated when she had asked him about them. The key results now looked ridiculous rather than challenging. She shut down her desktop, then walked into the conference room where Mick had the same damn slide with the same damn OKRs already up on the wall. No hiding.
The big table was sparsely populated. It could hold ten people, yet it was just her, Mick, Kendra, and Yosi. She sat down at the empty chair at the foot of the table. “Okay. Let’s go.”
The team leaned forward, except Yosi who leaned back to such a degree that she wondered if his chair would tip over.
“Let’s start with the OKRs. Confidence has dropped on all our key results. Other than the obvious staffing issue, what’s up here?”
There was a moment of silence, as the team hesitated before opening the Pandora’s box of speculation.
Yosi broke the silence. “My confidence has dropped because I can’t tell what I’m dealing with. I’ve got code that keeps breaking and essentially no documentation. Hardly any commenting, even, except some idiot who left Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quotes throughout. I’m low confidence because I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on, although poor documentation is an early sign of poor coding.”
“Fair. So this might not be permanent?” Allie asked.
Yosi shrugged.
Kendra spoke up next. “For me it is mostly staffing. I’m not a manager. I have to drop my work to cover Janice’s work while trying to replace her. Plus, Atsuko left for Cat Detectives, so I’m down an illustrator and we’ve got no lead game designer. You should try to borrow someone or steal or something. It’s ridiculous!”
Allie interrupted, “Yes, we all know we’re short-staffed now. I’m on it. Are those the only issues?”
There was silence. Mick yawned.
“Okay, so same deal here in the health metrics. Team health is bad. Yes, we are missing people. How are the rest doing?”
Again, Yosi was the first to speak. “The engineering pods are fine. Pete was not particularly hands-on, so Noam and Jheryn stepped up long ago to make sure everyone was communicating. They’ve got a host of bad habits, but morale is fine. Also, I do have a little good news. I’ve talked Simon into joining.”
Simon was a tall pale Goth with a bad attitude and unearthly coding skills. He was legendary at SOS both for skills and his ability to say no to Rick. He refused to be relocated from NoirTown. He said he liked the game’s feel (he dressed like one of the game’s vampire detectives) and had told Rick if he wanted him to leave the game, there were lots of other interesting companies to work at. Allie had to know how Yosi had convinced him to join. But not now.
“Thank you, that is good news.”
“Well, design is very worried,” Kendra burst in.
Mick finally spoke. “Yes, Kendra, design is always very worried.”
“You should be worried! There is no one to make your little experiments!”
“If you’d work as much as everyone else . . .”
“Who says I don’t, just because I have to go somewhere quiet to get away from you.”
Yosi slammed his hand on the table, flat, making a loud sound. Mick and Kendra stopped bickering. Then Yosi gestured to Allie.
Allie swallowed. “So that’s the sound of one hand clapping,” she joked nervously. “Okay, so let’s talk about what’s coming up next week . . .”
Mick shot out of the room as soon as the meeting was over. Kendra waited a moment, but Allie moved to speak to Yosi in a preemptive move to avoid listening to complaints about something she couldn’t fix any faster. Kendra vacillated, then stepped out.
“It’s only the first week,” Yosi said softly, sensing her dismay.
“Yes, I know.” She was so frustrated. “I just hate working in the dark. I feel like all the things I took for granted are proving false, and I don’t know where to start.”
“Start by getting your head clear.” Yosi walked over to the board. “Let’s get all the problems where we can look at them.”
“Okay. Just a sec.” She looked at her watch. She was supposed to meet with Mick. She texted him to say she’d reschedule for afternoon. “Well, there are all the hires, of course.”
“Let’s put them up on the wall.” He drew an org chart with Allie at the top. Then CTO, and he drew an empty box next to it, “Since I’m a temp.” He drew a box for Lead Game Designer, Art Director, Lead PM, and wrote Lawrence’s name in the QA spot. “Let’s get the next levels in, in case we can move anyone around.” And he filled in the chart with the pod leads and engineers in each pod, Kendra under Lead Game Designer, and only one name, Emma, under Art Director. She was a recent CCA graduate and not ready to do much beyond what she was hired to do: make gorgeous illustrations. Allie would have traded places with her in a second, though. Lawrence’s team was complete and tight. He commanded fierce loyalty.
“Why wasn’t he here today?” asked Yosi.
“George never had him come.”
“Does that make sense to you?”
“No.” Not at all. She’d fix that. “What about Simon?”
Yosi had put him on a line by himself, rather than in a pod. “Doesn’t play nice with others. I promised him he could do what he wanted, as long as he commented extensively.”
“Is that a good idea?”
“It’s an experiment. We’ll see. Right now, though, I can’t make head nor tail of the code, and he likes ‘unhorking’ things.” He shrugged. “He did have one request.”
“Oh?”
“He’d like to see a few vampires put in QuiltWorld by Halloween.”
“Hah.” It’d be well worth it if he was as good as rumored.
Allie looked at the wall of empty positions and sighed. At least she could see the size of the problem now. QA was fine. Engineering was fine for now. But the creative team had a hole she could drive a truck through. “Better the devil you know,” she muttered, and went back to work.
The next Monday, Allie arrived at eight a.m. but didn’t go straight into the studio. Instead she headed to the cafeteria. Her stomach still clenched when she considered the ever-increasing list of issues George had left her with. She decided it’d be best to grab a coffee downstairs first, then sit a moment and gather her thoughts.
The cafeteria was a tribute to Rick’s ego. Hungry for success, he’d clearly modeled it after many of the successful software companies’ “work hard play hard” decor style. It sported old arcade games throughout, as well as pinball games, foosball, and Ping-Pong tables. Mixed in amidst the games were tables for eating at (or playing board games), and along the wall were the highly coveted booths in which you could get a modicum of privacy.
The windows were shaded to allow for maximum atmosphere, which helped the arcade game players and hurt the Ping-Pong ones. A fireman’s pole led down from her studio to the cafeteria, though it was roped off. Apparently, HR had decided it was too big a liability to be actually used, though PR removed the ropes every time there was a photo shoot of their incredibly cool HQ.
She gave her order to the barista and glanced around to see who was in at this hour. A few folks sat with coffee and laptops. The balding VP of new games was in the corner with several gray-haired business development cronies, talking about who knows what over bacon and eggs. Tucked away in one of the furthest booths was Brenda Madsen. Allie wouldn’t have noticed her, except for her platinum blonde hair lit by the screen of her laptop, illuminating her and making her look positively elfin. Brenda looked up from her laptop and at Allie, as if she felt Allie’s eyes on her. She smiled and waved her over. Allie held up a forefinger and mouthed, “Just a sec.” The barista passed Allie her double latte, and she walked over to Brenda’s booth.
“And then there were two,” Brenda said softly.
“Oh?” Allie replied, puzzled.
“Sit!” said Brenda with a sly smile.
Allie sat.
“We now have two female GM’s. Congratulations!”
“What about Virginia?”
“Busted down to producer. Her game numbers sank, and they gave NoirTown to Mike.”
“Huh.” Allie wondered if that helped Yosi’s acquisition of Simon.
“Rick’s in a mood. He pulled Jim off HoldemFoldem as well.”
“What’s Jim doing?”
“Floating.”
“Huh.” Allie sipped the caffeine, not feeling quite verbal. Rick did what Rick did. She never could figure out why some GMs got to float around until they had a funded game or a new position, and why some others were demoted to producer. Producers at SOS were a blend of art director and project managers. Cat herders at best, schedule keepers at worst, and almost always female.
Brenda hadn’t been pulled off a game ever. She was a “starter”—a GM who could take a tiny creative team through the initial good idea into a new franchise. Her current game was a niche game so far. It was a multiplayer game in which you had to defend your cookie farms against marauding but super-cute monsters. It had a small but passionate following of players. Allie was pretty sure it wasn’t going to get any bigger than it’d been for the past year. SOS had several games like that. Base hits, Felix called them. QuiltWorld was a home run. Base hits were safe, the middle of the pack where you could hang out for a while as a GM. It was what she thought she’d start with when she was promoted to GM, or maybe even taking over one of Brenda’s games when she got bored.
“How’s it lookin’? Have you taken stock yet?” Brenda asked. She had an empty mug next to her. A spoon sat next to it, with a tea bag tightly bound to the spoon by its own string.
“Today is all one-on-ones. I’ll be honest. I lost key people to George’s new effort. He built his development team solely from QuiltWorld.”
“That’s against rules of engagement!”
“It seems QuiltWorld is considered big enough to be able to take it. I’m not so sure.”
“George is Rick’s golden boy.”
“George managed to take Pete, Victor, Carlos, and Janice. I need to find a new CTO, game designer, art director, and lead PM.”
“He’s a bit manager heavy, isn’t he? Who’s going to do actual work?”
“I know. I guess he thinks he can make the same magic he did when he started QuiltWorld, since it’s pretty much the same crew, minus Christie.”
“How many of them have been in the trenches recently, though?” Brenda looked into her empty cup.
Allie shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I can’t explain anything. I have no idea how I’m going to recover from this.”
Now Brenda looked up and at her sharply. “Don’t admit that. Ever. Darling, you think product management is vicious. You are swimming in the deep waters now. Jim is floating. He’d love to step in if he heard you weren’t feeling ready. And any of the other GMs of the base hits. They are all looking to step up, and QuiltWorld still has the numbers they could take credit for. You can’t show indecision.”
“Would you want to . . . ?” Allie wondered if she had made a mistake, as soon as she started the sentence.
“No. I like to roll my own games. And I don’t like the big hits, too much attention from above. No danger from me. In fact, if you need advice, feel free to visit. I’m here most mornings. But be careful whom you talk with. Including Patricia.”
Patricia was head of HR. Allie had a meeting with her this afternoon.
“Patricia? But why?”
“She’s Rick’s creature. Her loyalty is completely to him. You show any sign you aren’t up to the task, and he’ll know it before you set foot back in your office.”
“Ah, come on. Isn’t HR’s job to help us grow, to succeed?” That’s what Derek always said.
“Human resources. Humans are resources. For the company. Their job is to make sure the company succeeds. Patricia has made a lot of things go away for Rick over the years. That one . . .” She pointed at the VP of new games, now laughing uproariously with his tablemates “ . . . gets handsy with his assistant, suddenly she’s pipped out. Not him. A dev on Baccarat get sick, turns out it’s chronic fatigue, but he’s suddenly let go for underperforming. Why he didn’t sue, I have no idea.” She tried to sip at her empty cup, then slammed it down annoyed. “Use HR, but don’t lean on HR. And be careful. And best not sit with me at estaff, I’m not popular. Sit with Baccarat, Rick loves them. Keep your head down, listen, and don’t contribute until you’re certain how it’ll be received.”
“Really?” Allie was appalled.
“My advice is worth every penny you paid for it.” Brenda leaned back.
Allie had always thought Brenda pretty easygoing, but now she saw the anger in her eyes.
“Thank you.” Allie gulped. “No really. Thank you.”
Brenda seemed to relax a little bit. “You’ll figure it out. Just go slow and be careful what you say. Be careful whom you say it to.”
She got up to refill her mug. Allie took a sip from hers. It was cold.