July 9, 2009.
The Touchpoints group grew steadily under the auspices of Atiq and Jaan. In the months since Stephen had entered the intern programming contest, nine new scientists had been hired onto the team—an astounding number for any group in such a short time. Atiq had taken Xiao’s admonitions to heart. He wouldn’t face them again.
The team of Atiq and Jaan was well known in academic circles and was the envy of what few competitors Ubatoo had. Almost every university professor and their students were vying for a chance to join Ubatoo, and in particular its data-mining team. Xiao, using his connections, had the duo of Atiq and Jaan interviewed in both Forbes and The New York Times—and had their articles appear the same week. As Xiao had instructed, Atiq sold the vision and Jaan sold the technical brilliance. It was rare for modern-day number crunchers to receive such a large amount of press coverage. It was no surprise that following the interviews over 390 doctoral-level candidates applied to work with Atiq and Jaan.
Only a tiny fraction of the candidates would see Ubatoo, however. A minuscule one out of every thirty-six Ph.D.s who submitted their resumes was even given the opportunity to interview in person with the Touchpoints group. For the interviewee, the process was a grueling full ten hours. The morning of the interview day was primarily spent giving a prepared talk about the research the candidate had done, his publications that he thought were the most interesting, and what research he planned to do if hired. The topics spanned the spectrum of computer science, from applications to system design to theory. Talk titles included the well-attended “Improving the Ability to Advertise Through Tracking: A Machine Learning Approach to Incorporating Weak Signals,” to the not-so-well-attended “Theoretical Limits on Data Privacy.” Of course, none of the incoming Ph.D.s had ever tried their approaches on the amount of user data Ubatoo had, despite being utterly confident that any amount could be handled by their, as yet largely untested, theories. The unwarranted confidence was excused by the interviewers. More data was gathered here in a single hour than any incoming candidate had ever dealt with. Had this particular hubris not been forgiven, it was quite likely no candidates would ever have been hired.
After forty-five minutes of questions following the candidate’s presentation, the candidate was escorted to lunch by various members of the data-mining group. On those occasions when there weren’t enough people to accompany the candidate to lunch, interns were sometimes invited.
Depending on which set of people had lunch with the interviewee, lunch could easily be the most relaxed part of the day, or the most dreaded. If the interviewee was fortunate enough to meet with the people who were not new hires (those at Ubatoo for more than six months), the members of the lunch crowd usually did well in ensuring that absolutely nothing about the presentation, or even work, was discussed. Likely, they’d already decided whether they would vote for the person to be hired, and now they wanted to know the person on a more informal level. The topic of conversation usually revolved around all the perks available, the food they were eating, how much the company had changed in just the last six months (the old days), and how the candidate would unquestionably regret not joining, if given an offer.
However, because the majority of those in the Touchpoints group had been at Ubatoo only a short time, lunches often took on a very different character. Regularly, the interviewee was taken to lunch by interviewers who had been at Ubatoo under a month and who were still trying to prove themselves worthy of being there. In these cases, lunch was usually an exercise in academic one-upsmanship, or as Stephen liked to refer to it, mental masturbation: a fun, all-too-frequent diversion that in the end led to a minute of satisfaction and a mess to deal with.
The game went as follows. The instant the meal was started, the interviewers would delve into a minuscule technical aspect of the work presented in the talk, which in some, usually non-obvious, way related to their own work. Of course, on that topic, only the interviewer himself could be the world’s foremost expert. The real trouble started when the interviewee would try to interject an opinion that diverged from utter amazement at the obvious display of technical wizardry that the interviewer exhibited by being astute enough to find the small parallel to his/her own work. When such a diversion occurred, it was most commonly met with a Lord of the Flies–like ruthless barrage of questions designed to teach the interviewee that the only right response was sheer reverence. The sooner the interviewee realized the appropriate appeasement, the sooner the pain for the interviewee stopped.
There did exist, however tiny in number, a few lunches that began like this, but in which the interviewee addressed the challenge of oneupsmanship head on and proved himself able to stand his own ground. It was with complete surprise that Stephen noted that the interviewee was not berated or vindictively voted against in the hiring meetings. Instead, the interviewers usually passionately fought to ensure that any interviewee who could hold his ground would receive an offer. Nobody, despite any bruised egos, wanted to lose such a person to a competitor.
When the interviewee finished the lunchtime interview interrogation, usually thirty to forty minutes into the lunch—whether by acquiescing to the brilliance displayed before him or by displaying his own brilliance that outshined the others at the table, the conversation invariably turned toward the food they were eating. The free food was a perennial source of amazement for those who visited Ubatoo, and a genuine source of pride, and immense calories, for those who worked there.
Because it was quite rare for the interns to be able to contribute much to the conversation at these lunches, the interns had found other ways to keep amused. Out of such boredom was created the following classification system of the various types of interviewees, based solely on their discussion of the food they were eating.
A people manager would start by saying: “It’s an absolutely brilliant idea to have this quality of food. It keeps people on the grounds and working and thinking about Ubatoo. No wasted time going out. Very nice.”
A salesperson would start by saying: “All of this is free? Every day? That’s awesome. I can’t wait to try all of the cafeterias. I really can’t wait to tell my co-workers back where I work. They’re going to be so jealous.”
A marketing person would start by saying: “If I ate this food every day I would gain fifteen pounds my first year. It’s like the freshman fifteen, like being an undergrad again. You guys should try to be more green, though. Green I could really sell.”
A young engineer/scientist would start by saying: “This food is much better than the other companies where I’m interviewing. How late are the cafeterias open? Do they serve all this food in the middle of the night, too?”
An experienced engineer/scientist would start by saying: “This is as good as all my friends who came here said it was. You guys should really think about delivering this food to desks as well, especially for those days when things get busy. If we had perks like this where I am now, I bet people wouldn’t be in such a hurry to find their way here.”
Regardless of the position and the background, there was little chance that an interviewee didn’t leave impressed. At least the food always provided a nice upbeat end to the lunch—whether the person would get an offer or, more likely, would not.
It was in the midst of one of the interview lunches that Stephen was interrupted with a call forwarded to his cell phone from his office line. A voice he couldn’t quite recognize was speaking on the other end, “Stephen, I hope you remember me. We met a while ago at the Ubatoo party. My name is Sebastin Munthe. Atiq introduced us. I hope that now is a good time to talk.” It wasn’t, but the invocation of Atiq’s name was enough to motivate Stephen to excuse himself from the table, despite being in the middle of a debate about an equation that the latest interviewee had shown on slide three of his sixty-seven-slide talk.
As he scurried past the cafeteria’s maître d’, he rushed to find an empty conference room for a moment of quiet. He found Pinocchio and jumped in. “Hi, Sebastin. Great to hear from you again. It’s been a long time.” Stephen still hadn’t the faintest clue who Sebastin was.
“Thank you so much for taking my call, Stephen,” Sebastin continued in a vaguely familiar voice, the accent overly refined. “Normally, I would sit down with you and explain my group’s background and goals, to make sure you’re comfortable helping us. But in the interest of time, Atiq suggested I call you directly and, well, plead for your help. He mentioned you would be the one who would be fastest at the analyses I need.”
“Of course, I’d be glad to help. I’m flattered Atiq mentioned me.” Stephen was surprised Atiq still even remembered his name. “Are you tracking an advertisement campaign, or do you need some kind of demographic analysis done? I can help you with that as soon as I get back to my desk.”
“No, no. Nothing like that, Stephen.” A protracted pause arose before the conversation resumed. “I imagine it’s best to quickly give you a bit of background on my group. I head the American Coalition for Civil Liberties, ACCL for short. We’re a small but vocal group in Silicon Valley. We began by working on a number of pet social causes that we wanted to impact in our local communities. The ones we all coalesced around were those that as tech entrepreneurs we cared about tremendously, and, frankly, actually understood. Now, we’re focused on only one primary area—we need to ensure that our fundamental rights of free speech, free information flow, and non-censorship are upheld. You’d think we lived in China or Cold War Russia if you knew the extent of information censorship and the ever-increasing invasions of privacy we all must endure. I don’t suppose you’re familiar with our group, are you, Stephen?”
Now it came back to Stephen. “The moral conscience of Silicon Valley!” he blurted out as he recalled Atiq’s introduction of Sebastin at the party. These paranoid discourses on the evils of the U.S. government helped tremendously to narrow down the list of people who it could be. “Of course I’d be happy to help you in any way possible. I’d imagine that anyone at Ubatoo would help if they could.”
“Excellent, Stephen. Yes, your company has been remarkably receptive; I think our mission fits well with yours. But, lofty goals aside, I need your help urgently, I fear our resources are far less than yours.”
“No problem. What can I do?”
“I’ve just sent you an e-mail containing the titles of 960 books. I was hoping you could do a really, quite rudimentary, analysis of any activity surrounding them—if there are any particular geographies in which your partners are selling the books more than others, what the demographic makeup is of the buyers, and any other information you think would be interesting about the people buying or even discussing the books. Raw sales numbers, we already have. What we don’t have is the ability to look across the Web and put some of the facts together.”
“I can do it. But why are you doing this? Is there anything I should know about these books?” Sebastin’s request wasn’t difficult. Stephen had already mentally constructed the procedures to access the data he needed by the time he finished speaking.
“The books are a strange mix. They range from international cookbooks to government history to guides on how to sell collectible stamps. Most of them, from the titles that I can see, are fairly mundane. To be frank, we’re not really sure why, but we suspect that all of them have made it onto some ‘list of interest’ in Washington, DC. This means that people who are buying the books are probably finding their way onto some ‘watch list,’ too. Obviously, as ACCL, and as Americans, we believe we should be able to read any book we want, and that tagging a person as a ‘person of interest’ just because of what they read is a ridiculous thing to do. But that’s DC for you. I don’t know how to find all those people who might be unwittingly putting themselves on government lists by just reading a book. I fear that without some more information, we’re just poking around in the dark trying to help people we can’t find.”
“I can probably get the names of those who are buying the books or talking about them online. Can you use that?”
“That would be perfect.”
Another long pause followed before Stephen continued. “What are you going to do with the names? Are you going to contact all of them or go public with this information?”
“I like the way you think, Stephen. But, first things first. Until we have enough evidence of what’s taking place, it’d be premature to talk about this publicly. Assuming we find the right information, we would like to warn all those who are directly affected. Imagine if you knew that buying some book would put you on a list, wouldn’t you want to know? People can do whatever they want with the information, use it, ignore it, either is fine with me. I just firmly believe they should be told.”
“Of course. But it doesn’t make sense. Tracking cookbooks? I have a hard time believing that would be useful. But if you think that this little bit of information will help, I’ll be glad to get it for you.”
Sebastin responded quickly but offered no further explanation. “Thanks. It will be a great deal of help. I’ll certainly be sure to tell Atiq the next time I talk to him how helpful you’ve been. By the way, Stephen, not to beat a dead horse, but you know that last I heard, over a million people were now on at least one of the watch lists in the U.S. A million, just imagine that! ‘Persons of interest’—all that means is that it’s okay to tap your telephone, monitor your e-mail, watch where you go, and everything else you keep hearing about on the news.”
“It’s scary, I agree,” Stephen said, hoping to divert Sebastin before he continued. But Sebastin wasn’t done yet. He had plenty more to say about his conspiracy theories.
“And how do you think these people got on the watch list?” Sebastin asked excitedly. “Maybe it wasn’t just reading some cookbook or calling the wrong family member or watching the wrong TV show. What if someone happened to read the wrong book and called the wrong family member? Or what if they watched the wrong TV show and happened to order one of these books from Amazon? God forbid you should also take a flight that same week. You know, that’s truly all it takes. We just need to head this off and expose it for what it is.”
“I can help—I’m happy to do it. I’m not even sure which list you’re talking about, or whether these lists really exist, but we can talk more about that later. In the meantime, I’ll start working on the list of books you sent to me.”
“Fantastic. As you can tell, I always get a tad carried away. I hear it’s a common trait for us bleeding-heart types, no? One last thing, though: the lists are real; they exist. And you’re lucky not to have had any encounters with them.” He finally took a breath. “Why don’t we talk about the results in a week? We’d like to contact the people you find as soon as possible. I’ll be sure to tell Atiq you were just the right person for this project.”
Although Stephen might have been a bit unsure whether Sebastin really knew what he was talking about, and even whether he was a crackpot or visionary, Sebastin’s intentions were in the right place. The more people who knew about these lists, assuming they existed, the better off the world would be.
Stephen had hoped he would do something worthwhile at Ubatoo, though he never could have imagined this. It was time to do something other than finding gullible masses to buy more expensive diet pills. He was doing well here—now it was time for him to be doing good, also.