Chapter 3
It was a Wednesday in November, around four in the afternoon.
I was dealing with a headache. The reconciliation module in our finance system had this bizarre bug. Sometimes, the numbers didn't add up, off by a few cents here and there.
These bugs were the absolute worst. They didn't crash the system, but I couldn't ignore them. In finance, being off by a single cent was unacceptable.
After two days of digging, I finally found the culprit, an old floating-point precision bug left over from code written three years ago.
I fixed seven lines of code, ran the tests, and submitted the changes.
While I was at it, I wrote up a technical doc breaking down what caused it, how far it spread, and how I fixed it. It was approximately two thousand words, with lots of visuals.
Jaden forwarded the doc in the group chat, saying, [The finance reconciliation issue has been resolved. See the attached technical report for details. Thanks to the tech team for their hard work.]
Thanks to the tech team, not to Caroline.
On the doc, the author was listed as "Tech Team."
I didn't say anything.
The next day, Maddie ran into me in the break room and grinned. "Hey, you figured out that reconciliation bug? Nice work."
"Yeah," I replied.
"Mr. Larsen mentioned it to the big boss, said it was our team's win," she said, winking. "I put in a good word for you at the meeting."
I looked at her.
She really believed she was helping me.
"Thanks," I said.
That was Maddie. She wasn't a bad person. She took it for granted when she benefited from other people's hard work, and honestly thought she was contributing, too.
She said a couple of nice things about me.
I spent two days tracking down her bugs.
In her world, that made us even.
By mid-November, something happened that made me see things clearly.
That day, Jaden called a team meeting and announced that the company was promoting someone to team lead. "Taking into account work performance, teamwork, and everyone's feedback, my pick is Maddie."
Maddie. Monthly salary: 5,300 dollars. Two years with the company.
Me. Monthly salary: 3,200 dollars. Four years with the company.
I knew exactly what Maddie was capable of. I'd reviewed her code more times than I could count.
Her variable names were all over the place, she never bothered with comments, and her error handling was wrapping everything in a giant try-catch and calling it a day.
But she was a whiz at making PowerPoint slides.
Her reports were always well-structured and made perfect sense.
She could strike up a conversation with anyone from any department.
"Any objections?" Jaden asked.
No one spoke up.
I kept quiet, too.
Because I already knew how this was going to end.
That night, I got an email inviting me to an interview.
It was from a cloud computing company, not big, but with a great tech culture. The salary was 5,000 dollars.
I replied: [Sure, I'm up for an interview.]
By early December, I'd passed the interview.
The offer said: [$5,000 a month, full benefits, health, dental, vision, 401(k), and no overtime.]
No overtime.
I stared at those words for a long time.
The annual meeting was at the end of December. I decided to wait until after that to hand in my resignation.
It wasn't because I couldn't let go. I wanted to know what my final assessment at BrightCore Solutions would really be.
It was worse than I expected.
They labeled me the worst employee and docked me 600 dollars.
Fine.
The Saturday after the annual meeting, I opened my laptop at home and wrote my resignation letter.
It said: [Dear Mr. Larsen, I'm resigning for personal reasons. My last day will be January 31st. Please approve. Caroline Waters.]
On Monday morning, I printed out the resignation letter and left it on Jaden's desk.