Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
Understand? Yes. Care? No.
I find my old team exactly where I left them down in the product department. Alex is milling around near Andy’s desk eating a yogurt while Andy points to something on his screen. The two of them look like the epitome of I-work-in-tech-guys. Alex is in his blue Patagonia half-zip. Andy’s is green.
“Gentlemen.”
“How’s it going,” Alex says around a mouthful.
Andy cranes his neck back. “Oh hey, Annie.”
I’m mad, obviously, but I’m also not a fucking idiot. I don’t need to tell them what Brad said to us upstairs. I just have to drop enough hints so they can connect the dots, and then my work here is done. I also need to do this quickly, before anyone from DatStrat figures out what I’m up to.
“How’s progress coming along on integrated templates?”
Alex snorts. “What progress? It’s sitting with the dev team going nowhere.”
“So what will you present at the meeting Thursday?”
“Nothing,” he shrugs. “Why would we? It’s just an all-hands.”
“Isn’t it a good opportunity to show proof of concept, though? Get some buy-in from the other product owners?”
This catches Andy’s attention. He swivels his chair around, his eyes narrowed on me. “What do you know?”
Just that they’re going to kill your project and then you’ll all lose your jobs.
Alex and Andy both look at me expectantly. Alex is leaning back against the desk now, one leg crossed over the other. Andy is perched forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees.
I look from one, to the other, and back again.
“I know the exec team is thinking a lot about Version 3.0 right now.”
Alex’s attention returns to his yogurt. “So what? They’ve been thinking about that since we merged.”
I give Andy my best level stare. “There’s a rumor going around that they want it launched by the fall. If that’s true, they’ll probably be making decisions about any new product features they want to prioritize. And which ones they want to kill.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Why 3.0 in the fall?”
“There’s…another rumor…about a possible float. But. Who knows if that’s true.”
“I haven’t heard that rumor,” Andy says slowly.
“That would explain the layoffs, I guess,” Alex says, his spoon scraping around the bottom of the pot. “I still think they’re dreaming.”
A world of information is silently passing between Andy and me.
“Have they already decided about the features?” he asks finally.
“Like I said. It’s just a rumor. I can’t even remember where I heard it.”
“Right.”
“If they’re going to make the target, though, it makes sense that they’ll be thinking about which features are most compatible. Can integrated templates run with the in-app ads they’re working on?”
“No,” Alex says.
“It could,” Andy argues.
“By Thursday?” I ask.
He lifts a shoulder. “In theory. A single prototype, anyway.”
“It might be worth it. In theory.”
Andy nods. He understands what I’m telling him.
“I guess we’ll see you then.”
“You two are being weird,” Alex says, pointing his spoon from Andy to me.
Andy swivels back toward his monitor. I only shrug and tell them I’ll catch up with them later. My warning has been delivered. My work here is done.