Chapter Eleven
LACEY
I never knew I possessed such an amazing ability to take a bad situation and make it so much worse.
Let’s start with how I’ve been toiling at Lettercat for two years, implementing other people’s ideas while mine just never quite make the roadmap.
And then I finally get a big project approved—not just a big project, the project that’s supposed to literally save the company. That’s a lot of pressure already.
But then add the big, scary deadline to it.
Thirty days or else—or else what, exactly?
Who knows! All that matters is how now absolutely positively everything is riding on this idea that I championed, that I told people was the direction we needed to go, and for once they listened to me.
It’s officially my opportunity to shine.
Time is ticking, problems are mounting, so what’s a girl to do?
Oh, just try to kiss the founder and CEO of the company. What a fantastic fucking idea.
My mother would be so angry with me. Glenn would be so disappointed. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Meg Whitman and hell, probably even Elizabeth Holmes would be ashamed of me.
My mom’s told me that it’s a burden to be the only woman in the room, but that it’s also a responsibility.
She taught me to always take the opportunity seriously, to remember that you’re representing more than just yourself when you’re in there.
Once you make it into that room, you’re supposed to use your voice, to have incredible ideas, and then invite other women in there with you. Or something inspiring like that.
But what you’re not supposed to do is use it as an opportunity to put the moves on your boss’s boss, to literally caress his arm (oh god, I did that) and tilt your chin up at him, practically begging him to make out with you while he’s innocently white-boarding.
Maybe this is what happens when you choose work as your boyfriend: cage yourself up long enough, any monkey in there with you will do.
This is unfair to Jude, I know. He’s turned out to be a pretty nice monkey.
Not that I can ever look at him again, or speak to him, or be in the same office building as him after last night.
He said it himself: it was a terrible idea.
It’s not lost on me that he said it while his hand was up my skirt and he was looking at me like I was a perfect 10 on the 30-day NPS survey rollup.
I’ll admit that I’ve been flirting with Jude, mostly because it’s fun to see how awkward and blotchy he gets when I do.
At least that’s how it started, but there was a shift after yesterday’s demo.
And then I pushed it too far. The adult thing to do now would be to have a simple conversation.
Close quarters, lack of sleep: these things happen. And then we move on.
I decide on a less mature strategy, which is saying nothing at all and pretending it didn’t happen. Lucky for me, there’s a whole system to ensure that strategy is successful: the buddy system.
I ask Kate to meet me at Blue Bottle on our way in, so I don’t have to walk past Jude’s office alone and risk him asking me if I have a minute.
I avoid my own desk—where I’m a sitting duck—and head straight to Ingrid’s to see how she feels about soft deleting instead of hard deleting.
I stay there until I see Steve walk into the conference room for our upcoming meeting. Steve, the buffer I was waiting for.
When Jude walks into the conference room, I say a very general and possibly too-loud “good morning.” I can tell he’s waiting for me to look up, so I keep my eyes fixed on my screen.
I also let him propose the scope trim to the team, though he gives me more credit for it than I deserve.
As a group, we run through all the remaining items and find we’re able to knock a few more items off the list. The initial, ambitious plan is morphing into something smaller, but still valuable. And definitely possibly achievable.
As the meeting winds down, I pop up early and go bother Dave about user permissions, asking him if we can’t simplify them—and by simplify I mean, not have them. Then Keith and Jude head into the small conference room and I can relax for a minute.
I head to my own desk and sit down, but see that cute little tiger perched on my shelf.
I was so happy just a few days ago. And now what am I?
I shove the tiger in a drawer and focus on my work.
That’s the reason I’m here. I focus for fifty-five minutes and then I’m back in the danger zone: Jude could stroll by at any moment.
“Where are you going?” I ask Kate when she passes my desk.
“Um. The bathroom?”
“Great,” I say, “I’ll come too.”
She gives me a weird look. “Okay? But I don’t think you need to bring your laptop.”
In the evening, I sneak down the stairs, mentally exhausted but successful: I worked the entire day and successfully avoided being alone with Jude. It’s only six o’clock, but I’ll log in again later. No more late nights in the office for this monkey.
I work from home the next day.
Lettercat has a pretty loose policy about working remotely, which I suppose isn’t a policy at all.
It’s cool if you come in, it’s chill if you want to stay home.
Most people on my team go in most days, just because it’s nice there and we like each other.
I personally start to climb the walls of my studio if I spend too much time there.
But today it feels easier to stay home than scamper around the office; yesterday wasn’t my most productive day, and the reality is, I have a ton of shit to get done.
I walk to an early yoga class, stopping to grab a coffee on my way back, and enjoy it while I rot my brain on social media.
I open up LinkedIn to see how that Corday Ford partnership is going, but the only news from Tooity is a DM from their recruiter about a Product role.
I delete it: as though I’d chase that bad CF strategy across companies.
I set Slack to DND and mark my status as WFH, then settle in to do some deep work writing the full requirements for the final slate of tiger team stories.
Normally I’d move them out to the To Do board once they were ready, but I hold off today.
I’ll move them all at the same time tonight.
Just before I log off. Coincidentally, they’ll all be work for Jude, and I’m hoping if he gets them after work hours, he’ll ask any questions in the tickets instead of to me directly.
I make it through the whole day and most of the list before I get stuck. I think about asking the data team, but I know Steve will blink at me and tell me this is a question for Jude. I consider going to Ella and seeing if we could change the entire user experience to make my question a non-issue.
I sigh. This is ridiculous. Unsustainable.
I either need hand the tiger team off to someone else, or grow the fuck up and talk to Jude.
With no options for the former, I make a long, whiney moan before committing to the latter.
But first I need to put some laundry in down the hall. And place my grocery order. And vacuum.
When I run out of vehicles for procrastination, I take a deep breath and open Slack. I have dozens of unread messages. Does DND mean nothing to these people? Six of them are from Jude.
I click on his name and see:
Hey do you have a second
Know you’re on DND but it’s important
Followed by three missed calls, and:
Give me a call when you can, okay?
The last message was forty minutes ago. I sigh and click the button to return his call, keeping my camera off while wondering what fresh hell awaits me.
He answers immediately, camera on.
I wouldn’t say I used to think Jude looked angry all the time; it was more what I’d call pissy: some combination of impatient, mildly aggravated, and tired of being the smartest person in the room.
Now that I know him better, I see that he’s always tired and usually just being direct, which can feel like criticism when it’s coming from a person who’s in charge.
Or maybe he’s jerk and my own lack of sleep over these last couple weeks has softened me.
The Jude I see on my screen isn’t one who’s dealing with yet another setback or curveball thrown at him. I’ve seen him look anxious; this is the only time I’ve seen him scared.
“Glenn called me two hours ago,” he says. “Jen had a seizure. She’s in the hospital.”
Like any other person working in tech, I’ve had my share of bosses over the years and I’ve learned a lot from all of them; mostly about what not to do.
But Glenn’s not only made me a better product manager, he’s been a consistent example of a person who behaves with kindness and respect, something all too rare in this industry.
He might be a perfect human. I can’t imagine what he’s going through.
I turn my camera on while Jude tells me what he knows, including many, many details about hypertension late in the third trimester of pregnancy.
“Did Glenn tell you all that?” I ask.
“He only said they suspected it was from the hypertension and would probably induce. I’ve been researching,” he confesses.
I tell him I’m not a stranger to obsessing in the face of things I can’t control, that I once became an internet-certified fake dermatologist in the three days it took to learn that a mole on my shoulder wasn’t cancerous.
“It’s usually better not to freak out until there is unquestionably a reason to do so,” I conclude.
He nods. “I can’t really think about anything else. I need her and the baby to be okay.”
We look at each other through the screen, Glenn’s fan club.
“You haven’t heard anything more?” I ask.
“Not since you asked twenty seconds ago.”
“Here,” I say, sharing my screen. “Let’s think about something else.”
We walk through the user stories together, adding details and making edits. He carries his laptop out to fill his water bottle, has me wave hello to Jonnie on my way back. Each time we complete a review, I see him pick up his phone and shake his head.
While he’s explaining with more information than I will ever need how the ads are served from the third-party vendor, I move to my kitchen to make tea.
“I like that,” he says while I’m pouring boiling water into a blue and white speckled ceramic mug.
It takes me a second to realize he’s looking at what I’m doing, not talking about an architecture decision.
“The mug?” I ask, holding it up.
“I meant the kettle,” he says. “But I like the mug, too.”
I point my camera at my bright green kettle. “This?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I didn’t know they make them in colors.”
I show him my matching toaster.
“I’m learning so much,” he says. “Is your dishwasher green, too?”
I come back on camera to explain that the dishwasher is me, Lacey.
“But I have a takeout problem.”
“Me too,” he says.
“And it’s not like I’m hosting Thanksgiving. I only have four hundred square feet,” I tell him.
“It looks bigger than that,” he says.
Then he checks his phone, shakes his head.
I attempt to distract us both by showing off my space-saving design hacks: that Instagram-famous pan you can allegedly cook anything in, my desk which is actually a drop-leaf table that could seat four, if I borrowed two chairs, the books stacked on a shoe rack under the loveseat.
“Only eighty percent about product management,” Jude observes. “I didn’t know you were so well-rounded.”
A small apartment makes for a short tour. We get back to the user stories, and once we’re through them all, I add links to the specs, UI, and test plans wherever applicable. Jude stays on the call silent, just watching me work. But then it’s all done. I stop sharing my screen.
“I guess we should go,” he says.
I try, but can’t come up with a reason not to.
“Keep me posted, okay?” I tell him.
“I will,” he says. “And Lacey: thank you.”
Fifteen minutes after we hang up, he sends me a message. It’s a screenshot of a text from Glenn, announcing the birth of his daughter Ryley, along with a photo of a tiny, disgruntled person wrapped in a blanket, wearing a hat. Mom and daughter, Glenn’s message says, are both tired but doing great.
I add a dozen reaction emojis. Jude adds all mine, and at least ten more.
In product management, you’re not supposed to do anything based on instinct; it doesn’t matter if the green button looks better or matches your brand, you go with the orange one if it gets more clicks. Data never lies.
But as soon as you introduce a human, it can all go to hell.
We have a tendency to see in the data what we’re expecting to see: it’s called confirmation bias.
It can lead you to cherry-pick data that serves the point you’re trying to make.
For instance, I can give facts that show I’ve been flirting with Jude, that I pushed it too far, and he and I had a late-night near-miss the other day. End of story.
However. If you look at the complete set of data, another story might reveal itself. Jude opened an Uber door for me. He came back to the office after happy hour when he knew he’d find me there. He was upset about Glenn and he didn’t go to Ella or Trevor. He came to me.
After further analysis, the data is showing that Jude Mulholland likes me. Like, likes me likes me.
Add another data point: this information makes me happy.