“I guess,” I say. “That’s the team I’m hopefully getting transferredto.”
“I think Alex did some work with them recently. Hey, Alex—” he calls across the bar, waving Alex over.
Though everyone in this room works in the product department, we all have different disciplines. Leon and I both do user research, meaning I spend (spent, rather) most of the day scheduling calls with customers who already use our software, then ask them to share their screens as they talk me throughexactly how they use Taskio, and for what. Afterward, I write up a little report and email it to its final resting place, the inbox of another product manager.
Alex is a UX designer, which stands for user experience. He’s somewhere between an artist and an urban planner; it’s his responsibility to make sure things like the home button are in a place you can actually find.
It sounds simple, but in fact, Alex has the diplomacy skills of a hostage negotiator. He spends his days tactfully persuading the decision makers around him that no, we don’t need to look different, or be jazzy—the customer likes it best when they can navigate the software without having to take a seminar first.
Alex is almost freakishly tall, and as slim as a twig, with tawny-brown hair and a nose piercing. The way he leans down over the bar calls to mind a giraffe, munching on leaves.
“What’s up, guys?” he asks, pausing to sip on his morning beer.
“Al, you did some work with Data Strategy, right?” Leon asks.
“That’s the team I’m hopefully being reassigned to,” I tell him, craning my neck upward. “I’m trying to get some intel. What do you know about them?”
Alex knows a lot, as it turns out. From what he can tell, they’re some weird shadow faction, sitting separate from the other teams, working on miscellaneous projects at the behest of the leadership team.
They sound random, honestly. They must be the only team in the business that gets asked “What do you do here?” more than the product department.
“I did a lot of work with them last year. Building out the new reporting dashboard.”
“What is that?”
“Besides a disaster?” he jokes.
The reporting dashboard, it turns out, is the final phase of the Taskio/Jotter merger. If you can even call it that. Officially, Jotter was absorbed. Like when one twin vanishes the other in utero.
“All good guys, though,” he assures me. “And Connor is a genius.”
I try very hard not to roll my eyes.
A few other friends join us at the bar, and I survey them on whether or not they know Connor.
“The guy who’s always with Brad Pincer?” one asks.
“Er, not sure,” I admit. “Ishe?”
“If it’s who I’m thinking of, that guy is pretty much Brad’s bitch.”
Brad is the VP of corporate development. He is not a popular man in Product, nor, I think, anywhere. No one seems to be exactly sure what his role entails, yet Brad seems to believe his remit extends across the entire company. He crashes meetings constantly, invites you to explain things to him like he’s seven, and is obsessed—and I mean obsessed—with what he calls “cross-functional initiatives.” If Connor is one of his cronies, he’s also probably a complete drip.
Next, my friend Martha appears, wedging her way between us and leaning heavily against the bar to order another drink. She turns back with a slurredsorry ’bout that,while she waves the bartender over. It strikes me as I watch her pay for her vodka soda that she is already pretty tipsy.
“Want to do another shot?” she asks, confirming my instincts.
“I’m good, thanks,” I tell her. “I have to go back to the office after this.”
“Now that they’ve paid me to leave,” she says sagely, “you could not pay me to go back there.”
“Wise words, Mar. Any idea what you want to do next?” I askher.
“I think it’s time for me to move to Philly,” she says haltingly.
“Right.” I have no idea what she means by that and don’t dare probe further. Like Alex, Martha is also a designer. Maybe they’re into that there?
Martha considers us. “So what are you guys talking about, anyway?”
