My eyes wander down to my phone, and I check it absently, the display lighting up. “Shit,” I say, pushing back immediately. “I have to go. Our weekly catch-up started a minute ago.”
—
Connor is noticeably irritated by my tardiness when I slip into the meeting, though things have barely kicked off. He glares at me from across the room. Not a great start.
Worse is to come. Connor has just started talking when Brad sails into the meeting room, along with two of his cronies I recognize by face but not by name. I don’t think their visit was planned. Formally, we’re here to discuss some dashboard upgrades with Sven and a few of his software engineers. Not the sort of thing Brad would usually interest himself in. It has all the air of an ambush.
“How are my favorite data dweebs?” Brad says, clapping Ben on the back as he moves past, nodding toward the rest of us in turn.
“What do you want?” Connor asks, his eyes hard. He’s standing at the front of the room, poised to kick off the meeting.
“We won’t take up much of your time,” Brad insists, sounding like a slimeball. “I thought we could have a quick chat aboutJotter’s integrated templates ahead of Thursday. Oh good, Sven, you’re here too. Perfect timing.”
Sven grumbles something under his breath about his workload.
Brad laughs. “Always so funny, buddy. Now,” he says, calling us all to attention with a clap. “Connor, Josh and Aiden here were really interested in your observations on the project’s viability. I think you’re right. We should killit.”
I sit up straighter, on high alert. Andy and his team have been pitching the next version of the template library for months; they’ve been working on this since even before the merger.
Integrated templates would offer a much more personal experience—the idea is we’d use machine learning to predict and pre-populate boards based on what users have done before. If a social media manager plans a content calendar every month, and always schedules a blog post on a Monday, integrated templates would automatically set out that format every time you went to create a new board, saving the user time and energy.
It’s complicated and ambitious, but if they succeed, it would give Taskio a real edge against its competitors. I didn’t even know Connor was looking into it. What hasn’t he toldme?
“I didn’t say we should kill it,” Connor says. His tension is apparent even from here. He’s holding himself so rigidly it’s like you could snap him in half.
“Not in those words,” Brad concedes. “But let’s cut to the chase here. If it’s not going to be compatible with the free tier ad features, and we want to roll out Version 3.0 by September, it makes more sense to killit.”
Sven blinks. “3.0 won’t be ready by September.”
“It has to be,” Brad says simply. “We promised Paul it would roll out in time for the float.”
The float.Oh my god. Taskio is planning to go public. Are theyinsane?
I instinctively look to Connor, expecting him to look as shocked as I feel.
But he isn’t. He knows about this, I realize. My mind is working quickly now, piecing the details together while the others go back and forth.
Brad, the layoffs, the secrecy—it all makes sense, suddenly. Taskio is preparing for an IPO. These are the mysterious conversations Connor’s been having behind closed doors. He’s been advising Brad which features should stay and go for Version 3.0; where the product department should focus its resources. And he wants to kill Andy’s template library.
True to his word, Brad only stays for another couple of minutes, but the damage is done. The guys spend the rest of the time bitching about Version 3.0 and what it would take to have it ready by the fall, and Sven calls the meeting to a close, wearily saying that if they need to accelerate the timeline the dashboard updates will have to wait.
“Oh god,” John says. His elbows are resting on the table, and he slides his hands up to his eyes, rubbing at them from behind his wireframe glasses with the palm of his hands. “This is a disaster waiting to happen.”
I clear my throat. “What did Brad mean about killing the integrated templates?”
I can feel all the guys eyeing me cautiously, Connor most of all. When no one says anything, I ask again.
“Connor. Did you recommend they kill that project?”
He looks at me directly now. “No.”
“Really? Because Brad there seems to think you did.”
“He asked if it was ready and would be compatible with 3.0. All I told him was the truth.”
I scoff. “As you seeit.”
“As everyone sees it, Annie. Integrated templates are still a long way off.”
