The I.T. Girl

by Pearse, Fiona

  ‘If I make mistakes, which I don’t plan to, it’ll still be open to interpretation whether or not those mistakes mean I’m not senior level. What if I make mistakes because of a lack of support from management?’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It comes down to what you want to take the blame for: shared misunderstandings or a major code fuck up that caused delays in two high-profile feeds.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Neither of us can afford it.’

  He looked away and tapped his thumb on the table but I knew I had won. He had done it to himself.

  ‘I guess we have nothing more to say to each other then,’ he said. ‘Feisty, aren’t you. Crafty, eh? Never trust a woman.’ He laughed. ‘No, no. It’s all fair in love and war and CouperDaye.’

  I stood up with nothing more to say and left him laughing.

  I couldn’t sit still. I checked the website for my new spec and printed it out. On the way to the printer I took the long route and stopped by the water cooler, taking a breath and some ice-cold water. He took it all from me, I couldn’t believe it. He never would have if he wasn’t already so compromised.

  I sat back down and tried to read, but the words were meaningless. I put in my earphones; maybe music would help to calm me down. He must hate me now. That’s another enemy. The conversation drummed in my ears as I turned over the pages. But I might actually get through this programme, I thought, beginning to feel lighter. I might even start enjoying my job again... I just had to get through my one-to-one with Jerome Ross and then maybe things would go back to normal. Would JR ask about the revision programme? Would I have to explain myself all over again, on camera? And what about BelOpt? Did he know that was nearly a disaster too? I looked at the BelOpt website. A lot of the updates were from Gordon. He had recorded the activity over the last few days. Even the argument we had last week was up there. ‘Little shit,’ I tutted. Well, I’d have probably done the same thing. ‘Know the rules of the game, Orls,’ Boris’s voice sang in my head. I do know them, I thought. I know them so well that I’ve become as sad as that paranoid drone, Gordon. I froze, crumpling the pages in my hand. Was that true? When did I become like that? Somewhere in between obsessive project updates, lying to management and giving people a hard time to save myself, I had become one of the people I hate... I wasn’t even above blackmail. I squeezed my eyes shut, suddenly seeing my words to Boris differently. It must be in my nature, I thought with a sting. I mean, I’m good at following rules, aren’t I? I’ve always clung to my own. And look where that’s got me – working such long hours on METX, and putting the company first before my social life, before a relationship with a man who actually wanted to be there for me. I ended it with him just because I couldn’t admit I didn’t have control over everything. I even lied to Deelie because I couldn’t show a weakness. Was I just as image-obsessed as this company? I took in a sharp breath and yanked out my earphones. I realised I’d never started the music. The sound of air was surprising.

  I don’t want things to go on like this, I nearly said out loud. I used to be good at my job. I never needed survival tactics. A laugh escaped my throat. In a few days I was going to have an interview with a hyperactive image-obsessed head of operations who might decide I was a toxic cell in his precious company and had to be flushed out... Well, in that case, there is only one thing that I can do, I thought. I’ll just have to give CouperDaye exactly what it wants, one more time.

  My favourite interview suit, a navy dress and matching jacket stood out as suspiciously smart on the R&D floor but I didn’t care. With my hair tight in a high bun, I circled the cubicles on my way to the meeting rooms.

  Jerome Ross brought the hand-held up to one eye and beckoned me in to his temporary office.

  ‘Come on in, Orla. Have I got the pronunciation right?’

  ‘Yes, Orla as it is spelt,’ I tried to smile for the camera.

  ‘Please take a seat, Orla as its spelt.’ He manoeuvred behind the desk, watching his space. A chair was positioned for me below a wide lamp and a terminal jumped with market activity in the background of the shot.

  ‘Actually, I was wondering if we could use one of the larger meeting rooms. I have a presentation I’d like to give and we require a projector screen.’

  ‘A presentation? Great! Lead the way.’ He carefully reversed direction.

  I had already booked the meeting room and hooked up my laptop.

  ‘Come in.’ I held open the door.

  ‘This is the kind of thing I’m talking about.’ He scanned the camera over my notes and the screen. ‘The Life of a Bug’ he read out loud and then laughed at the picture of a bug beneath the title.

  ‘Whenever software crashes or doesn’t behave the way it’s supposed to, people wonder ‘why can’t it simply work?’ I want to examine the reasons why and suggest a more lasting solution for Feeds.’

  ‘Awesome. Take it away, Orla.’ He settled on the edge of a chair with his camera held steadily on the screen.

  I clicked through my slides, first setting up the problem. We regularly had issues with live software and bug fixing took up nearly half of our job. These bugs could be created for any number of reasons but when they got through to production, it was always because of two reasons: a rushed job and a lack of testing. In fact, most of the time, when a bug turned up in production, it was in a scenario that hadn’t even been tested before going live. I suspected this was news to him. We work in a high pressure environment, I told him, so the first reason is sometimes unavoidable. However, we could do something about the second. He was silent with only a twitch of his camera as I went on to outline my solution.

  Overnight Test Analysis meant that every night a group of scenarios would be run on our feeds in a reserved test environment, exercising all paths of the code possible. Then every morning a list of results would be available so any bug that was introduced in new software would be caught the next day. It was a big job to put it in place, yes. But once there, the gains were continuous.

  In truth, the task of setting it up had been started by our team many times but it was never finished. With another low-priority project on my desk, I realised I would have the time to take it on.

  My third group of slides outlined the technical detail. From doing research on the internet and going through the scrap-yard of our previous attempts I chose a list of possible overnight test harnesses worth further investigation. I also showed how we could fit the test cases into our existing feeds. To finish I stepped through a full example, showing a bug being introduced in a piece of code and then being caught during OTA, with the results on screen displaying a green tick for the tests that passed and a red X for the one that failed.

  It wasn’t new functionality or rocket science. But I knew with the recent events CouperDaye would be looking for a culprit, and I was hoping to make a lack of test facilities the scapegoat this time.

  Jerome Ross turned his camera on me. I tensed, waiting for his reaction. ‘You know, one of the questions I always ask people in my Snaps is, what can you do for your company? I want people to be enthusiastic about their job.’ His free hand griped an invisible employee. ‘CouperDaye is about the marriage of creativity and the strength to see things through! Unfortunately though, Orla, OTA has been tried before with your team and failed. You know, there is no magic solution.’

  ‘I know that.’ It was like being punched in the stomach. ‘But, it failed because we never have enough time to put it in place. I mean, if writing new feeds is always our priority, general improvements can never be made.’ Careful Orla, I thought taking a breath. ‘You know, under this merge we’ve been put in a position of being inexperienced in our jobs. And that makes something like overnight testing even more important.’

  He blinked at the word ‘merge’. ‘I am aware there have been issues and that is something I’m looking into.’

  ‘Well, we’re under more pressure now than ever before. I mean, there has to be some compromise.’ A sigh acciden
tally slipped out.

  Jerome folded away the camera and leaned back crossing his hands behind his head. ‘Listen, I would really like to come back to this when the time is right, when the merge is taken care of. Your enthusiasm is... hugely appreciated and I am on your side. But you know the big downside of OTA, Orla? How expensive it is, time-wise, to implement.’ He sucked air through his teeth.

  ‘It is expensive yes, but Jerome, we’re constantly paying for being without it. You know METX was my project? Those problems were partly due to the fact that under our current test process, we couldn’t test some scenarios before the code went live.’

  Jerome narrowed his eyes as if he was hearing an unpleasant noise.

  ‘And Cameron’s project, last week? That crash was a memory handling error that these overnight-test harnesses are designed to catch. It should never have happened.’

  The clasped hands came down and balanced on his crossed knees. ‘There has been a lot of turmoil in this group, I know, and that is something that I also intend to address.’

  ‘Let’s make a fresh start.’ I shrugged. ‘You know, I’d be happy to continue investigating this part-time while I’m working on my feeds, even if some of it is in my own time. It’s something I’m really excited about.’ It was true. It was the kind of challenge that got me into computers in the first place.

  Chapter Twelve

  Security presence was heightened on our floor. They stood at strategic points and occasionally spoke into their walkie-talkies, making a crackling sound. But mostly they stood solemnly, possibly waiting for another fight to break out. Boris and I rose to polite conversation so he could instruct me to start working on OTA with immediate effect. Cameron started a new project and as he was in the early stages of investigation, he didn’t have to face coding again for a while. But things were strange without Sam.

  I finalised the scope of OTA over the weekend, while curtains were being fitted in the living room. I was exploring what kind of tests could be run over night. Logical tests were the obvious choice but, I thought if we could get meaningful results from stress testing, by running a large amount of data through a feed, then we could see if a disproportionate amount of time was being spent on anything, as in the case with METX.

  I took a break to watch the pastel shapes dampen the evening light as the cords were tested. My flat was beginning to take on the form of a home. I walked in and out of each room, trying to remember how it looked when I first moved in.

  The lift dinged open on the twentieth floor. The sound seemed sharper, first thing on a Monday morning while the office was still settled. I wondered if Cameron would be up for an early coffee. Straight away, as I stepped out of the lift, I could hear shouting. Now what’s happening? I pressed fingers to my lips and retreated back, with a hand against the automatic doors. I hung my head there for a moment, trying to work out where the noise was coming from. Felix’s office. I walked down the corridor and glanced in as I passed. My hand went to my mouth. He was packing a cardboard box on his desk, pulling folders off the shelf, and Jerome Ross was doing the shouting.

  Even through the glass wall I could hear Jerome: ‘I love this company and I will not have her treated like this!’

  I went straight to Boris’s cube.

  ‘Boris, have you seen inside Felix’s office? JR is really shouting at him.’

  ‘Felix Stern is moving on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, with all the fuckups recently, my grand deception and Sam going postal last week, it was all enough to make JR yank back his dog. He’s still got the same position but it is, in effect, a demotion. Only five people on his new team. Can’t do much damage there.’

  ‘Jesus. That’s mad.’

  ‘There were some complaints to HR about Felix so he had it coming from all sides really. That’s the way it rolls around here, baby.’

  ‘Who’ll be taking his place?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. Could be someone internal. We’re expecting though that moving forward, we’ll divide up the project work. We’ll still all be one team but developers will do development and the analysts will do the business analysis. The other way didn’t really work.’ He scrunched his nose. ‘There were problems in New York too.’

  ‘You mean things are going back to the way they were?’

  ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’ He smiled, pleased with himself.

  ‘I guess Sam was right.’

  ‘Yes, well, anything else I can do for you, Orla?’

  ‘Actually, I was wondering if I could take Thursday and Friday off this week? I have a furniture delivery and also if you remember, I mentioned my bathroom fitting? They’ve said the end of the week would suit them.’

  ‘That should be fine. You don’t have any deadlines coming up. Doing pretty well with the old DIY, eh?’

  ‘Got some flat pack furniture to get stuck into.’

  ‘Flat pack. Loving it. Try not to impale your hand with an Allen key or something like that, eh? Won’t be able to type. Yes, that’s the important thing, Orla. The ability to type.’

  ‘Thanks, Boris. I’ll try not to.’

  Artur from Bath Bravo arrived at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning. I made us both a cup of tea, before parking myself on the living room floor. The best way to put the bookshelf together, I discovered, was on its back. I ignored the advice on the diagram that it was a two-man job. The model I chose fixed a black and white backing behind deep shelves that would leave room for a line of books as well as photos and ornaments sitting in front.

  ‘I can help, yes?’ Artur came into the living room and re-tied his pony tail which was heavy with specs of paint and dust.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ We had become friends while we worked in the adjacent rooms and he told me about his plans to propose to his girlfriend, who came with him from Poland.

  With a heave we lifted the bookshelf together and fitted it snugly against the wall.

  ‘It’s a good thing you’re here today, Artur,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I would have been walking around this thing on the floor for weeks.’

  ‘Yes? You no have boyfriend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’

  I made us more tea and showed Artur the gash in the window frame.

  ‘A few lick of paint after you put putty should do it nice.’

  ‘Cool. I’ll probably re-paint the windows anyway.’

  ‘Yes, could do with it,’ he said.

  In my bedroom there was only the dressing-table left to put up. I sat cross-legged, bent over the leaflet of diagrams with hinges and screws fanned out on my other side. Concentrating on putting it together was peaceful. There were thoughts in my head I still wanted to block out. Once assembled, I glued the little plastic caps over the screws and then filled it straight away, relieving the floor of its collection of makeup and hair products.

  The side table for the living room was the last job. It had a small drawer to go in front and then a door for the side shelf. I secured it to the alcove wall, below the pictures of my family holidays, in the old wooden frames, deceptively faded and worn.

  I caught Deelie’s eye while we were stretching in the row before the run and we smiled. I looked around to see where George was. He was at the other end of the railings, stretching with the men in their usual spot. She wouldn’t give me the full story over the phone, insisting on saving the gory details.

  The whistle blew and the group turned towards the path. My landmarks had changed from brittle, naked trees to rows of purple and green leaves above thick foliage merging everything together. Deelie and I fell in sync but we waited until there was a gap between us and everyone else, before speaking.

  ‘Haven’t seen you in a while.’ I teased.

  ‘It’s going really well,’ she blurted.

  ‘Fantastic. How did it happen?’

  ‘We got together on the boat.’

  ‘Thought so. When I came back inside, Alex was asking where you were
. We decided you were missing-in action... or getting some action.’

  ‘Ha. We looked for you. On deck.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Find me?’

  ‘Got side-tracked.’

  ‘Aw... So then you went on the date?’

  ‘Then I wore him out,’ she said proudly. ‘He stayed the whole weekend. We went out last Friday too.’

  ‘Wow. So you’re properly seeing each other. All your hard work has paid off, Deels.’

  ‘Yeah. Except I can barely walk now. Running’s no picnic either. Hey, keep up the pace!’ she commanded as I doubled over laughing.

  ‘Yes Ma’am.’

  ‘How’s work?’ she asked.

  ‘Improved. Er, I wanted to mention that. Sorry if I seemed a bit weird the night of the social... I was just under pressure.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she flipped a hand, ‘shit happens. Alex and I are going to the theatre next week. You want to come?’

  ‘You mean like to a musical?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’d love to!’

  My yoga clothes, bought with good intentions, felt like a salve on my limbs after my shower, and I organised myself on the couch with a cup of tea, pulling my hair into a wet ponytail. There was a magazine within reach. I stretched over to it with a groan and started reading an article for the second time. But, I wasn’t interested. I jumped up and went to the windows. Two couples that I recognised were having lunch in the communal garden, watching their children play. I went back to my phone on the couch and refreshed the inbox. Still nothing – I didn’t really expect anything. I kept re-wording a text message in my head; afraid of the replies. Finally I lost patience with myself and decided to take the direct approach. ‘Fancy lunch? I’d really like us to talk.’ He replied a few minutes later.

  I changed into a summer dress – it was almost warm enough. Then I blow-dried my hair and used the straightener. I took my time with my makeup, rubbing a little foundation into my lips so the lip gloss would stay longer. Men thought we wore makeup because we imagined they didn’t like us without it. But really, it was about armour. On the way out the door, I grabbed a jacket, just in case.