The Big Disruption

by Jessica Powell

  “Everyone so quiet. Do people not talk to him?” Arsyen asked.

  “Well, you can talk to him. But he speaks in puzzles,” Sven said. “Not everyone is capable of understanding him. So, if you’re going to talk to him, you just better make sure that what you have to say is really, really smart. Like the smartest thing you’ve ever said.”

  “Bobby is Anahata,” Jonas said. “He created it, built it, runs it. He is a genius. And seeing him here is a momentous occasion. Most of the time he is in Building 1. That is the locked building. It is said, ‘No one goes in, and no one comes out.’”

  “Though of course they do,” Sven jumped in. “But it’s really only the senior engineers that are allowed in there. I heard Bobby decided to get rid of all the chairs and desks in Building 1. He said they stopped people from thinking. So everyone works standing up, roaming about and having their thoughts collide in the hallways. It’s supposed to encourage innovation and collaboration. And phones — there are desk phones — though of course they are placed on the floor since there are supposedly no desks. Bobby apparently had them installed to encourage people to speak to each other.”

  “I heard that all responses to questions in Building 1 have to start with ‘yes,’” Jonas added. “You are not permitted to say no unless you have said yes first, because Bobby believes that if you start from believing things are not possible, nothing will ever be achieved.”

  “It’s one of the ten Anahata commandments,” Sven said. “They’re like the company’s guiding principles. One of them is to always start with the word ‘yes.’ And the rest, well, there is one about speed, and another about innovation…and putting our users first…oh, and changing the world. We must improve humankind!”

  “Humankind?” Arsyen didn’t recognize the word. Did Anahata want to make humans be kinder to each other? That sounded like something a silly communist would dream up.

  “Bobby believes that with every product, we should be able to ask ourselves what serious world problem we are solving.”

  Arsyen immediately thought of Moodify and the scores of Anahata products that largely just seemed to exist to waste time and have fun.

  “Really? Every product must solve world problem?” he asked.

  Jonas shrugged. “That is for the marketing and PR team to figure out. We build the product, and then they communicate to the public how it improves humankind. So, for example, Anahata’s search engine…”

  “Is democratizing knowledge,” Sven filled in.

  “And Anahata ads…”

  “Are enabling opportunity for small businesses.”

  “Anahata Maps…”

  “Are making it possible for poor children like Jonas, who have no access to food or clothing, to discover faraway places on the internet.”

  The men bussed their plates. Outside, the sun was blinding. Arsyen, temporarily disoriented, veered to the left.

  “Oh, Arsyen,” said Sven in a singsong. “I wouldn’t go there if I were you.”

  Arsyen turned. The path to his left looked exactly the same as the path to his right.

  “Going left is always a bad idea,” Jonas said.

  “But what if I come from — “

  “Never ask questions the rest of us know the answer to,” Jonas said. “Such inquiries are a sign of weakness unless employed as rhetorical devices, or if, in their pointed framing, they are designed to undercut one’s interlocutor.”

  “Stay close to us, and remember to keep that red badge hidden,” Sven said. “Just for this week, of course. No one gets fired after the first week. It’s, like, too mean to fire people after they’ve worked here for a week.”

  “Yes, Sven and I might form an emotional attachment to you by then, and it might hinder our productivity for us to lose a team member,” Jonas said.

  He paused, then took a step toward Arsyen.

  “To be clear, that attachment has not yet formed.”

  “Plus,” Sven added, “you could steal all of our secrets and take them to a competitor like Galt. Anahata will do anything to keep you from going to Galt.”

  “In the meantime,” Jonas added, “do not go anywhere without us. You are safe while you are with us. That is, unless we choose to fire you.”

  R oni found himself staring dumbfounded once again at the hairy little man before him. For the past three days, Arsyen had been talking about sponges, complaining about the brand they stocked in the micro-kitchen. “Anahata should disrupt sponges,” he was saying. “Align sponges with roadmap.”

  It was typical product manager speak — big vision statements with little understanding of the technical difficulties. Did Arsyen know just how complex modern sponges had become over the past twenty years?

  Whenever Arsyen spoke, Roni just nodded in response. As a technical lead, it was his job to let product managers like Arsyen think he cared about their opinions. Still, Arsyen’s opinions often seemed particularly random and difficult to endorse.

  “I make manifesto,” Arsyen announced to the team that morning. “As good P.M., I know manifesto key to successful product.”

  He began to read aloud.

  Social Car is Anahata technology to eliminate loneliness. Every day we drive somewhere thinking we go somewhere. But really, we go nowhere, because part of journey is lost to us all. That is human part.

  By using latest cutting-edge innovation technology, combined with old social networking, Social Car connect you to people in other cars. Thanks to Social Car, you make conversation with them and begin lifelong friendship. Because relationship is in cloud, you do not have to worry about catching sex disease or awkward moment where you realize other person is missing arm. The person is real and not real, like your journey, like life.

  Roni’s brain started to spin. This Arsyen was such a mystery. He spent half his time in the bathroom, and when he did materialize, you couldn’t be sure whether you were about to hear the stupidest or most brilliant idea of all time. One moment he was suggesting they attach mops to the wheels of Social Car in order to clean the road while driving, and the next moment he was busting out an amazing product manifesto. It reminded Roni of his first day on the job at Anahata, when Bobby smoked pot with him and the other NASA recruits, dropping some crazy science on them all about unicorns and space elevators. Both sounded totally stupid until you realized Bobby was a genius.

  Perhaps Arsyen was also a genius.

  If he was, that helped Roni, too: Managing a genius was always a good career move.

  “That’s pretty deep,” Roni said to Arsyen. “Life is like an empty journey unless you have Social Car. It really makes you realize how our technology is changing humankind for the better.”

  “I had never thought of the one-armed-person use case before,” Sven said.

  “It is statistically very unlikely that you will meet a one-armed person while driving,” Jonas said.

  “Maybe in the past, smartass,” Sven said. “Now that cars don’t need drivers, you may see a whole bunch of armless and legless people out on the road.”

  “But there should also be fewer armless people on the planet since driverless cars are safer. Car accidents cause 8.18 percent of armlessness in the United States,” Jonas said.

  “But — ”

  “Guys, guys, let’s stay focused,” Roni said.

  “I also have other idea,” Arsyen said. “I think about your problem — classic product management problem. I see problem many times in B2B solutions. I give you example from Pyrrhia social media roadmap. Sometimes when we in countryside, I have boys wash my car. But they lazy. They throw soap on car and then put water on car. But the car not shiny. It because they didn’t start at beginning — with water, in the cloud. I tell them, ‘Wash car first or I feed you to dogs,’ and finally they do it right. It’s like…software as a service for internet of things.”

  Roni frowned. Arsyen’s brain was moving too fast for him.

  Arsyen turned to the whiteboard and drew a r
ough sketch of two cars.

  “You all talk about what happen with Social Car when you on the road,” Arsyen said. “But what about before you get in car? Start at beginning of problem — not in middle like little Pyrrhian boys. Social Car can tell me who around me now. But what if I can tell Social Car who I want to meet when I first get in car?”

  “You mean, program it to take you to an address or someone’s house?” Sven asked. “Welcome to the modern world, Arsyen. Cars already have that. It’s called a GPS.”

  “No, this not about taking you to friend’s house. It for people and places you don’t know. So you have your app and want to meet other engineers. Well, Social Car take you to Star Trek convention. Or say you want to pitch businessman on your startup. Social Car take you to hotel bar or fancy-person strip club. Then, once cars close together, you can begin conversation with your target.”

  “I see, I see, so it’s a more targeted way to meet new people. Kinda like a business networking tool?” Roni asked.

  “Yes,” Arsyen nodded. “Business networking tool…in the cloud. Social. B2B. Alignment.”

  “I beg to differ,” said Jonas, looking up from his computer. “You are not describing a business networking tool. This is what one would call a hookup app.”

  Roni studied the drawing on the whiteboard. It looked like two rectangular men in suits.

  “He’s right. It’s totally about meeting hot girls!” Sven jumped out of his chair and hopped to the whiteboard, grabbing a pen and adding a pair of breasts to the roof of one of Arsyen’s cars.

  “Ohhh,” said Roni, as the idea came to life before him, his businessmen transforming into busty coeds.

  “A user inputs into Social Car what he wants in terms of age, gender, and sexuality,” Sven explained. “Social Car does the rest. All it has to do is scan the profiles from all the other Social Car–enabled vehicles. And we give them pickup lines to help kick-start the conversation.”

  “Great idea,” grinned Roni, slapping Arsyen on the back.

  “Also, I think about woman problem again,” Arsyen said. “You know, about woman who not want to be found. I think I have answer: We give her choice to turn off Social Car.”

  “You mean, let women choose whether to let people find her?” Roni asked.

  Arsyen nodded.

  “Are you crazy!?” Sven cried.

  Roni shook his head. How could this be the same employee who had authored that manifesto?

  He reached into his backpack and grabbed Arsyen’s HR form (damn HR, always wanting him to use paper!). No genius would ever propose listening to users’ opinions. As Roni made a little tick on the form, he saw a cloud of worry pass over Arsyen’s face.

  “If girls get to choose whether to use the feature, then we’re only going to have a bunch of dudes on Social Car,” Sven explained.

  Roni nodded. “People get confused by choice — it’s our job to tell them what they want. Besides, you’ve got three guys in here saying they love it. What other proof do you need?”

  But it was clear Arsyen was no longer listening. He was staring at the HR form in Roni’s hand, as if worried he had done something wrong. For that alone, Roni made another tick. The fact that Arsyen could even believe he had done something wrong once again indicated his inferiority. Geniuses weren’t ever wrong, even when they were.

  Which was also why Roni needed to be right about having hired Arsyen.

  Jonas cornered Arsyen later that morning.

  “What do you want me to do about those pickup lines?” asked Jonas, standing between Arsyen’s desk and the cubicle entrance.

  “Pickup lines?”

  Arsyen stood. He had learned it was best to minimize his interactions with Jonas. The boy was too smart, always staring just a bit too long and hard when Arsyen spoke about roadmaps and priorities.

  He took a step to try to move past him, but Jonas shifted to his left and again blocked Arsyen’s path.

  “The feature we discussed yesterday,” Jonas said, “the one that helps Car A and Car B start a conversation. How should I proceed?”

  “Well, I just think we should look at roadmap and — ”

  “What’s your obsession with roadmaps, anyway?” asked Sven, entering the cubicle. “I thought you came from Galt. Since when do startups have a plan or roadmap or really any strategy at all?”

  “I, I — ”

  “So what do you want me to do?” Jonas said.

  Arsyen frowned. Why was Jonas suddenly talking so much? And why hadn’t he taken care of that enormous pimple on his nose?

  “Arsyen?”

  “Put it in the cloud,” Arsyen said loudly, “NOW.” As an afterthought, he put his hands on his hips and sneered slightly, mimicking his father.

  Jonas didn’t seem to notice Arsyen’s power pose. “Something that is already in the cloud cannot be put in the cloud again,” he said.

  “We create innovative double double cloud,” Arsyen said.

  “You are not clear,” Jonas said.

  Such insolence! Arsyen gripped the sponge in his pocket, imagining he was squeezing Jonas’ neck. He slowly released it and felt the tension ease in his shoulders.

  “I set up meeting to discuss,” he said. “I bring many action items.”

  “Meetings are where all good things die,” Sven groaned. “Let’s just figure it out now.”

  “Must go to bathroom!” Arsyen yelled. He darted past Jonas and out the cubicle, making a beeline for the bathroom a few feet away.

  Safe within its blue walls, he took a deep breath and stared at himself in the mirror. The sharp line of his chin jutted outward with authority; his mop-trained muscles nearly intimidated his own reflection.

  “You can do this. You must do this,” Arsyen told himself, making the sign of the red-breasted woodpecker.

  He marched over to the cleaning closet, where he found a jute broom and some detergent pods. He decided to spend the rest of the day working on his croquet strokes. After all, if Jonas couldn’t find him, he couldn’t get mad at him. There was nothing unprincely about avoidance if it was strategic avoidance.

  T wenty-four hours later, Arsyen returned to his cubicle and informed Jonas and Sven that he wanted Social Car to change colors depending on the mood of the passenger.

  “I also want you to design car so it clean itself. There should be automatic vacuum and air-freshener function.”

  “Cool, that’s, like, robotics,” Sven said.

  “Yes,” said Arsyen, remembering from his online research that adding a robot to one’s roadmap was the touch of any good Silicon Valley product manager. “Every car come with broom robot. Robot Broom. Broom Robot. Bro-bot. With robot’s deep learning sweeping dirt into neural net.”

  “Arrrsyen,” Jonas growled. “You cannot send us in one direction and then another. This is a totally different idea from the hookup feature we discussed two days ago.”

  “Car color and clean very important to user,” said Arsyen, shaking his head.

  It was even more important to Arsyen. He had spent the entire night thinking up ways to postpone the team from settling on a clear direction. If he gave the engineers something new to consider, Arsyen wouldn’t have to flesh anything out until after his trial period was over. And once he was a permanent employee, he’d have plenty of time to learn how to be a real product manager.

  “I want purple and green cars,” said Arsyen, invoking the Anahata colors. “Now, sorry, but HR team needs paperwork from me. Back later.”

  Arsyen made his way to the video game console down the hall, holding his sponge in front of him like an offering. He had discovered that Anahata’s engineers let him roam wherever he wanted if he was carrying cleaning supplies, clearly uninterested in firing someone whose work they didn’t wish to perform themselves.

  He returned late in the afternoon and was relieved to see Jonas transfixed by his screen.

  Sven waved but didn’t look up; he was studying a bunch of cartoon dogs that
were lined up vertically on his phone. Each “dog” had the face of a real human being.

  “How Dogtown going?” he asked, hoping to score points with the nicer of his two co-workers.

  Sven sighed and explained that he had run into a snag. A local journalist had posted something in praise of Dogtown, and as a result, a few thousand people between San Francisco and the South Bay had downloaded it to their phones. While that should have been reason to celebrate, it instead led to a supply-demand imbalance: There seemed to be far more people who wanted to perform disagreeable tasks than there were people who needed disagreeable tasks to be performed for them.

  “There are too many guilty liberals on Dogtown,” Sven moaned. “I’ve essentially got everyone bidding on the same tasks.” He showed Arsyen the long list of white faces volunteering to perform menial tasks for people of color. “I tried to get someone to pick up a tub of ice cream for my fake Asian female profile last night, and the bidding war was so intense that I ended up getting it delivered for free. It’s even more exaggerated if I use my Latino or African-American profiles. Every white person in San Francisco seems desperate to run errands for free just to prove they’re really progressive. They even want me to design badges they can put on their profile pictures to prove to everyone else they’re not racist.”

  “But that a good problem, right? You rework power balance. Fight the Men!” Arsyen cheered.

  “I prefer to leave saving the world to Anahata. I just want to create a bidding system for errands. I’ll pay you to go pick up my dry cleaning. I don’t want to know who you are, what you do, or what you look like. Just pick up my damn dry cleaning.”