Bo at Electron

September 201x

Bo got to work early to prepare for the introductory meeting with the new network team. He didn’t know much about the new project, and was looking forward to meeting the folks he would be spending the next year working with. As he locked his bicycle out front he noticed two unfamiliar men getting out of a dark sedan and entering the building. Their too neat appearance and the fact that they had to look around to find the entrance just screamed "new hires" and Bo was pretty sure he had gotten his first glimpse of some new team members. One of them was a tall, thin blond man, with his long hair tied neatly back in a ponytail, the other man, of average height, had dark olive skin and very broad shoulders over a slight beer belly. They where both wearing suits with no tie — very typical ’first day at work’ clothing for California technical workers, and they both had small notebook computers in their hands. Bo could see into the lobby, and the men glanced at the building directory before getting in the elevator.

Electron Games was located in a large old building on the south side of downtown San Francisco, on the waterfront very near the new ballpark. There was a central courtyard with a few eating places, a cafe, and a bar that opened late in the afternoon. Bo preferred to lock his bike to the racks here rather the ones in the underground garage, it was much easier in and out thru the courtyard, and, when he got to work early enough, he could chat for a moment with Sally at the coffee stand. He thought about it for a moment, and decided he had enough time to flirt before meeting the new guys, so he headed over and grinned at the cute Korean girl from the third place in line.

"Thanks sunshine", he said when he got to the counter as Sally handed him his usual tall latte, "How was your yoga date?". Bo’s Korean was very good – he had grown up speaking it to his grandparents – but he had never really gotten a native accent. He enjoyed speaking with Sally not just to flirt. Her straight-off-the-boat Korean really made him pay attention to his speech.

She mocked a huge pout but broke up laughing immediately. "Terrible," she said while making the next customer’s drink as Bo stood to the side, “he was so stiff he couldn’t even do the sun salute. After all that talk about having lived at an Ashram it turns out he was working there as an accountant and he hates physical exercise. He was only into the meditation part of it."

They joked for a few more moments, Bo commiserating that his live-in boyfriend was not into bike riding with the fanatic intensity Bo himself put into it. As he turned to leave he noticed the driver of the sedan that had delivered the two new guys. He was taking pictures of the building facade on the side housing Electron Games. This man was 30 something, dark skinned, of medium build, clean shaven with a strong handsome face, and very fit looking as he briskly walked about the courtyard snapping shots with his cell phone. His suit (complete with tie) and the watch that could be seen when he raised his cell phone to frame a shot, both looked very expensive. Then he turned and walked out the open end of the courtyard, not toward the garage entrance but out onto the street toward the public parking lot a block away. He turned left and not right however, which would take him out onto the streets rather than towards the lot.

"Probably going to McDonald’s" Bo thought and shrugged it off as he headed upstairs, his mind now filling with the little he knew of the new project while he headed to his desk in the cubical farm. His cube was a corner set up, with more room than the others and a view out the cube doorway thru the windows onto the courtyard. As Electron was on the third floor of six, there was not really that much to look at, but the light coming in the north facing window was nice. He rated the corner cube by seniority (he was the tenth hire for the company, which in three years had gone from 10 employees to 70), and to his position as successful team lead for several projects over the years.

This new project was so top secret that as of yet he had been given nothing in writing. The little he knew had been passed to him verbally, in brief, closed door meetings where he was not allowed to take notes. It had a heavy networking component, which was normal for an online game, but unlike every game he had worked on in the past this one did not have a fixed map or game world. The game map was going to be generated on the fly from a set of dynamic data fed into the game servers from some outside source. The dynamic data was also to include many of the target "bad guys" in the game. So rather than manipulating a known database to present the game world to the players, the challenge in this case was to integrate several non-homogenous data streams into a coherent game, all the while maintaining a balanced game-play. This last part was of particular interest. In the normal course of design, balancing the difficulty of any challenge faced by a player was a matter of controlling the game map, how many players were in each area at any given time, and how strong the computer controlled bad guys were. Maintaining that balance with the game map, the numbers of players, and the bad guys all controlled by outside data streams was going to be a very hard job.

"It’s a good thing I’m one of the best," Bo chuckled to himself as sat down to read emails while waiting for the meeting to begin. Along with the normal administrative stuff, there were some emails with a few details for the meeting, including resumes for the new team members. Bo printed out the resumes and moved on without reading them. There was also - finally - a list of the current Electron staff and contractors that, along with the two new guys, would make up the core team. Bo printed that as well. Looking over the list, he considered how to handle himself at this all-important first meeting. He wanted to set the tone for the next few days while the team came together, establish himself as the lead, and figure out what the strengths of the new members were. And just arriving was an email from Janet, sent from her cell phone, asking him to stop by her office before the meeting began. That actually meant right now as the meeting was in 15 minutes.

Bo smiled as he knew from past experience with Janet that she wanted to walk into the meeting 5 minutes late, while engaging him in tech-talk. She was the VP for Operations, and it was her way of reinforcing both his position and hers (as his boss). Bo did not mind overly much. It was not how he himself would have done it, but it worked. In the very casual office that programmers and artists thrived in, it was good to stress that the chain of command was still there and had to be respected. He picked up the printed resumes and staff list on the way to Janet’s office, and met her as she was arriving.

At 5’2", Janet was one of the only people at Electron shorter than Bo, at 5’4". Her curly hair was currently red, although the roots were just starting to show the light brown of last seasons styling. "It’s like a seasonal timepiece" Bo thought to himself, not for the first time. She was a very attractive 30-ish woman, Eurasian features, in great physical shape and with a smile that made men melt. This is why she dressed in very conservative professional clothing, always including dark hose if any part of her legs were exposed. Bo had been working with her for just over a year, and admired the way she steered her way thru the male dominated game production world, always staying focused on her teams overall contribution to the companies goals. She always avoided any hint of romantic or sexual interest in anybody at the office. He knew that she also coached a coed soccer team for a local high school. She claimed dealing with emerging teenaged sexuality thru demanding teamwork was the best possible training for a woman in the game industry. Today’s business dress was dark, really one step too formal for the Electron office, to set the tone for the new hires. Later, when Janet took the new team out to lunch, she would order a beer with her food, to help set the other side of ’the tone’.

As Bo expected, Janet first went over the new team list very quickly, then she had a set of questions from the project that was wrapping up. Bo was no longer a part of that team, but he still had key knowledge about some of the technical design choices that he was in the process of passing to the operations folks now running the show. The conversation rapidly got very technical and they were deep into some of the finer points as the meeting time came. They were exactly five minutes late walking into the new team meeting, still talking over the previous project.