Page 16 of The Hard Launch

There’s worry in her face and no way for me to give context, so I nod and give her a discreet thumbs up, which I immediately regret. It feels dishonest; the news was not that good. It was actually pretty horrible.

I decide to focus on the project itself instead of the looming threats. I’m not going to sit on the sidelines while my whole company is at stake, so forget the spreadsheets: I’ll join the team and do some real work. Just the idea of it is energizing, as long as I don’t overthink it.

Is Edmund really this unreasonable, or is he setting me up to fail?

One month until we all find out.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LACEY

When they all get back from lunch, Kate’s at my desk showing me something she thinks is a bug that is absolutely not one. The board members head back into the conference room to collect their things, and there’s much hand-shaking in the hallway as they say their farewells. Kate and I continue our disagreement quietly, while I’m half-eavesdropping for signals about our plan for Lettercat. Mostly they’re talking about golf, and what the name of that steakhouse they all went to last year was.

“Quite the sausage party,” Kate remarks as the last ones depart.

“And Amber,” I add.

“Poor Amber,” Kate says. I agree. It’s not fun being the only woman in the room, but being the only woman in that particular room sounds like nightmare fodder. Maybe someday I’ll be in there, but I have no regrets about skipping it today.

Jude comes jogging down the hall and stops at the half-wall outside my cube and points at me, bright-eyed. “Gutenberg in, say, ten?”

“Sure,” I tell him.

He dashes away, then turns and comes back. “Can we make that five?”

“No problem,” I say, but he’s gone before I get the words out.

Kate, seated on my desk, has her arms folded and she’s looking at me funny.

“What?” I ask.

“You told me you had a boring weekend trapped in the office.”

“Which it was.”

She shakes her head. “No, something’s different. I sense… camaraderie.”

I shrug. “I don’t know that I’d go that far. Maybe mutual respect is what you’re picking up.”

Her eyes narrow. “The man is glowing. Did you not see him there, glowing?”

I stand up. “He probably got some hot new KPIs in. You know how he is.”

“Fine. Walk away! I’m filing that issue as a bug,” she calls after me as I head to the bathroom to check my lipstick before hitting the conference room.

“It means an immediate pause on everything we’re working on,” Glenn says. “Bugs, features, internal requests, all of it.”

I nod along with Trevor, who showed up a few minutes into this meeting, straight from the airport, and claimed to be fully up to speed after reviewing the board deck on his flight. It’s him, me, Glenn, Jude, and Keith, the CTO, in the conference room. Jude is sharing our plan for the upcoming quarter from the deck we made, the three-month plan he’s just committed us all to delivering in four weeks.

“I know it’s aggressive,” Jude says. “Which is why we’re going to need everyone pitching in however they can.”

“Agreed,” Keith says.

“Happy to hear you say that,” Jude tells him. “Can you spend this afternoon with me? I just want to walk through the process you’re using now and make sure my commits won’t be causing problems?”

Keith, who Dave and Ingrid tell me hasn’t done a single pull request in his six months here, makes a little choking sound but is saved from admitting anything by Trevor.

“Dude, you’re going to be coding?”