Page 39 of The Hard Launch

I overstepped with Jude. He wasn’t asking me what I thought his role should be at his company, he was telling me what the plan was. In the way a CEO would tell a person on the product team. Instead of reminding me of that, he redirected me. And I followed up by acting out in front of the team when he didn’t like the release. All in all, just a regular workday for me and most other people who work in tech. True emotional intelligence is a journey, okay?

But the pattern lately has been that everything gets fixed when Jude and I engage over ideas. We might start at a friction point, but ideas get better when we beat them up together. Only today, he didn’t meet me halfway or anywhere at all. He retreated, and I saw it. I felt it. And nothing got fixed.

Kate talking about this lunch like it was a setup could not have come at a worse time, considering the mood in that the room. Considering where Jude slept last night. Which is not something I’m going to think about during work hours.

All that aside, I take an instant and intense dislike to Kyle. He orders a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with three glasses, despite Kate and I telling him we weren’t interested in drinking at lunch today.

“Kate tells me you’ve got some AI experience,” he tells me.

I give him a rundown of the pragmatic AI strategy we’ve adopted at Lettercat. As an example, I tell him that we’re optimizing engagement by using AI to deliver each newsletter when the subscriber is most likely to read it, and seeing real results.

“But your real killer will be when the whole newsletter is written by an LMN. Your customers can just sit back and rake it in.”

Even though I want to, I don’t tell him that LMN is just three sequential letters of the alphabet, and what he’s looking for is LLM, which stands for Large Language Model. Instead I explain that our customers are creators and creatives, so it’s important that our AI strategy focus on efficiency, analytics, and quality, and not attempt to poorly replace what they do so well.

Kyle doesn’t listen, just waits for me to stop talking so he can flash me a knowing, over-whitened smile.

“AI newsletters, though. Build that and you’ll absolutely kill it. You don’t even need to give me credit for the idea.”

So I give up. I let Kyle mansplain to Kate how a chatbot works and overpromise what his magical LMN is going to do. I pick at my chicken Caesar salad while in my head I replay everything that happened in that conference room, trying to find the thing that was bad enough for Jude go cold on me like he did.

I don’t have to wait too long to find out: when I get back to the office, Ingrid is waiting anxiously at my cube and Dave and the QA team have each Slacked me a full summary of what happened when I left the room. I try not to panic: it’s easily explainable! So I explain the situation, easily, to Ingrid and then type it out to Dave and my pals in QA: it was an unsolicited call from a recruiter who found me on LinkedIn. It happens all the time.

Now I just need to tell Jude.

He’s standing at his desk, back in a Lettercat tee and jeans today, but he’s not alone. His sister is sitting on his couch and waves me in, but when Jude looks up and sees me, he looks back to his monitors and gives his head a shake. His headphones are on. Ella makes a face and gives me a shrug—typical Jude, right?—and I retreat.

His Slack is on DND, and he keeps his sister in there all afternoon.

I’m apparently not the only one who uses the buddy system.

I stay late, not because I’m a stalker, but because I have a superhuman amount of work to get through. With just a few adjustments to go, we’ll have some functionality heading to beta. That means I have final acceptance testing to do, messaging to craft for The Colony, support articles to assign, imaginary arguments to hold with Jude. Because so what if I did want to get another job? I’m not an indentured servant here. It’s incredibly fucked up for him to react like this. Am I supposed to limit my professional development forever because of him? Is anything he might feel about me conditional to my employment at his startup? Or is this just his way of backtracking and making last night my mistake?

“Lacey,” Ella says, in the tone of a person who’s said it a few times while I was lost in thought. She’s knocking on my desk. I notice she’s got her coat on and her bag with her, so maybe she’s here to let me know I can pop in and have my real argument with Jude now.

“Hey,” I say. “What’s up?”

“Jude and I are going to go grab some dinner. You looked upset when he dismissed you before, and I guess I wanted to check in. It’s not you; he’s being odd today.”

I tell her that we had a bad meeting and about the recruiter call. That it’s no big deal and I’ll iron it out with him tomorrow.

“Probably a good idea to give him a minute,” she says. “I know he really values you. And not that it excuses anything, but he’s under an awful lot of pressure these days.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes, and instead I locate my only remaining shred of empathy.

“I get it. Being a founder seems bad enough, but then you factor in the Edmund stuff…”

She nods. “I really think that’s it. The acquisition threat just has him spiraling. It’s—”

“Ella? You ready?” Jude calls to her down the hallway. She tells me we’ll talk more tomorrow, and that I should have a good night.

Which is now extremely unlikely.

I log out and I go to a kickboxing class that I know will make me sore for three days. I leave my laptop on my desk intentionally, so I won’t be tempted to work from home tomorrow. Also to see if, like my sister and father have suggested, I use the noise from work to drown out anything that might be bothering me in my real life.

I pick up some Pad Kee Mao on my way home. I sit alone at a very small table in a very small apartment and eat my noodles. It’s quiet in a bad way.

I’m angry at Jude. I feel awful for Jude. I’m frustrated at the situation, at myself.