Chapter 2

2.

Ten years ago, I was Employee Number One at Linden Tech.

Back then, the company didn't even have "Tech" in its name; it was just Linden Software. Marcus was my senior in college, two years ahead of me in the Computer Science department. He grabbed me at graduation and said, "Silas, I'm starting a company. Come with me."

I asked him what we were making.

He said he didn't know. We'd do freelance outsourcing first, survive, and then figure it out.

For the first two years, we took everything. We built checkout systems for grocery stores, scheduling software for tutoring centers, and even an auto-reply script for a guy selling vitamins―two thousand dollars, maintenance included.

Marcus and I squeezed into a tiny studio in San Jose. There was no AC in the summer, and the heat from two desktop towers turned the room into a sauna. I'd write code shirtless while Marcus sat next to me, making cold calls to hunt for clients.

We were dirt poor back then. But every time a new system went live, Marcus would buy two cheap beers. We'd sit on the fire escape, one bottle each.

He said, "Silas, when we're rich, I'm going to get you the best office in the city."

The best office.

I did sit in it for a few years―sixteenth floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the San Jose skyline.

But that was after the IPO.

The year we went public, Marcus stood on the podium and said one thing.

"Silas―without you, there would be no Linden Tech today."

The crowd cheered.

Back then, it was the truth.

In our third year, we landed our first big client―a convenience store chain with over three hundred locations that needed a unified inventory system. I wrote it all by myself in four months. Front-end, back-end, database, operations―everything.

The core architecture of that system was eventually reused in almost all our projects. Even now, those million-dollar architects on the sixteenth floor are still using my original designs.

In the fifth year, the company secured Series A funding. Marcus said we needed our own product. He started hiring, and I started leading the team. That year, I interviewed over seventy people and kept twelve.

I trained every single one of them personally―from Git branch management to database index optimization, from reading logs to writing unit tests.

They later became the technical backbone of the company.

In the seventh year, just before the IPO, the underwriters demanded a full security audit. I lived in the server room for a month. I literally lived there―bought a folding cot and put it right next to the server racks.

Every night I fell asleep to the hum of the cooling fans. Every morning I was woken up by the sound of the ops team opening the door.

The audit passed.

On the day of the IPO, I stood below the stage, watching Marcus press that ceremonial button.

After he pressed it, he waved to the crowd.

He didn't look at me.

In the eighth year, a headhunter approached me for the first time. A major tech giant offered me a Principal Engineer role with a 1.6 million dollar package. I forwarded the email to Marcus and asked what he thought.

He replied with a single Slack message.

"Don't go. You are the root of Linden Tech."

I didn't go.

That year, my salary was $350,000. He had raised his own to 2.4 million.

I didn't care.

Back then, it wasn't about the money. I cared about every line of code running smoothly. I cared that every 3:00 AM alarm was resolved the second I opened my eyes. I cared that every new hire could find what they were looking for in this team.

In the ninth year, AI started getting hot. Marcus told the board we needed to pivot. He began hiring AI specialists and slashing budgets for traditional business units.

He started saying in internal meetings, "Infrastructure is a cost center, not a profit center."

"A cost center."

And just like that, my team and I went from being the foundation of the company to a row of numbers that could be optimized away.

At 2:00 PM, I started packing my desk. A thermos, a half-dead succulent, and a mechanical keyboard―a Filco Blue switch I'd used for eight years. The WASD keys were worn shiny.

A junior intern, Cody, peeked over. "Silas, are you really leaving?"

"Yeah."

"But the payment system just pushed a new version―"

"Someone will pick it up."

I didn't say "the AI will pick it up." Cody pulled back. The office was quiet. Everyone pretended to work, but I could feel their eyes tracking my every move.

I stuffed everything into one cardboard box. Ten years, one box.

At the elevator, the guard stopped me. "Mr. Linden, your badge." I took the lanyard off my neck. It had rubbed against my skin for ten years; the moment it was gone, my neck felt strangely cold.

The guard swiped it. Beep. "Deactivated."

Outside the glass doors, the October sky over the valley was gray, but the air smelled better than the central AC on the sixteenth floor.

My phone vibrated. A message popped up in the company-wide Slack channel: "Silas Linden (Linden_0001) has left the channel."

Three emojis followed: two "flexing biceps" and one "rocket ship." Then, a new pinned announcement covered the system notification: "Archie Intelligent Architecture System is officially online, fully taking over daily maintenance for the Infrastructure Group. Let's welcome Archie to the team!~"

I could no longer reply. I hadn't even left the campus, and I was already purged from the group.