Chapter 2. Dealing with the Root Cause

Mike was in his office, finishing up the list of steps the networking team would take to reduce the likelihood of another outage. Despite close to two decades of working in financial technology, he never got used to the outages, and the adrenaline highs and lows that came with them. No two were alike, and they were always surprising. As the amount of processing power and bandwidth required to run financial intuitions increased, so did the complexity of the systems and networks. Mike often argued with other engineers about whether humans had reached the limits of their ability to understand how these systems function and how they broke down.

The phone rang, and Mike picked it up. It was Bill.

“Hey, Mike, can you please come down to the second floor?”

Mike knew, right away, what was happening. Large financial services firms are known for the boom-and-bust mentality—binge hiring when times are good, and laying off in a series of rounds when times are bad. In his six years at the firm, Mike had seen the way that R.I.F.s—Reductions in Force—were conducted: people were called to the second floor by their manager, and wouldn’t return. At the end of the day, the manager would gather the remaining team to brief them. Since “the departures” were not allowed to come back, their managers had to pack whatever remained in their offices and desks into cardboard boxes, to be shipped home.

Mike checked his firm-issued BlackBerry. It was still working. This was the only device Mike used, making him a subject of jokes from the other techies in I.T., who were always playing with the latest gadgets. Mike’s whole life was on this BlackBerry—his contacts, the schedules of his kids’ soccer practices. Mike scrolled through the menu on the device to turn off its radio. Disconnected from the network, the BlackBerry couldn’t be used to send or receive emails, or to make phone calls. And it couldn’t be wiped remotely.

Mike didn’t want to make Bill wait. He looked around the office, picked up the pictures of his kids, and put them into his backpack. He and Bill had worked together before, and it was Bill who had hired him. Bill was a great boss, always willing to go to bat for his team for the right things, even those that weren’t popular with others.

Mike walked out of his office, and made his way to the elevator. He noticed that he was sweating. When the doors of the elevator opened, a few of his coworkers walked out, surprised to see him there. “Banker’s hours?” one of them joked. Mike winced. “I’ll see you guys in a bit,” he said, as the elevator doors closed.

Bill met Mike on the second floor. Mike noticed the muffled sound of his footsteps on the thick carpet as he followed Bill to a conference room. The room could easily seat 25 people around the wooden conference table, but there was no one there now except Bill and Elaine, the head of H.R. She wore a black blouse and dark-blue pants. She motioned for Mike to sit in one of the Aeron chairs across from her.

Bill closed the door and sat down next to Mike. Elaine hesitated for a moment, then spoke. “Mike, this is never easy. The firm is terminating your employment, effective today.” She looked down at the folder on which she was resting her hands, and moved it across the table toward Mike. “In recognition of your years of service, the firm is prepared to offer you a severance package. You’ll have seven days to review it, and return the documents to me.”

She paused while Mike opened the folder and pretended to study its contents, blood rushing to his head. Bill said, “Sorry, man.”

“We’d like for you to return all the firm-issued equipment,” Elaine continued. “Do you have your phone and laptop with you?”

“My laptop is upstairs,” Mike said, “and I forgot the BlackBerry at home today. Sorry.”

“That’s fine,” Elaine said. “You can ship it to me later.” Seeing that Mike was taking the news reasonably well, Elaine relaxed a bit. She asked Mike if he had any other questions.

“Can I take a few minutes to read over these documents?” Mike asked. “If it’s the standard stuff, I should be able to sign them here. No reason to postpone it.”

“Of course,” Elaine said, standing up. “Why don’t I give you a few minutes?”

Bill stood up as well, and offered Mike his hand. “Good luck, man. And thanks for all your hard work. I’m sure I’ll see you soon, and of course, you let me know how I can help.” Mike shook Bill’s hand, and watched both Bill and Elaine leave the room. It was only then that he noticed two security guards standing just outside the conference room.

I already took down the network, Mike thought. What more can I do?