Chapter 33: Rescue party.

I managed to stay in high spirits throughout the first day at the office. It wasn't a big office, but it was in a luminous seventh floor and it had a good view of the Hollywood sign. Plus, they had a couple beer taps —to this day, I'm not sure if that counted as an advantage or as an inconvenience towards the productivity and the happiness of my workmates.

The technical team didn't surpass the dozen. Most were full stack developers. Some were more focused in the frontend, other in the backend, but most were aware of the whole architecture of the system. PHP, Python, MySQL, all those technologies, including many meritless ones.

Generally, these were the kind of people coming from high level languages, people that were allowed to think that Node.js was always a correct choice.

The closest person to both my low-level and data science affinities was Carl. At least, the only one that was proficient in Assembly (mainly x86), C, C++, and, at the same time, understood what those contemporary ML algorithms did. In fact, he had made a few contributions to mlpack. It was relatively uncommon: most people with some knowledge of data science tend towards higher level languages —and they don't really fit the programmer's profile that Carl and I so well incarnated.

He was knowledgeable and could have done a lot, if only he had found the strength to stop playing Magic the Gathering online. His productivity was probably less than a tenth of his potential. But I wouldn't blame him. My dreams of evasion had always affected my productivity too.

A bit more of a social creature, Marcus: the watercooler loiterer. Still an odd one, that one. “What's the scuttlebutt?” —that'd be his phrase. Disregarding what was that referencing, I always wished he had sometimes said “What's the craic?” instead —quite a different line that would transport me somewhere else.

Gary was the team leader. He, a middle-aged white man, had an ego that inflated and deflated on impulse. I think he wasn't used to work with women. But life changes and there he was, after two years of reporting to Mallory. Through adaptation, he had learned to be a subordinate to a woman. He was fine. Performing well, albeit awkwardly, in that setup. After I got there, he just didn't know how to treat me. I wasn't his boss. What was I? His power play was missing a rule book page.

This five-guy team was working on the API —the backend, if you may. That's what Mallory deemed closest to what my job was meant to be. My job, really, was diagonal to theirs. I was going to be mostly in contact with Hank, as he acted as an unofficial database administrator. For them, data sciences were data driven. Anyway, as they mostly relied on cloud services, the role of managing data infrastucture was somewhat simpler.

In a way, the fact that they called it API was somewhat describing how thin the backend processes were. As if the interface was the most meaningful part of it. Those processes were the ones I was supposed to fatten up.

Lastly, Chuck was there. He might as well have been called Chuck the Plant —as his social interactivity at the workplace was almost nonexistent. Surprisingly enough, outside the workplace he would become the most naturally extroverted of us all —which may not say much.

Living in a tent by the car had been acceptable in Anza-Borrego, but by no means was a sustainable option for my life in Los Angeles.

“Go live in the park!”. No.

Although... buying a sailboat and renting a spot in the port was alluring. Too long a commute, though. Regardless, I had to find a good living situation before the free month's rent in the cockroach infested place was over.

Yes, the place the company was paying for was full of LA roaches. They were everywhere. I couldn't care less, my life was outside.

Those days were extremely busy: learning what their processes were at work, then finding my own process after work.

LA was hinting itself as a different place... yet something hadn't really changed from the past: the harsh loneliness, now within a crowded superficially social schedule.

At least I had the latter: people surrounding me, offseting my mind from the ruminations of forlornness. Maybe that ever-present feeling of loneliness was quintessential of life, and fighting against it was a lost cause. Embracing it with a big smile was the way to go!