friendship

I thought we gonna be friends with Marcus. I really did. But after the phone call for minutes I was just staring at the blank space in front of me.

He is definitely not gonna be my friend. Heck he is not even gonna be my colleague. It really hurt. For a few seconds that lasted forever I spaced out of my body. I was not staring in front of me anymore, I was staring at myself. All those weeks of effort now seemed so stupid. I felt so stupid. A sudden burst of anger flew through my veins and I wanted to break something. But the moment has passed. And was back staring at the space in front of me.

It all started roughly three months ago when I got accepted to this company. It was a dream-came-through, or so I thought... I was working very hard to get into software development and finally I did!! And not just into any company, but one that was at the forefront of this new AI agentic revolution. We were writing the software of tomorrow! And finally, I was really proud of what I was doing as a day job.

But soon the pink fog started to disappear and I saw some big holes in my ideals. We were left alone because our leader was focused on another business opportunity and the space he left our dev lead started to fill in. Even though he hated managing people–he even said that out loud–Marcus became our leader.

When Marcus was doing the meetings, I got transported back straight into the high school bench. And not the fun part of it anyways. It was having a class with the worst possible teacher–the strict, no–guidance one, with sky high expectations.

I first started to be suspicious when 'they' fired T-bone. I actually really liked T-bone. He was helpful, attentive and even funny. He doesn't occur to me like the slacker that they told him was. But I accepted his fate, I didn't know any better. After all, I knew him for what, a couple of weeks or so, so how the heck would I know?!

And so I looked away, unsuspecting that I would be next in line.

Couple of weeks later Marcus said on chat:

–can you please compress your messages?
–what do you mean?!
–well can you just leave the smileys out?

I froze for a couple of minutes. And then I was like:

–I already turned my temperature down to -2 celsius (AI term for how friendly you are) if I turn it even more down I'll freeze!

Silence…
Looking back maybe this was the beginning of our drifting away.

I mean when I write it down, everything, every little act seems so obvious. But in reality it was a struggle. Because I really wanted to be Marcus' friend. He was every bit of the hero type that I idolized. He was a super competent programmer and business analyst with deep domain knowledge. He and his old buddy John were basically dreaming up the next generation of AI. And I wanted to learn from them, suck up every bit of knowledge and know how. But they were cold and distant.

I got very little help from the beginning. Vague directions and questions unanswered. When I made a mistake I was not getting a signal.

Even though I felt the pull to master tech, I knew that I was not safe under the leadership of Marcus. There was this new prompt engineering field emerging on the border of tech and business and I jumped right at it. Weeks went by and I started to be better, so much so that I started solving problems without help.

This was the point when Marcus fully turned against me. He called my manager and told him that I should be fired. But with reason lacking my manager backed me. And so we stayed, he even started to be more polite with me. But I felt something was odd and I tried to control the situation.

On a rare sunny afternoon I called Marcus. I explained to him that I swallowed the bitter pill. I accepted that he won't be my friend. But we can still be good colleagues, right? Well, he thought differently. For 20 minutes I was pushing us to find a common ground afterall I knew he wanted to fire me, but we are still here, right? But he stubbornly resisted–he won't be working with me.

I don't really remember much of the conversation, but I remember distinctly that he told me three times that he has no problem with me personally…

Weeks went by, and Marcus beneath his strange new calm and polite demenaour was boiling.

I sensed that the shit was about to hit the fan and so I sent an email to the founder. I explained that I tried hard finding a common ground but yet we are stuck. The founder Phinias rest assured me, there is nothing to worry about… yet.

But Marcus called him, and not much later after our conversation he said:

–it's either me or him.

And so I got fired. With no good reason, no good explanation.

Phinias was keep saying that he is very sorry. That everybody was very happy with me except Marcus. And he went on saying that now their next strategic goal will be to 'lessen dependence' on Marcus. But I found no peace knowing that Marcus eventually will also be fired. And the little trust I had in the company was shattered.

I was angry and sad. My dream was crushed. I flew to the sun so quickly and so high only to my wings get burnt. I wanted friends, fighting in the trenches for a common noble vision. But instead we were like kids in the sandbox. Throwing stuff at each other, and arguing who did what wrong.