Game Dev Story

Han Luyi realized Su Niannian and Lu Mingzhou were both looking at him.

"No need to cancel."

His expression gave nothing away. "Let's go talk to them."

Lu Mingzhou took a moment to think it over. "All right. I'll revise the materials."

He walked over and erased the numbers on the whiteboard.

Han Luyi returned to his desk, opened his computer, and searched for the news he had just seen.

How much did a single CodeSafe scan cost in inference? He knew BugKiller's costs, and they weren't cheap. CodeSafe's model architecture was heavier, so it could only cost more. Free forever, automatically integrated, three million developers—how many scans would each run per day? Who was paying for all that inference? Were they covering it with cloud-service profits? That would mean the whole of Dingsheng Cloud was propping up a code review tool. Why? It couldn't be just to target BugKiller. Then BugKiller wasn't the target. The ecosystem was. CodeSafe was a freebie meant to keep developers on Dingsheng Cloud. Seen that way, things weren't as bad as he'd first imagined. Few of BugKiller's customers used Dingsheng Cloud to begin with. If Dingsheng was starting an ecosystem war, Kunlun, Celestial Pivot, and Azure Peak had more reason to worry.

Thoughts tumbled through his head, but he reached no conclusion. By then, the news page had loaded. Han Luyi opened Sight.

That's it?

It had nothing to do with what he'd just been thinking. They only wanted to drive up daily usage.

But why drive up daily usage?

Sight gave him no answer.

Han Luyi called Su Niannian and Lu Mingzhou over for another quick meeting.

"The impact on us isn't as big as we thought. And it'll tie us more closely to the three cloud providers," Han Luyi said.

"Pricing will be a problem," Su Niannian said. "They're free, and we charge three thousand a month. When a tech lead wants to buy our product, their boss will ask, 'Why not use the free one?'"

"Like Microsoft's Copilot," Han Luyi said. "It might not work well, but it's still an AI."

The joke fell flat. Neither Su Niannian nor Lu Mingzhou got it.

"So the point isn't whether the product is good. It's getting users to feel the difference for themselves," Su Niannian said, returning to the topic. "We need someone dedicated to that. We also need to build the community properly, make good use of Azure Peak's event, and get Ma Xiaofei to shoot a few more promotional videos."

"Let's hire someone first." Han Luyi rubbed his temples, bringing the meeting to a close.

Three days after they posted the job ad, they had received more than seventy résumés.

Han Luyi and Su Niannian sat across from each other, each with a stack of printed résumés to screen.

"This one." Su Niannian held up a résumé. "Eight hundred words of self-introduction, two and a half lines of project experience."

Han Luyi glanced at it. "Applying to write novels?"

The résumé went into the pile on the left.

"This person didn't even change the company name. 'Your company, Cloudrise Technology.'"

"Probably submitted by a script."

A few résumés later, Su Niannian suddenly laughed and turned one around to show him.

Proficient in the entire Microsoft Office suite. Skilled at planning team-building activities. Passionate about square dancing.

"What position did they apply for?"

"Backend developer."

They both laughed.

When Han Luyi turned to the next résumé, he opened Sight.

He regretted it the instant the panel appeared.

One résumé, more than forty fields. Everything from technical ability to the remaining mortgage balance was laid out.

He glanced at the résumé beside it. The applicant was a former colleague, a P7 at Dingsheng.

Sight's information was useful, but there was far too much of it. Han Luyi only needed to decide one thing: was this person worth inviting to an interview? Instead, Sight laid everything out in front of him. Reading résumés was more exhausting with it than without it.

He looked through two more. Each résumé filled the screen with another panel. Technical strengths and weaknesses were buried among "salary flexibility," "likelihood of dishonesty," and "emotional anchor." He had to pick out what mattered himself.

What was it like?

Like an API returning the complete JSON when he only needed three fields. Everything else was noise.

Couldn't he customize it?

He set down the résumé, closed his eyes, and tried to find a "settings" button in his field of vision.

As soon as the thought occurred to him, an interface resembling a code editor appeared.

He froze.

[Energy: 437/500]

It had dropped by fifty points.

Sight was programmable?

He tried "writing" an instruction: keep only core skills, weaknesses, work style, team fit, stability, and hidden information in the output; filter out personal details.

He looked at the P7's résumé again.

[Chen Jianye]

[Core skill: large-scale systems architecture]

[Weakness: needs to be in charge; poor fit for small teams]

[Work style: highly controlling]

[Team fit: low (needs a stronger leader)]

[Stability: low (stopgap role; highly likely to leave within six months)]

[Hidden: interviewing with three other companies]

Seven lines. Much cleaner.

Han Luyi got into it. He made a few more changes, then looked at the same résumé again.

[Chen Jianye]

[Special skill: large-scale systems architecture]

Next résumé—

[Li Ting]

[Special skill: none]

And another—

[Zhao Lei]

[Special skill: distributed-systems specialist]

Han Luyi went back and dug out the square-dancing guy's résumé—

[Niu Yifan]

[Special skill: square dancing]

Heh. This was fun.

"What are you smiling about?" Su Niannian looked up at him.

"I feel like I'm playing Game Dev Story," Han Luyi said.

Su Niannian played games too, so she knew what he meant. "If only running a company really were like playing a management sim. It's not like you can see everyone's stat panels."

Han Luyi didn't answer. He lowered his head and kept reading résumés.

[Energy: 337/500]

It cost a fair bit of energy, but he was getting hooked.