The Real NullPointer!

Beep, beep, beep! Beep, beep, beep!

Jiang Yixin reached out from under the covers and felt around the bedside table before finally grabbing her phone. Seven fifteen. Right on time.

She turned off the alarm and squinted at Little Red Book in bed for a while.

Then she rolled out of bed, washed up, put in her contacts, and quickly applied light makeup in front of the mirror.

She normally went out bare-faced, but today was different.

Today, she was going to meet NullPointer!

Her roommate poked her head out from bed, bleary-eyed. "Why are you heading out so early?"

"An interview." Jiang Yixin grabbed her bag and ran out without looking back.

Her roommate scratched her head. "An interview? Isn't she starting at Celestial Pivot next week?"

That was right. Next Monday.

Jiang Yixin stood at the subway entrance as the wind lifted her bangs. She had received three offers through campus recruitment and carefully picked Celestial Pivot, supposedly the best for work-life balance. She had even specifically requested a delayed start date, enjoying the last summer vacation of her life with a clear conscience.

Then yesterday, someone had posted a link in the class group chat: BugKiller was hiring.

So she had no choice but to come.

It was a little embarrassing to admit, but she was a die-hard fan of NP. Every time NP posted a blog, she read it over and over, then recommended it to her classmates in the department. For a while, some people even thought she was preaching a religion. She had watched the entire livestream showdown with CodeSafe, and afterward, she had been too excited to sleep.

The subway swayed and rattled as Jiang Yixin leaned against the door and scrolled through her phone. NP's blog had not been updated in two months.

Was starting a business really that busy?

After getting out at Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Station and following the navigation for ten minutes, she finally spotted the inconspicuous shared office building.

She took the elevator to the third floor and found the red ladybug logo.

Pulling out her phone, she flashed a V sign and took a selfie with the logo, then sent it to her best friend. "I'm here! NP, here I come!"

Her friend replied instantly. "Good luck, die-hard fan. Don't forget you start at Celestial Pivot next Monday."

She did not reply. She was early for the interview.

She rang the doorbell, and a young woman answered. "You're here for the interview too?"

"Mm." Jiang Yixin nodded.

"Have a seat first. President Han and President Su are interviewing someone right now." The woman pointed beside her.

There was no dedicated waiting area. Several folding chairs lined the office wall, and someone was sitting in one of them. Jiang Yixin looked around but did not see an interview room.

She walked over and sat down. The man beside her was seriously bald and staring gloomily at his phone.

He looked like a max-level veteran developer.

Jiang Yixin set her bag on her lap. This place was different from what she had imagined.

NP's company... this was it?

She had interned at several major tech companies. They had impressive office buildings, floor-to-ceiling windows, greenery, and young engineers in company T-shirts walking around discussing code. Now, she was sitting in the hallway of a shared office, with the water dispenser beside her gurgling away.

She stole a glance at the man beside her.

Just then, he looked up too, and their eyes met.

"Hello," Jiang Yixin took the initiative to speak. "Are you here for an interview too?"

The man looked her up and down, his gaze carrying a hint of appraisal. "Dingsheng, P7, ten years of experience, managed teams. And you?"

Jiang Yixin did not react at first. Was he... listing dishes off a menu?

"I... just graduated."

The corner of the man's mouth twitched. "It's a small company. The questions probably won't be very professional."

Jiang Yixin blinked.

Then why did you come?

"The next interviewee, Chen Jianye," a voice called out.

"Not from a very good school, huh?" The man stood and straightened his shirt collar. "Places like this are only worth considering if you have no experience. If you get the chance, go to a major company. The technology there is on another level."

Jiang Yixin swallowed back a retort that was desperate to come out and turned away, pretending not to hear.

The man left, his footsteps echoing down the corridor.

Jiang Yixin resumed looking around. One wall was a large board covered in colorful sticky notes. Squinting at it, she could vaguely make out product requirements broken down and prioritized by color.

It looked... maybe not that unprofessional after all?

She stole another glance at the workstations in the distance. Mechanical keyboards and gaming mice... that desk belonged to a developer, right?

She took out her phone and scrolled for a while.

"You're Jiang Yixin, right?"

She looked up. A pretty woman in a beige knit sweater stood before her, smiling sweetly.

"I'm Su Niannian. Please come with me."

Wasn't she NP's partner? She had come to get her personally?

"Have you used BugKiller?" Su Niannian asked as they walked.

That question was not in the set of standard interview answers Jiang Yixin had prepared. "Y-yes, I have. I'm a paying user..."

Su Niannian led the way and casually grabbed a bottle of water from a drawer, handing it to her. "The meeting rooms are outside. That's the downside of shared offices. Sorry about that."

Jiang Yixin accepted the water and realized that the interview room was not inside the company at all. It was a shared meeting room at the end of the corridor, with an A4 sheet taped to the door reading, "Source Code Technology—Interview in Progress."

The room was very small.

Han Luyi sat on one side of the table, with an empty chair beside him and another across from him.

"Jiang Yixin? Please sit."

It was NullPointer in the flesh!

Jiang Yixin sat across from him, her legs trembling slightly.

Su Niannian took the seat beside Han Luyi.

"I'm Han Luyi, CEO and CTO of Source Code Technology. This is Su Niannian, Chief Product Officer and COO."

"I'm Jiang Yixin!" Her throat felt a little dry too. "Hello, Teacher NullPointer!"

Han Luyi's brows shifted slightly, and his eyes were bright.

"Let's start by assessing some fundamentals. In terms of data structures..." He suddenly asked a highly specific question that hit Jiang Yixin's blind spot with perfect accuracy.

I'm done for.

She opened her mouth, but her mind went blank. She had thought she knew it, but she was stumped.

Han Luyi watched her without urging her on.

She stammered through half an answer, knowing herself that it was wrong.

Han Luyi did not let her off. "What problems would arise in this scenario once the volume of data increases?"

Jiang Yixin froze. Usually, interviewers would switch questions at this point, and some would simply give the answer directly.

She stared at the tabletop for several seconds, and something flashed through her mind. "Would it... cause an out-of-memory error? If it had to process too many requests at once..."

"Correct." Han Luyi nodded. "How would you solve it?"

"Paginated loading? Or... use a queue for asynchronous processing?" She did not sound very certain.

Han Luyi gave no evaluation. He merely wrote something in his notebook and asked the next question.

The next question precisely stepped on another of her weak points.

Jiang Yixin's head buzzed.

I'm done for. I don't know this one.

Wait, why isn't he asking about that? I know that!

No... I used to be a top student.

Han Luyi asked four or five questions, every one of them as though they had eyes, drilling specifically into the things she did not know.

For the last question, she got the answer—and answered it rather well.

"President Su," Han Luyi turned to her, "do you have anything you'd like to ask?"

Su Niannian had been listening beside him the whole time. Now, she spoke. "If you were to add a feature to BugKiller, what would it be?"

Jiang Yixin answered from "the user's perspective": "Real-time prompts for code inspection. It would report issues as you write, without waiting for you to save."

Then she hurriedly switched back to "the developer's perspective": "Of course, that feature would come with a major performance cost and would require trade-offs. It might not be suitable for every scenario..."

Su Niannian smiled. "No need to be nervous. We're considering that feature already."

Then she asked, "What salary are you expecting?"

Jiang Yixin took a deep breath.

"I have an offer from Celestial Pivot, 320,000 a year, and I start next Monday." She spoke very quickly. "I just came to take a look..."

Han Luyi's pen stopped.

Su Niannian lowered her gaze to the tabletop.

The silence was deafening.

Han Luyi closed his notebook. "All right. We'll consider it. Thank you for coming to interview."

Su Niannian went to call the next interviewee. Through the open door, Jiang Yixin saw a bespectacled young man who looked very nervous.

She walked out of the office building. The sunlight was lovely.

She took out her phone and sent her best friend a WeChat message.

[Little Jiang (starting work soon edition)]: AHHHHHHHHH, I met the real NP!

[Big Liu (corporate slave edition)]: How was it? Is he handsome in person?

[Little Jiang (starting work soon edition)]: Super handsome! Like a man straight out of a manga!

[Big Liu (corporate slave edition)]: Was the interview hard?

[Little Jiang (starting work soon edition)]: (crying) I couldn't answer any of it. I got crushed into dust.

[Big Liu (corporate slave edition)]: (hug) Good girl, look on the bright side. At least you won't have to agonize over which offer to take.