Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!
Jiang Yixin reached out from beneath the covers and fumbled around the nightstand 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 usually 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's right, next Monday.
Jiang Yixin stood at the subway entrance as the wind lifted her bangs. She had received three offers during campus recruitment and carefully picked Celestial Pivot, supposedly the best for work-life balance. She had even deliberately postponed her start date so she could rightfully enjoy the last summer vacation of her life.
Then yesterday, someone had dropped a link in the class group chat: BugKiller was hiring.
So she had no choice but to come.
It was embarrassing to admit, but she was a hardcore NP fan. Every time NP posted a blog, she studied it over and over, then recommended it to her department classmates. For a while, people even thought she was preaching. She 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 hadn't updated the blog in two months.
Was starting a company really that busy?
After exiting at Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Station and following the navigation for ten minutes, she finally saw the inconspicuous shared office building.
She took the elevator to the third floor and found the red ladybug logo.
She pulled out her phone, made a V sign, took a selfie with the logo, and sent it to her best friend. "I'm here! NP, here I come!"
Her best friend replied instantly. "Good luck, hardcore fan. Don't forget to start at Celestial Pivot next Monday."
She didn't reply. She had arrived early for the interview.
She rang the doorbell, and a young woman answered. "You're here for an interview too?"
"Yeah." Jiang Yixin nodded.
"Have a seat first. President Han and President Su are interviewing someone." The woman pointed to the side.
There was no dedicated waiting area. Several folding chairs stood against the office wall, and someone was sitting in one of them. Jiang Yixin looked around but couldn't see an interview room.
She walked over and sat down. The man beside her was severely balding 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 companies before: sleek office buildings, floor-to-ceiling windows, greenery, young engineers in company T-shirts walking around and discussing code. Now she was sitting in the hallway of a shared office, with a water dispenser beside her bubbling away.
She secretly glanced at the man beside her.
The man happened to look up too, and their eyes met.
"Hello," Jiang Yixin took the initiative. "Are you here for an interview too?"
The man looked her up and down, his gaze carrying a hint of scrutiny. "Dingsheng, P7, ten years of experience, managed teams. You?"
Jiang Yixin didn't react at first. Was he... listing ingredients?
"I... just graduated."
The man tugged at the corner of his mouth. "It's a small company. The questions probably won't even be professional."
Jiang Yixin blinked.
Then why did you come?
"Next interviewee, Chen Jianye." A voice called out.
"Not from some good school, right?" The man stood and straightened his shirt collar. "Places like this are only worth considering for people with no experience. If you get the chance, go to a major company. Their technology is different."
Jiang Yixin swallowed the retort lodged in her chest and turned away, pretending not to hear.
The man left, his footsteps echoing down the hallway.
Jiang Yixin resumed looking around. One wall was a huge board covered in colorful sticky notes. Squinting, she could make out what seemed to be product requirements broken down by priority, each priority marked in a different color.
It looked... maybe not that unprofessional?
She secretly peeked toward the desks in the distance again. Mechanical keyboards and gaming mice—those desks belonged to developers, 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 this NP's business partner? She had come to get her personally?
"Have you used BugKiller?" Su Niannian asked as they walked.
That question wasn't in the interview prep materials Jiang Yixin had prepared. "Y-yes, I have. I'm a paying user..."
As Su Niannian led the way, she casually grabbed a bottle of water from a drawer and handed it to her. "The meeting rooms are outside. That's the downside of shared offices. Sorry about that."
Jiang Yixin accepted the water and only then realized the interview room wasn't inside the company. It was a shared meeting room at the end of the hallway, with an A4 sheet taped to the door that read, "Source Code Technology—Interview in Progress."
The room was tiny.
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 NP in the flesh!
Jiang Yixin sat across from him, her legs trembling slightly.
Su Niannian sat 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 was a little dry too. "Hello, Teacher NullPointer!"
Han Luyi's brow twitched, his eyes bright.
"Let's start by testing some basic knowledge. In terms of data structures..." He suddenly asked a highly specific question that hit Jiang Yixin directly in one of her blind spots.
I'm done for.
She opened her mouth, but her mind was blank. She had thought she knew it, but the question had stumped her.
Han Luyi watched her without urging her on.
She stammered out half an answer, and even she knew it was wrong.
Han Luyi didn't let her off. "In this scenario, what problems would arise when the volume of data increases?"
Jiang Yixin froze. Usually, interviewers would switch questions at this point, and some would simply give the answer.
She stared at the tabletop for several seconds. Something flashed through her mind. "Could it... cause a memory overflow? If too many requests are processed at once..."
"Correct." Han Luyi nodded. "How would you solve it?"
"Load it in pages? Or... process it asynchronously with a queue?" She didn't sound very certain.
Han Luyi gave no evaluation. He merely wrote something in his notebook before asking the next question.
The next question precisely struck another one of her weak areas.
Jiang Yixin's head buzzed.
I'm done for. I don't know this one.
Huh? Why isn't he asking that? I know that one!
No... I used to be a top student!
Han Luyi asked four or five questions. Each one seemed to have eyes, drilling specifically into the things she didn't know.
For the final question, she had an answer, and a pretty good one at that.
"President Su," Han Luyi turned to her, "is there anything you'd like to ask?"
Su Niannian had been listening from the side the entire time. Now she spoke. "If you were to add a feature to BugKiller, what would you add?"
Jiang Yixin answered from the "user's perspective." "Real-time prompts for code inspection—errors appear as you write, without waiting to save."
Then she hurriedly switched back to the "developer's perspective." "Of course, that feature would have a major performance cost, so there would need to be trade-offs. It might not be suitable for every scenario..."
Su Niannian smiled. "Don't be nervous. We're considering that feature already."
Then she asked, "What are your salary expectations?"
Jiang Yixin took a deep breath.
"I have an offer from Celestial Pivot—320,000 a year. I start next Monday." She spoke quickly. "I just came to take a look..."
Han Luyi's pen stopped.
Su Niannian lowered her gaze to the tabletop.
The silence at that moment was deafening.
Han Luyi closed his notebook. "All right. We'll consider it. Thank you for coming to interview."
Su Niannian went to call in 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 beautiful.
She took out her phone and sent a WeChat message to her best friend.
[Xiao Jiang (Starting Work Soon Edition]: "Aaaaaah, I met NP in the flesh!"
Her best friend replied instantly.
[Big Liu (Corporate Slave Edition)]: "How was it? Is he handsome in person?"
[Xiao Jiang (Starting Work Soon Edition)]: "Super handsome! He looks like he stepped out of a comic!"
[Big Liu (Corporate Slave Edition)]: "Was the interview hard?"
[Xiao Jiang (Starting Work Soon Edition)]: "(crying) I couldn't answer anything. I got completely crushed."
[Big Liu (Corporate Slave Edition)]: "(hug) Be good. Look on the bright side—at least you don't have to agonize over whether to accept an offer anymore."
Before you continue