Chapter 103: Positioning and backing down
In November, the technical department led by Zhang Guo at Facebook Chinese completed development of Facebook's instant messaging tool. Su Can made a special trip to treat Zhang Guo's team to a celebration at a steakhouse. It served food on a Japanese-style conveyor belt and had something of the feel of an English pub, with everyone sitting side by side along the belt, drinking and helping themselves to food.
The chefs plated the dishes at their stations, then sent them around the room on the conveyor belt. Everyone picked out whatever they liked-black pepper steak, vegetable salad, skewers, oden, udon noodles-and set the plates on the tables in front of them. It lacked the refinement, fuss, and numerous rules of a Western restaurant. Everything suited Facebook Chinese's relaxed, grassroots style.
Zhang Guo had initially applied to Facebook Chinese simply because he was drawn by the waves Facebook was making in Silicon Valley. For a fervent tech enthusiast like him, quietly joining Facebook Chinese might have been the ultimate destination for a hacker of his kind. It was also one of the ways many hackers who had made enormous contributions to China's internet, once stirring up bloody storms, eventually withdrew from that world.
Some became ordinary white-collar employees at IT companies, some went into antivirus work, some joined government offices, and others entered relevant state agencies. Most of that early generation of Chinese hackers settled into peaceful lives after being "brought into the fold," once the tide of that era had passed.
Zhang Guo, who had always fought alone, had never imagined that a veteran like Qiao Shuxin would discover him, or that Su Can would entrust him with important work, making him a true pillar of Facebook's technical team. Thinking of how lost he