"Plus these products are not TV sets made in China, for the wide consumer market. Few of our products are consumer products. The military products are under contracts, and there is no need for cost pressures, other than stupid, destructive greed. This hurts me in particular, 'cause I am in charge of quality. How can we deliver an improving quality, if the product is disappearing in front of our eyes due to cost reduction challenges?”
“You’re right,” Alex said, “you can’t.”
"And he's a sadistic bastard too, if you haven't noticed yet. He gets his kicks from making people suffer. The moment he sees someone on the verge of breaking down, I swear to you, he's pre-orgasmic or something… just watch him tomorrow. We've all noticed that about him, but, regardless, he's a skilled torturer. When you're in his line of fire you will hurt, and you will give him pleasure by hurting, and you will hate yourself for it.
"Wow," Alex said in a soft voice.
"You should see how he does performance appraisals. After each performance appraisal, the bottom 10–20 percent of all teams will be fired without cause and without the reason of poor performance. Even if you reached your goals and made your numbers, you could still be fired. This is a stupid method to manage performance — stupid and dangerous too. No one cares about the company or the product anymore. No one does what's right anymore. Everyone hopes that someone else is on that list of terminations, when next February comes. This method destroys teams, and overall human values. It degenerates, as a method, everything that was at the core of our success as a company.
"He didn't invent this method. Someone else did. Walker is just happily applying it, 'cause it creates pain, uncertainty, and suffering in his people, and he loves that. He calls it a competitive, high-performing environment, 'cause everyone is willing to harm everyone else and do anything to survive. He wants all of us to become just like him."
"HR doesn't do anything about this?"
"Hah," she laughed wryly, "you don't know much, 'cause you're new. There is no human resources department on our side here. You should keep in mind they're not to be trusted."
"Thanks for the heads up," Alex said.
"He's also a liar, our COO Benjamin Walker. I've seen him lie, then fire people to cover it up. The former VP of manufacturing, the one before Dunwood, used to tell him in every operations meeting that cost pressures were too high, and that they impact negatively the quality and reliability of the product, in addition to the employee morale and engagement. Every meeting he said that to Walker, and Walker replied he doesn't want to hear it, 'cause it's nothing but a lame excuse for poor performance.
"Then, one day, Walker comes by the plant to visit, and some assembly workers reach out to him and tell him exactly the same thing. That they're disappointed by the fact that the company is cost-driven, rather than quality-driven like it used to be, and that they feel disengaged and disrespected. Walker listened, and then expressed complete surprise, stating he had never been told about such concerns. What was the VP to do? Call him a liar in front of everyone? The former VP held his mouth shut, and minutes later, Walker turned on him and fired him right there, on the spot, for keeping the situation from him. Many of us knew that the former VP was telling Walker about the situation every week. It served as a warning to all of us… we are to silence our disgruntled employees or be fired."
"Wow, it's unbelievable," Alex said.
"I hope you won't repeat a word of our conversation to anyone," Janet insisted again. "It's important that you don't."
"I won't, don't worry. And I appreciate you speaking with me; it will help me navigate the waters at corporate. It's hard, you know. You come on as a new hire, filled with hopes and aspirations, and within days, the honeymoon is over and you wake up to such a reality. By the way, my boss is competing with your boss for the 'Asshole of the Year' title."
"Who do you report to?" Janet asked.
"Sheppard. Dustin Sheppard, CTO."
"Sorry to hear that," Janet said, with a sad smile, "indeed another bastard. Not easy with him either. I heard he's filled with so much hatred and contempt for people that it makes you sick to the stomach."
"That's correct. He is… vicious. That's the only word that comes to mind."
"Well, we better turn in and get some rest. Tomorrow morning we'll be offered our weekly serving of public humiliation."
…59
Before starting the computer, the man looked around for a third time, just to make sure. No one was there yet; it was too early in the day. He started the self-guidance configuration application, and then flipped through the various screens. The graphical user interface was designed to allow humans to control all the parameters for the self-guided drone flight. A flight plan included landmarks, targets, and coordinates of interest for both combat and recon missions, and well-defined safety collars.
A safety collar was a restriction imposed by the system to prevent the drones from launching missiles on their own, without prior target confirmation from a human operator. The drone would find the target, based on geo-coordinates, or a combination between preloaded imagery and a set perimeter. If a target was identified while the drone was flying above the set perimeter, the drone could even lock the missile targeting system on the identified target, but not launch the missile until the human operator manually confirmed each and every launch.
The man flipped through screen views until he reached the screen labeled Target Imagery. He read through the configuration and review options available on the screen. Load, Review, Restrict, Prioritize, Remove. He spent a little bit of time reviewing the existing target imagery. Most everyone from the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list was preloaded. Osama Bin Laden, although confirmed dead, was included on the list, together with his adjutants. In addition, there were known vehicles of terrorists and strategic landmarks and military equipment belonging to hostile forces of countries currently at war with the United States.
"Uh-uh," he muttered, content with what he was seeing.
He removed a USB flash drive from his pocket and connected it to the computer. Then he clicked the Load New Images option on the Target Imagery configuration screen.
One by one, the images stored on the drive were opened, allowing the man to confirm the load of each one.
A front view of a silver Toyota 4Runner, showing the car license plate.
A detailed view of the California license plate.
A head shot of an attractive young woman.
A rear view of the same silver Toyota, showing the rear license plate.
A full body image of the same woman, approaching the parked silver Toyota in NanoLance's parking lot.
All selected images loaded correctly, and the confirmation screen disappeared, leaving the user to move on to configuration.
Satisfied, the man clicked on the Distribution screen tab. Under Distribution, he had three options: General (all flight plans), Single (create new flight plan), and Test (field test and simulator). Without any hesitation, he clicked General (all flight plans). His choice ensured that the target imagery he had loaded would become a part of every active drone's target search.
Then he moved on to the Restrict screen. This was the collar management screen. Again three options, reflecting three different levels of security: Do Not Target, Do Not Lock on Target, Do Not Launch. These options clearly specified which actions were not to be taken without ground control input. The default setting was for all three options to be checked. Ideally, the drones would not be allowed to get a lock, release a missile, or even set a target without a human's confirmation. The man unchecked all three boxes, removing all restrictions requiring human input. The self-guided software now allowed any drone to target, lock, and launch missiles at will, on any of the targets reflected in the images he had just loaded.