It was not hot in the summer and not cold in the winter in Silicon Valley. However, as the late-autumn sunlight was strong, YongHo went under a tree’s shade.
The entire time he was listening to Lucia’s story, he wondered if this was really possible. The sexual discrimination didn’t show that much difference to when he was in Korea, even though he was in the most developed country in the world, and this was the place which had the most cutting-edge technologies, Silicon Valley.
20% lower wages despite doing the same work, moreover, the ratio of women in the technology field didn’t even amount to 10%.
Creativity, imagination, ideas, dreams, hopes – these were the words associated with Silicon Valley, but in the depths, male chauvinism, or the so called ‘boy’s club’ had taken root.
The welling emotions in Lucia had erupted as she couldn’t hide her tears while speaking.
He thought that American women were more adventurous, and more challenge-loving; and thought that they were very strict.
However, human life was similar wherever it was, and the predicted activity of women weren’t that much different.
“You cried your heart out now?”
“……”
Perhaps due to having cried in front of a stranger, and a man at that, Lucia couldn’t raise her head. YongHo patted her back, saying it was alright.
24 years old this year. To confront the ills of society alone, she was still young.
“Why didn’t you talk to your superiors about it?”
“…I did talk to them at the beginning, but they didn’t take it seriously.”
Lucia carefully brought up the topic. However, the company seemed that they didn’t want to make a big deal out of it as all they did was verbal caution.
“……”
“Thank you for worrying about me. It’s my problem so I can solve it. What was it that you were trying to say last time? I think you said something about problems in the code……”
There were still tears on Lucia’s big eyes. He pitied her because she was trying her best to pretend to be alright. Perhaps the pale white skin, which looked translucent to the point blood vessels could be seen, was stimulating his protective instinct.
***
The first thing he did after YongHo came back to the office was to look at the code that Kenneth and the web developer, Mark, had uploaded.
YongHo’s job was to overlook the general development of the server and the application. Going through the code review requests that the developers uploaded to JIRA was also an important part of his work.
‘It’s clean.’
It was YongHo’s mistake to think that the work of a dirty minded person would be dirty.
Unlike Lucia’s code, there was nothing that he could find fault with in Mark’s codes. No matter how, unlike Lucia who had a short career, Mark was a developer who had spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley. Although he was not at a genius level, he still didn’t have any problems with work.
‘Is this why there was nothing……?’
In the company’s view, Kenneth and Mark were more of a loss compared to Lucia. She was an existence that was in the phase of being taught, and being raised. She was at the stage where she was being invested in.
Society revolved around ability.
On the underside, there was the sorrow that one had to receive, if one didn’t have the skills.
‘I should consult Jessie.’
He felt that he might come up with an answer if he talked with Jessie, another woman.
“So?”
“Huh?”
“YongHo, I’m not exactly a management personnel, nor am I a person in charge of a department.”
“……”
“Pathetic sympathy cannot change anything.”
YongHo could only sit there dazed. Was Jessie such a cold-hearted person?
Even though winter hadn’t arrived yet, YongHo felt that his body was shivering from the cold he felt from Jessie’s body.
“Was it Lucia? I think it’s, instead, better to help her raise her skills.”
To defeat the oncoming cold, YongHo sipped the warm coffee in front of him.
He finally felt his body warming up then. Even though the heater was on inside the building, YongHo couldn’t take his hands off the hot coffee.
“Do you know what else Silicon Valley is called? It’s Sex Valley, I don’t have to explain anymore, right?”
At Jessie’s continuous cold words, YongHo seemed to have become emotional as he became offensive.
“So you mean i should just stay still?”
Jessie stared at YongHo silently.
“I heard high ability means strong self-esteem.”
Jessie left him just a few key words and left. Another name to call Silicon Valley, Sex Valley.
YongHo sat there for a long time and sipped his coffee.
Even so, staying still wasn’t in accordance to YongHo’s personality. So, the method he found was to look at the code carefully.
‘No matter how, it wouldn’t be perfect.’
Even when he first started coding, he used not GUI(Graphic User Interface, e.g. Windows), but CLI(Command-line interface, e.g. Linux).
Just going by ease of use, it was the difference between a shovel and a fork crane. However, he did have something he earned from it.
The eyes to see codes.
Before the bug window told him about the bugs, he saw the problems within the code. From the coding style to no longer used methods/functions, he could see from various angles.
YongHo looked at the code that Mark uploaded, trying to find any faults in it.
Due to something called the HTML(Hypertext Markup Language), we can see elaborate web page documents easily, and quickly.
LIke all programming languages developed, the HTML language also developed and now, had become HTML5.
New functions were added, and obsolete functions disappeared. Amongst those, there were some which were still allowed, but not recommended.
Although they were still allowed due to the compatibility with lower versions, as they wouldn’t be in the future, people needed to refrain from using those. This was what YongHo was looking for.
‘Another one found.’
YongHo exclaimed after he found another flaw. In the code that the web developer, Mark, uploaded, there was a tag to draw a table. There were some properties to control the shape of the table.
In HTML5, ‘cellpading’ and ‘cellspacing’ and such elements that made up designs were recommended to be managed separately in CSS(Cascading Style Sheets).
‘cellpading’ and ‘cellspacing’ were elements that controlled margins of a table or indentation, so they were supposed to be put inside CSS, but the code was in HTML.
‘I should put comments!’
YongHo felt delighted when he thought that he could bully Mark. This was a small revenge that YongHo could do.
In fact, coding on the HTML didn’t make any bugs or problems occur when the users checked the webpage.
There was no problem in regards to usability. As it wasn’t the style that the HTML developers recommended, in perhaps 10 years, it might be unusable.
However, that was for the distant future. There was no need to worry over it now.
It was such a small, and trivial problem. YongHo picked such small and trivial problems to collapse Mark’s self-esteem.
‘Should I add some more……’
Everyone had left work, but YongHo hadn’t left until late into the night.
***
When he came to work in the morning, Mark could only be absent minded at the full mailbox.
The results of code review has arrived.
The results of code review has arrived.
The results of code review has arrived.
The results of code review has arrived.
Mails with the same title were decorating the first page of his mailbox.
The related people were notified of most of the events through JIRA through e-mail. If there was a comment on the noticeboard, or if someone was assigned to an issue, or a reporter, or if the results of a code review had arrived.
In fact, he could be notified with all the results with one e-mail. (T/N: Why doesn’t google do that… so much e-mails for translation comments…)
However, YongHo didn’t do that on purpose. He made it so that it would send an e-mail for a single problem.
It was purely intentional.
‘……”
Click. Click. Click.
Mark massaged his neck as if fatigue overcame him while he checked the e-mails one by one.
“Is this guy calling this a problem……”
There was no problem at all for the webpage to run. It was also hard to say that he had gone against the rules that HTML5 had set.
He just didn’t code according to their recommendations.
Please follow the HTML5 standard.
This was YongHo’s comments that ran throughout all the e-mails. Please follow the HTML5 standard. In pretext, YongHo was up front. Following HTML5 was recommended throughout the company.
The reason why Mark didn’t follow the standards was because for some, he made a mistake, and for some, he thought it was no problem.
And for a few, it was because the results he wanted didn’t come out when he used CSS to do it.
If he spent some time, there was no reason he wouldn’t be able to. However, as there was something called the schedule, he was flexible.
“He’s coming at me, eh.”
Mark burned his fighting spirit while checking the e-mails that YongHo had sent. He also thought that he himself had some strength in the web developing field.
He didn’t pile up his skills to be pointed out like this by someone.
***
Most left when their work finished. Also, as most people had enough ability to do what the company assigned them to, it could be said that there were almost no employees who would work late into the night.
Or, they could work at home on their laptops, as such system was there, so YongHo could not see anyone working late into the night until now.
However, today was different.
‘Whoa……’
When he looked around, there were two people.
A man and a woman.
They were Lucia and Mark.
‘What are they doing here and not going home?’
YongHo raised his head and looked at the two in doubt. As they had put the people working on the same area together, Mark and Lucia were close to each other, as they were both working on the client.
At that moment, a chat popped up on his messenger.
“YongHo, I have something to ask you, is it alright?”
It was Lucia. If he had to put in effort to find flaws in Mark’s code, there was no need for such effort with Lucia. Most of them were riddled with problems.
Although it wasn’t easy for people to work with them, everybody had a time when they were newbies. YongHo, too, learned a lot from Son SeokHo and An ByungHoon. (T/N: An ByungHoon’s from Mirae IT, you probably forgot…, in fact do you even remember Mirae IT?)
As he had never forgotten his tadpole days, YongHo didn’t find Lucia’s question annoying and accepted each and every one of them.
“Yes, it’s alright.”
When YongHo’s answer came, Lucia, who was coding with her back to YongHo, turned her head towards him and waved her hands.
Her eyes were full of passion to learn. YongHo knew very well that such passion wasn’t directed at him.
‘Wow, she’s really a goddess in the engineering department… Did they look at her face when they recruited her?’
Looking at Lucia waving her hand from far away, he momentarily thought that he understood Mark’s attitude towards her.
In Korea, she would be called the ‘goddess in the engineering department’. This was the stereotypical white woman that a Korean man would imagine at least once about.
“Yes, I’m going.”
YongHo stood up and approached Lucia. And there was a pair of eyes which looked at that scene from beginning to finish.
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