Page 5 of Whistleblower

“Is this really necessary?” I ask, glancing around the office. “You know what I do.” Or more accurately, what I used to do.

I swear… If he follows up this question with, “Where do you see yourself in five years…”

This interview—hell, this entire office—screams Silicon Valley. It’s meant to be energetic and casual. The embedded message is: we’re young, we’re fun, we’re tech badasses, and we care more about the invention than the presentation. Except, I know the truth. Ronnie’s anarchy t-shirt only looks casual, but it retails for over two hundred dollars. The sneakers, which he purposely left untied, are from a designer line that isn’t even available to the public. They have to be custom-ordered and cost about the same as a down payment on a brand-new Ford F-150.

Ronnie is wearing ripped denim blue jeans while conducting an interview for the Director of Personnel—a position with a salary in the low six-figures.

I think.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to negotiate my annual salary. I’ll ask for two hundred thousand, but the truth is, with my baggage, I’ll settle for one twenty, which is peanuts in this city.

Ronnie scoots an inch forward toward the edge of the desk, his left leg dangling. I shift in the weird, turquoise egg-shaped office chair I’m sitting in, and try to divert my gaze away from his crotch, which is uncomfortably close to my face

“Eden, play along. Please. It’s a formality.”

Filling my lungs to the brim, I let out an exaggerated sigh before I give the speech I’ve given hundreds of times before. “As you know, my doctorate is in organizational leadership and development. My role as a consultant has been to help data-centric companies scale their workforce without imploding from rapid growth.”

“Can you elaborate a bit?” Ronnie asks with a teasing smile. I want to slap him right now. He knows exactly what my expertise is because we went to school together. I pursued my doctorate, while Ronnie finished his master's, but we shared a few classes. Not to mention, at one brief point, I was his boss. This entire interview is borderline demeaning.

“How so?” I ask curtly, forcing a clipped smile.

“The company you worked for most recently—Empress—what did they do? What did you do there?”

Now, I’m pissed.

What’s his endgame, bringing up Empress? This was supposed to be a job offer. Ronnie is a friend. I’m overqualified for the position I’m interviewing for. In fact, I’m overqualified for his position.

Still, I’m desperate. So, I bite back my irritation and answer his ridiculous questions. “As you’re well aware, Empress developed a ground-breaking app that secured half a billion dollars in its first round of fundraising. The algorithms they developed were like nothing else on the market.

“Empress would allow users to compile all of their social media platforms into one control hub. The technology was built to continuously evaluate all platforms, and compare them against the user’s content performance, engagement, and target audience to essentially create a tailored rapid-growth approach depending on the user’s specific goals. Their algorithm changed social media virality from a lottery system into a predictable pattern.”

“One algorithm to rule them all,” Ronnie jokes. What an ass. He knows what Empress did better than anyone. Redd Tech was their competitor—if you could call them that. Their developments paled in comparison. Empress’s tech cracked the code on all the other social media platform’s sneaky algorithms, but instead of hoarding it, they shared it, wanting to level the influencer and creator playing field.

Everyone deserves recognition. Everyone deserves a chance to be seen.

“Right. Something along those lines. As a user you could just create content and the app would predict the success of that content on various platforms based on your following, current trends, optimal posting time, etcetera. The predictions were unbelievably accurate. Empress could tell you almost down to a single digit what you could expect in likes, reach, and follows. It was basically a cheat sheet for the intricacies of content strategy. All you’d have to do is create content, and the Empress algorithm would monetize it for you.”

“Beautiful elevator pitch.”

“Thank you,” I sass. “Empress was wildly successful right out of the gate, they needed to scale—quickly. I was their lead consultant on growth strategy for personnel.”

Empress’s tech division went from five employees to nearly eighty within the span of a month. They built a U.S.-based customer service team from scratch. They needed analysts, legal, accounting, human resources—you name it. The founders of the company were in so far over their heads. Their genius was in tech, but they had no idea how to build a healthy corporation. That’s where I came in.

Ronnie nods along enthusiastically. “And you were successful. So successful, Empress offered you a full-time role as Chief of Operations?”

“Right.”

“Which you accepted.”

“Correct.”

“And were fired three days later?” Ronnie asks.

I suck in a sharp breath, surprised at his candidness. “Unlawfully.”

“Why?” Ronnie raises his eyebrows at me.

Why is he being so inquisitive? Empress’s demise was publicized. He knows exactly why I was terminated, but he wants to hear me say it. Again, what an asshole.

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