After a brief hesitation, Scott clicked on the strange file “Glitch_HR.exe”. An interface appeared on his screen that somewhat resembled his homework project but was a bit more cluttered. The design was a bit of a mess, like someone had tried to cram too many features onto one screen.
Also, some buttons were labeled with different languages.
While professor Chu continued to crush the dreams of his students, Scott decided to press a button labeled “Org Chart”. A screen popped up indicating that no company was selected, followed by some weird message in arabic. Pulling up Gurgle translate, Scott learned that he was supposed to return to the main screen and set up corporate information. Curious he followed the instructions and received a screen with several prompts:
Name
?
Core Business
?
Clicking on the first “?” he typed in “Gurgle”. After a brief pause, the core business filled in Advertising. That’s odd. It recognized the company and populated some data. Out of curiosity, Scott returned to the Org chart and found it was populated with a massive chart that allowed drilling down several levels. His eyes widened - how was it possible this application could have the org chart of a major company loaded in? Was it even legal to have this information? He quickly exited and went back to the company screen.
Scott typed in “Horace Mango University” and returned to the org chart. This chart was much less complicated and after a little searching he found “Senior Professor of Computer Sciences - Dai Puddles Chu”. WAIT! Professor Chu’s middle name was Puddles? Ok, now he knew this wasn’t real. Scott raised his hand.
“Yes?” Dr. Chu asked.
“Is your middle name Puddles?” The professor looked at him in shock.
“WHO TOLD YOU THIS?!!! Everyone! Class is dismissed!”
Well, that was a surprise. Scott made a quick exit from class and headed back to the imposing building where they housed engineering students and other unfortunates. He wondered if the building design was inspired by communist aesthetics, or if they simply thought stark concrete blocks with small prison style windows made the other students feel safe from the dangerous Freshman.
Entering his rooms Scott’s first priority was to see if any of his other teachers had unusual or embarrassing names. Disappointed, he got back to thinking how unlikely it was that his computer had somehow cobbled together a program that could pull information like this. If this was illegal, he probably shouldn’t go showing his friends for now in case someone turned him in to the authorities. He wasn’t sure if there was even any reward money for turning in Computer Science majors with what was probably illegal spying software. If it was enough to buy a few beers he could think of a few people who wouldn’t hesitate to “do the right thing”.
After a little experimentation, Scott confirmed that he could get an org chart for companies big and small and even branches of the government. He was a little alarmed when he saw a list of deep cover agents for the FBI - Scott seriously wished he hadn’t clicked on that. No doubt black helicopters were heading his way already. After panicking for about 15 minutes, Scott noticed a meaningful lack of armed government agents bashing down his door. While it’s possible the dorm security stopped them, it seemed much more likely they hadn’t tracked this severe breach of security back to him. Anyway, he promised to never do that again! He should probably delete this program, but on the other hand this was way more interesting than going to his Statistics class!
Going back to the corporate screen Scott wondered if he could set up a new company. After entering about 20 names and learning they were already companies. He found an option to generate an unused name. That sounded good. He was prompted to first select the core business. After only a little thought he picked technology. Obviously, he did not want to start a new fast-food chain or accounting firm - he was a software genius… ok, sort of a B student who seemed to have accidentally downloaded a bunch of viruses that somehow built some weirdly powerful software and billed millions of dollars to … someone in Russia. OK, that was a troubling thought - they were not likely happy right now.
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Anyway, the program came up with some suggestions. Mostly a weird combination of unrelated words, often with letters replaced randomly. He picked “Genysis”. It seemed to speak of creating worlds and the beginning of something amazing. He didn’t think switching out a letter was going to fool the big guy upstairs about how he was totally copying the name of a bible chapter. Hopefully he wasn’t going to get sued by a half dozen other companies that were already stealing the name with various spellings.
Going back to the org chart he was pleased to see it was empty. He found an option to add an employee. He was totally going to make himself CEO, Chairman of the Board and Dictator for life if that was an option. There were choices to find a candidate by position, or to find a position suitable for a candidate. This software was so much better than what he turned in for his class assignment! OK first he picked CEO (Dictator wasn’t an option - stupid program!). A list of names appeared, along with various rankings in job experience, skill potential, cost to recruit, expected salary. There were some other metrics too, but they all combined into an overall ranking. He didn’t recognize any of the names on the first page and most were not even located in his city.
Naturally, he used the search function to find himself. “Scott Henderson, Age 19”. There were a few people with the same name and age, but he found himself and admired his rankings. OK, actually he was a little disappointed. The stupid program rated about 1 billion people better qualified for CEO than him. Drilling into the various rankings he scored #1 in cost to recruit, but much lower in everything else. For “Expected salary” he was actually on the low end, because yeah, he expected to get paid if he was going to be CEO. Experience he was close to the bottom - ok not a huge surprise there, but it stung a bit that this stupid program rated him low on skill potential. Ouch!
Out of curiosity, he backed out and chose the option to find the position most suitable for the candidate. Selecting his name again he got a list. The stupid program decided he was most suitable for unpaid intern, followed by cafeteria worker, mail room delivery, and finally junior programmer. Stupid software. Looking at “Junior Programmer” he saw his ranking for potential skill skyrocketing to 320 million. How were there so many programmers with better potential skills? He wasn’t sure there were even that many people in the country. How could he have low experience and low potential? He was still rocking #1 on cost to recruit, but his overall ranking was embarrassing. How was a lazy kid like him supposed to compete?!! Oh yeah - he was the one who controlled the software. Hah! Back to the CEO job … click “Hire”!
An annoying prompt popped up saying “This candidate is not qualified for this position. We recommend the role of Unpaid Intern or Cafeteria Worker”. Arghh! Stupid program!
Scott went back to the main screen and clicked on some of the other buttons. They were written in non-English languages, but he could translate them. One said “Job Training” clicking on it, he got a prompt “You are not an employee of Genysis. This feature is unavailable.” What the heck! This was his program, and he couldn’t even use it. Hah - Scott had the source code and he was a programmer. This wasn’t going to stop him.
Fifteen minutes later after looking at the most confusing and complex program he’d ever seen, he was ready to give up. He’d found where some of the buttons were labeled, but the security code was obfuscated and unreadable. That was a seriously advanced technique - who even did something like that?
With a sigh, Scott went back and tried adding himself as a Junior Programmer. To his surprise it worked! And there he was, at the top of the Org chart! Hah! Who needs a CEO when you have a Junior Programmer running things like a boss! Going back to the main screen, Scott clicked “Job Training”. He didn’t actually want to do some boring training but was curious to see if he could access another section of the program. He was pleased to see a new screen. There was a list of web links along with various scores and yet another ranking. Among the components were ease of understanding, value to company, cost of training. Everything on the top page was free. Did the software somehow know his budget was basically zero?
Backing out a screen he returned to the "Corporate" data screen. There was now a lot more information than the initial name & core business. Now it looked like this:
Name
Genysis
Core Business
Technology
Employees
1
Training Budget
43.50
Recruiting Budget
0
Monthly Salary Budget
0
CEO
?
That training budget was pretty sad and oddly specific. Out of curiosity, Scott checked his bank account. $43.50! Ok, it was embarrassing that he was broke but he was also kind of outraged that this software was somehow poking around in his banking information. That was definitely illegal and more importantly, could he hack this code to get into some billionaire’s account and borrow a few million that he wouldn’t even miss??? A search of the code only gave him a headache.
Then he searched through the job training list to see if there was anything for reverse engineering software when you had the code but couldn’t really understand it. Not surprisingly, nothing really matched that.
All right, he didn’t want to do any training anyway. It was time to look at getting a CEO! Hah, good luck finding someone with a zero dollar salary and recruiting budget.