Spent the day doing phase two of that for which yesterday was phase one. We parallelized. We tuned. We tweaked, and we timed. We found stupid bugs up and down the chain, and we removed them. We automated. We timed again. 0.26 seconds per compound/CPU, for those who are keeping track.
At five, the boss came in and said “It’s beer time.” Then he made us shut our laptops and come with him to this place where they serve beer and play music. There were many people there. Most of them work at Evil Pharma, but they seemed like nice people anyway. Evil pharma employs about 40,000 people worldwide, and these were just a few of them. I met a robotics person (who manages the robots that toss vats of steaming goo around) and two oncology / genetics people who (I assume) steal people’s souls for a living and then sell them back in fractions. They were vague about what they really do. We talked about how much we used to party back in college, and what a pain it is to be a grown up.
Then the boss said “We need to hire you. Is that possible?” I said “no,” and explained that I’m ruined for future employment by the whole “work from home, kick ass all day” lifestyle. He persisted. Then I explained about the noncompete clause I had signed. He persisted beyond flattery to the point where I said “what is this? don’t feed the ego, man!”
To that, he said “Chris, you just did in two days what we failed to do in two months. I’m serious. Can you at least come back next week and do more? You’re expensive but worth it.”
So that’s my new slogan / motto / bumper sticker: “Expensive but worth it.”
Oh yeah, and my brain is totally fried. I feel like two months worth of smart got sucked out of me in about two days. I think I’m going to go watch some movie with explosions in it now.
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