Life After Google

Three days into the silent treatment, Derrick—my fiancé and CEO—greenlit his assistant's pitch for a self-driving road trip. He expected me to flip, like always. I didn't. A month later, he came back and saw it—I wasn't the same. He backed Molly, stole my project, and thought I'd explode. I didn't. I just helped her draft the proposal. He trashed everything I built, just so she could snag her year-end bonus. I didn't fight back. Took the blame, took the hit. Molly was all smug. "See? Told you. You can't go at Yara head-on. Give her the silent treatment—she folds. She's scared of losing you. That's why she's playing nice." Derrick ate it up. Called her smart. Then he pulled me aside—offered a raise, a promotion, even a fancy wedding. First time he'd ever brought it up. But he missed one detail: he'd already signed off on my resignation while he was off playing road trip king. And I'd already dumped him. That was it. Clean cut. Nothing left.

The HR manager slid a severance agreement across the table and said coldly, "You're fired." I froze. "Why?" Just one week ago, my boss had praised me in the company meeting and called me one of the team's most valuable people. The HR manager shrugged. "Ms. Lyttle, you're already 35. You don't have the energy of younger employees anymore, and you're not what you used to be. You no longer fit the company's future." I joined this company when I was 29. Over the past six years, I wrote countless lines of code and worked through more sleepless nights than I could remember. Every time the company faced a major system failure, I led the emergency response and saved it from catastrophic losses. And now they were telling me I was too old and too slow. I laughed in disbelief. "So you've already copied all my experience and skills into an AI, haven't you?" The HR manager paused for a moment before answering confidently, "AI never gets tired, never takes time off, and never asks for a raise. Once the company has an employee like that, why would we keep you?" I looked at her. "Are you sure the AI has learned everything I know?" She smiled. "Absolutely." The moment I heard that, I finally relaxed. Long ago, I had already hidden a trap inside my code to keep my skills from being copied. The moment their AI employee went live, the company would only have three days before everything fell apart.

"Kylie, this year's annual bonus is evaluated based on two factors: performance and peer reviews. "Since your team never participates in company social events, your coworkers all gave you poor ratings. That's why this is your year-end bonus." Around me, the male employees were receiving bonuses in the tens of thousands. And yet, the women I led—developers who had worked for over ten years and built every core system the company relied on—each received nothing more than a coffee gift card and a mug engraved with the company logo. I laughed out loud. Then I turned and walked into my office and submitted resignation requests for the entire technical team. The manager, Preston Alec, sneered. "Good riddance. AI can replace women like you who only know how to have children." A few days later, the very people who had mocked me were standing in front of me, begging me to come back. I smiled in return. "AI conquers everything, doesn't it?"

At the end of the year, the company made employees vote on who would be laid off. In front of the boss, the votes were read aloud one by one. Natalie Reed. One vote. Natalie. Two votes. Natalie... thirty votes. All thirty people on my team had voted me out. I clenched my fists and looked around at my coworkers. Every single one of them avoided my eyes. Maggie Turner was the oldest on the team. I knew she had to pick up her kid, so whenever she could not finish her work and had to rush to her kid’s school, I stayed behind and cleaned up after her. Dylan joined last year. He was losing sleep every night over money for his wedding. I squeezed time out of my own schedule, helped him complete his project, and got him a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus. And the trainee closest to me started trembling the moment I looked at her. She looked just as timid as she had when her hands shook and spilled wine all over a client. Back then, to fix the mess for her, I apologized to the client and drank until I had a stomach hemorrhage. Only then did she pass probation. I could not help feeling hurt. The boss looked at the result and asked if I had anything to say. I took a deep breath and asked everyone on the team, “Why did you vote for me?” My timid trainee suddenly found her courage. “Because you always pretend to help people, then steal our credit.” “Otherwise, how could someone as useless as you become the top salesperson?” I laughed, took off my employee badge, and placed it on the table. A week later, my boss was kneeling outside my door, begging me, the so-called useless one, to come back to the company.

I give up on my position as a higher-up in a listed company just so I can accompany my wife, Jennifer Hurley, to a rural area to carry out a cultural tourism project. I even help her secure subsidies from the government and transform that project into a state-recognized exemplary project. But the first thing Jennifer does right after becoming the main person in charge of the project is force me to quit. "I want to tender an application for this project to be recognized nationally. Unfortunately, as the main person in charge, my spouse isn't allowed to take on any roles in the business aspect. "Either you quit your job or get divorced. You should make your choice." I don't hesitate to quit my job on the spot. But after that, Jennifer has her assistant, Maurice Gould, take over my position immediately. Her reasoning is, "Young people know more about coming up with creative ways to promote cultural projects. Our project needs new blood." At the afterparty, Jennifer raises her wine glass and gives a grand speech on the project's success. It turns out that I'm the only one who gets kicked out after everything I've done.

What happens when a billionaire CEO goes to college? Faith is about to find out. Utterly and completely broke, Faith is forced to work three different jobs to support herself through college. Unlike her counterparts, Faith failed to get the good fortune of being born into a rich family. God's attempt to make it up to her must have been giving her a super sharp brain which is the only reason why she could attend the prestigious Barbell University on a half scholarship. But, with the remaining half of her tuition going into $35,000, Faith is forced to slave away night and day at her part-time jobs while simultaneously attending classes, completing assignments, taking tests and writing exams. Faith would do anything--literally anything, to get some respite, including taking on the job of tutoring a famously arrogant, former-dropout, self-made billionaire CEO of a tech company for a tidy sum. Devlin has returned to college after five years to get the certificate he desperately needs to close an important business deal. Weighed down by memories of the past, Devlin finds himself struggling to move ahead. Can Faith teach this arrogant CEO something more than Calculus and Algebra? Will he be able to let go of the past and reach for something new?