Disclaimer: I do not own Silicon Valley

Chapter 9 – Engineering Servers

"Thanks for coming in and sitting down with us. We're really excited to meet a few good engineers to join the Pied Piper Team.", I said as it was time now to hire additional engineers to share the workload of the team.

"So why don't you tell us a little about yourself?", Jared asked from beside me as we were taking the interviews in the Kitchen of the incubator.

"I don't work before noon. Or after 2:00 PM. And I need to bring my dog to work. Are you... are you dog-friendly?", the guy, high as a kite in a red hoodie in front of me asked.

"Oh, yeah, you can bring your dog to work.", I said nodding my head.

"That's not what I asked. Are you dog-friendly?" he asked again with a curious and high face.

Then we met our next prospective employee, a black dude in a blue t-shirt. "Um Nice pool. Can my dog go in?", I wanted to say fuck no that's not hygienic. But for the sake of this conversation I said, "Yeah, yeah, we're very dog-friendly."

"Is there a lifeguard? - Um - 'Cause my dog can't swim.", I just look at him and then turned to Jared. Jared seems to have the same idea and looked at me in wonder at the weirdness of the statement. I pursed my lips very tightly so that I wouldn't laugh.

"It says here on your resume that from 2010 to 2011 you 'crushed it'?", I asked, reading from the resume.

"That's actually an old resume. It should also read that I crushed it from 2013 to present.", the bespectacled engineer in the hideous glasses said.

"So are we to understand that you did not "crush it" in 2012?", I had to put my hand on my mouth from laughing out loud at Jared's unintentionally witty remark.

"There was a medical situation preventing me from crushing it to my usual standards. So I had to take some time off until I was able to crush it at 100%, at which point I resumed crushing it full-time.". he said as if made perfect sense.

"So it says here that you're proficient in C++, code assembly for multiple processor architectures, and that you are a cyborg?", I said again reading from the resume of the half-dead gothic cyborg.

"That is correct short for a cybernetic organism. I came into this world of filth and pain with a congenital heart condition, requiring the installation of a pacemaker, upon which I am mortally dependent.", he said in a monotone voice just like a cyborg.

"Mmm.", Jared mumbled looking at me as I tried and failed to hide my smile.

"Wow, he's technically a cyborg.", I whispered to him.

"Yeah, yeah. Makes the resume accurate.", Jared said out loud.

"Look, we all know that I can make a shitload more money working for some multi-colored Happy Town in a hermetically-sealed box.

But permission to be honest?", cyborg said in a monotone with his palms joined on the table.

"Permission granted.", Jared said. But he didn't say anything yet just looking at Jared with a small creepy smile.

"I like that you guys are so weird.", he finally spoke again, still in a monotone with a creepy smile.

"Mmm.", Jared just mumbled.

"Yes, we are the weird ones.", I said sarcastically with a snort. Though I don't think cyborg understood the sarcasm.

XxxxxX

After a few minutes, I was sitting with Jared, Dinesh, and Gilfoyle discussing the prospective employees. "So the rest of them were duds. But his cyborg guy seems like a solid engineer." I asked passing around his resume to Dinesh and Gilfoyle.

"I agree with you, Richard. My only concern is that he is named Jared. Won't it get confusing around here with two Jared's? If you want I can go back to my original name, 'Donald.'", he said to all of us.

"No that's too big a hassle. We will just go with Other Jared.", Gilfoyle spoke up.

"OJ for short.", Dinesh piled on.

"Wait. Jared was here first. Should he be just Jared or Original Jared?", I got into a bit of fun as well.

"Thank you, Richard. I was just about to say the same thing.", Jared said looking at me with a smile for taking his side. "But don't you think OJ is a little controversial?", Jared continued.

"You should be flattered. OJ Simpson is one of the most recognizable people on the planet", Gilfoyle continued ribbing Jared.

"Was that Jared Patakian I saw exiting the house?", Erlich said barging into his kitchen.

"Yes, we just interviewed him.", Jared told him. "We think he's great.", Jared continued. I didn't say anything giving my full attention to Erlich.

"He actually is great. I tried to hire him for Aviato. But then he took the offer, shopped it around town, and got more dough at a different gig. I didn't care for the way that he handled it.

So I am going to have to err on the side of caution and say don't hire him.", Erlich said more tact and humility than in cannon.

"Well, I'm sorry that that happened to you, but it's not your call whether we hire someone or not.", Jared got up to confront Erlich. It looks like he is developing a backbone. Good for him.

"We've got to hire a lot of people, and he was the only one that we all agree on.", Jared pleaded with him with joined hands.

"But this is my house. I'm going to be on the board of this company. I mean, I must get dings, right?" at our confused faces, he expanded, "Dings? - Like in a jury or 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'"

"Erlich, thank you for letting us stay in your house while we figure out what we need office-wise. Really. But I'm sorry. You don't get a say in this. We're going to hire the android." Jared said putting his foot down.

"He's a cyborg, Richard.", Erlich said completely ignoring Jared now and turning to me.

"Erlich let me ask you this, Do you really think he would do that? Use our offer to shop around town for a better and then ditch us? Also, do you really don't want him with us?", I asked looking Erlich in the eye.

Erlich didn't answer for a few seconds, actually reflecting on what I asked and what he said then he nodded to me. "I am sure Richard."

In reply, I just took Cyborg's resume from Dinesh's hand and tore in two pieces in front of everybody.

"I am sorry Jared, but if Erlich feels so strongly about this guy then I will go with his instinct. Plus we just met the guy and I am not willing to create a dispute in this team over a guy we just met. Which would have happened between you and Erlich if we had hired him. Now, lets set up some more interviews. Gilfoyle, Dinesh come on let's get back to work." I said getting up from my seat and going towards my work station in the living room. I saw Jared's sad but understanding eyes. I saw respect and appreciation in Erlich, he even stopped me as I was leaving the room to say thanks to me.

Well, that's one useless argument avoided.

XxxxxX

So we were now meeting Carla. Who I was very excited to meet. Not only because she seemed like a really interesting character that should have been made a regular. But also because she was smoking hot with those big eyes and that funky punk rock like hair.

"I'm using VP9 ABR to reduce bits and using WebRTC to carry the bulk of the load via p2p.

So basically I pay for one tiny-ass outgoing stream and the user's ISP picks up the whole tab.", she said.

"The users pay for all that bandwidth, not you? Wow, that could save us a ton of money.", I told her genuinely in shock.

"Yeah, a shit ton.". she said casually nodding her head.

"And do you think you could integrate it into our platform by January in time for CES?", liking this girl more and more.

"Look, I'm not going to get in your way. You know you design the engine. I just assemble the car. I could have an alpha of that up in a solid weekend of hacking.", wow this girl had an aura of cool around her.

"Wow." I exclaimed.

"Cool." Jared said.

"Plus I could count on one hand the number of people on earth who could handle sitting in a room with Dinesh and Gilfoyle all day.", she said and I snorted at that.

" So - All of that. Plus you're a woman.

What? No, I just mean we would absolutely love to have a strong woman working here.", Jared put a foot in his mouth.

"I'm not a 'woman engineer'.

I'm an 'engineer'.", she replied annoyed to Jared with air quotes.

"- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay, no, no, no.

No, yes, of course.

We want to hire the best people who happen to be women, regardless of whether or not they are women.

That part is irrelevant." Jared kept on fumbling.

"Are you doing that interviewing thing where you try to rattle somebody to see if they freak out or not?", she asked with narrowed eyes to both of us.

"Uh, sadly no.", I said shaking my head in disappointment. "This is... that's just Jared." I continued.

"I wouldn't know how to do that.", Jared commented agreeing with me.

"Well, I am aggressively unemployed right now. So why don't you give me a call when you know what you want to do?" She said getting ready to leave.

"I am sorry, but we are not going to do that.", I told her in a solemn tone.

"Oh. I see. May I ask why?", she asked in a little disappointment.

"Cause I am giving you the job right now.", I said with a smile.

"Really!", she beamed at that.

"Really. Come on let's discuss the specifics.", I told her.

"Sure!", she exclaimed very perkily, with a dazzling smile.

No No. Bad Richard. You have a girlfriend. But she is so cute and hot. No Bad Richard. Very Very Bad Richard.

XxxxxX

I enter the living room with Jared where all the workstations are set up. It seems Carla had just arrived and was beginning her prank on Jared & Gilfoyle.

"Uh, Richard has something very important to tell you.", Jared said to the room as if introducing me on stage.

"Yes.

Ahem, so, Jared has informed me that as CEO, I need to be able to answer any questions that you might have about Pied Piper's harassment policy and workplace code of conduct.

Apparently, every company our size has to have one of those.

Essentially, if you find the workplace hostile in any way, you can submit a written complaint.

It will be completely anonymous.

Essentially, don't do or say anything that might offend anyone.

Okay? Thank you.

That's the policy.", I finished as quickly as I could and moved to the back of the room to enjoy the show that was about to start.

"- Okay.

Guys, um This is actually pretty serious.

I mean, we're all cool here, but we know each other.

So obviously, when Dinesh calls me retarded Frankenstein, or he describes me as AIDS lady, or Gilfoyle refers to me as effeminate K. D. Lang, I know this is a joke among friends." Jared said trying to specify the policy.

Oh, poor Jared.

" It's not a joke.", Dished replied.

"We're not friends," Gilfoyle commented.

"See, it's hilarious. But, um, as we grow, we're going to be adding a lot of new people to this company, and to this office, and some of them might not be as amused as I am by such strong language. Lawsuits happen.

So, questions?", Jared inquired.

"Oh, uh, I have a question.", Carla said raising her hand. Oh here it goes. It hasn't even started and I am already laughing.

"Mm-hmm."

"My best friend's nickname is Cunty." Carla said shocking Jared.

"I'm sorry, her name is…", Jared tried to reclarify thinking he might have heard it wrong. "Cunty. And I was hoping I could call her Cunty while I'm here.", Carla started her prank.

"Okay, that one's easy. No, you cannot.", Jared said shaking his head.

"Cause, you know, I want to have Cunty come visit me for lunch, and if I can't call Cunty "Cunty," then it's like, I'm not going to want to have Cunty over at all, which I feel like kind of violates my rights Yeah, um, it as a woman." Carla responded with an innocent face.

I couldn't control myself, I keeled over laughing.

"Okay, I'm going to have to get back to you on that one. Richard why are you laughing?", Jared asked me curious and confused.

"Her best friend's nickname is Cunty.", Gilfoyle shouted astonished amidst chuckles, that how did Jared not get that he was just played.

"That was awesome!", I said getting up from the ground as I held m" stomach in pain. "If nothing else, you are going to be very fun to be around Carla. My god you are the perfect combination of cute and hilarious.", I said walking out with a pouting Jared, never seeing a minute blush on her cheeks.

Bouts of laughter kept coming to me as I recalled the incident for the rest of the day. That night when I told the incident to Monica, she laughed too but not as hard as I thought she would. Also every time I mentioned Carla, her smile dimmed just a bit. Wonder why that was?

XxxxxX

"Hey Erlich, Russ Hannamen sent me these 2 passes for some charitable ball for billionaires. You want it?"

"Fuck yeah!"

Erlich might have grown on me, but that doesn't mean I am going to just pass up a chance to fuck with him.

XxxxxX

"….We went to Taco Bell.

Erlich, he started crying in Taco Bell.

He tried to blame the taco sauce.", I just had a very amusing conversation with Jin-Yang.

"Richard?" Carla called from behind me.

"Yes.", I replied as I turned around.

"OJ says you wanted to see me?" –

"Yeah."

"Um, I don't want to say this any of this, at all, but several employees have lodged a complaint, against you.",I told her giving a knowing look as we sat across the kitchen counter from each other.

"For what?", she asked with a smirk.

"Um for making this a hostile workplace.

By, quote, 'repeatedly rubbing our fucking faces in the fact that Richard Hendricks is a pussy who gave a new hire more than us.'" Jared read the written complaint next to me.

"Mm-hmm. Interesting. And which two of the several employees, lodged the complaint?", Carla asked giving a curious look to Jared.

"Actually, our policy guarantees anonymity, so I can't tell you that.", Jared said shaking his head.

"Look, you and I both know how much you make.

- Are you fucking with them?", I asked with a smirk already knowing the answer.

"- Yeah, of course, I'm fucking with them.

I bought a fake Dolce & Gabbana bag at a swap meet to piss them off and apparently, it did.

And I lied and said I was getting a Mercedes.

Oh, I also left a fake credit-card statement open on my screen, - 'cause I thought they'd see it.

Did they see it?", she asked excitedly.

" - They saw it."

"- Yeah, sweet."

"- Carla.", I said in a slightly abolishing tone.

"Okay, all right, but what I used to do to fuck with them involved gay porn and Photoshop, so I don't think that would be cool after OJ's big harassment speech."

I couldn't control myself and started laughing wildly at that. It took me a few minutes to control myself. "Ohh man… You are something else. I haven't laughed like this since the last time Dinesh accidentally declared his love for Gilfoyle during the Tech-Crunch.", I told her laughing still finding it hard to control my laughter.

Even she started chuckling at that. "You have to tell me that story!", she begged.

"Maybe some other time. For now, just let up with pranks before you break those two. I need all the engineers fully functioning until I reach January."

"Fine!", she whined. "I will. But you have to promise to tell me the story of how you pranked Gavin Belson in full detail! Do we have a deal?", she asked extending her hand for us to shake on it.

I just shook my head in amusement and then shook her hand "Sure. But I thought everyone would have forgotten it by now."

"Are you kidding! You are a legend Richard. The whole valley was talking about you. You are an inspiration to all geeks like me. And besides, you were the biggest reason I joined Pied Piper.", she said the last part a little shyly.

I did my best to ignore that and its implications and move on.

"Thank you. Now, please remember our bargain, alright?"

"Sure Richard, anything for you.", she said with a teasing smirk and left with, if I am not mistaken, a little sway of her hips. Oh boy, this is going to be trouble.

"What just happened?" Jared asked.

"Nothing. Absolutely Nothing. Not one thing!", I said leaving the kitchen myself to get some fresh air. Maybe even call my girlfriend... the girlfriend I very very much love.

XxxxxX

So a few weeks passed and a lot happened. We finally found a commercial building with good security to establish as our office. The security was very good with biometric scans and triple verification to get in.

Dinesh was very pissed that I said no to the building with the supermodel office on the floor above us. Though Monica was suspiciously cheery when I told her about this.

Anyways the office set me back a 100k but it was fine. Now we were packing our shit at the incubator to move to the new office. Erlich's whole thing with the Kimono just got over and I could see he was super sad when I told him not only we are moving to a new office but also I was moving out.

I had leased a 3 bedroom pre-furnished apartment five-minute walk away from the new office.

Just as we were putting the last of the boxes in the truck Jared came running with panic on his face.

XxxxxX

"Hey, Richard?", he said anxiously.

"Oh, hey Jared."

"Richard, we need to talk. It's really important."

"Okay. Hey, guys, lets go inside. Jared wants to talk. By his expression, it doesn't sound like good news."

Once all of us were inside in the living room, Jared dropped the bomb.

"Richard, the hosting company that was going to be renting us server space just dropped their bid."

"Okay, well, let's just get servers from some other provider."

"Well, I just contacted five other web services companies, and they're all denying us.

I think I know what might be happening here.

All of them Rackspace, Softlayer, Amazon.

I mean, they can't afford to lose Hooli's business.", Jared explained to the horror of the people in the room.

"So Gavin Belson can just pick up the phone and make us radioactive to every single web-hosting service?", Dinesh exclaimed in shock.

"It's how these guys operate.", Jared said shrugging.

"I mean, when Bill Gates got married on Lanai, he rented every helicopter on the Hawaiian islands so that paparazzi couldn't use them to fly over.

Although in that case, it was a positive, because now you can imagine that wedding however you want.", Jared said giving an example to aggressive business practices.

"What? - Jared? Our entire platform is web-based.

We need servers for that.

What the fuck are we going to do?", Dinesh panicked.

"I know what the fuck we're going to do. But you're not going to like it." Gilfoyle said looking at all of us in the room. "We build our own servers.", Gilfoyle continued from the corner.

"Gilfoyle, servers are essentially a utility.

I mean, you wouldn't dig a well for water or build a generator for power.", Jared tried to reason with Gilfoyle.

"I think we should dig our own well and build our own generator.

I also think we should store a year's worth of food and ammunition in a blast cellar.

But we don't.

So good luck when the shit hits the fan.

Look, Richard, we're about precision, about shaving yoctoseconds off latency at every layer in the stack.

If we rent from a public cloud, we're using servers that are by definition generic and unpredictable.", He said trying to justify his idea to me.

"Yeah, but we're already up against a serious deadline. I mean, how long is building our own servers going to set us back? .", Dinesh said being a negative ninny again

"If I busted my ass? I could stand them up inside a week right here in the house.", Gilfoyle glared at Dinesh challengingly.

"Look, Richard, truth is, this is a huge positive.

I tried running the platform on my old coin rig. At 5200 gigaflops, your algorithm FLIES compared to normal CPUs.

No host could match the config that I built here in the house.

Oh, and also, we don't seem to have a choice.", Gilfoyle completed sarcastically.

"But that would cost a ton.", This time Jared said being a negative ninny.

Okay, that's it. Its time I Step In.

"I think Gilfoyle is right. Gilfoyle are you sure we can do this?", I said looking him directly in the eye.

"Yes.", simple and straight reply.

"How much time and money do you need to build servers that can handle millions of users?", I asked Gilfoyle making his eyes go wide at my ambition.

"Ma...ma...million!? Are you crazy Richard!", Dinesh the negative ninny said.

"If I have all the engineers helping me… a month and 500k, minimum.", He replied shocking everyone in the room.

"You will have a million and a month. Get it done. I am putting you in charge of it. Build me the best goddam servers this valley has ever seen." This shocked everyone in the room even further.

"Richard that will practically wipe out our cash reserves. If you really want to do it we will have to cut back on everything else, including the new office.", Jared tried to reason with me.

"We are not cutting back on anything. We are keeping the office and building the servers in the office. We certainly have enough space there to do it.", I said cutting off Jared right then and there, my mind made up.

"Trust me Jared, by the time the reserves are gone and we do not have a revenue stream, I will cut us another cheque. If Gilfolye says he could do it, I am inclined to trust the best god-dam engineer I have met in my life.", I told everyone in the room. I swear I saw Gilfoyle chest swell in pride.

Then I turned and focused all my attention on Gilfoyle. "Hire part-time engineers if you have to. I will have Jared help you with the hiring for the additional help. I will see if Monica can scrounge us up some talent as well. Dinesh you and I will be slogging on the platform. Erlich if you are up for it buddy we will need all hands on deck and you are a solid engineer if a bit rusty. We could use you." I said looking at Dinesh and Erlich. Erlich seemed pretty enthusiastic at not parting from the team.

Gilfoyle got up and promptly knelt on one knee with his head bowed and a hand-folded on his chest, "Thy will shall be done, Dark Lord."

I just chucked at his antics. "Very Well my Loyal Friend, its time to get to work!", I said hearing cheers all around.

XxxxxX

Just as we were halfway done setting up servers, Nucleus announced their preview by landing the deal to live stream a UFC fight. Ohh…things are going to heat up!

XxxxxX