My Code, My Call Chapter 2

The seventh month was the annual performance review.

Everyone had to write a year-end summary and present it to the entire department for ten minutes.

I wrote an 8-slide deck.

CloudStow Warehouse System core module development. 470,000 lines of code. 127 version iterations. 120,000 average daily orders processed.

Mark wrote a 35-slide deck.

The title was: From 0 to 1: How I Led a Team to Deliver a Million-Dollar Project.

He stood on the stage, his delivery full of passion and emotion.

"When this project first started, there were only two of us. Me and Lydia."

He said my name.

I was a little surprised.

"Lydia was responsible for the foundational code implementation, while I was responsible for the overall technical architecture and project management."

Foundational code implementation.

He called 470,000 lines of code "foundational code implementation."

He continued, "We faced many challenges, but under my coordination, the team overcame every hurdle, one by one."

He said "my coordination" five times.

He said "team collaboration" three times.

He never mentioned my name again.

The CTO listened, then nodded. "Mark, your management skills have improved significantly."

Then it was my turn.

I stood on stage and got through my 8 slides in four minutes.

The CTO asked, "Lydia, how are the coding standards?"

I said, "Every function is commented, and all naming conventions follow camel case."

The CTO asked again, "What about unit test coverage?"

I said, "82%."

The CTO nodded and said nothing more.

When the final performance ratings came out, Mark got an 'A'.

I got a 'B+'.

"Lydia, your annual bonus multiplier is 1.2," HR said.

"And Mark's?"

HR didn't answer.

I found out later that Mark's multiplier was 2.5.

My bonus was $18,000.

His was $50,000.

Same project, same department, same year.

He got $32,000 more than I did.

That night, I sat alone at my desk until 11 PM.

Sam messaged me. "Lydia, why are you still here?"

I replied, "Fixing a bug."

"What bug?"

"A bug in my head."

Sam sent back a question mark.

I didn't reply.

The eighth month, the system had a major crash.

At two in the morning, the client called. Thirty thousand orders had vanished from the database.

My phone blew up.

Mark called me: "Lydia, figure out what's wrong!"

The client called me: "Lydia, can the data be recovered?"

The CTO called me: "This is a production incident! It has to be solved tonight!"

I crawled out of bed and opened my laptop.

I went through the logs line by line, checked the code block by block.

At 3:30 AM, I found the cause.

It was a configuration file Mark had changed last week. He'd entered the wrong parameter for the database connection pool.

I took a screenshot, ready to post it in the group chat.

Then I hesitated and deleted it.

I spent the next two hours writing a data recovery script, pulling all thirty thousand orders from the backup database.

At 5:30 AM, the data was fully restored.

I messaged Mark: "It's fixed."

He replied instantly: "Great! Thanks for your hard work."

Then he sent a message to the group chat:

"Good morning, leadership. The incident from last night has been resolved. After investigation, it was a configuration conflict caused by a temporary server expansion. Lydia and I have completed the data recovery work together. We will optimize our deployment process to prevent similar issues in the future."

"Lydia and I together."

I had worked alone for three and a half hours.

He had slept through the night.

He called that "together."

The next day, the CTO praised him in the main company chat: "Regarding last night's incident, Mark's handling was decisive and minimized the losses."

Mark replied: "It was all thanks to great teamwork."

No one asked who was the person writing code at three in the morning.

I sat at my desk, reading the messages, and suddenly felt so tired.

Not physically tired.

It was the kind of exhaustion that leaves a hollow space in your chest.

Sam quietly asked me, "Lydia, why didn't you tell them you did it all by yourself?"

I said, "What good would that do?"

"At least... management would know."

"And then what?"

Sam fell silent.