Artyom Voronin learned about his firing from a notification on his smartphone.
He was sitting in the "Horizon Hub" coworking space — one of those trendy Silicon Valley spots where designers spent millions on an "atmosphere of productivity": floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows, two-thousand-dollar chairs, a coffee machine that made latte art, and a quiet lo-fi beat that no one ever turned on voluntarily.
It was 11:47 AM.
The sun was shining so perfectly it seemed staged. The rare California cloud cover accentuated every glint on the glass facades. Somewhere behind the wall, a group of marketers laughed — that same laughter of people utterly convinced their work has meaning.
Artyom was fixing a bug in a facial recognition system for bank cameras. The third time that week. The same error: the algorithm confused people with Asian features under certain lighting angles. Nothing complicated. Routine work he could do half-asleep. Honestly, the last year and a half, that's exactly how he'd been working — half-asleep.
The phone in his jeans pocket vibrated briefly. Once. Businesslike. Faceless. Artyom didn't pay attention. He was finishing a code comment — an explanation for whoever would maintain the system after him. "After him" sounded like a euphemism for death, though it was only about the next sprint.
A second vibration. And a third — in a row.
He took out his phone.
The screen displayed a notification from the corporate portal. White background, blue logo, black letters. Everything as usual — and completely different.
"Dear Artyom Voronin,
*We inform you that your position of Senior Validation Engineer is subject to redundancy due to process optimization and the full implementation of automated decision-making system version 4.2.*
Your last working day is today — October 21, 2028.
Access to all corporate systems and resources will be deactivated at 18:00.
Thank you for your contribution to the company's development.
The People Operations Team."
He read the first paragraph again. Then the second. Then went back to the first — as if the words might change if viewed from a different angle.
The words didn't change.
Senior Validation Engineer. Redundancy. Last working day — today.
Thirty-five years old. Two diplomas. Twelve years in the industry. Sleepless nights. Flights to time zones he'd never visited. Conference calls with Indian contractors at three in the morning. Thousands of lines of code he'd written, rewritten, optimized, defended in code reviews, buried in legacy systems.
