Julius Chance
Bird
“Tell me, you still work as a programmer, right?” Victor pretended not to understand the humor.
“Yes. At the moment, I have a contract with the Sydney branch of Deutsche Bank. But I'm going to give up programming.”
“Why so?”
“Age. Employers start discriminating. The average age of programmers at Google, for example, is thirty years. And the proportion of those over forty is less than three percent. And in Facebook, developers are even younger. I’m forty-five. So the time has come for me to change the way I earn my livelihoods. One option is to convert to IT managers.
“Well, I didn’t know that programmers have careers as short as boxers. But you have to postpone you plans for a few years if not forever. I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. And you will get younger straight away!”
“It is widely said that business kills friendships…”
“A-a-a… there are so many sayings, proverbs, superstitions, omens in this world, that you can find hundreds for and hundreds against anything you decided to do. They are all not about us and not for us. I made some inquiries; your fee is a hundred bucks an hour, isn't it? Impressive. But I’m willing to pay you five times as much.”
“Five hundred an hour?” Antony could not believe his ears, “can we go down to the cabin as the noise of the storm drowns out the words?”
“No, no, I’m not sure there aren’t any eavesdropping devices. I called the specialists, they checked everything, but let’s to reinsure. All business conversations will be conducted only on deck, quietly, with the sound of the breaking waves and the howling of the wind.”
“What kind of work is it?”
“After Snowden’s revelations about the CIA’s wiretapping of all the inhabitants of the planet, among the big people around the world, the strong demand rose for absolutely non-eavesdropping means of communication. Customers are not only individual businessmen, Mafiosi and politicians, but also entire governments of a number of countries.
A lot of people don’t like being hooked by the CIA. They are willing to pay billions.” Victor finished and looked straight to Antony’s eyes.
“I agree with what you’ve said. But you just can’t imagine the gigantic volume and complexity of this work! I admire you as an entrepreneur, but your small firm can’t handle that, sorry to be blunt. The tender will be won by some international telecommunications giant.” Antony smiled some with guilt.
“Well, this is exactly where you’re wrong, my friend! The very giants have no chance here! They won’t even be invited to the table. It is clear to a fool that the global scale of wiretapping could not have been organized without the cooperation of leading manufacturers of equipment with the US special services. Judge yourself – after the fact of wiretapping of German Chancellor Merkel was revealed, has been opened a single criminal case against at least one employee of at least one telecommunications company? Not. No one even was kicked out of work! And the corporations and the CIA don’t even condescend to apologize for!
The larger the firm, the more likely it is that it has already been recruited by the secret services. Therefore, our customers are searching among not so large, but certainly independent companies, such as mine.” Victor paused for a long moment and then looked at his friend for his honest opinion and stand on the matter.
