Making Commerce Great for Everyone
“Another day at TalDorify.” Scanlan cracks his knuckles as he boots up his laptop. His freshly prepared pour-over coffee sits nicely on a coaster on his ‘corner office’ desk. He stares out the window at the cityscape down below and smiles. The colours from the sunrise are starting to fade into the clear blue sky, but it’s beautiful either way. As his startup applications automatically turn on, Scanlan hazards a guess at how many notifications from the East Coast and Europe will be waiting in his Slack DMs. He’s expecting at least three panicked requests from Taryon, and will be surprised if none of the sales reps have reached out yet.
The little red notification bubble tells him he has 5 unread messages or direct pings. Not bad. Below average for the typical start to the week. He begins to sift through them, in addition to the support tickets that have piled up over the weekend, and other customer-related inquiries in his email. Mentally prioritizing the requests based on how long they’ll take to answer, and which account they’re for, Scanlan sighs and mutters to himself. “What would you all do without me?”
TalDorify started as a small developer-led organization on the East Coast. Their founder, Allura Vysoren, put the team together over a decade ago. She now leads the company with her partner, in both life and business, Kima. They’ve been extremely successful, in fact, they’re the most successful startup in Tal’Dorei history to-date. Scanlan was lucky to get the job here, three years ago, as a solutions engineer.
But the glamour of working for one of the most progressive, successful, tech businesses in the country has now started to fade. It’s been three years and he hasn’t had a real promotion. Sure, they’ve changed his title. But the pay increases have been pathetic, and the type of work is no more challenging than when he first started. For some reason, his boss thinks that more work is equal to more challenging work. He’s beginning to get bored and knows himself too well to think that will go well.
Still, how many companies would let Scanlan work from home 100% of the time? Would provide funds for him to totally kit out his at-home workspace? Who else could he roll into work within his sweatpants, and be trusted to just do what he needs to do without the constant oversight that an office brings?
He slogs through the morning doing demos for half-witted sales colleagues. They’re not all idiots, some of them are extremely intelligent. But some of them, Scanlan wants to banish to the Astral Sea, never to return. He answers inquiry after inquiry in between meetings, both scheduled and ad hoc. The call with Kashaw is especially painful. How that guy still doesn’t know what TalDorify does, after selling the product for over three years, Scanlan will never understand. After Taryon’s fifth question of the day, Scanlan mutes the direct message channel on Slack. He’ll deal with it later.
Chromatic News
He’s just about to jump over to his personal computer for some much-needed relief, and a lunch break when an @everyone message comes through in the general channel.
#general
!!! IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT @everyone @here …
Scanlan rolls his eyes as he sees the notification pop up on the bottom right of his screen. You don’t need to use @here if you’re also using @everyone. But whatever. He clicks on the pop-up to see the whole message.
<
…due to the recent escalation of the Chroma Virus Outbreak, all of TalDorify’s offices are to be shut down immediately. You will have the rest of the week to coordinate a time to pick up any office equipment you’ll need, but effective today, no one is permitted to work in any of the offices.
We will continue to monitor the situation and update all staff as more information comes to light. If you have immediate questions or concerns, please pass them on to your team lead for the time being.
We thank you for your immediate response and patience with us as we navigate this outbreak, together. Stay safe.
Thank you, always,
Your management team –
Allura, Kima, Seeker, and Tofor
>
Wow, not quite what he was expecting. Several new message sounds go off as both Scanlan’s phone and Slack blow up.
Vox Machina
Scanlan clicks on the private Vox Machina Slack channel first. Vex set it up a couple of months ago when they all met at company headquarters a couple of months ago. They had teamed up for the hackathon and won the competition. Vex had planned on keeping the project going, but everyone’s been too busy. They’re all loaded up with other garbage to dedicate any real time to it, classic TalDorify.
#VoxMachina (private)
{
Vax (Sr Dev): Woah, crazy news, eh?
Pike (DevOps): Let me know if any of you need supplies, I’ve been stocking up ever since I heard about the virus outbreak last month. I hear we might run out of toilet paper!
Grog (QA/QC): Oh no. Not TP!
Percival (Staff Eng): Relax, I’m sure it’s just a precaution. We’ll be back to normal in a few weeks.
Vex (Team Lead): This is going to disrupt my whole sprint 🙁
Keyleth (Product Manager): I’m stuck in an airport right now…
Vax (Sr Dev): What?! Where are you Kiki? Why are you in an airport?
Keyleth (Product Manager): Emon. I was supposed to be supporting this sales pitch, but obviously that’s not happening anymore!
Scanlan (Solutions): Well, if any of you dopes need internet, The Mansion has a bit of extra space 😉
}
He offers it as a joke, since none of his friends actually live nearby. But he knows at least a few of them have potato quality internet setups, and he braces himself for their IT questions. It’s funny how bad with technology someone can be, even when they work for a technology company.
Remote-First
A few weeks go by, and Percy is proven wrong. Which is rare. The Chroma Virus is ripping through the globe and just seems to be getting worse. Their governments have put restrictions on travel, public spaces, and even going outside in some cases. There’s a mandatory mask policy everywhere, and anything deemed non-essential just isn’t happening. Scanlan thinks he’s fortunate he was already using a grocery delivery service, working from home, and that his primary source of social interaction is mainly online.
TalDorify, to their credit, has done a great job adjusting and trying to ease the company into a remote-first environment. They announced this week that everyone now gets a one-time 500 GP to upgrade their at-home offices. It can be for anything that will help them with this adjustment. Scanlan laughs when he sees what Grog and Pike got. The roommates decided that what they needed most in this time of crisis, was the largest bean bag chairs Scanlan has ever seen. He already has a sweet office setup, but he has been wanting this new keyboard… and his set of headphones is last year’s model…
Sales Support
“Hey everyone, thanks for joining us today in these unprecedented times.” Kash kicks off the meeting with his well-rehearsed introduction. Scanlan strains to keep his face impassive. “I know there is so much craziness that must be filling your day-to-day right now, and that’s why I’m so grateful to have a half hour of your time today. At TalDorify, we care about small business owners. We care about your business, and we will do everything in our power to help you on your personal journey to success.”
Scanlan nods, keeping a tight smile on his face. Kash is almost done and will hand off the next 27 minutes of the 30-minute meeting off to him soon. He checks his notes on the company, one more time.
“And with that, I’d like to hand you over to my colleague, Scanlan. He’s a technical wizard, and will be able to answer any and all questions you have about our product.” Kash flashes his iconic toothy smile and mutes his microphone.
“Good morning, or afternoon, depending on where everyone’s calling in from today. I’m Scanlan Shorthalt, Senior Solutions Engineer at TalDorify. I’ve been building technical demos and proof of concepts here for all of TalDorify’s largest customers for the past two years, and have onboarded over a hundred new businesses over my tenure of three years. Prior to TalDorify, I worked as a software developer for a small agency, and previous to that I actually got my Master’s in music, believe it or not.” It’s his standard intro. He does this with all new sales calls and any new onboarding calls where he hasn’t previously met the customer.
This company is actually not the worst. They’re a startup trying to commercialize their mushroom protein process. If they can scale what they’re doing, they could replace up to 80% of Tal’Dorei’s cattle farming for beef, using only a fraction of the land area. Scanlan ends his demo with five minutes to spare. Leaving time for a few, high-level questions, and for Kash to wrap up with next steps.
Priorities
The call ends, and Scanlan slumps back in his chair. He lets out a heavy sigh and gets up to grab a beer. It’s the end of the day, and he’s ready to decompress. The new liquor delivery service came this morning and the mixed pack is calling his name. The annoying ringtone of a Slack call pierces through his headset, and Scanlan turns to see who has to the nerve- Ah, of course, it’s Kashaw.
Begrudgingly, Scanlan answers the call. “Hello?”
“Hey, Scan Man.” Kash uses a nickname that Scanlan would really prefer him not to use. “I just wanted to debrief a little after that call.”
“Uh sure, Kash. But I only have a couple of minutes.” Scanlan has no plans or other meetings, but he has boundaries and it’s 4 PM and he’s been up working since 7 AM with no breaks today.
“Yeah I’ll be quick, promise.” Kash replies.
Scanlan keeps his camera off and goes over to the fridge to grab a, much needed, beverage. “I thought the call went pretty well.”
“Sure did, but I feel like we can do better, you know?” Kash continues. “Like, maybe with some prep beforehand, you could customize your demo environment to have some of their actual data in there.”
Scanlan mutes himself and takes a deep breath. They’ve been over this before.
“You know, like what you did for that telecom sale we closed a couple of months ago.” Kash continues.
Give Kash an inch and he takes a friggen mile. “I remember… but I can’t just go making custom demos for every sale, Kash.”
“But I feel like we’d be able to close way more sales!” He’s not relenting.
“I’ve been given a directive to stick to the template demos, unless the opportunity has been deemed priority.” It’s true. After months of being derailed to build custom demos, Scanlan’s boss finally stepped up for him.
“This is a high priority,” Kash argues. “We need to get sales up this quarter, or we’re all missing our bonuses.”
Scanlan hates it when sales use the term ‘high priority’. It’s either a priority, or it isn’t. If there is more than one priority, then nothing is a priority. But that’s not what executives and directors and people who don’t actually have to do the work, like to hear.
Giving into the urge to check his calendar, Scanlan sees that the demo he’s doing for Kash tomorrow is in the afternoon. Technically he could throw something together. He checks the potential revenue of this opportunity and… you have got to be kidding me. It’s the smallest deal he is supporting this week. “Tomorrow is going to be too short notice, but next time – escalate it to Zara and she can let me know if it’s a priority for a custom demo or not.”
Fortunately Kash relents, and doesn’t try to make small talk with Scanlan about some dumb sports team or anything.
He hangs up and checks Discord to see if any of Vox Machina are playing something. Sure enough, Pike and Grog have logged in to this race car soccer game that’s all the rage at the moment. Scanlan starts up his PC and sends Pike a note to see if they want to bring him into their current game.
New Normal
It’s six months into the pandemic, and while some things have gotten easier, it’s mostly shit. Work has taken the opportunity to put more crap into the sales pipeline, as it seems like everyone and their dog now has an online business. Scanlan’s boss is too worried about ruffling feathers to push back. But Scanlan at least has one thing to look forward to at work. Vex finally got approval to properly resource their hackathon project.
Scheduling brainstorming meetings with all of them is a little difficult since they’re scattered across three different time zones. Percy, Vax, Vex, and Keyleth are all on European time, Grog and Pike on the East Coast, and Scanlan alone on the West Coast. So sometimes they meet without him, but that’s okay. It’s not like he’s contributing to any of the coding. Even though he could. But Vax and Percy are a lot more efficient at it. Plus, they can work together, bouncing ideas off each other with Keyleth and Vex.
To make things easier, Keyleth supplies most of the customer context. If Scanlan has time, he reviews their meeting notes after the fact and provides his own feedback. She’s usually pretty good, but sometimes Scanlan’s nerves are tested with how ignorant the Product Manager can be at times. Like, how can she think that a customer would use an app without an interface unless they’re a developer?
Project Planning
He brings this up the next time all seven of them are on a call together. “It’s looking good, but are we sure we’re targeting the right persona?”
“Please elaborate, Scanlan.” Vex is short, direct, and aims much of her ire on Scanlan.
“Well, this tool doesn’t have an interface. But our target persona is a marketing professional, right? Maybe we should be designing it for developers.” Scanlan suggests. This would be perfect because they wouldn’t have to change any of the actual code, just some of the workflows and how they plan to market it to the broader organization.
Percy is making a face. Why does he always have to make that face? “I don’t know, Kima was pretty clear they only agreed to fund this little endeavour because she thinks this will help sales. And sales wants to sell to more marketing teams.”
Scanlan thinks for a moment. “Then, maybe we need to just target larger marketing teams with technical resources.”
He’s met with a bunch of shoulder shrugs. None of them really know or care how the sales side of the organization works.
“I’ll bring this strategy up the next time I sync with leadership.” Vex promises. “Scanlan, would you mind writing up some notes about how you think that could work?”
Direct message with Vex (Team Lead)
{
Vex (Team Lead): Hey, Scanlan. Kima isn’t buying your strategy. Could you put some revenue numbers together to make a better case for it?
Scanlan (Solutions): sure…
Vex (Team Lead): don’t get sassy with me, we’re on the same team
}
“Then why does it feel like you’re working against me?” Scanlan mutters to himself as he holds himself back from typing a passionate reply.
{
Scanlan (Solutions): I know… you’re just the messenger. It’s just annoying. Maybe you should add me to the next meeting and I can pitch the case face to face?
Vex (Team Lead): well, it’s at 3 AM your time, but be my guest
Scanlan (Solutions): 3 AM? Fuck that, I need my beauty sleep
Vex (Team Lead): hahaha, you sure do
}
Directive from Leadership
On their next team sync, Vex brings the bad news. “So, they’re impressed with the proof of concept… but they aren’t buying our target customer strategy.”
“So, does that mean we can’t build it no more?” Grog asks.
“No… it just means that Scanlan’s right… which, unfortunately, I think he is. We’ll build it all for nothing, because no one will actually use it.”
Percy scoffs, then quickly mutes his microphone. Sorry. He types into the chat.
Keyleth frowns. “What if we change it up a bit?”
“Yeah, if we’re worried about adoption, we could just build an interface.” Scanlan suggests.
Vax makes a face at that. Percy smirks. Vex’s eyes dart around the screen, “Don’t think you’ll get away with leaving all that front-end work to Vax, Percy.”
“Front end is beneath me.” Percy states boldly. “I have much more important things to do than to build a bloody interface.”
“What, and you think I don’t have better things to do?” Vax retorts.
The meeting devolves quickly into an argument that makes no sense to Scanlan. If front end work is so much easier, as they say it is, then why are these guys so resistant to do the work?
“Come on Vax, please? For me?” Keyleth asks.
It’s finally enough to break up the argument, and Vex counts off action items for everyone. “And Scanlan, I guess you can support Grog on the testing once Vax pushes those changes later this week.”
Scanlan stares at his screen once the call ends. Now the fun project at work is starting to suck too.
Customer Success
“Tary, remember last year when you were working with that replaceable grass pad company?” Scanlan swirls his cocktail glass. It’s Friday afternoon and he’s put in more than enough hours for the week already. This will be his last call of the day.
“The one that offers subscriptions so dogs can poop on real grass inside the apartment?” Taryon asks, scrunching up his face in disgust.
“That one.” Scanlan takes a sip of his cocktail. “Remember how they tried to configure things, and I taught you why that wouldn’t work?”
Tary’s eyes turn up towards the top of the screen. “No?”
Scanlan sighs. “Well, this customer is trying to do the same thing. It doesn’t work, not with the product as it currently is.”
“But I told them it was possible! I told them I would figure out how to fix it!” Taryon exclaims.
Scanlan likes that Taryon’s version of ‘figuring out how to fix something’ is going to Scanlan for the answer. He thinks for a moment. If they used their prototype application and just made a couple of tweaks… “I might have a solution for you.”
Custom Solutions
“You want me to, what?” Percy asks Scanlan the next Monday.
“It would only be a minor addition to the code, and then it would fit this customer’s use case perfectly,” Scanlan explains Taryon’s dilemma and the solution he’d been mulling over all weekend.
“But that’s custom work, for one customer. I hardly find that worth our time.” Percy concludes.
Scanlan adjusts his approach. “It would show Kima there’s actually a customer solution that works. What better way to spend our time, than making a real solution for someone?”
“For a company that sells sod for dogs to crap on?” Percy laughs. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, actually, the company Tary is currently working with sells no-sugar gummies. But I’ve seen this problem come up with others, with slightly more noble causes.” Scanlan replies, seriously. “Could you just look into it? If it’s too hard, I’ll tell Taryon off.”
Percy’s face changes. “It’s not that it’s too hard… I’ll have a solution for you by the end of tomorrow.”
Scanlan takes the win.
Scalability
It works. Taryon is ecstatic. So much so that he runs his mouth and tells the rest of the Customer Success organization about it. Scanlan’s inbox is flooded with implementation requests and he curses himself for it.
The solution Percy came up with, was a lot less scalable than Scanlan had hoped for. The engineer probably spent an hour max on it, and just worried about getting to the final product without considering how it would be implemented by someone else. Typical.
It’s only a couple of days before their next team sync, so Scanlan waits for the call with the rest of Vox Machina to bring it up.
“I have good news and bad news.” Scanlan starts after small talk dies down and Vex lists off today’s agenda.
The rest of the team sits quietly, muted, waiting for Scanlan to continue.
“The implementation with Tary’s customer went well!” Scanlan is met with smiles and nods. “But he told the rest of CSM land about it, and now we have about a dozen more customers that want it done for them…”
“I don’t get why that’s bad news?” Pike asks.
“Yes, this is what you said would happen, Scanlan.” Percy adds. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Wider adoption?”
“It is.” Scanlan chooses his words carefully. “However, the implementation is still quite manual. Each case needs its own set of custom code to be set up to function.”
No one seems to see the problem with that.
“Sorry, Scanlan,” Keyleth starts. “But, isn’t custom implementation, like, what your whole job is about?”
Heads are bobbing up and down in agreement.
They don’t even know what he does here, do they?
“It’s hardly a small order.” Scanlan counters.
“It’s not like you’ve been spending much time on this project, like the rest of us.” Vax interjects, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Maybe it’s time for you to pull your weight.”
Scanlan’s heart is racing. He’s trying to keep things together. “That’s ridiculous, and besides the point. Every time you put a custom piece of code in, you’re compounding the ways something could go wrong.”
“Of course,” Percy agrees. “That’s why it makes the most sense for you to be doing the implementation. It’ll be on the client side, and not affect our code base. Problem solved.”
Okay. He can’t handle it anymore. They really don’t see the value in what he does. “You don’t care, do you. About me, about what I bring to this team.”
A few beats of silence before Vex, Pike, and Percy all try to talk at the same time.
“That’s not-”
“Of course we-”
“Scanlan-”
They all awkwardly mute themselves to let someone else take the lead.
A moment passes. He can’t take it anymore. He stands up at his desk. His hands are shaking. Scanlan takes a deep breath, and presses the ‘leave call’ button. He throws his headset onto the desk, leans over, and screams.
Always Forward
No one reaches out to him to ask if he is okay. No one apologizes, except for Pike. But Pike wasn’t even the one who had done anything wrong. Fucking developers, always think they’re right. They could just as well question Keyleth’s value to the team, but nooo. Vex asks him to put another budget together for her meeting with Kima, not even mentioning the tiff from the day before. Enough is enough.
“I’m putting in my notice.” Scanlan tells his boss the next day.
Leaving TalDorify is easier than he thought it would be. They send him a box for him to package up and ship his laptop back, but he gets to keep everything else. It’s just two week’s and he doesn’t have to worry about handing anything over because no one is organized enough to figure that out. A couple of the more junior solutions engineers reach out for a call and some final words of wisdom. Scanlan holds back a little bit. He doesn’t want to burn all of his bridges. After all, TalDorify was an amazing opportunity, until it just wasn’t anymore. Allura and Kima and the rest of the directors have a huge network and influence on the rest of the tech world. It’ll benefit him when he starts looking for a new job.
But, Scanlan doesn’t need to think about what’s next for job prospects right now. He needs time to sit and reflect. To consider if his friends were even his friends after all, or were just using him like he’s now suspecting. As he wraps up his final day and his boss throws a lackluster online goodbye party for him, Scanlan dawdles on shutting down the work laptop for the last time. Part of him expects Vox Machina to reach out, to make one last effort. He hovers over the post HR put up an hour ago, thanking him for his time at the company and wishing him best of luck in the future. All of Vox Machina has emoji’d on the post, but none of them has reached out personally.
He thinks of sending something in their group chat, but before he can hit send, he’s logged out of the laptop. I guess HR pulled the plug. Scanlan thinks to himself. “Oh well, it’s for the best.” He packs up the computer and charger cable and logs in to play some Skyrim. There’s a new modification he wants to try out.
Gaming with Grog
Weeks pass into months, and then finally there’s a light at the end of the tunnel on restrictions due to the pandemic. It’s also probably high time Scanlan starts looking for a new job. He puts a post up on social media, telling his network he’s open for work. He takes the time to curate the post and ‘celebrate’ his ‘taking time off for personal health and reflection’ because it had been years (never) since he had taken a break from work.
A number of old colleagues comment on and reshare his post. He goes to turn off notifications on his phone so he’s not constantly looking at it. Grog has messaged him on Discord.
<Grog: want to game tonite?>
<Scanlan: sure thing, what game and what time?>
They hop on voice chat as Scanlan scrolls through options. In the end, they end up playing separate single player games and just chat. Grog says he misses him. That TalDorify isn’t the same without him. Scanlan believes Grog truly feels this way, but he doubts anyone else feels this way. TalDorify stocks have never been higher. They’re soaring financially with the pandemic and everything and everyone going online. At least he still has his shares in the company.
“How’s everyone else doing?” Scanlan asks, not sure if he wants to know the answer.
“Good, I think.” Grog replies. “Vax asked Keyleth out!”
“Oh really?” Scanlan thought he’d never work up the courage to do that.
“But I think she said ‘no’.” Grog continues.
Scanlan lets out a snort. “Sorry, that’s not nice.”
“And Percy and Vex and an item now too…I think.” Scanlan can almost hear his friend’s brain working overtime.
“Look at you, the Grand Gossip Poobah.” Scanlan laughs.
They switch to a simple multiplayer game for a bit.
“How’s Pike?” Scanlan ventures.
“She’s good, got promoted!” Grog announces proudly. “She’s leading a team now.”
“That’s great.” Scanlan answers. “I was always worried they wouldn’t see her leadership potential.”
“Yeah, Pikey’s the best. She’s getting her own apartment now too. Which I’m a little sad about.” Grog admits. “You should call her. She misses you too, buddy.”
“Pike doesn’t miss me.” Scanlan frowns as he voices what he’s been too afraid to acknowledge. “Look how well she’s doing without me around.”
Grog swears loudly and Scanlan flinches at the sudden volume change as he sees Grog’s avatar dissolve. They’re forced to restart their run again.
On the Hunt
Soon after, Scanlan gets a direct message from someone he helped onboard at TalDorify. They remember him being especially helpful and invite him for a chat about a small startup they recently joined. The company is based on the West Coast and is developing a music sharing application. They have a couple of paying customers, and are looking to hire their first dedicated customer-facing role.
“Dranzel… hmm, interesting.” Scanlan talks to himself as he navigates the company’s website. It’s simple but slick. Load times are impressive, and there seems to be some pretty savvy work as he downloads the free version of the app and plays around with the codebase. All signs point to someone knowing what they’re doing.
<Scanlan Shorthalt: Thanks for the reach out, this looks like an interesting opportunity. I’d be happy to have a call and discuss further.>
Dranzel hires him basically on the spot. They’re impressed with his experience and his candor about the tech industry and startups in general. His background in musical theory is a nice added bonus. They want him to start right away, but Scanlan negotiates another week. It’ll take some time shipping a new computer to him anyway.
Travel restrictions are still a thing, but they’ve loosened up on inter-country travel. It’s been a while since Scanlan has left the city, and this will be his last week off for a little while.
He sends a couple of text messages, checks flights, and books travel for the next day.
One Last Trip
Grog is standing by the luggage carousel, a mask awkwardly covering most of his beard as he holds up a sign spelling Scanlan’s name wrong. He smiles and waves to his friend.
The trip was relatively painless. A few more checks and a lot of hand sanitizer than pre-pandemic, but he’s made it to the East Coast and now looks out the passenger window as Grog drives him back to his apartment.
“I’m glad they don’t make you quarantine anymore.” Grog breaks Scanlan’s concentration.
“Me too. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have made sense for me to fly out.” Scanlan replies.
“Restaurants are still weird, so Pike said she’s picking up stuff and will bring it over for us to share.” Grog says.
Scanlan looks over at his friend, waiting for some punchline, or punch to the crotch. After a minute, he realizes, oh he’s serious. “Pike is coming?”
“Yeah, she said something about not wanting you to be alone on Valentine’s Day.” Grog states, then rubs his chin with one hand, thoughtfully. “Which hardly makes sense, because you won’t be alone. I’ll be with ya!”
Scanlan smiles, despite himself, and half-jokingly asks. “Think she’ll make me keep my mask on, though?”
This is a fan fiction piece, characters are not my own. Everything is completely fictional. It takes place in a non-magic Exandria and draws inspiration from Critical Role characters and real-life events.
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