Status Updates From The Bug: A Novel

'If you waited thirty days for your inevitable failure and then signed a paper agreeing you were fired "for cause," you'd get a nice reference letter, a sweet little severance package, a chance to move on to your next job. On the other hand, if you complained, called it sham layoff, forced the company to pay for your unemployment... A mean hole in your resume is what you'd be left with... No, they had you."

'Of course, no one knew what was happening in Ethan Levin's life. ...To us, the testers, he was like all the programmers: impatient, defensive, condescending. The fact that he might be unhappy was irrelevant, since a nasty, unhappy person is like a nasty drunk: whatever allowances you're inclined to make are trumped by the nastiness.'

"Had my VC meeting," said Steghman.
"Uhm?" said Ethan.
"You?"
"Yeah."
They ate for a a while.
"How'd it go?" asked Ethan.
Steghman took a bite, chewed, pulled a drink off his straw. "Tense," he said finally.
"Yeah," said Ethan.
"You?" asked Steghman.
Bad, Ethan wanted to say. Humiliating.
..."Aggressive scheduling," he said.
Steghman laughed. ...Aggressive scheduling: programmer-speak for impossible.

Ethan brings up his program of Conway's Game of Life simulation only to find the same disappointing boom and bust cycles being endlessly reproduced. "He'd wanted to create something that would evolve. He'd hoped for a surprising pattern, an outcome not programmed, an unexpected turn of events, like the lovely life-forms that had emerged from Conway's world. ...it was always as it was now..."