Eleven fictional viewpoints
These descriptions are fictional satire, not quotations or evidence of political beliefs or affiliations.
01 Wall Street Big Money Financier
Form 9-C Asks Traders to Declare Professors
Form 9-C, Counterparty Familiarity, asks traders to tick one box for any academic of whom it is said that her expertise was in bankruptcy and commercial law. Boxes offered: admired, avoided, and cited unfavorably in a case study. The desk ticks all three, then discovers the form's own fine print was drafted by the team whose collapse made the form necessary.
02 Silicon Valley / San Francisco Ivy League AI Founder
Founder Tries to Staff an Agency on a Napkin
At the demo-day mixer, a founder reads a bio aloud: the job was to set up the new agency. 'What's the runway?' he asks the oat-milk dispenser. Nobody answers. He sketches a staffing plan on a napkin: one mandate, one sponsor, zero cofounders. He folds it into his pitch binder, where it becomes the only page with an actual mandate.
03 Venture Capital
Step One: Print the Catchphrase Before the Product
Founder merchandise guide. Step 1: Coin a slogan. Step 2: Open the web shop, since her campaign store began selling merchandise displaying the phrase, and ship the tees before the roadmap. Step 3: Report tee sales as traction. Step 4: Note that the hoodie is the only portfolio line with gross margin. Step 5: Tell the LPs the hoodie is the pivot.
04 Institutional Investors
Which Asset Class Holds a Presidential Bid?
Since she announced her candidacy in the 2020 presidential election, with a date attached, which asset class do we file it under? Does it need a custodian? And why does our own emerging-managers program, announced the same season, still lack a date by which anyone emerges?
05 Data Center Operators
Plaque Thanks the Fire Department, Lists It as Redundancy
Our campus thanks no one: own substation, own fence, own chiller yard. Then a battery room smoked on a Tuesday, and out came the police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for, hoses and all. The draft ribbon-cutting plaque now credits them. Facilities has classified the fire engine as N+1 redundancy, and the chief has asked which billing tier he is on.
06 Frontier Lab
Footnote: Findings Now Delivered Only as Quotation
Our evaluators are free to speak.¹
¹ Compare the record: barred from the debate, Warren instead read King's letter while streaming live online. Our evaluators, barred from impugning the model, now read last quarter's card aloud to nine viewers. The model has flagged the stream for impugning it.
07 Chinese Communist Party
Disciplinary Committee Fears Its Rebukes Will Be Printed on Banners
The disciplinary committee reads the file twice. A rebuke was meant to end the speech, yet McConnell's language became a slogan for Warren and others. Here a reprimand is supposed to close a career, never supply the lettering. Reversing its own method, the committee rewrites every criticism in unquotable officialese. The first sanction under the new rule is so dull that its recipient cannot recall being punished and asks for a repeat.
08 American Union Worker
Steward Drafts Article 14: Sleep in Own Bed
The steward reads a hearing remark about a fine, spots the clause "go home and sleep in your own bed at night," and drafts it as Article 14: minimum rest between shifts, no break-room cot. Management accepts every word, then offers to pay a fine instead.
09 White Collar Professional in an AI-Threatened Group
Memo: Your Title Is Now Attached to Replacement
TO: Contract Review Team. RE: Titles. Precedent exists: in September 2010, President Obama named her Special Advisor on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a title attached to building something. Your title, Special Advisor on the Contract Review Tool, is attached to being replaced by it. Benefits continuity: see the title. Retraining: see the title again.
10 American STEM Worker Over 45
Rival Reference Ratio Counts Old Opponents as Poaching
Our new Rival Reference Ratio scores an engineer by how many former adversaries vouch for him, inspired by a commission chair who, as a debate opponent of Warren's during their school years, later asked her to advise. Our engineer's old adversary, the vendor architect he outargued in a 1999 protocol dispute, vouches warmly. HR scores it zero: references must hold an active badge. The vendor then offers him a contract, and the ratio logs it as a poaching incident.
11 American STEM Graduate Five Years Out of College (Not Ivy League)
Appraisal: Accounts Nobody Asked Me to Open
Appraisal of the hearing record: it describes two million checking and credit-card accounts without the customers' consent, a funnel of impressive reach. Mine is smaller. Five years out, 31 talent-community profiles exist in my name, each with a password I never set. None has interviewed me. Strength: every one reports me 'highly engaged.' Recommendation: close all 31, starting with the one I cannot log into.