Hearing his roaring laughter on the other end of the line, my face flushed with mild embarrassment.

“I was young and green back then, okay? Everyone goes through an ‘experimental’ coding phase. I actually optimized and cleaned up that project a long time ago; I just haven’t pushed the update yet. The client suddenly demanded a hard reboot out of nowhere—otherwise, if left alone, the system runs perfectly fine. That bastard Chen dared to look down on female programmers? Let him stew in his own misery and sleep on a bed of nails for a while!”

Zhang Hua was choking with laughter. “Sis, you are my absolute idol! Now, every time Chen opens a meeting, he uses your name as a sacrificial punching bag. The whole IT department is crying to the heavens, saying HR must be completely blind. Out of everyone to fire, they kicked out the founding god who carried the entire team.”

I burst out laughing. “And that is exactly why AI is a long way from replacing programmers. AI only knows how to produce textbook-perfect templates. Humans, on the other hand, have the magical ability to turn a steaming pile of scrap metal into a smoothly running system.”

At 11:00 PM the next night, Manager Chen voluntarily called me. His tone sounded like he was trying incredibly hard to suppress his rage and appear calm, but I guarantee that, deep down, he wanted to hack me into a hundred pieces.

“Uh… Zhang Tiao. I was a bit hot-headed the other day, and some things were handled improperly. I am now officially representing the company’s board of directors to invite you back to work. You’ve really made me look at you in a new light, Ms. Zhang. With code written this… aggressively, it’s true that no one in the company can replace you.”

I waved my hand in the air, feigning modesty. “Oh please, we all have our edgy, rebellious youth, right Boss?”

In his wildest dreams, Chen probably never imagined that a seasoned veteran like me could have left behind such a horrifying ‘legacy’ during my rookie days. But it was just his rotten luck that CEO Li Shenhao was breathing down his neck, forcing a tight deadline on this exact cursed project.

“Manager Chen, are you mentally prepared to swallow your pride and beg me yet? Anyway, it’s late, and I’m busy going to a wedding in the countryside tomorrow. Let’s circle back the day after tomorrow.”

It was already the fifth day since the CEO had handed down his ultimatum. According to Zhang Hua’s whispers, Chen had been losing sleep and skipping meals, stressing so hard that his mouth had broken out in cold sores.

Unable to wait until the day after tomorrow, bright and early the next morning, Fatty Chen and the HR witch personally drove all the way to my front door to pick me up.

Stepping out of the car, Chen scanned the sprawling garden villa, his face full of bewilderment and suspicion. “Ms. Zhang… your house… is this big?”

I smiled nonchalantly, brushing off my shirt. “Oh, it’s just my aunt’s place. I’m just her lowly niece crashing here. After all, I’m just an old, unmarried female programmer with zero value on the marriage market, right Boss? If I go on blind dates, get married, get pregnant, and have kids… wouldn’t that just drag the whole company down? Dealing with an employee like me, it’s best to fire them early to save yourselves the trouble. Isn’t that right, Yutong?”

Li Yutong stood next to him, choking on her own spit. In her entire career, she had hired countless people and fired just as many, but this was undoubtedly the first time she’d had to swallow her pride and travel all this way to grovel to someone she had personally fired.

“Haha… you’re exaggerating, Ms. Zhang. How can a capable person like you be compared to ordinary women?” Yutong’s face was twisted into a painfully forced smile, looking like a soggy cracker.

The second I stepped foot into the office, I—someone who usually kept a low profile—instantly became the center of attention.

I faintly heard a few of the fresh-faced rookies whispering in the corner: “That absurd, exploding pile of garbage code was written by her? It’s true what they say, girls in programming are totally unreliable.”

Meanwhile, my older colleagues knew full well this was just a charade I had set up to mess with Chen. They quietly crossed their arms, ready to watch a good show, laughing inwardly. Because they knew the truth: the smooth, high-end framework these rookies were using to do their jobs every single day was single-handedly designed and optimized from scratch by this “unreliable” woman.

CEO Li Shenhao didn’t fly into a rage this time because I was secretly his wife or anything—he was furious because he realized just how colossally incompetent his management was. If Chen had bothered to spend even a little time looking at the technical side, he would have known who the real soul of this department was. This department head, brought in with a sky-high salary, pushing forty, only knew how to write simple, surface-level business logic but was completely blind to the underlying architecture. A real freeloader! Ironically, this guy was a nepotism hire sent in by one of Shenhao’s business partners.

I leisurely pulled out my chair, sat down, and booted up the program. The project that had been running perfectly fine the day I left was now spitting a screen full of bright red errors, thanks to the meddling of Chen and his rookies.

I clicked my tongue, shaking my head as I looked up at him. “Manager Chen, so this is the extent of your skills? A senior expert like yourself can’t even fix a little bit of code like this?”

Chen’s face flushed crimson, then drained to a sickly pale white. He ground his teeth but couldn’t utter a single word in defense. Unbothered, I pressed a few keys, restored the original version of the code from before I left, and sat back with my arms crossed in silence.

Seeing this, Chen sidled up to me, testing the waters. “Ms. Zhang, how about this… why don’t you take some time to write up a highly detailed system maintenance manual? That way, the new guys will know how to operate and manage it in the future.”

Hearing themselves mentioned, the nearby rookies’ faces instantly turned ashen. I shot a sideways glance and noticed one of them even had a resignation letter drafted in a Word document on his screen. It was obvious just how brutally my code had tortured them over the past few days.

I twirled a pen in my hand, putting on an exaggerated look of conflicted hesitation. “That’s so tough. I’m currently unemployed, remember? I don’t work for this company anymore, so I can’t really do that. Not to mention, when I left, Yutong forced me to sign a non-compete agreement.”

Chen flashed a desperate, groveling smile. “You’re always joking around, Ms. Zhang! Let’s just say the past half-month was an impromptu paid vacation. How does that sound?”

“That won’t work!” Taking a mile since he gave an inch, I delivered the finishing blow. “If you want me to lift a finger, the company first needs to pay out my full severance package, calculated at N+3 months’ salary.”

Li Yutong’s face darkened instantly. She snapped, “Labor laws cap it at N+1! Where the hell do you get off making such an absurd demand for N+3?”

I glanced at her and let out a sarcastic bark of laughter. “Oh my god, what a rare treat! Did the sun rise in the west today, or did our dear Yutong actually just open her mouth to talk about labor laws with an employee?”