When a subordinate makes a stupid, career-ending blunder, the manager catching some stray bullets is nothing but poetic justice!

How could that greasy manager, Fatty Chen, ever comprehend it? I hadn’t been passed over for a promotion all these years because I was a woman, and certainly not because I was incompetent. I just liked coasting. I enjoyed my stress-free, work-hard-play-hard lifestyle. Who would have thought these assholes harbored such deep-seated, bone-deep misogyny against female programmers?

But this time, Chen had really kicked a hornet’s nest. Because that core project Li Shenhao was forcing him to keep afloat? That was the very same source code I had written with my own two hands when I was just a fresh, clueless college grad.

Calling it “source code” was being generous. In reality, it was pure, unadulterated spaghetti code.

Aside from me, not a single soul on this earth could decipher it. It was the absolute pinnacle of patchwork engineering: the structure was a tangled mess, functions called each other at random, there wasn’t a single line of comments to explain anything, and documentation? Forget about it. Years later, when my skills had actually leveled up, even I would get full-body chills looking back at that “masterpiece” of my youth.

Just picturing the look on those new “elite geniuses'” faces—turning pale and staring at that code like deer in headlights—was enough to make me crack up.

But you want to know the most lethal part? Deep within that codebase, if you accidentally deleted just one seemingly useless, completely arbitrary line, the entire system would crash instantly. I was the only one who knew which thread to pull to untangle that knot.

And if they wanted to scrap it and refactor? Just sitting there analyzing every module and drawing up a basic data flow diagram would eat up a whole month. Even with a gun to his head, Chen couldn’t meet that deadline—unless he forced the entire IT department to pull all-nighters, skipping food and sleep. And was that going to happen? Hell no. People go to work for a paycheck; they aren’t going to literally torture themselves for a company.

The funny thing was, I had actually quietly optimized and cleaned up that entire codebase a long time ago. I was planning to push the shiny new update right after the holidays. Well, isn’t that just perfect? They can keep the old garbage for the new year! It’s exactly like the golden rule we programmers always joke about: “If the code runs, it’s a damn miracle. Don’t touch it, and let God sort out the rest!”

Less than a week later, my phone rang again. I glanced at the screen: Manager Chen.

The second I answered, that arrogant, greasy, bossy tone oozed through the speaker. “Ms. Zhang. Regarding the project’s source code, there are a lot of ambiguities in your handover. You need to clear your schedule and come assist the company.”

I broke into a radiant smile, turning away from the phone to yell at my besties around the table, “Oh, Mahjong! Read ’em and weep, ladies!”

I leisurely pushed my tiles forward before bringing the phone back to my ear, pouring on the thickest, fakest sweet voice I could muster. “Oh no, I’m totally booked, Boss! You literally kicked me out of the company, remember? Why on earth would I help you? Well… unless you come down here, get on your knees, and beg for my forgiveness~”

He clearly wasn’t expecting me to play my hand so brazenly. He went dead silent for a solid minute before losing his absolute mind, roaring into the receiver, “Zhang Tiao! This was your job responsibility! If the company suffers damages because of your lack of cooperation, I will have the legal department sue you into oblivion! Do you hear me?!”

I casually dug a pinky into my ear, completely unbothered. “Oh really? And what exactly are you going to sue me for? That my code is too trashy and it offended your delicate eyes? That code was running perfectly fine the day I left. Besides, maybe you should take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself if firing me and withholding my legal severance was by the book. We’ll see who ends up dragging who to court!”

I let out a sharp scoff. “Anyway, with that kind of attitude, Manager Chen, we have nothing left to talk about. Go ahead and sue me! Come on, baby! I fucking dare you!”

Since when was having “subpar technical skills” a federal crime? That was the funniest shit I had heard all year. I hung up on him without another word and went right back to my game.

Later that night, Zhang Hua—my work bestie from the IT department—called me. The second I picked up, he was cackling so hard he sounded possessed, completely unable to stop.

I grimaced, rubbing my temples in exasperation. “Are you having a seizure? Speak English or I’m hanging up. My mom is calling me to go help wrap the New Year’s banh chung.”

It took a minute for him to finally catch his breath, wheezing into the mic. “Sis… cough… you are a literal god descending from the heavens! How did I not know you were capable of writing a weapon of mass destruction in code form?! Normal people get better at their jobs over time, but comparing your current skills to five years ago… that was a glow-down straight to the center of the earth!”

“Guess what? Fatty Chen has been screaming at all those new Ivy League valedictorians all day, calling them useless trash for not being able to fix it. One of the hot-headed Gen Z kids almost picked up his mechanical keyboard and went full Mortal Kombat on his ass.”

“Chen wasn’t having it. He called an emergency all-hands meeting and projected your project right onto the massive screen in the conference room. He aggressively declared that he was going to personally fix the code you wrote five years ago to set an example for the juniors. And the result? The second he booted up the IDE, he froze for five straight minutes.”

“Sis… you wrote a single Java class that was eight thousand lines long! The IDE literally froze and then crashed to desktop, Hahahahaha!”

Zhang Hua was practically howling through the phone. “You should have been there! Chen’s face completely short-circuited—he looked like he had just stepped in fresh dog shit! He finally managed to struggle his way through editing a single block, but the idiot accidentally deleted some random, harmless-looking comment… and the entire database immediately fell into an infinite loop! The whole IT department is having a total meltdown right now. The toxic energy in that room is so thick, even a sleep paralysis demon would drop to its knees and beg for mercy!”