Diary of a Death March is an evolving series of short stories I'm writing, which revolve around the people working at a particular company and a disastrous project they've been working on; eventually, said project becomes a death march. Each story is told by a specific character who works at that company and on that project, in one fashion or another.
The characters are below. Each perceived the events around him/her differently, so check out all the stories to get the full effect. As I write more stories in this combined universe, I'll keep this page updated.
Point-of-View Characters
Each POV character has a story told from his/her point of view.
Steve
The lead programmer of Engineering Team 1. Read his story.
Christian
An intern hired to Engineering Team 2, which is reassigned to work on the project. Read his story.
Emily
A developer on Engineering Team 3, which is reassigned to the project. Read her story.
Bianca
The head salesperson at the company, also responsible for client contact. Read her story.
Marisol
The lead developer for Engineering Team 3. Read her story.
Terry
The Chief Technical Officer for the company. Read his story.
Other Characters
Characters who don't (yet) have a point-of-view story, but still feature into the company's tale.
Jim
A company "lifer". Seen in Steve's, Christian's, Emily's, Bianca's, and Marisol's stories.
Neil
Christian's manager, directs the intern groups. Seen in Christian's, Bianca's, and Terry's stories.
Kelly
The company's internal server admin. Seen in Steve's, Terry's, and Bianca's stories.
Ken, Hayley, and Marlene
Emily's husband, daughter, and mother-in-law, respectively. Seen in Emily's and Marisol's stories.
Rodrigo
The manager for Engineering Team 1. Seen in Terry's story.
George
The manager hired to lead Engineering Team 3. Seen in Terry's story.
!!!Spoiler Alert!!!
If you don't want to spoil what happens in the stories, stop reading here and go read Steve's story.
Timeline
What follows is a rough timeline of events in the story, and different events are peceived differently by the characters. Please note that not all events are listed here. The story takes place in 2014 and 2015. Don't read this timeline before reading the POV stories, as it is largely for my reference and tells the fate of the characters.
June 1st: Company is sold by original owners to new ownership group (Song, Terry, Hannah). Top execs leave, are replaced.
September 1st: Sales team pushed by management to seal the deal with new customer.
September 7th: Sales makes commitment, first delivery on February 4th. Engineering Team 1 (Steve, Jim, etc.) assigned to project
September 16th: Bianca and Neil hallway meeting.
December 10th: Terry's divorce finalized.
December 17th: Company Christmas party, Terry tells employees to "try to avoid putting their own needs before the team's".
January 4th: Terry orders mandatory overtime for Engineering Team 1.
January 25th: Steve begins sleeping at his desk.
January 27th: Jim snaps, throws his phone against the wall, is fired.
February 4th: First Delivery Deadline. Bianca negotiates with customer for new deadline.
February 5th: Francis fired.
February 6th: George hired as lead of Team 3 (Marisol and Emily).
February 11th: Engineering Team 3 assigned mandatory overtime.
March 2nd: Christian starts work.
March 9th: Kelly quits.
April 1st: Second Delivery Deadline. Bianca commits to extended deadline on April 14th.
April 2nd: Steve ragequits.
April 4th: Due to Steve quitting, Bianca manages to get customer to agree to new extended deadline on May 27th.
May 12th: Christian refuses to work late.
May 26th: Final push. Marisol makes pancakes for programming teams.
May 27th: Final Deadline. Project is not done, customer fires company.
May 29th: Christian (and all interns) let go, Marisol fired due to George's misrepresentations. Neil assigned to Engineering Team 3. Engineering Team 2 disbanded.
May 30th: Engineering Team 3 reassigned.
Personnel
The following is a rough list of the company's personnel. I've included full names for any defined characters. Please note that this is list is not comprehensive (for example, I haven't defined Human Resources or other operations groups) and the personnel list may change as I write more stories.
Ownership Group
Song Liu, CEO
Hannah McAllister, CFO
Terry Raddins, CTO
Sales and Marketing
Li Soo, Director
Bianca Franks, Head Sales
2 or 3 additional salespeople.
Engineering Team 1
Rodrigo Menosa, Team Manager
Stephen "Steve" Karim, Team Lead
James "Jim" Gardner, Senior Developer
2 or 3 Junior Developers
Engineering Team 2
Neil Johnson, Team Manager/Team Lead
Christian Mitchell, Development Intern
2 or 3 additional interns
Engineering Team 3
Francis Willingham, Team Manager
George Trainos, Team Manager
Marisol Gardeña Lopez, Team Lead
Emily Brankish, Junior Developer
1 or 2 additional Junior Developers
Server Team
Kelly Nakamura, Lead Server Admin
1 or 2 additional admins
Notes
The Diary of a Death March stories are my own work and are a work of fiction. No relationship, real or implied, to any real persons or events blah blah blah you get the idea. It's a story, people.
That said, I'd love any feedback any writers, tech people, really anybody has on these works. I'm an amateur writer but a professional programmer, and looking forward to improving my storytelling skills.
Images
Image creators, if for any reason you would like your image to be removed from these pages, please contact me on Twitter and I'll be happy to oblige. The information for each character image is found below.
"Steve" is Avishay: Headshots a la Peter Hurley by Flavio, found on Flickr and used under license.
"Christian" is artist Kehinde Wiley. This image is his headshot, taken by his studio, all rights reserved. Image has been modified (removal of a black bar as seen here) and is used under license.
"Emily" is Portrait Session by Big D2112, found on Flickr and used under license.
"Bianca" is Headshot by Liz West, found on Flickr and used under license.
"Marisol" is 10070030 by moodboard, found on Flickr and used under license.
"Terry" is businessman Harry Crosby; portrait found on Wikimedia and used under license.
