01 Ascend Corp · New employee onboarding
The Standard Year
There are between four and eight of you, you have all just been hired, and you have one fiscal year.
Orientation reel Reel 01 · about five minutes · narrated
Turn the volume up. If the phone's mute switch is on, the reel will be silent.
§ The written version
1. Who you are
Everybody draws two things. A rank, from Chief Executive down to Associate, which everyone can see. And a Secret Identity, which nobody can see, and which tells you what you are quietly being paid to do.
Your rank decides what you earn. Your Secret Identity decides what you actually want. These are almost never the same thing, and that is the entire point. Nobody is on your side.
2. How the game works
Here is the whole game.
The Chief Executive writes a memo, using four words handed down by the Board. It is passed down the chain of command, and every single person may change two things on the way. The lowest-ranking employee then reads the final version out loud.
You are not playing for the company. You are playing for yourself. Whoever has the most personal cash at the end of the year is named Chairman of the Board. Everybody else is laid off.
2.1 The memo
The Chief Executive gets four words from the Board, and must fit all four into fifteen words or fewer. But as it travels down the chain, each rank is shown fewer and fewer of those four words.
| Vice President | is shown three of the four |
|---|---|
| Director | two |
| Manager | one |
| Associate | none at all — and reads it out |
Each employee below the CEO either retypes the memo exactly, or changes up to two things — a word added, deleted or swapped, or a mark of punctuation. Three of the four Board words must survive, or the memo has failed.
2.2 The meeting, and the verdict
Five minutes on the clock, with the result already on the screen. So this is not a discussion about what the memo should say. It is an argument about who did this.
If the memo passes, everybody is paid. The Chief Executive earns $1,000 for every Board word that survived, and then promotes or demotes one employee — though the Board may overturn that, and fine them for the trouble.
If it fails, the Chief Executive is fined $1,500 and demoted all the way down to Associate. Everybody below them moves up a rung, and is paid a promotion bonus for it.
Which means that failing the memo can promote you. Sabotage pays, and the Chief Executive is the only person in the room who needs this memo to survive.
2.3 Your cards
- Skills go face up in front of you and stay live all year.
- Perks stay hidden in your hand, and most are worth far more if you hold on to them.
- HR Violations are shuffled in among them, waiting. Resolve one the moment you draw it, out loud, then discard it.
Between quarters, news breaks. Some of it pays you, some of it fines you, and some of it rearranges the entire hierarchy while you watch.
3. How the year is won
Four quarters, then the final audit. You are paid a salary at whatever rank you have ended up at, and you collect $1,500 for every rank you have climbed above where you started.
Then the Secret Identities. You collect $1,000 for every colleague whose identity you name correctly, and you lose $500 every time somebody names yours. So spend the year behaving normally. Whatever that means for you.
And you are paid a bonus for every quarter you achieved your own secret objective. Not once. Every quarter you managed it. Highest personal total is named Chairman of the Board.
4. Five notes from Human Resources
- Write everything down. Your Book of Record is the only thing that pays you.
- Note your starting rank now, or the climbing bonus cannot be calculated.
- Read your Perks early. Most are worth more later than now.
- Watch who benefits from a failed memo. It might be almost everybody.
- Being obviously good at your job is its own kind of confession.
Every payout, penalty and salary figure is in the Standard Operating Procedure. Take your seats. The Chief Executive has the memo device, and the first memo of the year.