Marcus Chen | Jon Is Awful

The Audience Surrogate

Marcus is you. He's the lens through which we experience the horror of Jan's presentation. When the discomfort creeps in, when something feels off, Marcus is the one who voices what the audience is already thinking.

He's not the protagonist. He's not the villain. He's the witness. The only one in the room who notices that something is deeply, fundamentally wrong with what's happening on screen.

Backstory

Why He Started

Marcus started coding because he loved building things. There was something magical about typing symbols into a computer and watching something come to life. A button that does something. A feature that helps someone. That dopamine hit of seeing your creation work.

He remembers staying up late in his apartment in Sao Paulo, teaching himself React, building little apps that nobody would ever use but that made him feel alive.

What He Does Now

Now he fills out compliance forms. Attends mandatory trainings. Sits through meetings about meetings. Writes documentation that nobody reads about features that will never ship.

"His favorite feature he ever built was removed six months later for 'not fitting the roadmap.'"

Nobody told him why. Nobody asked his opinion. One day it was there, the next day it was gone. Three months of his life, deleted in a merge commit he wasn't even tagged on.

The Countdown

On his monitor, partially obscured by a dying succulent plant, there's a sticky note:

Just 18 months until the cliff vests

He updates the number every month. Sometimes he forgets. Sometimes he stares at it for a little too long during standup.

The Dream Deferred

Marcus dreams of starting his own thing. A side project that becomes a real thing. Something he owns. Something that can't be deleted by someone else's roadmap decision.

"But the market is bad right now."

That's what he tells himself. That's what he tells his friends back home when they ask why he's still at Prismo. The market is bad. The timing is wrong. Just eighteen more months.

During the Presentation

Marcus watches Jan's presentation with growing unease. At first, it seems fine. A corporate training video. Another checkbox to tick. But something is... off.

The way Jan talks. The way the slides move. The way everything feels just slightly too smooth, too rehearsed, too perfect.

"I'd better watch this training video..."

He's the only one who notices. Or maybe everyone notices. Maybe everyone feels it. But Marcus is the only one who says something.