
George Chen allowed himself a brief moment to appreciate his
senior design manager's figure as she walked into the room before
refocusing on the business at hand. He knew he shouldn't be paying
any attention to one of his employee's bodies, but a woman like
Lucy Park made that impossible. She likely couldn't have worn anything
to conceal her soccer-ball sized breasts, and the tight turtlenecks
she habitually wore didn't even make the attempt. Likewise, the pencil
skirts and fitted slacks she wore made it easy to guess that she spent
a good amount of time at the squat rack.

Lucy was the second designer that George had hired at Chatr, and it
was incredible how much she had grown along with the rapidly expanding
startup. When the only other designer had quit in the middle of a major
site redesign, Lucy had taken over and made it her own. Engagement
spiked after the redesign was rolled out. The search for a design
manager had been slow going, so as a stop gap measure, George had assigned
a few new hire designers to report to Lucy while they looked, but she had
done such a good job that he wound up deciding to leave her in place.
Now, Lucy was the most senior of four design managers reporting to him.
It was long past time he handed off responsibility for managing the entire
design org, so he had been looking for a Head of Design for the last five
months.

"Hey George, you said you wanted to talk about the Head of Design search?"
As his most senior designer, Lucy had been involved in the search for her
new boss.

"Yeah, I'm thinking it's time to wrap it up. Running design is taking up
too much of my time and I'm going to need some more bandwidth as we gear
up to raise another round."

She nodded, "Ok, well, Gina Fresh seems like she has lots of good experience.
I think you know some of my concerns with her, but of the candidates we've
talked to she seems like our best bet."

"Actually, I share those concerns, and I think I might even be more worried about
her lack of broad market consumer experience than you are. I've actually been
thinking of concluding the search without hiring externally."

Lucy felt shocked at the implications of what George was saying, "what do you
mean?"

"I'm asking you to become the Head of Design."

Lucy felt as if reality had been shifted one notch off kilter. She was only
25 years old and her boss was asking her to become an executive. She felt
a pang of guilt as a part of her wondered if the way she looked had anything
to do with it. Her looks didn't give her anywhere near the influence she had
over Percy when it came to other people, but especially since she had changed her look
to the sexy-professional vibe that drove her hypnotized husband wild she had
noticed doors opening for her that seemed like they ought to have stayed
closed. "I probably shouldn't be asking this, but: are you sure?"

"As we've talked to all of these candidates, I've kept asking myself if I
would rather have them or you in the position, and so far I keep thinking
I'd rather have you. We'll make the position provisional at first, and
if you find that you're in over your head we can pick up the candidate
search again. Something tells me you'll do great though. Last time I did
this with you, you certainly rose to the occasion."

"Well, umm, I don't know quite what to say. I'm pretty surprised by this,
but I'm gonna make sure I don't let you down."

"Excellent. The new position will come with a pretty significant compensation
bump, roughly doubling your salary, giving you access to a higher bonus pool,
and assigning you more stock options, but it will take me a little while to
get the formal letter drawn up. I'm thinking of making the announcement at
the all-hands this Friday. Any other questions?"

"Let me think." Lucy looked up and chewed the inside of her lip. "Ummmm,
well, I've been thinking of doing a part-time MBA for a while now, and
this makes me think I should do it sooner rather than later. Could you
pay my tuition?"

"That's a great idea. Yeah, I think we can do that."

"Great, well then, no more questions. Thanks George!"

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