After wrapping up their quick lunch, the squad spent the rest of the afternoon just lounging around, shooting the breeze, and watching their lines. Since none of them actually had any real angling experience, their haul was pretty pathetic.
The only things biting were tiny, finger-sized minnows that weren't even worth reeling in. This quickly caused the girls, who had been super hyped at first, to completely lose interest and find other ways to entertain themselves.
Eventually, all the fresh air and sunshine caught up with them, and the girls started yawning one by one. Before long, they pulled a couple of camp blankets over themselves and knocked out for a quick nap in the sun.
To avoid waking them up and to see if their luck might turn around somewhere else, the guys grabbed their rods and lawn chairs and drifted down the bank to a new spot, keeping the campsite well within line of sight.
Nick lit up a cigarette, and the group immediately fell into comfortable conversation. Of course, given who they were, it didn't take long for the small talk to pivot away from personal lives and shift straight back to company operations and the daily grind.
For the most part, Nick just played the role of a quiet listener, taking mental notes as Tyler, Zack, and Terry bounced updates back and forth regarding their respective pipelines.
Once the guys ran through their talking points, Nick finally leaned forward. "I'm planning to shake up a few executive assignments across the board. I want to run the blueprint by you guys and get your honest feedback."
The "you guys" Nick was looking at were explicitly Zack and Terry. Tyler had just been bumped up to general manager, so his corporate runway was already locked in.
"Reshuffling our roles?" Zack asked, looking a little caught off guard. Terry looked equally puzzled.
Nick nodded, taking a slow drag. "As Militech keeps scaling at this breakneck pace, we urgently need executives we can absolutely trust—people who have the leadership chops to oversee the macro picture."
"You two are founding veterans of this enterprise. It's honestly a massive waste of talent to keep you both locked away in the R&D lab indefinitely. One of you needs to step out of the server racks and help us shoulder the corporate burden."
"Exactly," Tyler chimed in, nodding in lockstep. "Barney and I have been whiteboarding this for a minute. We literally cannot find an outside candidate we trust with this level of corporate leverage, so it has to be one of you two."
"At the end of the day, this is our empire. Outside hires are always going to be mercenary talent; we can only truly trust the core circle with the keys to the castle."
Hearing the logic, both Zack and Terry nodded. Terry kept his mouth shut, but Zack pressed for details. "What's the actual operational scope? Break it down for us."
Nick nodded, laying out the chess board. "Here's the play: with our recent macro adjustments, we've aggressively acquired a massive network of legacy manufacturing plants."
"Those factories are going to serve as the primary engine room for our entire global product rollout moving forward. We need an executive who can integrate the infrastructure, upgrade the automation systems, and enforce unified corporate oversight across the whole supply chain."
"This pipeline was originally dropped entirely on Old Zack's plate. But you guys know how he operates. He's great at maintaining the status quo and protecting what we've already built, but he completely lacks the aggressive drive needed for rapid expansion. While he's gotten more stable over the quarters, he's definitely lost his killer edge."
"The plants we just bought up are plagued with a ton of highly complex, legacy political issues, and Old Zack is a guy who cares way too much about saving face and corporate optics. Because of that, he's not decisive enough when it's time to pull the trigger on tough calls, and he tends to let critical issues drag out."
"So, I want him completely out of that operational vertical, and I need one of you to take the reins."
Hearing the critique, Zack and Terry fell into deep thought. Zack looked over at Nick, a hint of corporate anxiety in his eyes. "Old Zack is still considered a heavyweight executive in this company. When you pulled him out of the marketing director slot a while back, he didn't throw a public tantrum, but everyone in the building knew he was harboring a massive amount of resentment."
"Now, pushing him straight out of the manufacturing division when he barely just took over the role—isn't that a massive PR risk? If he gets blindsided, he might just throw his papers on the desk and walk out. Our startup hasn't been on the map for very long; if we start aggressively purging the old guard the second they outlive their immediate usefulness, the street is going to think we're completely ruthless, and employee morale will take a massive hit."
Nick waved a hand to dismiss the anxiety. "You don't need to sweat the optics on that; I've already engineered a separate landing pad for him. Right now, I'm strictly auditing your career goals. What are your thoughts on running that division?"
The two engineers traded a quick glance but stayed silent. Nick looked straight at Zack, dropping the hammer. "Zack, I want you to step up and run the production empire."
"Me?" Zack gasped, completely stunned. It was blindingly obvious he hadn't anticipated his name being called for a massive operations promotion. He had genuinely assumed that after their previous product cycle, he was destined to spend the rest of his corporate lifespan quietly grinding away behind a terminal in the lab.
"Yeah, Tyler and I ran the numbers, and we're convinced this playbook fits your baseline skill set perfectly. Originally, I was leaning toward handing the keys to Terry, since he's successfully executed a dozen hardware retrofits and line upgrades for us. But you know the reality—Terry is absolutely terrible at corporate politics and reading a room. You're the only one who can actually manage the human element of a massive factory network," Nick explained plainly.
Zack processed the words, his eyes shifting over to Terry. Terry just offered a relaxed smile and shook his head. "Zero arguments from me, man. The boss is dead-on; I'm a total disaster when it comes to corporate schmoozing and dealing with suppliers."
Nick turned a mock-annoyed glare onto him. "Do you think lacking basic social skills is some kind of badge of honor, Terry? If you don't know how to manage people, you buy a book and you learn. Starting next Monday, the entire R&D lab is officially your kingdom. That doesn't just mean supervising the engineering sprints; it means own the budget, own the talent retention, and own the internal politics. You better get up to speed fast, because if you tank our tech roadmap, I'm going to personally make your life a living hell."
Terry just chucked sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck under the lecture.
Meanwhile, a quiet wave of disappointment washed over Zack. He had been holding his breath for months, desperately wanting to spearhead a major engineering breakthrough to prove his technical dominance to Nick. He absolutely hadn't expected that the crown jewel of the company—the R&D division—would ultimately be handed directly to Terry.
Even though Zack and Terry had been the first pair to connect out of the core four, and Zack was technically the one who brought him into the inner circle, Zack had honestly always viewed Terry as a bit of an underachiever. Because of Terry's tight personal bond with Nick and Tyler, Zack had always low-key perceived him as a tag-along outsider who just lucked into the founding equity.
But looking back at the timeline, the reality was undeniable. Ever since Terry signed his contract, he had performed flawlessly, pulling ungodly hours and executing brutal engineering sprints without uttering a single complaint. He seemed incredibly quiet, borderline boring on the surface, but the guy was low-key a silent genius. Putting everything else aside, his absolute loyalty to Nick's vision and his flawless execution of every impossible directive meant Zack simply couldn't compete on his level.
So, when the dust settled, the core research empire belonged to Terry, while Zack was being pushed out into the corporate wild to babysit the factory floors.
Even though running global manufacturing was a massive, high-leverage job, Zack understood the core truth of the valley: for a bleeding-edge tech enterprise, the R&D division is the supreme source of all power.
Despite Zack doing his absolute best to mask his body language, Nick and Tyler caught the flash of disappointment on his face instantly. It was completely within their calculations.
There was only a single throne available for the research division, and both engineers possessed the raw technical competence to sit on it. But at the end of the day, Zack had way too many personal ambitions running through his head. Forcing a guy like him to lock himself in a silent lab, reject the constant dopamine hits of corporate fame and fortune, and silently endure the isolation of pure research was an impossible ask. He would have burned out in a quarter.
Whether you're evaluating a person or an international conglomerate, reality always balances between "style" and "substance." The concept of "substance" is the silent, unglamorous kinetic energy built up deep within the engine room of an organization. Substance doesn't get featured on the cover of Forbes like style does, but without that raw, grinding substance, where would the flashy style even come from?
Because of that, the unglamorous backbone is infinitely more critical to survival. On paper, it looked like Terry won the internal competition, but the reality was that he was inheriting an absolutely crushing workload packed with terrifying institutional pressure.
In a way, the assignment was almost cruel. A dozen other executives would get to enjoy the media spotlights, the stock options spikes, and the public glory that "style" brings to the table, while Terry would be forced to vanish into the shadows, completely alone, carrying the entire weight of the company's "substance" on his back.
Nick and Tyler knew Zack's psychological makeup inside and out; precisely because they understood his character, they knew he could never survive that level of isolation.
That was the exact variable that drove their decision to migrate him out of the lab. While the corporate reshuffle felt like a brutal blow to his ego right now, in the grand scheme of things, it was actually the ultimate liberation.