Saving the Developer
“Mr. Siwon.”
“Yes?”
“We really feel like we’re going to die.”
One day, Jeong Hyeonwoo asked for a meeting and got straight to the point, sounding dead serious.
Going to die?
Was he sick?
No, wait.
The subject was “we,” not “I”?
“The work just keeps piling up.”
“Ah.”
I was still trying to make sense of it, my brain lagging a little, when Hyeonwoo put it even more bluntly.
“We want to create things as aggressively as you do, Mr. Siwon, but we just can’t.”
Seeing the dejected look on his face, I felt sorry for him.
Last life, I had built on products that were already commercialized and refined them into something concrete, but this time the two of them were developing something completely new.
And they were doing it with just two people.
“No. I’ve been making you work too hard. I’m sorry. I’ll open hiring right away.”
Even if there were similar products on the market, it was normal for the development team to be much larger than this.
There was even a saying that if thirty people were gathered, twenty of them should be developers and researchers.
And yet here we were, at a company considered a leading name in AI, doing something this absurd.
“I thought I could code, but I guess I’m lacking a lot.”
“No. You’ve been keeping up with us unbelievably well. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Thank you.”
Right. At the stage where we were thinking about updating existing products and developing new ones, it was impossible for just two people to handle everything.
We’d raised plenty of investment, and even if sales were only modest, not hiring was just stupid.
“So, could you just add two people to our team?”
At his modest request, I shook my head.
“Two won’t be enough. How about five?”
Hyeonwoo immediately scowled and shook his head so hard it looked like it might come off.
“No way? These are projects we made ourselves. We can’t just have five people steal them all of a sudden. Two is enough.”
That was exactly why I hadn’t been able to expand the team.
Everyone’s attachment to TA Medical and its products was just too strong.
Each person cared so much about their own project that they didn’t want to split the work with anyone new.
But if we kept going like this, everybody would burn out and end up stuck somewhere between two terrible choices.
“Let’s open hiring notices for both the development and research teams first. Then we can hire as many people as fit with the team.”
“Can we at least hire one person?”
“Let’s decide how many after we run the full standard hiring process.”
At my words, Hyeonwoo looked faintly disappointed.
Still, if we didn’t bring in people now, there was no telling when burnout would hit.
For now, I just needed to get them as far as the interview stage.
“Please draft the desired experience level and the content for the job post, then send it to me. I’ll approve it and put it up right away.”
“Got it. But if there really isn’t anyone we want, I’m only hiring one person.”
“Fine.”
After leaving the meeting room, I went straight to find Choi Yeonghun.
He had probably been struggling to juggle lab work and company work without a gap in between, so I wanted to share the good news that we’d be expanding the team.
“Yeonghun-nim~”
“Yes, Mr. Siwon. What is it?”
But the moment I saw Yeonghun’s face after so long, I knew something was seriously wrong.
He looked absolutely wrecked.
Really, truly exhausted.
“What happened? When did you end up looking like this?”
“What? Are you teasing me right now?”
“No. What time do you even leave work these days?”
“I don’t know. I avoid checking the clock because I’m afraid it’ll make me sleepy.”
I had no idea what that even meant.
Honestly, it was a level of obsession with work even I had never reached.
It was fair to say he wasn’t living a normal life.
His eyes were completely devoid of light, and that made the severity of Yeonghun’s depleted state even more obvious.
“Yeonghun-nim. Please draft the content for the research team hiring notice. Let’s open hiring and bring in some people.”
The moment I said that, the murky cloud in Yeonghun’s eyes suddenly flashed bright.
“Hiring?”
“Yes.”
“New hiring? People to work with us? The research team? Not just the development team? Not people doing front-end or side tasks, but a research team that works with me?”
“Yes.”
Yeonghun covered his mouth with both hands, looking overwhelmed, then slowly slid down in his chair.
“Yes. I’d been feeling like we needed one more person.”
“We can hire more than one.”
“Then there’ll be too much to hand over.”
“For now, let’s see who applies and hire the people we feel like handing work over to.”
After a moment of thought, Yeonghun gave a weak nod.
Like a zombie somehow brought back to life, he immediately started typing something up.
A quick glance at his screen showed that he’d already kept a separate file full of notes on what kinds of people they should hire.
His preparation was seriously impressive.
“We’ll have to decide how to do the coding test.”
I returned to my seat and started preparing, one item at a time, for the hiring process.
It went without saying that we needed coding tests and key interview questions, and since our headcount would only keep growing, we also had to work on an additional office lease.
First, we needed to check as soon as possible whether there was any vacant space available.
“Good thing we came to the Shared Office in the beginning.”
The first hiring announcement was opened for developers.
Surprisingly, the positions were posted as experience not required.
More precisely, it said that anyone whose background fit the role would be considered, regardless of what kind of experience they had.
“What? Doesn’t that mean they’re not hiring senior people?”
Of course, experienced candidates who were used to the standard format of postings divided by seniority and qualification requirements looked at it with confusion.
Honestly, it really did look like a posting for fresh graduates or interns.
But that wasn’t TA Medical’s position at all.
“If we post it like this, only people who genuinely fit our company culture or are interested in our company will apply.”
It was, in its own way, a method for finding people who could adapt to a company whose workforce was mostly university students and whose culture was still unusually flat and open.
“Then you’re not contacting headhunters either?”
“No. We’ve contacted the professors in our departments.”
“We also posted it in the department communities.”
“We said even interns could apply, so it shouldn’t be a bad situation, right?”
Most companies wanted long-term full-time employees.
That was only natural.
Between hiring, onboarding, and helping someone through resignation procedures, it made more sense to keep people who already knew the job and keep them for as long as possible.
But TA Medical’s developers had to play the role of pioneers for medical AI development.
So even if someone might only stay for a short time, TA Medical chose to gather the people who had the better ability, even by a little.
What we needed was not a full-time employee who would stay at a startup forever, but a developer who might just test the waters and still deliver more than one person’s worth of work.
“How many applicants are there?”
“A lot. But the ratio of interns, non-regular positions, and part-time applicants is overwhelmingly high.”
“Roughly what’s the split?”
“Eight to two. Two are full-time applicants.”
“What? It’s that extreme?”
In truth, even I was a little taken aback by the application pool.
I had figured the ratio would be something like sixty percent non-regular and forty percent full-time at most.
But this was an unavoidable result.
The people most interested in TA Medical are the Korea University computer engineering students, and most college students probably wouldn’t even think about applying for a full-time position.
Ah. That makes sense.
Check the applicant list. There are going to be a lot of familiar names.
And sure enough, most of the names on the list were from Korea University’s computer engineering department.
There were also quite a few students from other departments within the university.
“Looks like the people who applied through the campus community posts make up a big chunk.”
“The professors seem to have recommended a lot of them too. Some applicants even listed the professors’ names as their references.”
“Wow. That’s true.”
Seeing familiar names on the list, everyone at the company felt their tension ease a little.
They all had a rough idea of the reputations of people from their own department.
“Everyone, don’t only hire people from Korea University.”
Park Jaeyun quickly warned them, worried for no reason.
But there was no way anything she feared would happen.
Everyone felt the same way she did.
“There aren’t even five people from our department we’d want to bring in. Don’t worry.”
From the start, TA Medical was a group made up of the top students in Korea University’s computer engineering department.
There was practically no reason to hire anyone from the same department.
“I saw a few students from other universities whom I’d seen at conferences and competitions before. There are about two people I’m interested in.”
“I saw the name of a classmate from my science high school. That guy is seriously obsessed with research.”
Since everyone was choosing people they’d work with directly, they became sharp and cold-eyed about it.
“There really aren’t many senior applicants.”
“Honestly, this stage really does need senior talent.”
“For that to be true, the posting was a little... well, it was what it was.”
As the applications kept coming in, one resume finally caught everyone’s attention.
“Hmm? This one’s unusual.”
“Which one?”
“This one. She’s forty-two, but her development experience is only three years. Before that, she worked in HR.”
“Ah. I saw that one too.”
A resume so unusual everyone had already remembered it.
“But if someone younger with a longer career comes in later and ranks higher, I think that might be a pretty big shock.”
“If her experience had been fully extensive, I would’ve asked her to take on a team leader role, but it feels too awkward to make that request in this case.”
“Right? That’s what I think too.”
Given the realities of Korean society, she was clearly a rather complicated applicant.
Everyone else brushed past the resume as just being unusual, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
“Why? Are you curious, Mr. Siwon?”
“Yes. The portfolio is interesting, isn’t it?”
At my words, everyone opened the portfolio file they’d all somehow ignored so far.
It wasn’t a PDF. It was a portfolio that linked to a website.
And that website was a high-level responsive site in every respect: design, motion, and content.
“What? Was she a designer?”
“Hmm. She did all this by herself?”
“Hah. What is this? Is she just really good at Googling things?”
“How should I put it... her sense is kind of young, isn’t it?”
Only then did everyone feel interested in the resume again.
Even looking through it carefully, they still couldn’t get a clear sense of what kind of person she was.
And yet the resume kept emphasizing that she had done all sorts of things.
That ambiguity only made everyone more curious about the applicant.
“As long as she’s capable and can blend into our company culture, age and experience don’t matter.”
Especially for me, I wanted to meet this person in person.
It wasn’t because she was someone I had seen or heard about in the past. It was because the neatness that came through in every single detail of her materials drew me in.
And at my decisive statement, everyone nodded as if under a spell.
“Then should we at least ask her to take the coding test?”
“The coding test results will tell us a lot, and if we ask the right questions in the interview, we’ll quickly find out whether that website was made in-house or outsourced.”
“The projects she’s worked on are all over the place too. I feel like she’ll be a total either-or kind of person. Either she’s good at everything, or she’s only touched everything once.”
Either-or.
Either a jack-of-all-trades developer who can do everything well, or an older applicant carrying a resume full of empty experience.
No one could predict which side this applicant would turn out to be on.
But instead of feeling uneasy, everyone found themselves looking forward to interview day with excitement.
She was just that kind of applicant—someone who inspired anticipation that was hard to put into words.