Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 478 - 426 Nestor Corporation one day

Chapter 478: 426 Nestor Corporation one day

To avoid exploitation by landlords, the staff quarters of Nestor Corporation were all built in the suburbs or the sub-centers of the city. The place Jiang Yan was heading to was called the Nestor-Wu Junyi Ichome Staff Quarters, where half of the entire block had been acquired to construct a ten-story dormitory center.

He verified his identity at the entrance, then went to the labor center on the first floor of the dormitory to handle the procedures, receive work clothes, and food.

"Welcome to Nestor Corporation." The main terminal at the labor center displayed the message, carefully introducing him, "You are the 59,840th member of Nestor Corporation, with shares worth 10,026 funds."

Having become a shareholder within ten minutes of arrival, Jiang Yan carefully checked and found that these shares could be cashed out, but the company suggested it was best to hold onto them, as owning shares meant he could vote on company affairs in the future.

Jiang Yan’s room was on the sixth floor. He wandered around, trying to find the location of the surveillance center and the mind control department. Normally, the larger these departments, the worse the company atmosphere, but he found neither. Instead, there was a staff activity center taking up nearly half of a building. Now, at seven o’clock in the eve, the place was filled with company folk playing games, drinking beer, all clad in Nestor’s work uniforms, which left Jiang Yan utterly stunned, as he’d never seen such joyful and unrestrained behavior at a company.

Anxiety gnawed at him. He checked his phone for information and saw his work schedule: from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, five days a week.

Jiang Yan then had his dinner, mainly roast chicken and sushi. The food provided by the company was very cheap; two meat dishes and two vegetarian ones cost only five funds. He felt dazed, even guilty, as if seriously exploiting the company by merely dining there.

Like in a dream, he stumbled into his room, 603 on the sixth floor, which, to his surprise, was a single rather than the six-person room he was accustomed to. It was fully furnished with Synthetic Human janitors responsible for cleaning.

He still owed 60,000 in total to various banks, credit cards, and small loans. Lying in bed, worried about his finances, he received a message that his salary had been rated as Level N5, 10,500 funds per month, and if he was willing, half would be paid in advance the next day to help him settle in.

Spiritlessly, Jiang Yan chose to agree. When the money hit his cash card, he felt almost mad with gratitude. He wanted to kneel and worship Nestor Corporation, to work for it until his last breath.

The next day, he discovered he would be working remotely, not even needing to visit a workstation, which further confounded him. Jiang Yan logged into the system at seven and tried to start the day’s work of restructuring and coding the main page of the Nestor Corporation, but a prompt informed him he was not yet on duty.

With a sigh, there was nothing Jiang Yan could do but mentally howl, ’Please, Nestor Corporation, let me start working!’

Jiang Yan donned the Nestor Company uniform gravely as if putting on a lavish gown, hanging his work badge around his neck as if it were a medal of honor. He ate breakfast distractedly, eagerly waiting for the work hours to begin. The dormitory center had many single work booths - quiet and convenient spaces. He found one and started working vigorously, showcasing his expertise.

Development projects required teamwork, and to his surprise, Jiang Yan found himself already designated by the system as the supervisor for the entire project, a sort of team leader. His monthly salary increased by half a level, to 11,250 funds, and he was granted the authority to choose his own partners, along with a list of contact information for other available engineers at the company.

He felt flattered and overwhelmed as he joined forces with other product managers and UI/UX designers in the company to form a team.

"I’ve been working on the next user software, and I heard you took over, so I’m sending you the source code." Nakame Hiroshi, a former front-end designer, sent over the source code for the Nestor Corporation website.

If he were still at his old company, Jiang Yan would certainly have exchanged a stream of pleasantries, expressing his gratitude for the support, but now Jiang Yan found his work inexplicably easier.

"Thanks," he replied briefly before immersing himself completely in his work.

Product Manager Ichida Kazuo had collected user feedback, which gave him twenty new features to implement. He never expected that one day in his life he would work with such zeal, making Jiang Yan feel that his past decade of life was like walking dead, utterly pale in comparison to his now radiating creativity. By 6 p.m., he had restructured 80% of the code, and the new Nestor Corporation homepage was going to be as breathtaking as the legendary pages of all massive enterprises, surely attracting more customers.

"Wow, it looks really good." Jiang Yan marveled. He also owed thanks to the visual design icons and branding—he used to think colleagues were just dead weight, but now he saw them all as warriors on the same boat.

It had never occurred to Jiang Yan before to show others what he made; he felt that was just part of job compliance, but now he felt he had truly achieved something, produced something beneficial to the world.

He wanted to share his achievements with his colleagues, but they had all left on time, preparing to continue the next day.

He couldn’t quite describe what he was feeling.

At first, Jiang Yan had felt uncomfortable with the on-time leaving culture at Nestor Corporation, thinking them too lazy, but then he half-feared, half-thrilled found himself seemingly "revived."

After one week, he faced an unprecedented complete weekend off; he felt as if all long-suppressed things had been released, giving rise to countless unprecedented ideas. He wanted to take a walk in the park, play games that young people played, cycle in the city, find a girlfriend to marry and have children with, finish reading an entire book, learn to swim. These fantasy-like ideas had never before entered his mind.

Work had suddenly turned from a pathological drain on life to a healthy activity for body and mind, and he naturally began pursuing work, his mindset changing almost daily since joining Nestor Corporation.

"I’m really scared ... I’m really scared that our Nestor Corporation might collapse one day," Jiang Yan said to a colleague during a meal, and he was very upset when he spoke.

"Hell will freeze over before someone beats our company," his colleague responded with emotion; he had once felt the same way until Nestor Corporation violently crushed one competitor after another, and was now still preparing for battle, "All we need to do is each play our part."

After dinner, Jiang Yan checked the public affairs decision-making column, where there was an ongoing debate about the newly established Nestor Middle School.

It was a hot topic. Some people firmly believed the school was built from the wealth created by Nestor Corporation and therefore must prioritize the company’s dependents first; other people argued that the existence of Nestor Corporation is for the overall social fairness, hence there should be a warm welcome for outsiders to participate.

The desire to speak out on major issues prevailed, but Jiang Yan’s personality did not allow him to make sweeping statements; he felt that any approach would harm the interests of certain groups. Feeling a part of the debate, he delved into these messages, considering the connection between company interests and social fairness.

Jiang Yan dreamed about Nestor Middle School that night, and when he awoke the next day, he felt confident and relaxed, looking forward to Monday when he could work on some backlog tasks without any overtime, something he was really not used to, and he cautiously enjoyed the work itself.

With Jiang Yan’s involvement, maintenance and upgrades were conducted on over a dozen websites under Nestor Corporation. The original versions were just passable, but now the web pages were sleek and beautiful, and even shortlisted for the annual Best Website Design Award.

The homepage is indeed the face of a company, and after the upgrade, the traffic for the secondary pages of Nestor Corporation also soared dramatically; people were more inclined to delve deeper into the company.

When the system asked him if he would like to stay at Nestor Corporation, Jiang Yan chose to agree without any hesitation. Once his loan was repaid and he had saved a bit of money, he would travel to Shangjing to visit that convenience store worker who had rescued him back then.