I am not a literary giant

Zuo Ziliang's company is located on the 15th floor of Building B4K in the startup park. It occupies only two offices and a meeting room on the entire floor. Next door is a small company that makes independent games.

Even in such a tiny space, they've created a corporate culture. Right inside the entrance, on the wall, is written, "Warm hearts with enthusiasm, heal souls with sincerity." A sign hangs by the door that reads "Wen Ai"—the name of their app. This leaves passersby completely confused; nobody knows exactly what their company does.

During the period when Wang Zixu was completely absorbed in his creative work, the monthly downloads of the "Wen'ai" app jumped from four figures to five figures. User ratings also improved from 4.2 to 4.5, earning it a spot in the app store's search results.

Every Monday after the weekly meeting, the department is supposed to send the weekly report to Zuo Ziliang's email address. This Monday morning, when he opened it, he was shocked to find that the weekly turnover had increased by 400% compared to the previous week. Like Wang Zixu, he checked the calculation three times before confirming that it was indeed the figure.

At that moment, Operations Director Huang Da was in his office reporting to him. It was supposed to be a happy occasion, but he looked very troubled: "Boss, the number of users has surged, and we don't have enough speech therapists. Many users can't find a match for half a day, and the churn rate is very high."

Zuo Ziliang thought for a moment and said, "Let's implement an incentive program. There are different tiers for orders over 15 per day, 30 over 30, and 50 over 50. We'll pay them to keep them motivated."

The speech therapists at Wen'ai are not formally employed; they're more like ride-hailing drivers—most are part-time. Therefore, the platform doesn't have much control over them and can only win them over by offering higher pay. Fortunately, this tactic always works.

The operations team said, "Okay, but there's another problem. They're all urging us for the script now, saying they can't chat without it."

Zuo Ziliang said, "With so many new users, won't the old scripts be reused repeatedly?"

The operations team said, "But even with repeated use, we'll eventually run out of resources. Boss, I don't have any complaints, I'm just giving feedback. Our script team's output is still too low. Shouldn't we expand our output over there?"

Zuo Ziliang remained silent, seemingly deep in thought. Besides him, only one other person in the company knew of Wang Zixu's existence; the other employees all assumed the scripts were produced by an external team, completely unaware of his true identity.

He doesn't want the prince to make a public appearance for the time being, for various reasons.

Huang Da said, "Boss, I have a suggestion."

Zuo Ziliang said, "You go ahead."

Huang Da said, "I think we should break down departmental barriers, establish an end-to-end content matrix, align the granularity of different teams, form a differentiated approach that is quick and efficient, and use the needs of speech therapists as a starting point to improve the script team's awareness of the content, thereby forcing an increase in productivity, thus forming a synergy and improving the underlying logic of our platform's operation..."

Zuo Ziliang frowned: "Speak like a human being!"

The operations team quickly suggested, "Could you introduce the script team to us and add them to the group so the speech therapists can directly connect with them? Wouldn't that be more efficient?"

Zuo Ziliang stared at him with a half-smile and said, "Why don't we just create another script module to directly connect with the speech therapists and have them pay by the piece?"

The operations manager paused for a moment, then said, "As expected of the boss, this idea is truly imaginative. It's not impossible, but it requires the script team to cooperate. Their work is more creative, and charging them by piece might lower the quality..."

Zuo Ziliang said, "Go away, can't you even tell I'm talking nonsense? You should first make sure what I just said is true. You guys in operations should all urge the speech therapists in the group to take on more orders. I've never met anyone who doesn't want to make more money!"

……

Huang Da returned to his workstation, and the other operations staff gathered around to ask, "How did it go?"

He said, "It wasn't very good; I got a scolding from the boss."

The person next to him said, "I told you long ago, this script team should be our company's core secret, the moat of our app. How could we just hand it over? In this cutthroat competition, who knows, some former employee might poach them, and then..."

He stopped talking at this point, knowing he shouldn't continue, but his meaning had been conveyed.

Huang Da said, "But these security measures are too tight. Right now, everyone can only see the product. We have no idea whether the other party is an individual or a team, how large the team is, or what their professional background is. And yet, they've almost become the core of our work. How are we supposed to prepare our monthly reports now?"

On the surface, he was worried about the monthly report, but in reality, he was resentful and was just venting. The app that competes with "Wen'ai" had been coming on strong recently, seemingly determined to completely shut down "Wen'ai," which could be described as a critical moment of survival.

At this critical juncture, self-rescue is of course necessary. However, it should follow his principles, standardize the language therapy scripts, set up standardized courses, and improve the quality of employees, instead of being like the boss who somehow got a bunch of scripts from somewhere. The key is that these scripts are actually written so well that they really helped Wen Ai save herself, and even had a strong momentum of the West prevailing over the East.

It felt like a broken cable, and the boss somehow pulled out a chopstick, put it in the computer case, and the cable inexplicably connected. While it did work, this kind of "work" made everyone feel very insecure.

Complaints aside, the work still had to be done. After he finished speaking, his colleague was still absorbed in the conversation:

"It should be a team, a small team, not very large, with a core creative idea, and the writing style should be consistently reviewed and maintained..."

Huang Da opened the large group chat for speech therapists and relayed Zuo Ziliang's message to everyone. Soon, he received a barrage of "Received" messages.

Just as the boss said, there's no one in this world who doesn't love making money. Hearing about the incentive, these guys were all clamoring to start taking orders like crazy.

However, after one member of the group asked a question, everyone's formation turned into three soul-searching questions:

When will the new script be released?

"Could you release the new script sooner?"

"Could you provide a few more scripts each day?"

Huang Da typed in the group: "The script will still be distributed on time every day. Don't rely on the script too much. This is our internal learning material. It's a benefit, but also an incentive. After you've thoroughly understood the script, you should think outside the box, apply what you've learned to other situations, and use new methods to interpret it, instead of just asking for the script every day."

The group fell silent for a moment, then someone broke the silence.

Sunny and cheerful Sakura: [I'm done for; I can't learn that kind of writing style. Anyway, hurry up and send the script; I've forgotten how to chat without one.]

As soon as he said that, the other group members quickly followed suit, copying and pasting a whole bunch of them, all adding one.

Huang Da rubbed his forehead.

……

Where there are people, there is a community. In the girls' dormitory, four people can create five groups. In addition to the official group, the "Wen'ai" speech therapists also have many smaller groups. The sunny and cheerful Xiaoyingjiang started a trend in the official group, and then she started talking in several small groups of leading speech therapists.

Sunny and cheerful Sakura: [Do you guys think I should ask the operations team for the scriptwriter's contact information? I have some questions I don't understand and want to ask that scriptwriter. It's urgent.]

Someone replied in the group chat very quickly.

The Innocent Poet: [It's impossible to get that. If we could directly connect with the script team, what would be the point of official operations?]

Sunny and cheerful Sakura-chan: [The official channels are still useful; at least there's a platform. And I checked the opposing channels; they've been getting thoroughly thrashed by the Wen Ai (anti-China) media lately, they might be shut down soon.]

Innocent Poet: [No, it's a low-asset industry. They can survive as long as they have a few thousand loyal fans.]

Sunny and cheerful Sakura-chan: [Is the poet involved in investment and financing? How does he know so much about the market?]

Innocent Poet: [No. I write domineering CEO romance novels, so I know a little about it.]

Sunny and cheerful Sakura-chan: [...]

zed: [There's a certain beauty in how, as a gay man, everyone seems to have shit in their pockets. Yeah, beautiful.]

Sunny and cheerful Sakura-chan: [Z-God is rambling on like that again.]

Innocent Poet: [How much revenue did Sakura-chan generate this month? Did it break even compared to last month?]

Sunny and cheerful Sakura-chan: [It's already at 7, almost matching last month's total, and it's only the first ten days of the month!]

Innocent Poet: [Hmm. This month's order volume is terrifying. I'm off to collect the money.]

Sunny and cheerful Sakura-chan: [Yeah, off to collect money~]

zed: [This is a casual chat group, please don't talk about work here.]

After he finished speaking, the group chat returned to calm.