As a junior JSON engineer at MegaCorp, you find that your new jsonic language has tripled your productivity. Just in time—your annual review is coming up in two months. You figure you’ll be in a great position to ask for a promotion and a raise.
But at the end of the fourth day, you get an email from your boss. “We need to talk. I’ll stop by your cube.”
Wow—you weren’t expecting her to notice so quickly!
Your boss arrives. She drops a piece of paper onto your desk. “This is a productivity chart of the 50 JSON engineers who work for me. Does anything look strange to you?”
You see one line, labeled with your employee number, that has recently hockey-sticked above all the others.
“Well,” you say with grand modesty, “I’ve always felt that my greatest flaw is working too hard—”
Your boss sighs. “Oh please, not that one again. Look—you need to tell me what’s going on here.”
You sense an opportunity. You open your laptop. You explain that you invented a DSL called jsonic. You demo the language in DrRacket. You wait as your boss studies the screen.
“OK, so here’s the deal,” she says. “This is a cute toy. But if you want to keep using it, you need to work through the weekend to bring it up to MegaCorp standards, so we can deploy it to the rest of the team starting on Monday.”
You see your productivity advantage fading, and with it your raise. “But I really just made it for me—”
She cuts you off. “Check your employment contract. It belongs to us now. Here’s what I need you to add.”