Chapter 114: A Heavy Responsibility

Saturday morning’s shift turned out to be far more relaxed than Lin Luyou had anticipated. Perhaps it was the baptism by fire she had endured the previous night—a frantic race against time—that, even though she was still half asleep, her efficiency in completing tasks remained high.

“Xujia! Hey, didn’t Xujia come in this morning?”

Just as Lin Luyou finished another batch of tasks and was about to rest her eyes for a moment, a somewhat unfamiliar male voice called out.

He was looking for Chen Xujia.

Lin Luyou glanced toward Chen Xujia’s workstation—no one was there—then turned back to him and said, “Xujia probably just stepped out for a bit. Why don’t you wait here for now?”

The man nodded and pulled open Cheng Li’s chair to sit down.

“Why are there so few people here this morning?”

“Hey, Brother Yu, what brings you here?” Before Lin Luyou could respond, Tang Xiao’s voice cut in from the side. “It’s a perk from Da Ming. We’re on a rotating shift for the next couple of days, working just half-days each.”

“Really? That good?” Ding Tongyu sounded a bit envious.

The data analysis department had been busy all night. In addition to their own analysis tasks, they had to pull data from the database for the operations team, working hard until around three or four in the morning.

Yet, despite their near all-nighter, the higher-ups hadn’t even acknowledged their efforts.

“Heh heh heh, Brother Yu, why don’t you and your guys defect over here? How about joining our department?”

Chen Xujia returned just then, having fetched some water, and teased Ding Tongyu using his usual line.

“I think I’ll pass,” Ding Tongyu said, clearly annoyed. “If we all left, wouldn’t the same workload just fall back on the rest of us?”

Normally, the Product Operations Department had the authority to search for detailed data on specific products within the system. But since few of the new recruits knew programming, these peripheral tasks piled onto the data analysis team.

The reason they stayed up late last night, besides the boss’s sudden demands, was that the Operations Department had accumulated so many basic data requests that their computers slowed down, making large-scale data computation impossible.

“Tell me, your department is always doing so much product analysis. Why not hire a few people who can program? Then for issues like last night’s with Junrui, TT, and Lanling companies, you could handle them yourselves.”

“I’m not trying to shirk responsibility or divide us,” Ding Tongyu continued. “As data support, we’re naturally happy to meet your normal data needs… But since you have permission for product detail data, if you could operate that yourselves, we could devote more time and energy to complex data. Wouldn’t that be twice the result for half the effort?”

“Exactly. You’re absolutely right.” Chen Xujia dropped her playful smile and sat seriously beside him. “For us veterans, learning programming is a bit of a challenge… but now when we recruit new people, we make SQL and Python additional requirements.”

“Look at her,” Chen Xujia said, pointing toward Lin Luyou, “and the other new girl in our group—they both have programming experience. When we hired them, we thought we couldn’t keep bothering you all forever. We know your department is swamped and under a lot of pressure. You shouldn’t have to waste your energy on our little tasks.”

Ding Tongyu followed Chen Xujia’s gesture and looked at Lin Luyou. After arguing for a while, the anger he had been holding in dissipated. He raised an eyebrow and smiled.

“All right, then I’ll be looking forward to your results. Of course, if you need help, I think a few people in my group would be more than happy to give them an intensive training.”