The Phoenix Project

Chapter 3

• Tuesday, September 2

I follow Patty and Wes as they walk past the NOC, into the sea of cubicles. We end up in a giant workspace created by combining six cubicles. A large table sits against one wall with a keyboard and four LCD monitors, like a Wall Street trading desk. There are piles of servers everywhere, all with blinking lights. Each portion of the desk is covered by more monitors, showing graphs, login windows, code editors, Word documents, and countless applications I don’t recognize.

Brent types away in a window, oblivious to everything around him. From his phone, I hear the NOC conference line. He obviously doesn’t seem worried that the loud speakerphone might bother his neighbors.

“Hey, Brent. You got a minute?” Wes asks ...