Most people work in teams. We worked in a malfunctioning collective that thought it was a team. And if you think you've worked with the most dysfunctional people on the planet—that just means you haven't met these ones. They're not just weird. They act like they broke out of casting for a show where every episode ends with someone accidentally launching a nuclear missile through the coffee machine.
Elvis always said: "I didn't recruit them. They're like a virus—just appeared one day, slipped in byte by byte through the system's firewall."
Troy was the first. Tall. Square-jawed. Wearing a shirt that probably cost more than the server rack behind him. He introduced himself as a "technical visionary," though in practice he didn't understand a damn thing about programming. His real superpower? Convincing investors to throw money at him even when all he had was a piece of paper that read: "This is a great idea. Trust me."
"The trick," he used to say, chewing a burrito over the keyboard, "is making rich people believe they'll die without our awesome service. Everything else you can buy. Or steal. Or hack into something that barely works."
Troy was the face of the project. And the body. But when it came to brains—those were usually borrowed. His charm passed for confidence, and his quick hands for competence. He couldn't code to save his life, but he knew how to look like he could.
Then came Mandy. Small—like a phone charger. But mean—like a Friday-night system bug right after everyone's packed up to leave. Her stare could punch through concrete. And her sarcasm? Could crash the entire architecture of a project.
She worked on interfaces. Not because she loved them—but because she hated them. Every one of her designs was an act of aggression against the user. Her buttons were invisible. Her fonts, offensively tiny. Her forms? Endless bug loops. But the whole thing was labeled: "ultra-modern style." And somehow, it worked. Clients loved it.
"You don't get it. It's not a bug. It's an experience. I create a challenge. People should fight for access to information. That's the concept," she'd say, downing another bottle of soda with a label in Chinese.
Her laptop had no stickers. Only scratches—and a warm, consistent hatred for the human race. She launched builds using a key that only worked one out of three times. Just because it was more fun that way.
The last to arrive was Neil. No one invited him. One day, he was just there—sitting in a chair in the corner. And he asked, "Mind if I stay?"
He wasn't a programmer. Wasn't a designer. Not even an engineer. Neil was… a psychotherapist. Former. He quit after having a breakdown in the middle of a session. Started telling a client we all lived in a simulation—and that it was high time to delete old memories through dietary adjustment.
At first, Elvis wanted to kick him out. But then Neil started drawing diagrams that looked like alchemical blueprints. And one of them? Solved a critical database loop problem.
"I'm not a coder," Neil would say. "I'm an observer. I listen to how systems speak. And sometimes… I reply."
Since then, he'd become the project's unofficial philosopher. He wrote manifestos, mapped out logical mazes, and asked questions no one wanted to answer. Questions like: "What if a bug is a form of life?"
And that's how the team came to be.
Troy — a charismatic fraud. A man who sold air. Mandy — an interface goddess of pain, with a worldview soaked in misanthropy. Neil — a philosopher with a therapist's degree and the soul of a gothic monk. And Elvis — the last guy still trying to keep the circus spinning on a single, cracked axle.
Calling them a team would've been generous. They were more of an anomaly. But somehow, together, they managed the impossible—or at least tried. And sometimes… they just didn't die under the weight they kept piling on themselves. And that, in itself, was a kind of success.