Mika was sitting in one of the meeting rooms at the end of the corridor. The office was always full of people, so Aleksandr had specifically chosen this place as its location ensured relative silence which made it easier to focus.

Mika was scrolling through the team's chat and replying to the messages he had missed. “This is crazy. How come I have so many unread notifications? It hasn’t been 24 hours, and I already have 40 of them,” he mumbled while checking the hour on his laptop.

Is this what all my days are going to look like? When will I find time to code? he wondered, feeling a pang of anxiety.

He left the office yesterday at 6 p.m., making sure he caught up on all the tasks that were assigned to him for that day. Now he was waiting for his meeting with Aleksandr. They were supposed to start at 10 a.m., and it was already 10.30 a.m. Mika bit his lips. Having no idea why he was running late, he decided to send him another message despite his ‘do not disturb’ status.

Just as he was about to start typing, he heard someone’s footsteps approaching the glass door. Mika lifted his head, and the next second, he saw Aleksandr briskly entering the room.

Aleksandr walked to the table, placed his laptop on it, and immediately began explaining why he was unpunctual. Eager to understand what had kept him so long, Mika shifted all his focus to him.
 
"Mika, I’m sorry. I know that we were supposed to start our meeting 30 minutes ago, but I had to stay longer on the previous call. I saw you reached out to me, but I couldn’t reply then, as we had intense discussions going on. The thing is... we’ll have to abandon the project we were supposed to be working on,” he paused for a moment, trying to read Mika’s expression which was changing with every word he was saying, “I understand that this isn’t something that you expected and it might come as a surprise, but the leadership has already made a decision and there was nothing me or Natalia could have done to make them change their mind. We will have to pick another area that was assigned to us.”

Mika’s eyes widened in bewilderment as he was processing in his head what he had just heard. He started his new role only yesterday and got materials from Aleksandr a few days ago. He tried his best to read carefully through them, note down the most important aspects, and memorize them. And now Aleksandr is saying that it is no longer needed and there will be new things he will have to work on.

Mika leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. “Wow… I’m a little surprised because I wasn’t expecting this to happen. Or at least not so fast. Is this normal in big tech?”

“I will be honest with you: yes, it is. Unfortunately, situations like this cannot be avoided and it all depends on a range of factors – some of them can be predicted, while others cannot. The new fiscal year has begun, which means managers have recently defined priorities for the upcoming 12 months. Looks like in the end they decided to change tasks or areas for some of the teams, and what I have just mentioned to you is one of those examples,” Aleksandr gave a detailed explanation of the situation while rolling up his sleeves.

Mika couldn’t help but take a sneak peek at him. There was something undeniably sensual in the way Aleksandr’s long fingers moved as he folded the dress shirt’s material. It revealed not only his bare skin but also his fine forearms.

I bet he must have a strong grip.

Feeling a flutter in his chest, Mika bit his lower lip, trying to calm himself down before continuing with his questions. “Does this mean priorities might change in the middle of the year as well? What will happen to the projects and people working on them?”

“Well, if that happens then the project might be moved to another team or even get canceled.”

“What? What do you mean by ‘canceled’? I thought those types of things are not happening in big tech, where so many people are working and everything seems to be planned thoroughly months ahead,” he retorted, looking even more dumbfounded than he was just seconds ago.

Aleksandr wanted to chuckle after hearing Mika’s words, but he knew that his reaction might create a misunderstanding. After all, Mika was a newbie in their company who needed time to settle down and learn how everything operated here. And it was his role as a mentor to help him go through the onboarding period as smoothly as possible, which would last for a few months.

Leaning over the table, Aleksandr unlocked his laptop and connected it to the external monitor that was located on one of the walls. “What do you know about accessibility?” he asked Mika while fixing his gaze on his laptop’s screen. He was looking for a file that was shared with him and Natalia during the call.

“Accessibility?” Mika repeated, clearly surprised. He never worked in this area and had little knowledge about it. “I didn't have a chance to work on any task that would require getting myself familiar with it,” he replied honestly.

Aleksandr smiled and started sharing on the monitor the slide he was looking for. “Great, so now you will have a chance to do so. Welcome to the big tech – the project we just got assigned is related to accessibility. Our team will be working on the ‘color settings’ area. As our product has grown significantly in the last year, we need to add necessary changes to our application so that it would become accessible to more people,” he said placidly.

“But first, let’s talk about the basics and what accessibility means,” he continued explaining while approaching the whiteboard and taking a marker. “What you see on the presentation is how teams in our organizations are divided and who does what. For now, you need to be aware that we’ll be working on this with the US team. The rest you will read later, so let us focus now on our part of the work. By rewriting the ‘color settings’ and introducing a new approach, users with reduced vision and color-deficient vision or ‘color blindness’ would be able to perform their work faster and more easily. Do you know how many people experience significant disability?” Aleksandr paused to ask his question.

Mika shook his head. He had no idea and did not want to give a random number.

Aleksandr wrote an answer on the whiteboard. “Around 1.3 billion people, which is about 16% of the global population. To put it simply, it’s 1 in 6 people.”* When he finished highlighting all the numbers, he turned to Mika. “Pretty scary stats, aren’t they?”

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*Based on the information from the WHO website: https://www.who.int/health-topics/disability#tab=tab_1