Aleksandr didn’t want Mika to meet the same fate. “Going back to my question about Francesco: are you sure there’s nothing you want to share with me?”

“Apart from the fact that I recently spent 3 hours on a call with him, I don’t think there’s anything worth sharing.”
 
Aleksandr, sure that he had misheard, asked Mika to repeat how long Francesco kept him on a call. “You heard it right. 3 hours.”

“What did you discuss for such a long time?”

Mika tapped his fingers against the table. “Let me think… We started by going through my recent PR*, where I introduced a fix to the issues they were having. But that took only around 10 minutes. And then…hmm…”, Mika tried to recall what they had talked about. There were so many meetings he was attending, and tasks where he was going back and forth, that he was sometimes losing track of what was going on. “And then… Ah, I remember now. He had some issues with the local environment setup and asked me if I knew how to solve it.”

Irritated, Aleksandr clicked his tongue. He knew perfectly well what was going on, without Mika telling him the rest of the story. This guy has no shame. He doesn’t think of Mika as a ‘real engineer’ but since no one in his current team is willing to help him, he uses him to solve his problems.

“Next time something like this happens, just cut him. This is not your responsibility to stay for such a long time on a call with him,” he answered, his tone firm.

“But…”
 
“If you feel bad about it, just say you have other meetings scheduled and can’t talk with him now – if he wants to get on a call with you that badly, he can set up a separate meeting.”
 
“I’m not sure this is going to work…”
 
Aleksandr’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Mika’s troubled expression. Mika was clearly trying to find an explanation for why he was helping someone who thought low of him.

“Mika, you’re not doing charity here. You have your work and we, as a team, have our own deadlines. These are the things you need to prioritize. If he needs your advice, then first ask him to write in a chat what it is that he wants to discuss – then you let him know if this is something you can or cannot help him with.”

Aleksandr paused for a moment to take a sip of his coffee. He’s just using Mika to boss him around. That’s not going to happen anymore.

As much as he wished Mika to live his life without any troubles, he didn’t want to barge between them and use his job title and authority, which would surely do the trick to resolve this situation. That would, of course, be the easiest and fastest solution, but it wouldn’t solve the real issue.

Instead, he wanted Mika to learn how to be more assertive on his own. That would take more time, but in the long run, it will help Mika build much-needed confidence. Confidence that would play a significant role, the higher he would go.

“There are those general chats where he can ask for help. I’m sure he knew about them. There’s always someone online. Remember that your time is as valuable as his.”

This time Mika had to admit that Aleksandr was right. There was no point in denying what he was saying. After all, it was Aleksandr who spent years in the engineering world, not Mika, so it was wise to listen to his advice and learn from his experience as much as possible.

While Mika got a chance to work with different people in his previous jobs, dealing with engineers was something completely different, and he still couldn’t fully understand how their brains work – some of them were open and easy-going, while others looked like they were seeing a human for the first time in years, after spending centuries locked in the basement. “I forgot about them. But yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll suggest that to him next time.”
 
“Good,” Aleksandr smiled lightly, hoping that the solution he had offered would resolve this problem.

“And how are you feeling, Aleksandr?” Mika asked. They were talking mostly about him, and while it was nice to have Aleksandr’s full attention, he wanted to know how he had been doing those days.

Unfortunately, the following answer didn’t give him any additional information other than what he already knew. “I’m fine. Everything is good.”

Mika could think of only 3 reasons: Aleksandr was really okay. Second, he still felt uncomfortable and wasn’t able to open up in front of him, or, what Mika suspected was the most relevant case, didn’t want to bother him with what had been happening in his life.

Trying to read the room, Mika continued softly, “I read your recent article about the importance of accessibility in software development on the TechX website. It was really good. I especially liked the part where you mentioned the benefits of early adoption.”
 
“Thanks.”

“I just wonder… When do you find the time for all your extra activities? You’re always the first one to come to work and the last one to leave. Then we have those late calls with the US team. Not to mention all of the meetings you’re leading. You surely spend a lot of time preparing for them. And then there’s our project which is still in an early phase and requires a lot of research. Oh, and you have your speaker's activities. That’s a lot for one person to handle,” he prompted, hoping that this time Aleksandr would pick up on this and at least share something more.

“I’m kind of used to it.”

Damn, another vague reply. But Mika didn’t plan on giving up so easily. Time to change strategy. “Aleksandr, you remember our conversation in the café?”

Aleksandr nodded. “Great. And do you remember the second rule?”

“Of course, after all it was me who came up with it.”

Mika asked him to say out loud what it was about.

“I would like us to be in an exclusive relationship. Helping and supporting each other. No dating other people. Having sex only with each other,” Aleksandr said in one go.

_______
Dictionary:
- PR (Pull Request). A pull request is a way to propose changes to a codebase. It includes modifications to code and/or documentation made in a separate branch. Best practice is for each Engineer to work on their own branch, create a PR, and have it reviewed by other Engineers (to ensure code quality, catch potential mistakes/bugs). Once the required approvals are received, the PR gets merged and the changes become part of the main branch (codebase).