In her small one-bedroom apartment in downtown Boston, Nina Avanthika browsed through job postings on her laptop with a growing mixture of annoyance and desperation.
At first, she had thought her major in Women's Studies from Boston University would open doors to her to make a difference for women and marginalized groups in the world, but now, it felt more like a millstone around her neck.
Her meager savings were being eaten away by Boston's high rent and her high speed internet bill. The looming first student loan payment would completely clear her out.
Nina ran her hand through her short cropped black hair as she scanned through posting after posting that required a STEM degree that she did not have, until one job posting finally caught her eye.
It was a posting for a personal assistant to a CEO, offering a very generous paycheck along, with insurance and travel allowance and only requiring a bachelor's degree, and experience in event management and organizational skills! This was it!
She quickly clicked the 'Apply Now' link. Her jaw dropped as the online form loaded. It was from Sirius Software, a relatively new, but widely successful, extremely controversial, and very secretive game development company.
"If I get this job, it would be an excellent opportunity to campaign for women's rights and gender equality from within" thought Nina to herself.
With a passion borne from years of activism, Nina launched Google and tried to find information on Sirius Software's CEO.
Unfortunately for Nina, Sirius Software's CEO was a complete enigma. Aside from his name, Aaron Zakhrov, there were no pictures of him, he had no social media or any online presence. Even at game development conferences and other trade shows, he was not the public face of Sirius Software. Instead, Japanese idols were hired to present and promote Sirius Software's games, in skimpy, revealing costumes, and extremely high heels.
"Such antiquated and sexist practices speaks volumes even if the coward never shows his face", thought Nina savagely to herself as she tried in vain to gather information about the elusive and enigmatic Aaron Zakhrov.
Finally giving up her fruitless search, Nina took a deep breath and started filling in the online job application form from Sirius Software with a fierce determination, her long, brown-skinned fingers with short, neat nails devoid of polish, flying across the keyboard.
The first few sections of the form were easy. She quickly entered her contact information, social media links, education, and work experience.
But then she came to the IQ assessment questions. She felt a wave of annoyance wash over her. Why did they need to ask her these strangely cryptic and ambiguous questions?
The next section of the form was even stranger. It asked for her height, weight, shoe size, and other tailoring measurements.
Nina stared at the form, her eyes widening in confusion. What did her measurements have to do with the job? She was applying for a personal assistant position, not some modeling gig!
As she reluctantly entered her height and weight, the form spat out a red error message that she needed to enter the values in SI units. She blinked in surprise, SI as in Metric units?
Growling at the form, she impatiently punched in random values, but the form still spat out error messages saying her values were not valid. Her hands trembled slightly, the form's demands overshadowing her earlier annoyance. It seemed as if the form was designed to filter applicants based on body measurements! Surely this wasn't legal?
A savage determination to change the company and make sure no other woman would have to endure the indignity of being filtered by their body shape gripped her, and she painstakingly converted and entered the SI units of height, weight, shoe size and other tailoring measurements. She sighed in relief when the form accepted her converted measurements, for a few moments, she had worried that her actual measurements would be filtered as well.
The final section of the form was the request for a selfie. This too, thwarted all her attempts at uploading a random photo. With a growl of impatience and frustration, Nina quickly washed and moisturized her face, combed her hair, and snapped a picture with her webcam.
The form finally accepted the photo, Nina sighed in relief, and fell back on her bed. She had never filled out a form so intrusive before, and she couldn't help but wonder what kind of person Aaron Zakhrov was and what kind of company was Sirius Software. "I will change Sirius Software, and make it a safe, inclusive space for everyone. Just you wait Aaron Zakhrov! The world has no place for sexist pigs like you!" she vowed to herself, as she closed her laptop and started to get ready for bed.
----
In his darkened office at Sirius Software Headquarters, Aaron Zakhrov sat at his computer, stretching his broad muscular back after the end of a long day of coding, inter-spaced with business meetings.
He took a gulp of coffee to clear some of his fatigue, and launched the job application program that processed the data from the application form he posted for the open position of his Personal Assistant.
He watched as the sophisticated program, one of his best creations, took not only the data applicants provided, but also mined their data from social media and other online activities to create extremely detailed and comprehensive profiles.
Aaron knew exactly what kind of person he wanted as a personal assistant, political correctness and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion be damned.
A young, conventionally attractive female with a strong work ethic who was intelligent and discreet. Someone who was arm and eye-candy, and who could take over the mundane day-to-day activities of responding to correspondence, scheduling meetings and planning itineraries, while he focused on the overall direction of the company and his own involvement in the engineering process.
To that end, he had designed an extremely detailed application form, backed by a sophisticated filter to weed out potential bad actors, and ensure his exacting physical, and intellectual requirements were met.
He read through the only application profile that had survived his aggressive filtering algorithms with cold and calculating blue eyes. Nina Avanthika was a recent graduate in Women's studies from Boston University, and from her social media profile, had strong opinions on what video games should look like. She aggressively called out the use of breast jiggle physics, and raged that Sirius Software's video games catered to 'the male gaze'.
Cold contempt and suspicion coursed through him as he reviewed her application information. It was not the first time that activists and corporate spies had tried to infiltrate his company and force him to change the way he ran things and change the content of his games. And Nina Avanthika clearly viewed herself as a savior, bringing diversity, equity, inclusion and whatever else she thought was needed into Sirius Software by applying for this position.
The fact that hers was the only application in over a week fueled Aaron's sense of suspicion. "Either you have powerful friends, or you are an accomplished actor Nina Avanthika. Which is it?" Aaron mused quietly to himself.
Closing his eyes in deep contemplation, he carefully considered the ramifications of hiring her.
It was obvious from the way his application posting was tampered with, that somebody well versed in manipulating job sites, and with considerable influence really wanted him to hire her.
"Keep your friends close and your foes even closer. I think that adage applies in this case." thought Aaron to himself, as he emailed her a detailed interview invitation, including directions to Sirius Software headquarters and the compulsory dress code of a skirt-suit and heels.
"Let's see what you are made of Ms. Avanthika" he mused to himself, before shutting down his computer and retiring for the night.