Coder Lee Yongho

400 billion (≈350 million USD) in annual sales.
However, a yearly deficit of 30 billion (≈26 million USD)
This was the poor result of the Shinseki Mall.
Even so, they couldn’t give up on the consumer’s market, which was going from offline to online, so they needed to make a breakthrough.
One part of the breakthrough was the PS System.
The aim of the project was to raise sales by ‘shooting’ the customer’s ‘preferences’, and change deficits into profits.
Of the 2 months of the compet.i.tion, when about half of the time had pa.s.sed, the G.o.ddess of victory seemed to be waving her hand at Mirae IT.
“3 billion (≈2.6 million USD)?”
“Yes. This is the sales produced due to our recommendation system.”
“What about them?”
“About 1.3 billion (≈1.13 million USD), sir.”
“Has one month pa.s.sed since then?”
Out of the 2 months of the compet.i.tion, the end of the first month was nearing.
“Yes, sir.”
Kim ManHo made a sneaky smile at the reporting man.
“Yes. Tell that friend that he’s doing well. That we will be counting on him in the future.”
“I understand.”
Until now, Mirae IT was in an absolutely superior position.

Dave wrapped his head with his hands, while screaming, after having a look at the Leaderboard notice.
“No way!”
RMSE Score : 0.8655.
The first place had changed again.
1. Shinseki Maut.
2. The Dark Forces.
The Dark Forces, with Dave at the core, had come down to 2nd place.
“Jessie, is the number I’m seeing real?”
“It should be, if you can’t believe it, then call the hosts or something.”
“No way. This… no, I don’t have the time for this.”
Jessie smiled while looking at Dave, who had a fierce reaction, interestingly. The smelly office seemed to have become brighter due to the smile of the person called Jessie.
“How about James?”
“He had the exact same reaction, and he seemed to write e-mails to various places?”
“Good. I can’t lose like this. I shall gather all the teams we don’t have a union with.”
The NetFlax Prize took a ‘Winner takes all’ structure.
Winner takes all.
2nd place had no meaning anyway.
Dave requested cooperation from other teams by offering to split the prize.
The office was never quiet that day due to Dave’s fuss.

After the system was edited, code committing was split into two stages. First, the developers would upload the source on to the SVN.
Then after YongHo’s confirmation, it would be decided whether it would be applied on to the real server.
YongHo, who was looking at the code, scratched his head as if he didn’t understand something.
‘I definitely told him once.’
He had told Lee HyunGu through Son SeokHo but there was no change.
The code still stank. The code that other people wrote, in no way, satisfied him either.
However, Lee HyunGu was different from even them.
YongHo couldn’t find any ‘efforts’ anywhere in the code, and he even thought that this was intentional. He was coding exactly opposite to how Son SeokHo told him to code.
‘It won’t do like this.’
YongHo looked for Son SeokHo again, in the intra-company messenger app.

Adjusting the recommendation system, which showed a 10% increase in performance in the NetFlax Prize, into Shinseki’s PS System was by no means, easy.
The core was the addition of another process.
“The point of the system for the NetFlax Prize lies in estimating what star the customer would give.”
“Yes.”
“However, we need to go another step further for the PS System.”
“I think you’re talking about the recommendation process to the people categorized by the stars they give to the series… am I right?”[1]
“…I think you’re ready to go into the world now.”
The greatest joy of teaching lied in watching the growth of someone. Son SeokHo felt that it was worthwhile, seeing YongHo all grown up, and couldn’t hide his joy.
“No, I have a lot more to learn from the head researcher.”
“What would Mr.YongHo do to make that stage?”
“It was already implemented on maut though?”
“You’ve seen the source?”
“Of course I did. It’s made by our head researcher, who is the core of the project.”
It was an era where open source was everywhere.
If one goes into gethub, programmers could find most sources that they were thinking about in their heads.
The sources were already implemented.
The paradigm was shifting from implementation to combination.
And a problem that arose from that, was the degradation of ability.
There were a lot of instances where the people only use the implemented sources so their ability to create new things decreased. Son SeokHo was wary of this fact so he made YongHo keep this fact in mind.
“And you threatened me to have a month of code review if I use the source as it is…”
YongHo said with a suppressed voice. His teeth clattered when he thought about the code review with Son SeokHo.It definitely helped him in regards to raising his ability and it was also partially fun, but it remained inside his memory as a difficult time.
“Did I say that?”
YongHo could only grit his teeth at Son SeokHo, who pretended that such thing never happened.
“…Yes, you did.”
“Oh, ok. Then let’s get on with the changing the system. We can’t lose to Mirae IT right?”
If recommendation never affected the customers’ actions, then Son SeokHo would have never even made the maut.
If they applied YongHo’s results with the 10% increase, then the difference in sales could be reversed in just one night.
‘I must buy this!’
Preference shooting.
The upgrade of the PS System began.

Oh My G.o.d!
Dave was sitting in his seat dumbfoundedly. He pulled out his hair for some time, and held his head down for the next, and stayed still.
When looked from the side, one would think ‘What kind of madman is this?’ – automatically.
“Dave, get yourself together.”
“Jessie! This… is just not possible. It can’t be like this, right?”
“What are you saying, you madman.”
She had white skin, as expected of a white person. And so, the red lips were accentuated. However, Jessie’s such charming lips weren’t seen by Dave.
“I increased it to 10.5%! I won against myself! I broke that unsurpa.s.sable wall!”
“So what?”
“No… I must have been seeing things.
Dave opened the Leaderboard noticeboard after accessing the NetFlax Prize website, again.
1. Shinseki Maut.
2. The Dark Forces.
There was no change in the rankings.
With a value of 0.8581, Shinseki Maut was still in first place.
11% increase in performance. A record was set for the first time in the compet.i.tion.
“I think you’re not seeing things, though.”
“They’re monsters. These guys must not be human.”
Dave muttered like a psychopath. Jessie seemed to judge that she shouldn’t leave him like this, so she put her hands up.
*Smack*
And smacked Dave’s head.
“Hey! That, hurts.”
“You seemed out of your mind, so I called you back to reality.”
“It ends in an hour right?”
“Yes.”
“*Sigh*… Where is the ceremony held?”
“I think it was California.”
“Let’s go! To California!”
After speaking, Dave packed his bag, when he had no choice but to put down his packed bag.
Jessie was holding onto the Luffy action figure from the animation called One Piece.
“You’re going without even applying for a leave? What are you going to do, when you get there? They are monsters so you are planning to shoot GomuGomu no Pistol like Luffy?”
“L, let’s put that down first, Jessie.”
“Why? Just leave the company and leave however you want then.”
“Uh, yeah. R, really? C, can I do that?”
“Hey!”
“NOOOO!”
Dave threw away the bug he was holding, and threw himself forward and slid on the floor to catch the Luffy action figure.
However, Jessie only pretended to throw it.
“So let’s get yourself together. There’s a confirmation process anyway. And there’s also time to call the award winner to the main company of NetFlax. So the award ceremony is in one month. Relax, okay?”
At Jessie’s words, Dave nodded like a little pup that listened to orders. It was Jessie’s most sure-fire method to control Dave.

A man is typing on the keyboard one at a time while trembling his hands. Perhaps he was sweating cold sweat, but droplets of water kept dropping on to the keyboard.

fdisk / dev/hda.

After putting the command on the console window, the screen changed. The root account was shared by all the people partic.i.p.ating in the project anyway.
The man thought that he wouldn’t be found out doing this, by anyone.

Command (m for help) : | (

Screen where you can input commands.
And at the end, the cursor was blinking.
The man barely moved his trembling hands atop the keyboard.

D.
And Enter

It was the option to delete the part.i.tion.
The man didn’t think he would do this at first.
He was acknowledged in his own way, within the company, and was promoted to manager status.

However, manager was his limit.
Due to the trait of a distribution company, management personnel received better treatment than programmers.
To become a general manager, he needed to raise his capability as a management personnel rather than his ability as a programmer, and the man started straying from his path from then.
He had programming ability that was acknowledged by many people, but he was a.s.sessed as D in the performance management.
-10%.
Considering 3.4% inflation, then around 13.4% of his annual salary was taken away.

He considered coming to the smart shopping strategy team his last opportunity.
And he worked hard without consideration for his body.
However, the spotlight was always pointing towards Son SeokHo.
At first, he thought of catching up.
However, whenever he interacted with Son SeokHo, all he felt was misery that he was standing still at the starting line.
Son SeokHo was calling from the end of the marathon, but he, a manager, lost his way on the starting line.
And when he looked at the existence called YongHo, who appeared out of nowhere, that worry only increased.
Despite his young age, his ability was too astonishing. While he was busying himself catching up to Son SeokHo, YongHo had surpa.s.sed him in no time.
Can I really survive in this industry?
Isn’t it that I don’t have any talent or ability?
Worry turned into self-loathing, and not a long time pa.s.sed before it changed into wrath and hostility.
‘Yes. Let’s leave. I will leave for you guys.’
When he decided, he became calm.
And there was a fine opportunity for this too. From what he thought was the last opportunity, an unexpected rope was thrown at him.

Part.i.tion number(1-8) : |

The monitor was urging to go to the next stage.
Now all he had to do was to select a number.
The man partic.i.p.ated in the project from the beginning so he knew which part.i.tion contained the code for the current recommendation system.
The rope from the heavens, was stopped at ‘3’ on the keyboard. The man pulled with more strength at the rope which was tickling the keyboard.
*Tap*
‘Huh?’
The strong-looking rope dropped down without any strength.
“Mr. Lee HyunGu. We’re from the personnel management team. Please stand up.”
From Lee HyunGu’s forehead, not a drop of water could be find. It was a face that paled white.
After he spasmed with the pale face, he started shedding tears.

Translator’s notes

Regular Chapter 1/3

[1] This might sound confusing so I will explain this here:
Person A and Person B gives Movie X a 1 star and 5 stars each. Then, they will be put into 2 groups, 1 group being people who gave 1 star for that movie, and the other group being people who gave 5 stars to that movie. And so on…

Dave was an Otaku…. lol. Guess who else is, and who that guy is crazy about.

One was Dave, so the other is ……
Dave likes Luffy, the other guy likes ……..

Oh, and what do people think of the google drive folder (Devouring Monarch) I posted in previous chapter? Any good?

Tiny spoiler since people are asking ‘when will MC get a backbone?’
Something interesting happens around chapter 75, and he will get a backbone then. Well, in my opinion anyway.

Nice reading~

Translator : Chamber