New Employees With an Annual Salary of 1 Trillion Won - Chapter 51

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 51. Missing Puzzle Pieces (1)

The stock market always flowed in directions different from expectations.

The market that was predicted to fall had risen for two consecutive days, and I stared only at the stock price window trying to understand it somehow.

“The NASDAQ index has risen over 5% in just two days. It has climbed back up by the same amount it fell due to the MicroStrategy accounting manipulation incident.”

“You don’t seem to understand it.”

“Even with the interest rate hike announcement, I have no idea why stock prices rose.”

Accounting manipulation, interest rate hikes.

Despite consecutive negative news, NASDAQ actually rebounded.

No matter how much I thought about it, it didn’t make sense.

“Didn’t you feel it during the Tiger Fund meeting? There were more people pinning their hopes on technology stock long positions.”

“But if interest rates went up, shouldn’t it normally fall?”

“They see it as already priced in. Everyone was already predicting the interest rate hike.”

The Branch Manager’s judgment was accurate.

If we had closed our short selling positions even a day later, our profits would have been cut in half.

No matter how much I could see the gears, it was difficult to respond to the market in real-time like the Branch Manager.

“Then what happened to the Market Forces that took over our positions?”

“We have materials from the Prime Broker. Take a look.”

Simply summarized major issues.

Among them, there were phrases that caught my attention.

[7 Hedge Funds Bankrupt Under Margin Call Pressure]

[Institutional Investors Mass Stop-Loss. Short Selling Position Closure Confirmed]

[Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Forced Liquidation Occurred]

In just two days, countless funds went bankrupt,

and investors who followed the short selling tasted hell.

“If we had held onto those positions… it’s terrifying just to think about.”

“Well, we had money saved up, so we could have lasted a few more months. But what do you think? Do you think technology stocks will keep rising?”

Absolutely not.

That’s why it was even more incomprehensible.

Clearly, all the technology stock gear structures were already broken.

“Honestly, I have no idea why there’s a rebound. There are many companies that will definitely collapse within a month.”

“I think the same way. We can just consider it rigor mortis.”

“Dead companies are twitching?”

“Something like that. There are still many market forces caressing dead stocks. They’re pests disrupting the market. So we need to clean them up.”

The forces that followed the short selling had already collapsed.

Now it was the turn of the forces following tech stocks.

“In the end, short-term stock investment seems to be all about timing. Whether long or short, if you miss the timing, you fall into hell.”

“For long-term investors, it’s just waves, but the market has more day trading forces betting their lives on those waves.”

“Don’t you also enjoy riding the waves, Branch Manager?”

“Not until I met Employee Lee. I was originally a value investor.”

Come to think of it, that was true.

The Branch Manager was originally someone who wanted to operate the Korea Branch using private equity fund methods.

“But short-term investment doesn’t seem necessarily bad.”

“If you can read the waves well, you can see bigger profits. Like us.”

The Branch Manager picked up the telephone.

Soon after, the familiar voice of the prime broker flowed through the phone handset.

[Branch Manager, congratulations once again. It was really perfect timing.]

“Looking at the materials, quite a lot of places got liquidated. This is going to earn us some serious criticism.”

[Who would criticize you, Branch Manager? They were even competing to buy from you, offering higher premiums. But what’s the reason for your call?]

The broker’s voice seemed urgent.

With the market fluctuating so much, there must be mountains of work to handle.

But the broker’s tone completely changed with the Branch Manager’s next words.

“I’m looking to establish short selling positions again.”

[Really? What scale are you thinking of?]

“About 700 million dollars. Simple 5x leverage should be enough.”

[Of course it’s possible. What stocks are you targeting?]

“Tech stocks, naturally.”

700 million dollars per place.

The plan was to trade with three prime brokers.

So it was about 2 billion dollars with 5x leverage, a position worth 10 billion dollars.

Looking at leverage ratio alone, the previous short selling was more aggressive.

But considering the overall scale, this investment was much larger.

[Is this another investment led by the Korea Branch independently from headquarters?]

“That’s right. But why do you ask?”

[The investment direction seems quite different from Tiger Fund Headquarters, so I was curious.]

“The Korea Branch operates investments in a completely different way from headquarters.”

[I’m on the Branch Manager’s side, but headquarters must be quite uncomfortable with this.]

This investment would determine which approach was correct.

A confrontation between those who follow trends and those who create them.

And in my eyes, the outcome was already clear. Those who go against market flow are bound to face destruction.

“What’s there to be uncomfortable about? In the end, returns tell the whole story. Can you establish positions by today?”

[Many funds have been liquidated over the past two days, so there’s plenty of volume available. Perfect timing.]

“I’ll send you the stock list by email right now.”

[I’ll set aside everything else and wait only for the Branch Manager’s email.]

The moment the Branch Manager put down the phone handset,

I handed over the stock list I had prepared in advance.

“I think these stocks have the highest possibility of plummeting.”

“Now you’re moving on your own without me having to say anything. The composition is almost identical too. Amazon, Qualcomm, Cisco, even Broadcom.”

“Most of these are technology stocks that serve as core axles.”

In fact, there were no stocks I could recommend other than technology stocks.

No matter how much I looked at other stocks, no gears came to mind, and only the stocks I had studied or watched with interest brought up gears.

“I was watching these stocks too. Let’s go in right away.”

“But is there a reason you’re only investing 2 billion dollars?”

“Our funds have grown quite large, and I don’t want to go begging. Plus, I have other things to do with the remaining amount.”

We were confident about the technology stock crash.

There might be rebounds, but we were confident there wouldn’t be rebounds strong enough to trigger margin calls.

So we could have put all our funds into short selling, but the Branch Manager seemed to have other plans.

“Do you have other plans?”

“We can’t just stick to short selling. For a more long-term future, we need to pursue other investments in parallel.”

“Do you have somewhere in mind?”

“I have several candidates. Could Employee Lee go and check them out personally? They’re all IT-related companies.”

There was no reason to refuse.

Watching stock prices fluctuate up and down in real-time was making me feel motion sick.

Directly observing and learning about technology like at COMDEX suited me much better, and especially conversing with IT companies had a high possibility of creating new gears.

“I’ll do that. Where should I start?”

“I’ve already set up meetings with several places. The first one we’ll meet is a promising startup called ‘Google’.”

“Google, you mean the company that made the search engine? I remember seeing them briefly at COMDEX.”

“Perfect. I’ll provide an interpreter, so just go have a casual conversation. It’s not a heavy meeting about investment or contracts.”

Hearing the name Google made me even more interested.

Among all the technologies I saw at COMDEX, Google’s technology was somehow different.

The technology itself was impressive.

But above all, the gear structure hidden within it was more complex and massive than any company I’d ever seen.

Of course, Google’s gear structure was also crumbling like other IT companies.

But the scale of the hidden structure was so massive that it was difficult for me to even gauge.

“When is the meeting?”

“About 10 minutes left. We scheduled it in this hotel’s VIP room, so you can go down now.”

“This is too sudden! I haven’t even organized what to talk about.”

“When technicians talk to each other, topics tend to come up naturally. Go ahead. It’s not polite to keep guests waiting.”

A meeting all of a sudden.

Without any time to prepare mentally, I was pushed by the Branch Manager’s back toward the VIP room.

***

There were countless websites in the United States.

Among them, there were two that were growing fastest since 2000.

One was Rollbook that I created, and the other was Google, which promoted itself as a next-generation search engine.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Larry Page, CTO of Google.”

“I’m Sergey Brin, co-founder.”

“I’m Lee Jung-hoo, founder of Rollbook. Please feel free to call me Mister Lee.”

Fortunately, Google’s founders were young people.

Though they looked older than me, they appeared to be in their mid-to-late twenties, so I could continue the conversation with a comfortable mind.

“We often heard about Rollbook through the Stanford network. Especially since several PayPal founders are Stanford alumni. Oh, we also did our doctoral programs at Stanford.”

“Collaborating with PayPal made our entry into the United States much smoother.”

“Tiger Fund said they’d give us a chance to make valuable connections, and they’re certainly connecting us properly.”

This meeting wasn’t a conference or negotiation, but literally a meeting for networking.

I could sense the Branch Manager’s intention for me to expand my network while he simultaneously discovered new investment opportunities.

And they were definitely people who could help me.

The moment I saw them, various types of gears were generated, and even beautiful harmonies began to flow.

“I’ve seen Google’s booth at COMDEX. It had a completely different structure from existing search engines.”

“That’s right. We’re now exceeding 15 million searches per day. University Students make up a particularly large portion of our users.”

“Rollbook also has the highest proportion of University Students.”

The common point of having the same target demographic.

Thanks to this, we were able to continue our conversation without any obstacles.

However, as the conversation lengthened, parts where our opinions diverged inevitably emerged.

“But Rollbook’s advertising system is too commercial. Banners, local ads, and even a points market… It could be inconvenient from the user’s perspective.”

“Isn’t Google’s bigger problem that it has almost no revenue model? In this state, it seems difficult to sustain the service itself.”

The difference in development philosophy was clear.

Technology-centered Google and user-based Rollbook had different orientations.

“Google’s goal is to help users find the information they need as quickly as possible. It’s a structure where they get information and leave immediately. Rollbook, on the other hand, has too long user retention times.”

“Users these days don’t just want simple information. They want to spend time on the Internet and communicate. Rollbook is a platform tailored to those needs.”

Suddenly, Yu Min-jung came to mind.

She was the one who often told Rollbook Employees that their emotions had dried up.

After meeting Google’s developers, I understood what she meant when she said those things to us.

Google’s developers had their entire thinking filled only with Engineering Students’ mindset.

Google was focusing solely on efficiency and Optimization.

But that way, the gears couldn’t roll properly, and they needed the Lubricant of a revenue structure to rotate stably.

“I think community services are good too. Other services also have a freshness you can’t see on existing websites. But advertising and markets just don’t match with me at all.”

“It was an unavoidable choice for survival. And our advertising is user-friendly. Clients only receive the ads they want. It’s not indiscriminate advertising, but a customized advertising system that’s essential for users.”

Google’s founders shook their heads.

They seemed to have an aversion to advertising-based revenue models themselves.

“You’re saying the same thing as investors. But no investor has ever convinced us.”

“Actually, for Google to survive, not only advertising but the system itself needs to change structurally.”

“Are you telling us to become a portal Website? You’re saying what investors would say again.”

“Not a portal, but evolve into a platform. Rollbook also transitioned to a platform after the same deliberation.”

No matter how much we continued the conversation, no compromise was visible.

Mismatched gears are bound to break if forced to mesh together.

Eventually, we set aside talk about advertising and the meeting flowed toward acknowledging each other’s Technology and philosophy as we wrapped up.

The New Employee with 1 Trillion Won Annual Salary Chapter 51

E-book Publication Date | 2025.11.27

Author | Seo Oh

Publishers | Heo Heung-beom, Park Geon-won

Publisher | Poten

Address | [04783] 10th Floor, 8 Yeonmujang 11-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul

Phone | 02-6320-8500

Fax | 02-6320-8585

ISBN | 9791175305892

Price | 100 won

ⓒ Seo Oh 2025

This E-book is a copyrighted work protected by copyright law.

This E-book is published under the author’s contract, therefore unauthorized reproduction, copying, distribution, and sharing are prohibited without written consent from both parties.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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