shorts, with his hand sometimes raised to his chin while he mused, he looked every bit the part of a little emperor.
I remarked on this to Sam as we lay in our bathing suits on the pool deck that first weekend, surveying the scene. Since meeting at happy hour, we had quickly formed something of an alliance. Alone, we might just have been the odd employees interested in something besides accumulating mountains of data and power but, together, we were the weird kids who occupied the far edge of Facebook’s cultural map, composed mainly of Harvard fraternity boys, preppy Stanford kids, and other engineers of similar provenance. Sam and I claimed the pool as our de facto territory, given that we were more comfortable in swimsuits and in the sun than most of the engineers, and set up our towels on the deck in the afternoons to watch the goings on around the house.
Lucy, a petite, good-natured Stanford ex-cheerleader who had recently been added to the customer-support team, lived at the house and often worked on answering emails from the pool, her laptop perched precariously on the edge of the deck. Fiercely competitive (she made sure to win all sports competitions held at Facebook, like the yearly Game Day, which wasn’t very hard to do, considering that most employees weren’t particularly athletic), she made it a point to answer more emails than anyone else, even while half submersed in the pool in a bikini and turning a deep tan.
Maryann also often came to the pool in her bikini and set upher towel nearby, tanning quietly behind big sunglasses, pleasant and reserved as always. She was unequivocally considered hot at the company. But, I sensed, the last thing you wanted at Face-book was to be the hot girl, especially if you weren’t protected, as Maryann was, by a close group of college friends who also worked there.
One day, one of the sales guys told me pointedly that I was hot, reminding me that I was surrounded by men who were in the habit of sorting women into hot or not-hot categories. Facemash, Mark’s first website at Harvard, was designed to allow viewers to rank the attractiveness of Harvard students’ photos. I wanted to be the cool girl, not the hot girl. The cool girl always has a chance of winning, because she has something beyond looks. As Stevie Nicks once said about her trip through the male-dominated music business, “I never wanted to be too pretty.”
At another summer barbecue, I overheard Mark talking with some engineers about whether it was better to date a girl for looks or intelligence. “I dated a model once who was really hot, but my girlfriend is actually smart,” he said, as if they were mutually exclusive categories. “Why can’t a girl be pretty and smart?” I asked him in front of everyone. “Why does it have to be one or the other?” The group went quiet for a second, seeming confused. I knew then that if you had to pick one in order to succeed at Facebook, smart, not hot, was the thing to be.
• • •
On weekend afternoons, there were usually some boys milling about the pool house with laptops or beers drawn from a keg thatwas kept under Mark’s tent. Occasionally someone important—usually an exec or VC, who would pull up to the house in a blaze of Audi exhaust—came over to talk to Mark in hushed tones under the tent. “It feels like we are in ancient Greece,” I observed to Sam. There was not much for us to do at the pool house, though I found out later that, while he was pacing and we were sunning, one of the things Mark was mulling was whether to sell the company to Yahoo! for one billion dollars. I had a vague sense from the intense vibes during those days that something very serious was under consideration, but I didn’t think for a minute that Mark might sell the company and we’d all cash out and go home so soon: We had a pool house, a gathering mass of enthusiastic boys (and a few equally energetic girls), and the future to dominate.
One newcomer, who
I remarked on this to Sam as we lay in our bathing suits on the pool deck that first weekend, surveying the scene. Since meeting at happy hour, we had quickly formed something of an alliance. Alone, we might just have been the odd employees interested in something besides accumulating mountains of data and power but, together, we were the weird kids who occupied the far edge of Facebook’s cultural map, composed mainly of Harvard fraternity boys, preppy Stanford kids, and other engineers of similar provenance. Sam and I claimed the pool as our de facto territory, given that we were more comfortable in swimsuits and in the sun than most of the engineers, and set up our towels on the deck in the afternoons to watch the goings on around the house.
Lucy, a petite, good-natured Stanford ex-cheerleader who had recently been added to the customer-support team, lived at the house and often worked on answering emails from the pool, her laptop perched precariously on the edge of the deck. Fiercely competitive (she made sure to win all sports competitions held at Facebook, like the yearly Game Day, which wasn’t very hard to do, considering that most employees weren’t particularly athletic), she made it a point to answer more emails than anyone else, even while half submersed in the pool in a bikini and turning a deep tan.
Maryann also often came to the pool in her bikini and set upher towel nearby, tanning quietly behind big sunglasses, pleasant and reserved as always. She was unequivocally considered hot at the company. But, I sensed, the last thing you wanted at Face-book was to be the hot girl, especially if you weren’t protected, as Maryann was, by a close group of college friends who also worked there.
One day, one of the sales guys told me pointedly that I was hot, reminding me that I was surrounded by men who were in the habit of sorting women into hot or not-hot categories. Facemash, Mark’s first website at Harvard, was designed to allow viewers to rank the attractiveness of Harvard students’ photos. I wanted to be the cool girl, not the hot girl. The cool girl always has a chance of winning, because she has something beyond looks. As Stevie Nicks once said about her trip through the male-dominated music business, “I never wanted to be too pretty.”
At another summer barbecue, I overheard Mark talking with some engineers about whether it was better to date a girl for looks or intelligence. “I dated a model once who was really hot, but my girlfriend is actually smart,” he said, as if they were mutually exclusive categories. “Why can’t a girl be pretty and smart?” I asked him in front of everyone. “Why does it have to be one or the other?” The group went quiet for a second, seeming confused. I knew then that if you had to pick one in order to succeed at Facebook, smart, not hot, was the thing to be.
• • •
On weekend afternoons, there were usually some boys milling about the pool house with laptops or beers drawn from a keg thatwas kept under Mark’s tent. Occasionally someone important—usually an exec or VC, who would pull up to the house in a blaze of Audi exhaust—came over to talk to Mark in hushed tones under the tent. “It feels like we are in ancient Greece,” I observed to Sam. There was not much for us to do at the pool house, though I found out later that, while he was pacing and we were sunning, one of the things Mark was mulling was whether to sell the company to Yahoo! for one billion dollars. I had a vague sense from the intense vibes during those days that something very serious was under consideration, but I didn’t think for a minute that Mark might sell the company and we’d all cash out and go home so soon: We had a pool house, a gathering mass of enthusiastic boys (and a few equally energetic girls), and the future to dominate.
One newcomer, who
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