There's a village full of polite people that has no reflective surfaces. Every villager sees every other villager every day. Some higher power identifies that there is at least one sinner among the people. Any person who has sinned is marked by the higher power, and must leave the village. No resident will give a sinner any indication that he is marked, but all of the sinners leave on the third day. How many sinners are there?

If the waiter had stared at me, I'm sure that he would have seen my brow furrow until my eyes almost completely disappeared. The rumors were true; it was the infamous Microsoft interview, and that first question would be followed by increasingly confounding ones. Over the course of five hours, I balanced marbles, burned rope and designed an object model for Priceline. I invoked Xeno's paradox over a side of salad and quietly hoped that our eavesdropping waiter would walk by and subtly pat me on the back. Alas, my back went unpatted, but as the inquisition wrapped up, the contentious tone of my interrogators became flattering, almost acquiescent.

The three founders of this start-up were all just shy of 30 and Microsoft multimillionaires. They had invested their money and purported expertise in a small software company of their own. Following the Bill Gates model, they could expect returns of one hundred-fold -- at a bare minimum. They had been standouts in the world's most successful company and made more money in seven years than most make in a lifetime. As the New York new-media scene had become increasingly watered down by bankers with wealthy friends and ideas on napkins, I had found the proverbial needle in the haystack. I watched as the CEO punched some numbers into Excel and told me how much I was worth. It was then that I remembered that needles sting.

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They wanted to pay me less than half of what I had been making and more than 20 percent less than my next lowest offer. It wasn't a decision to be made lightly. "Fifty percent of the people to whom we extend offers accept on the spot," I was told.

My answer? "I'm with the 50 percent who don't accept on the spot. I need to think things over."

The CEO invited me to call any time: "David, I don't care if it's 5 in the morning, if you have a question about the company, you call." I was not yet in his employ, yet I found his loyalty seductive. The promise of fun, responsibility and a substantial ownership stake in the company was tempting, and the spreadsheet that was clearly visible in my mind's eye iterated through possible company valuations and my consequent net worth. I began to contemplate equity dilution and tried to find the magic number that would enable me to retire by age 30, so I could pursue my dreams.

I called him three or four times. He assured me that this was "the perfect job" for me: "I wouldn't say that to just anyone. This is just so right for you." He cajoled me and stroked my ego, but I had to consider things -- things like paying for rent and food. A few conversations with some college friends who had hit it big in Silicon Valley swayed me further, and suddenly I was Zen. I don't know if my moving my nightstand fixed the feng shui in my apartment, but I felt completely at ease with the decision. At 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, I called my interrogator-cum-supplicant and accepted. My start date was April 12 -- a full three weeks away -- but I was already taking any spare time I had to swing by the office three or four evenings a week to get a head start. I had accepted the fact that I would become wealthy beyond my dreams. Now I had to begin my mission of changing the world's perception of software.

It was easy to rationalize my inherent greed as the nobility of our corporate dream pushed the dollar signs into the background. The start-up reeked of success and had all of the accouterments -- academic and business pedigree, representation by a top law firm, a fancy midtown office -- of a bona fide company. Within a month of starting, I had become a zealot, wild-eyed and bent on revolution. Prior to this, I had been working as a technical recruiter, and while I came across some interesting business plans, there was nothing quite so revolutionary as what we were doing. Although I wasn't able to disclose the details of the concept, I described it as "the paper clip of ideas." It was so blatantly obvious that it had eluded everyone else's radar.

Meanwhile, I no longer registered on any social radar. I became the stealth friend, visible to my co-workers only as we sat in cubicle formation high above planet Earth. Who had I become? If Wall Street had created a new-economy "bubble," I lived in it. While I thought that being a member of this exclusive club set me apart from the old-economy heathens, I would later realize that I was just distancing myself from who I really was.

The Free Software Project
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