I can’t stop marveling at how together geeks are in the Valley. At Microsoft, there was no peer pressure to do anything except work and ship on time. If you did, you got a Ship-it Award. Easy. Black and White.

Here, it’s so much more complicated—you’re supposed to have an exciting, value-adding job that utilizes your creativity, a wardrobe from Nordstrom’s or at the very least Banana Republic, a $400,000 house, a cool European or Japanese car, the perfect relationship with someone as ambitious, smart, and well-dressed as yourself, and extra money to throw parties so that the whole world can observe what a life you have, indeed. It makes me miss Redmond, but at the same time, it is kind of inspiring. I feel conflicted.

Even Michael noticed, with a rare lapse into pop culture: “Perhaps David Byrne was talking about the geeks inheriting the earth in that Talking Heads song, ‘This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife! My God! How did I get here?”’