[...] there are so many software firms that just selling them software can make a company one of the fastest-growing software firms. [...]

Someone who talks to people all the time about what they want is a twenty-six-year-old woman I'll call Claudia Gomez. She is what is known in the headhunting trade as a "ruser," meaning one who performs ruses, one who uses surreptitious methods to trick receptionists into giving out names and job descriptions of employees at Silicon Valley companies. She sells these names to research firms, which in turn sell them to headhunters. So hot is the black market for names out here that Claudia gets $40 for a salesperson and $80 for an engineer, and for a female engineer she gets $120, since every company wants to improve its diversity.

[...] One of the best ways to get rid of a troublesome coworker is simply to give out his name to a few headhunters, who will quickly bombard the guy with so many offers that he will resign on his own within the month. In the ultimate perversion, companies hire headhunters to telephone their own employees (without identifying that's who they're really working for), in order to discover which ones are unhappy and vulnerable to being picked off. Do they fire these troublemakers? Odds are they'll be placated with a raise or a spontaneous performance bonus of two thousand stock options.

But there's still loyalty. I believe that Silicon Valley workers have a muscular faith in their industry, a deep optimism that they will be able to continue to find work for many more years. They have loyalty to the whole process. Their need to see the altruism in their efforts is supplied by implicit deduction rather than explicit hype: the industry is good; I work in the industry; therefore, I am good. This halo by association, or the Big Umbrella, reinforces industry loyalty. Your company may burn its cash, it may get beat to market, or it may even lay you off with only a week's severance [...] but you don't worry, because there are other companies willing to hire you. [...]

"We'd promised a client two camels and suddenly it was a week away. We had to go out and find camels --"

"-- but it turns out that if you make a five-thousand-dollar donation to the San Francisco Zoo, they'll let just about anything out of its cages for the night."