Sometimes it felt like everyone was speaking a different language—or the same language with radically different rules. There was no common lexicon. Instead, people used a sort of nonlanguage, which was neither beautiful nor especially efficient: a mash-up of business-speak with athletic and wartime metaphors, inflated with self-importance. Calls to action; front lines and trenches; blitzscaling. Companies didn’t fail, they died. We didn’t compete, we went to war.

“We are making products,” the CEO said, building us up at a Tuesday team meeting, “that can push the fold of mankind.”