Even on the farm, people were talking startups. With a measure of reluctance outdone only by the exhaustion of precarity, Noah and Ian’s friends had begun moving into the industry; the ecosystem found a way to absorb those with college degrees and fluency in middle-class social cues. A principal at a public elementary school took a job at an education startup making scheduling software. A music critic wrote copy about fitness and meditation apps. Journalists switched into corporate communications. Artists took residencies at the social network everyone hated, and filmmakers found themselves in-house at the larger tech corporations, shooting internal promotional content designed to make workers feel good about their professional affiliations.

Everyone needed a hustle: artists, musicians, blue-collar workers, and public servants were leaving San Francisco, and new ones were not taking their place. In blond-wood coffee shops that opened for people who wanted to take meetings in coffee shops, the baristas were not, as they had once been, young and new to the city. They were older and softer and still protected, at least for the moment, by rent control, but the writing was on the wall. Even comedians began offering corporate improv seminars, workshops for startup employees to strengthen team relationships through mutual humiliation. “What’s your opinion on coding boot camps?” the cuddle therapist asked Ian.