Chan's Personal Blog

A while back, one of my friends joined a start-up in Silicon Valley, and invited me over to their company for lunch because they had amazing free food. We tried to setup times on several occasions, but it just never worked out because something always came up. In either case, eventually our times lined up, and I made an appointment.

I got to their offices, and my first impression was, wow this place is really disorganized. They had networking cables all over the place, a bunch of people crammed around make shift computer desks, some contractor was painting their offices. Anyway, that was fine, since I was there only to see my friend, oh, and free food.

We head into the kitchen, and there's food sprawled across kitchen counters. There was a mix-match of Indian food, Greek food, and pizza. He was ranting and raving how they got free lunch and dinner every day and how delicious every way; however, the menu wasn't too appealing to me. I don't think I found anything of significant nutritional value. I guess I'm getting old, as pizza isn't all that appealing to me anymore; stereotype dictates that your average computer geek should be put on a strict pizza and coke diet.

Anyway, we start doing some catching up, and he starts talking about how great the company is, and how much power he wields. The red flag went up when he started asking me about what type of work visa I was on. This was odd because this is not a normal conversation piece. I had a suspicion that something weird was going down. Half way through the meal, the CEO comes through to the kitchen, and I'm introduced to him. My friend goes, oh you should talk to the CEO for a few minutes afterwards. I thought... why would I want to talk to the CEO? Oh crap, this is an unsolicited recruiting session. By this point, I have marked my friend as a hostile entity and the goal shifted to getting out as fast as possible. Unfortunately, there was only one exit out of the lunch room.