The branding also vexed me. I knew multiple people who had decamped for pastoral settings to kick dependencies on heroin, cocaine, painkillers, alcohol—and they were the lucky ones. Addiction was a generational epidemic; it was devastating. The Tenderloin was five blocks away from our office. There had to be higher aspirations. At the very least,

It was tricky: I liked my coworkers, and I did my best to dish it back. I didn’t have horror stories yet, and I preferred things stay this way. Compared to other women I’d met, I had it good. But the bar was so, so low.

What I also did not understand at the time was that the founders had all hoped I would make my own job, without deliberate instruction. The mark of a hustler, a true entrepreneurial spirit, was creating the job that you wanted and making it look indispensable, even if it was institutionally unnecessary. This was an existential strategy for the tech

Permissioning was effectively a rite of passage. It was a concession to the demands of growth.

Good interface design was like magic, or religion: it cultivated the mass suspension of disbelief.

With the promotion came a bump in equity. I still did not know what the shares were worth, and I was afraid to ask the M.B.A. whether he had been offered more when we were promoted. It seemed safe to assume the answer was yes. After all, his work was seen as strategy, while my work was interpreted as love.

They were able to offer pricing that we, as a slightly more bloated company, were reluctant to match. They had a higher tolerance for burn.

Ian loved me in the way you love someone at the very beginning: he still believed I was the sort of person who wouldn’t allow herself to be treated badly, to be made to feel like shit. Someone righteous, moral. Someone who valued herself. I empathized with his disappointment. I wanted to be that person, too.

My desires were generic. I wanted to find my place in the world, and be independent, useful, and good. I wanted to make money, because I wanted to feel affirmed, confident, and valued. I wanted to be taken seriously. Mostly, I didn’t want anyone to worry about me.