Sophia of Silicon Valley

by Anna Yen

  Tears welled, then flowed from my eyes. Tears of humiliation and disappointment that I’d messed up, and a little from the relief that Mom hadn’t murdered me. But while most parents soften at seeing their children struggle, mine have always had the opposite reaction. We are a family of “chin-ups”: Have a problem? Get over it. So even though my mother’s chastising was over, she didn’t hesitate to rush me along, or “chop-chop” as she would say. She certainly didn’t care that I was down in the dumps. “You’ve stepped into a shit hole,” she said. “You’d better dig yourself out of it quickly because it’s smelly down there. Go find yourself a new job. It’s the best way for you to meet nice boys.”

  Chapter 2

  The only thing motivating me to get out of my warm bed one week later was my low blood sugar. And the feeling hanging over my head that I was on a fast track to nowhere. While most of my high school and college friends were making fresh lives for themselves with new careers and their own apartments, I was still waiting for the thing that would kick-start my “real” life: a husband. I was obsessed with finding my better half—a life partner—to prove to my parents, and myself, that someone could love me despite my health problems, my height, and my race. I told myself that he would be the key to my happiness and the person who would finally allow me to be just like everyone else.

  I could tell by the silence of the house that my dad had already gone to work. Maybe Mom would be gone, too.

  No such luck.

  I pushed open the kitchen door and bumped directly into her.

  “What is your plan today?” she asked.

  “Why?” I knew there was something behind her question—errands or her version of Emily Post—so I told her I was spending the day looking for a job.

  Survival tactics.

  I made myself a cup of coffee, despite Mom’s tsk-tsks about how Americanized her children were with their coffee instead of green tea. Holding my caffeine in one hand and my old college laptop in the other, I sat on one of the barstools and checked my email. The first message was from my best friend, Kate.

  To: Sophia Young

  From: Katelyn Grace

  Subj: Tonight

  Let’s meet at the Rosewood for drinks and boy hunting. See you at 7!

  Xo Kate

  The next email looked equally promising.

  To: Sophia Young

  From: Audrey Young

  Subj: Check out this YouTube video

  Sissy,

  Thought this would make you smile, but DO NOT try this yourself.

  Sister

  The link from Audrey brought me to a thumbnail of a video that, according to the YouTube counter, had been viewed nearly twenty million times. The thumbnail showed a man standing next to a treadmill, which immediately diminished my hopes of being entertained. But I clicked on it anyway, and as the video began to play, one of my favorite hip-hop songs started to blare over my laptop’s speakers. I watched closely as the man leaped onto the treadmill—while it was moving—and began to dance! My eyes widened and I giggled in surprise as Mr. Cool hopped, skipped, flipped, and spun on the moving conveyor belt, all to the beat of the music. I swayed along with him, my foot and knee bobbing up and down, too. Ooh, fun!

  Within minutes, I was standing on the treadmill inside my parents’ garage, attempting to copy Mr. Cool’s amazing routine.

  To: Audrey Young

  From: David Young

  Subj: Your sister

  Audrey, your mother called. Please meet us at the Stanford emergency room. Sophia fell off the treadmill and hit her head. Did you send her that video? You know better. Please try to do a better job looking out for your little sister.

  Daddy

  That night, after a thorough lecture from my entire family that would forever cause my mother to rebuke, “and for God’s sake don’t kill yourself” every time I told her I was going to work out, I handed my keys to the parking valet and walked into Silicon Valley’s place to be seen: the Rosewood Sand Hill. The sprawling luxury resort was discreetly tucked into the Santa Cruz Mountains, and its sweeping terraces overlooked the grassy hills, dry from the summer’s above-average temperatures. I smiled at the sight of Kate standing in the open-air lobby—a lobby teeming with young, Waspy men wearing lanyards around their necks. The lanyards could mean only one thing: a conference had just ended. More important, the bar would be busy, no doubt filled with investment bankers and power players. No dreamers in sight.

  “Did you hear Andre Stark has a new girlfriend?” Kate gossiped when I got within earshot. She was referring to the young, handsome CEO of a space transport company who was standing ten feet away. The same Mr. Stark was rumored to be working on the world’s first electric car company, which promised to change the entire auto paradigm and the world along with it.

  “Oh no! But doesn’t he know he’s your boyfriend?” I joked.

  “Well, you know what I always say,” Kate said, leaning in close to my ear. “Girlfriends . . .”

  “. . . are only speed bumps!” I said, finishing her sentence. It was one of the things we always said to each other so we could keep on dreaming about the what-ifs. We laughed, officially greeted each other with hugs, and walked into the dim, wood-paneled bar, grabbing a corner table with gray velvet chairs.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about your predicament, and I know what you should do,” Kate said excitedly, as though a bright light had just been lit above her head. “There are lots of openings at Sterling, Rich and I bet you could get a job there, too!” She’d been working for four months as a paralegal for the prominent law firm; our voices shrilled at the idea of spending our days together.

  “Wait. I don’t have any training.”

  “Hey, I didn’t either, but I did it. They’ll teach you. It’s easy. They just want smart people.”

  I can be smart. Sometimes.

  “You did two summer internships there and you majored in poli-sci,” I said.

  “There are lots of hot, young, single guys working there,” Kate cajoled. She, like my parents, was hoping I would find a great guy. She’d seen the poor dating choices I’d made in college and probably wanted me to hook up with a nice lawyer like Mark, the first-year associate she’d recently gone out with.

  I laughed. “Well, in that case,” I told her, “I’ll give it a go! Why not? I’ve got nothing to lose!”

  Change of plans: banker husband is now a lawyer husband.

  “Awesome. Send me your résumé and I’ll get it to the right people.”

  “Thanks, Kate,” I said, promising myself to do better, to be better, this time. If not for myself, for my friend.

  Katelyn Grace and I had been inseparable since we were college freshmen, both shunning our Catholic-school upbringings and celebrating our newfound freedom by drinking and making out with every frat boy we could find. She was tall, with wavy light brown hair and an exotic, beauty-queen-worthy look that often caused strangers to ask, “What are you?” Her reserved, elegant East Coast manner made her seem mysterious, proper, and regal—on the outside. One would never guess she was the same drunk person who had to be carried out from a restaurant on the night of her twenty-first birthday. The person who spent the night on the floor of our dormitory’s bathroom, praying to the porcelain gods. She was loyal, intelligent, fun, and had a very quick wit about her. What I respected most about Kate was that she knew exactly how to get what she wanted. It was time that I did the same.

  After we hatched our plan, we left our high-top table and decided to have a little fun with the lanyard guys. As we bellied up to the bar, I smiled with satisfaction: the perfect number of people were standing around it—crowded enough to give me an excuse to tap one of them on the shoulder and use my favorite line. “Hi. Sorry, but could I please squeeze in for a moment to get a drink?” I asked bashfully.

  “Oh, sure,” a cute venture capitalist said as I turned sideways and brushed up against him, arms up in the air, looking straight into his eyes. My shy smile brighten
ed into a big one.

  “Here, actually, why don’t I get you a drink? What do you want?”

  “Oh, that’s okay, I need two drinks. One for my friend as well,” I said, still inching past Venture Capitalist Guy but slowly turning to face the bar.

  “No problem. What do you guys want?”

  “Really? Oh gosh! Thank you!” I squealed. “A vodka and soda for me, please. And a glass of house white for my friend.”

  “Impressive. Hitting the hard stuff on a school night, eh?”

  No. But I’m guessing a long explanation about how vodka doesn’t raise my blood sugar would be a bit of a turnoff. I shrugged and smiled, then made my way back to Kate.

  “Classic,” Kate said, laughing. “Well done.”

  “He’s cute! And did you see his friend? I’d say it’s a toss-up.”

  “Hmm. Okay, I get the tall one, then.” Kate winked.

  “Deal!”

  The following week, I opened the heavy glass doors that led to one of the top law firms in the country. It was tucked into the foothills of Palo Alto, appropriate for Sterling, Rich’s reputation as the center of Silicon Valley—the go-to firm offering tech companies a long menu of services that led clients to believe they were going to be billionaires. From first rounds of funding to selling shares on the public stock markets, Sterling, Rich was where the action happened. There was an actual humming coming from inside this fifty-thousand-square-foot compound. Kate had told me people were at the office twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, working on transactions for some of the world’s best-known companies. Based on how tied she was to her BlackBerry and mobile phone, I guessed everyone here was at their clients’ beck and call.

  But I wasn’t wary of that. I ignored the fact that I had few qualifications for this job, swallowed hard, then click, click, clicked my way across the gray stone floor, pretending not to be impressed by the dome of the firm’s grand entrance. Fake it till you make it. I straightened my posture, smoothed out my vivid paisley-print silk skirt, and held my head up high as I passed the expensive-looking white leather chairs and stainless steel tables neatly placed in the reception area. They were flanked by two-story glass staircases and wood-covered walls that rose so high that I wasn’t sure they would ever end. I imagined myself belonging in a place like this, and tingled from the idea that I might be the wife of a Sterling, Rich lawyer.

  This will do nicely.

  I approached the beautiful crescent-shaped reception desk, which nearly stretched around the entire circumference of the lobby. Behind the desk sat a foreboding security guard who was so muscular that I nicknamed him “No Neck.” Beside him were three receptionists, each wearing a headset that seemed to float above her heavily shellacked hair. Over this warm and cheery group hung a bronze engraved sign: sterling, rich, goodman & rosenbach.

  The receptionist farthest on the left bared her pearly whites with a warm welcome and asked for my name. Within seconds, she lifted her headset off her head like a beauty queen might lift her crown, stood up, and led me to a conference room just down the hall from the lobby. “Help yourself to the drinks. Grant Vicker will be here in a few minutes,” she said as she shut the walnut door. I twiddled my fingers and looked around the room. Hanging from the walls were large, magnified images of blurry objects that I examined for a while before deciding they looked like spinning carousels.

  I gingerly pulled out a chair and sat down at the beautiful cherrywood table so I could reread Grant Vicker’s American Lawyer profile that I’d printed out at home. Grant was the hotshot attorney at Sterling, Rich. He’d risen quickly through the ranks of the firm and made partner a full two years earlier than the rest of his entering class of ambitious peers. Grant’s quick-thinking negotiation tactics and skillful approach to executing initial public offerings gave him an impressive reputation and attracted an all-star list of clients that probably minted money for this firm. The article highlighted his various Princeton awards and the fact that he’d earned the highest GPA ever recorded from Stanford Law School. I couldn’t believe that an accomplished man like Grant Vicker was interviewing me, but the person who’d called me to arrange this meeting had said that apparently he liked my background.

  Which background would that be? The fired-from-previous-job background or the slam-dunk ADA lawsuit background?

  I was in the middle of applying a layer of lip gloss and examining the artwork when Grant walked into the conference room. I turned around to find a man that looked different from the one I’d seen photographed in the American Lawyer article. About six feet tall with thick, tousled hair and a boyish grin, he looked like he could have been a ski instructor during the winter and a rafting guide in the summer. But his bellowing voice and lumbering walk made him appear much more intimidating than he was—at least to me.

  “Aren’t those artworks pretty?” he asked.

  “Pretty ugly,” I blurted out with a mischievous smile.

  Grant laughed. “That’s the thing about art—everyone has a different opinion, and I’m glad to see you’re not shy about giving yours.”

  Did I just score a point?

  He sat down across from me, placed a leather-bound folder on the table, and continued, “Kate has raved about you. How long have you two known each other?”

  “Over four years. We met as freshmen in college,” I replied. The memories of our fun, careless school days were still fresh in my mind.

  He looked at my résumé for a moment, nodding his head. Part-time sales associate at Gap for four years. Marketing intern at IBM, junior year. His tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth, and for a moment, he looked like a kid who was concentrating hard on coloring inside the lines. He didn’t appear to be much older than I was, and his casual demeanor made me feel as though I were just talking to a friend.

  “Kate mentioned you were at Global Partners. Why did you leave?”

  I paused for a moment, wondering if I should use the answer Dad rehearsed with me—the commute was too long—but I didn’t want to lie to my new friend (if that’s what he was). “I—I was fired.”

  Argh—brain fart! I shouldn’t have said that. Rookie maneuver.

  “Do you mind if I ask why?” Grant asked.

  “I didn’t get along with my boss.”

  “Who was your boss?”

  “Jack Wynn.”

  Grant smiled and said, “Yeah, he’s an asshole.”

  Oooh, I like you!

  “So tell me why you’re interested in law,” Grant said.

  I dug deep for a scoop of bullshit and then remembered my dad’s advice to look Grant straight in the eye and to seem ambitious by sitting forward in my chair.

  “In college I took a class called Law and the Judicial System,” I said, which was true, except by “college” I meant “high school.” “Since then, I’ve wanted to be a lawyer, and I think a job at Sterling, Rich would be a really good start.”

  “A lot of paralegals here are on the law school track, but we’d ask you to commit to two years,” Grant responded. “If you make it two years, I will write you a recommendation letter—that is, assuming you deserve one. Will that long of a commitment be a problem?”

  I shook my head.

  Unless Mr. Right finds me.

  “So why do you think I should hire you?”

  “Well, I’m not going to lie. I clearly don’t have any paralegal experience. But I’m organized, hardworking, a quick learner, really fun, and if I must say so myself, everyone likes me. That’s always good for client relations.”

  “Well, it’s good that people respond positively to you, but actually, your experience is exactly why you’re here, so don’t sell yourself short. Most of my business revolves around taking companies through their IPOs and—”

  “Wait, so do you mean I won’t get to sit in court and yell?” I interrupted, sounding genuinely disappointed.

  “This is corporate law, Sophia. Not litigation. You won’t be in any courtrooms. That is, unless you
or I do something terribly wrong and find ourselves being prosecuted.”

  I nodded and scribbled a note down in my little reporter’s notebook: Don’t get prosecuted.

  “I like that you have a nontraditional background. And, even though you weren’t at Global Partners that long, you are Series 7 licensed, so you have a good understanding about the stock market and will get up to speed faster,” Grant continued, referring to the financial securities test I barely passed when I joined GP. “What is the biggest lesson you think you learned there?”

  “Pigs get slaughtered,” I said without blinking. It was one of my favorite Jack-isms. I was referring to the old Wall Street saying, “Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.” It counseled against excessive greed and impatience. Ironic that someone like Jack Wynn would appreciate it. Rat bastard.

  Grant smiled. “Yes, indeed they do. Well, you must have a good work ethic, or you wouldn’t have lasted even a month at that bank. Work ethic is the hardest thing to vet when you’re interviewing candidates.” He capped his pen and leaned back in his chair. “Any questions?”

  “Yes,” I said. I capped my pen, too. My dad often told me that professionals respond well to mirroring. No harm in trying. “What did you major in?”

  Grant smirked. “History.”

  “History? That’s interesting. Why history?”

  “History is my favorite topic. It’s an antidote to our tendency to assume that the way things are today is the way that they’ve always been and therefore naturally should be. It’s like somebody once said: ‘The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.’” Grant laid his well-manicured hands across his leather folder.

  Sheesh. A simple “I like history” would have sufficed.

  “I read in your bio that you were a Supreme Court clerk before coming to Sterling, Rich.”