But, then, after a few months, I realized something a bit odd. Everyone I met was (in his or her own opinion) uniquely “special” in some way. Every salesperson

But, then, after a few months, I realized something a bit odd. Everyone I met was (in his or her own opinion) uniquely “special” in some way. Every salesperson I tried to recruit was the best on his or her team. Every speaker I heard was in the most demand for his or her specialty. Every startup founder had discovered the Next Big Thing. ... After my disillusionment wore off, I realized that in the Bay Area everyone had to be a rock star, because claiming to be anything less made them look relatively pathetic. All of this hyperbole about people and companies had built what I started calling the “Bay Area Hype Machine.” Once everything becomes “epic,” nothing less will do, so hype ends up everywhere. That's when things began to go off the rails: when we started dividing people into two categories - "superstar" and "mediocre".