如果你打算拍攝一部電影，記錄一位失業在家，已到知天命之年，但看上去還是很冒失的家伙，剛剛獲得一次“再就業”機會的情景，開場應該是這樣的：4月份的一個星期一早晨，陽光明媚，氣候涼爽宜人，和風吹拂著馬薩諸塞州坎布里奇市的查爾斯河。主人公走進鏡頭，他滿頭白發，留著過時的發型，戴一副牛角框眼鏡，上身穿一件領子上帶紐扣的襯衫。他把自己那輛斯巴魯傲虎開進停車場，手心出了點汗。停好車后，他抓起厚重的筆記本電腦包，朝一棟年代久遠的紅磚建筑正門走去。這棟建筑經過翻新，外觀看上去閃閃發光。那一天是2013年4月15日，這個人就是我。那是我第一天去HubSpot公司上班，它也是我獲得的第一份非媒體工作。

HubSpot公司占據了好幾層樓。這個辦公場所原本是一棟可追溯至19世紀的家具工廠，現已被改造成一家科技初創公司經典模樣：暴露在外的橫梁，磨砂玻璃，巨大的中庭，大廳里懸掛著現代藝術作品。乘電梯上到三樓時，我既緊張又有些興奮。直到那一刻，我仍然不敢相信自己竟然得到了這份工作。9個月前，我被紐約《新聞周刊》雜志毫無征兆地掃地出門。當時我擔心自己可能再也找不到工作了。而現在，我即將進入東海岸最熱門的科技初創公司之一，成為營銷團隊的一員。這家軟件公司創建了一個“集客式營銷”平臺——與“推播式營銷”（傳統廣告）不同，該平臺通過博客、社交媒體和其他內容幫助公司吸引客戶。只是有一個小問題：我對市場營銷一竅不通。不過，面試我的招聘官似乎并不在乎這一點。但我還是不那么確定。

不過，我記得HubSpot對于我的加入似乎非常興奮，這讓我稍稍有點安心。公司首席營銷官“頭蓋骨”（這是我給他起的綽號），在HubSpot博客里寫了一篇宣布我加盟的博文。一眾科技博客隨后刊發了我，一個52歲的《新聞周刊》記者，離開媒體行業加入軟件公司的故事。

接待我的是一個名叫扎克的家伙。他說，很抱歉“頭蓋骨”今天不在公司，然后領我參觀了一下辦公室。扎克看上去只有二十來歲。他一臉友善的笑容，頭發打了發膠。他讓我想起《新聞周刊》雜志社那些剛剛大學畢業，負責為作者們進行背景調查的實習生。我想他肯定是某個人的助理。

這家公司的辦公室與我孩子在蒙特梭利上的幼兒園有著驚人的相似之處：大量使用亮麗的基本色，各種玩具，一間午睡室，里面有一張吊床，墻上是有催眠作用的棕櫚樹壁畫。在谷歌的帶動下，這種將辦公室裝飾成游樂場的趨勢像傳染病一樣，風靡整個科技行業。工作不單純是工作；工作還必須有趣。HubSpot被劃分成多個“社區”，每一個社區都用波士頓一個街區命名：北區，南區，查爾斯鎮等。有個社區還配有一套樂器，供人們舉辦即興爵士樂演奏會，不過扎克說，公司還從未有人這樣做過。每一個社區都配有一間小廚房，里面有自動咖啡機，休息室區域配有長沙發和黑板墻，人們在黑板上寫下各種留言，比如“HubSpot = 酷”，也有一些激勵性的信息，例如“我們有兩只耳朵，但只有一張嘴，所以應該多聽少說。”

一樓有一個巨大的會議室兼游戲室，游戲室必備的桌式足球、乒乓球桌、室內推圓盤游戲和視頻游戲等一樣不缺。隔壁餐廳里配有工業用冰箱，里面裝滿了啤酒，櫥柜里有百吉餅和麥片，一面墻上擺滿了各種玻璃容器，里面裝著堅果和糖果。這面墻被稱為“糖果墻”，扎克解釋說，這是HubSpot的員工尤其引以為豪的地方。他們會向所有參觀者首先介紹這面墻。這是一個年輕的地方，處處充滿活力。團隊會經常到戶外玩彈簧床躲避球、卡丁車比賽和激光槍戰。

幾條狗在HubSpot的走廊閑逛——就像類似幼兒園的裝飾一樣，養狗也是科技初創公司的慣例。扎克告訴我說，每天中午總有一群員工在二樓大廳做俯臥撐。樓上有一個地方可以干洗衣服。有時候，公司還會聘請按摩師為員工提供按摩服務。在二樓有淋浴間，專為騎自行車上下班的員工和那些利用午餐時間慢跑的員工準備。有時候，當周五的快樂時光失控的時候，它也被用作“性愛小屋”。后來我從公司前臺潘妮（她是一位萬事通，掌握著公司上下各種小道消息）那里得知，有一次，事情嚴重失控，最終迫使公司管理層不得不發出一份備忘錄。她告訴我說：“是銷售部門的人干的。他們真令人惡心。”

后來我還聽說，在一個星期六的早上，清潔工來到公司后，在一樓男廁發現了以下物品：一堆沒喝完的啤酒，一堆嘔吐物，還有兩條三角褲。清潔工自然不高興。更令他們苦惱的是，有一天上午，HubSpot市場營銷部門一位二十多歲的小伙子，醉醺醺地來到公司，不知因為什么原因，放火燒掉了清潔工的手推車。

所有人都聚集在寬敞開放的空間里工作，就像孟加拉國襯衫工廠的女工一樣，只不過手中的工具從縫紉機換成了筆記本電腦。公司流行玩具槍戰，人們從巨大的平板顯示器后面開槍射擊，在桌子下面匍匐和滾動。人們習慣召開站立會議甚至步行會議，即一群人一邊散步，一邊開會。

所有人都沒有專屬辦公室，即使CEO也不例外。這是公司明文規定之一。每三個月，所有人需要采用一種公司版本的搶座位游戲，調換一次座位。HubSpot稱其為“座椅黑客”，目的是提醒每一個人，變化是永恒的。如果需要一定的私密空間，你需要預定一間位于工作空間邊緣的會議室。有些會議室以紅襪隊球員的名字命名，有的則以“營銷明星”的名字命名——我花了一段時間才接受這種做法。有的會議室里配有豆袋椅而不是實用的辦公家具，員工在開會的時候，隨意地躺在椅子上，把筆記本電腦架在膝蓋上。

HubSpot每一位新員工都必須接受培訓，學習如何使用軟件。這是個好主意。這樣一來，我就不必擔心自己應該在這里做什么，也不用擔心為什么把我招進來的“頭蓋骨”還沒來跟我打招呼或說明他希望我做什么。

培訓在一個小房間進行。在大約兩周時間里，我與另外20名新員工擠在一起聽勵志演講。最開始的時候，這些內容聽起來就像是邪教洗腦一樣。這跟我此前對科技公司的想象一模一樣，只是有過之而無不及。

我們的培訓主管名叫戴維，是一位瘦長結實，精力充沛的家伙，大約四十多歲，剃著光頭，留著灰色的山羊胡子。培訓第一天，我們相互打招呼，進行了一番自我介紹，還給其他人講述自己的與眾不同之處。戴維的獨特之處在于，他周末在一支重金屬翻唱樂隊表演。

戴維身兼雙重角色，既是老師，又是布道者。他每兩周都要培訓一批新員工，每次都是同樣的高談闊論，展示相同的幻燈片，講相同的笑話。他很擅長做這件事。他毫不掩飾地告訴我們，他喜歡HubSpot。他曾做過許多工作，HubSpot是到目前為止最棒的一家。這家公司改變了他的生活。他希望我們的生活也會因公司而改變。

戴維告訴我們：“HubSpot不僅僅是銷售產品，還在引領一場革命，一場運動。HubSpot正在改變這個世界。這款軟件不僅幫助公司銷售產品，也在改變著人們的生活。是的，我們正在改變人們的生活。”

他講述了一個名叫布蘭登的客戶的經歷。布蘭登是弗吉尼亞州一位游泳池安裝工。他的公司面臨困境，難以為繼。但自從使用HubSpot軟件之后，這家公司開始蓬勃發展。很快，他開始在全美各地修建游泳池。他賺了大錢！在取得巨大成功之后，布蘭登聘請其他人運營這家游泳池公司，他自己則成為一名勵志演說家。他在世界各地傳播集客式營銷的好處，改變了成千上萬人的生活。

戴維說道：“這個人成了超級明星。這一切都是從HubSpot開始的。這就是我們要做的事情。你們將成為這份事業的一份子。”

事實上，我們就是在銷售軟件，幫助其他公司——其中多數為游泳池安裝公司和花店這樣的小公司——增加銷量。然而，HubSpot所處的在線營銷行業一直聲譽不佳。公司的客戶形形色色，有人以給人們發送海量電子郵件促銷為生，或者投機取巧地利用谷歌的搜索算法，或者鉆研哪一種誤導性主題最有可能誘導人們打開信息。在線營銷雖然不像網絡色情那樣骯臟，但也好不到哪去。

但戴維卻在大肆吹捧這個行業，新員工們則頻頻點頭，似乎極為認同他的觀點。這些新員工大多剛剛走出大學校園，干凈利索，清清爽爽。坐在我旁邊的一個人剪著平頭，剛剛從新罕布什爾的某所大學畢業。他告訴我說，他現在與父母住在一起，每天需要花一個小時來上班，不過，他正在考慮搬到距離波士頓較近的地方住。

HubSpot不止銷售軟件，還培訓人們如何使用軟件，以及如何更高效地進行在線銷售。在公司年度客戶大會Inbound上，成千上萬名網絡營銷人員聚集波士頓，學習新的營銷技巧。其中一條是在電子郵件中使用誤導性主題，例如，“轉發：你的假期計劃”，以誘使人們打開信息。他們說這種做法“可以提高信息被打開的幾率。”在會上，HubSpot還展示了一些新功能和產品，如一款產品可以在網站訪問者的電腦中植入跟蹤Cookie文件，跟蹤用戶訪問的每一個頁面。當某個人第二次訪問你的網站時，這款軟件甚至可以給你發送提醒——這樣你便可以馬上給對方打電話說：“嘿，我看到您又登錄我們的網站了！我可以為您提供哪些幫助？”

這就是我們的業務：購買我們的軟件，銷售更多的商品。這種模式無可厚非，但進行自我宣傳或描述公司業務，HubSpot并沒有遵循同樣的敘事方式。培訓師告訴我們，我們每天發出的數十億電子郵件并不屬于垃圾郵件范疇。相反，我們將這些電子郵件描述為“受人喜愛的營銷內容。”這是培訓師的原話。這句話背后的邏輯關系錯綜復雜：“垃圾”意味著來源不明的電子郵件，而這些電子郵件的收件人均通過填寫表格向我們提交了他們的聯系方式，并允許我們與他們進行聯系。我們的電子郵件可能不受人們歡迎，但從而嚴格意義上來說，它們并非來源不明的郵件，因此也就不是垃圾郵件。即便我們和客戶發出了數以十億計的電子郵件信息，但我們并不想騷擾其他人——事實上，我們試圖為人們提供幫助。通過一封接一封地發送信息，每一次都采用不同的主題，我們可以發現人們的真正需求。我們在了解他們。我們在聆聽他們的聲音。

因此，我們并不是在創造垃圾郵件。事實上，官方的說法是，HubSpot憎恨垃圾郵件，希望杜絕垃圾郵件。我們希望保護人們免受垃圾郵件侵擾。發送垃圾郵件的都是壞人，而我們是好人。我們的郵件不是垃圾郵件。事實上，我們的郵件與垃圾郵件截然相反。我們的郵件是反垃圾郵件。它是阻擋垃圾郵件的屏障——是垃圾郵件“避孕套”。HubSpot甚至創建了一則宣傳廣告，在T恤衫上印有“要做愛，不要垃圾郵件。”

來到這家公司，讓我感覺置身于一座偏遠的海島，一群人已經在這里與世隔絕生活了許多年，他們制定自己的規則、儀式、宗教和語言，在某種程度上，甚至創造了屬于他們自己的現實。事實上，這種情況在所有公司都存在，但基于某些原因，科技初創公司更傾向于集體思維。幾乎每一家科技初創公司都是如此。要想在這類公司工作，先決條件是相信你的公司不只想著賺錢，你所做的工作有特殊的意義和目的，你的公司有神圣的使命，而你希望成為這個使命的一份子。

在HubSpot，員工需要遵守公司文化準則。這些準則整理了一些不同尋常的語言，并列出一系列共同的價值觀和信念。文化準則類似于某種宣言，是一個128頁的幻燈片文件，名為“HubSpot文化準則：創建我們熱愛的公司。”

這套準則的創建者是HubSpot的聯合創始人之一。在公司內部，人們通常直呼他的姓哈米斯，有人甚至將他視為精神領袖。哈米斯稱自己花了100個小時制作這個幻燈片。面試我的，正是他和另一位聯合創始人布萊恩?哈利干。幾天后，他給我發來了幻燈片的鏈接，我想這是他吸引我加入公司的誘餌。他說，這個幻燈片“描述了HubSpot的文化。”

文化準則描繪了一種公司烏托邦，認為個人需求要讓位于集體的需求——其中一條幻燈片提到“團隊大于個人”——并且員工不需要擔心工作-生活平衡問題，因為工作便是他們的生活。

文化準則問道：“成為一位HubSpot人意味著什么？”然后定義了這一術語的含義，并解釋了哈米斯所稱的HEART理念，即謙遜、高效、適應能力、卓越和透明。HubSpot的員工要想成功，必須具備這些品質。真正具備這些品質的HubSpot員工可以“創造奇跡”。

哈米斯也承認，文化準則中的許多內容都是“期待實現的目標”，這意味著HubSpot在實際工作當中并沒有將其中一些價值觀付諸實施，而是期待未來落實。HubSpot的價值觀之一是透明，并非簡單的透明，而是“從根本上做到不同尋常的透明。”

文化準則成為公司開展公關活動的妙招，吸引其他許多初創公司競相模仿。哈米斯在線發布幻燈片之后，其瀏覽次數已經超過100萬次。這令他倍受鼓舞，他正準備寫一本與公司文化有關的著作。

哈米斯的文化準則包含了HubSpeak的許多要素。例如，文化準則指出，如果有人辭職或被解雇，公司會用“畢業”來指代這種事情。加入HubSpot的第一個月，我在市場營銷部門便見證了許多次畢業。所有員工都收到了“頭蓋骨”的電子郵件，內容是：“特此通知各位團隊成員，德里克已經從HubSpot畢業，我們很期待看到他如何在下一次大冒險中發揮自己的超能力！”這時你才會發現，德里克已經離職，他的辦公桌早已被收拾干凈。德里克的上司將在無人知曉的情況下，安排他從公司消失。人們就這樣離奇消失，就像Spinal Tap樂隊的鼓手們一樣。

沒有人會談論“畢業”的人，甚至沒有人會討論把離職描述為“畢業”是多么古怪的作法。事實上，我從未聽到有人嘲笑HEART理念，或者拿公司的文化準則開玩笑。所有人好像都覺得這些事情再正常不過。

HubSpot的員工會談論成為“擁有超能力的超級明星”，他們的使命是“激勵他人”和“成為領導者”。他們談論專心“取悅客戶”（delightion），這個杜撰的詞出自哈米斯之手，意思是讓客戶高興。

理想的HubSpot員工，應該具備一種品質——GSD，代表“即便是令人惡心的事情，也要做好”。它被用作形容詞，例如“考特尼總是保持超級GSD的狀態。”客戶培訓研討會的負責人被稱為集客式營銷教授，屬于HubSpot學院的教職員工。我們的軟件具有神奇的力量，只要人們使用它——等一下——就會產生一加一等于三的效果。哈利干和哈米斯在HubSpot年度客戶大會上首次提出這一神奇的理念。在他們身后，一個巨大的幻燈片上寫著“1 + 1 = 3”。從那之后，這個理念便成為公司的口號。人們將一加一等于三的理念，作為評估新想法的衡量標準。有一天，公關部負責人斯平納對我說：“我喜歡這個創意，不過我不確定它是否產生一加一等于三的效果。”

事實證明，我太天真了。我用25年時間報道科技公司，我以為自己非常了解這個行業。但在HubSpot，我發現許多我信以為真的事情都是錯誤的。

例如，我以為科技公司首先都有偉大的發明——一款令人驚艷的配件，一款出色的軟件等。例如在蘋果公司，史蒂夫?喬布斯和史蒂夫?沃茲尼亞克建造了一臺個人電腦；在微軟，比爾?蓋茨和保羅?艾倫開發出編程語言和一款操作系統；謝爾蓋?布林和拉里?佩奇創造出谷歌搜索引擎。科技公司要將工程設計放在首位，其次才是銷售。這是我對科技公司的理解。

但HubSpot卻截然相反。HubSpot最初聘用的職位包括一位銷售總監和一位市場營銷總監。哈利干和哈米斯分別擔任這兩個職位，盡管他們沒有任何可以銷售的產品，也不知道他們要做什么產品。HubSpot最初就是一家尋找產品的銷售公司。

另外，新工作讓我學到的另外一件事是，雖然人們依舊把這個行業稱為“科技行業”，但事實上，如今技術已經不是關鍵所在。我有一位朋友從上世紀80年代開始在科技行業工作，曾是一位投資銀行家，目前為初創公司提供咨詢服務，他表示：“如今，發明偉大的技術已經無法得到回報。關鍵是商業模式。如果你的公司能夠迅速擴大規模，市場便會給你回報。關鍵在于迅速把公司做大。不需要盈利，只要擴大規模就可以。”

這正是HubSpot的作法。所以，風險投資家才會在HubSpot投入大量資金，他們才會相信HubSpot的IPO一定能取得成功。也是基于這個原因，HubSpot才會招聘如此多年輕人。這是投資者希望看到的：一大批年輕人，開開心心地工作，談論著改變世界。這種做法很受歡迎。

此外，招聘年輕人的另一個原因是成本低。HubSpot目前仍在虧損，但公司的業務屬于勞動密集型。如何以盡可能最低的工資，吸引數百人從事銷售和營銷工作？一種方式就是招聘大學畢業生，并讓工作看起來很有趣。為他們提供免費的啤酒和桌式足球。把工作場所裝飾成幼兒園和兄弟會聚會場所的樣子。舉行派對。只要做到這些，你便能找到無數年輕人，領著3.5萬美元的年薪，愿意在狹窄的房間里埋頭苦干。

除了各種有趣的硬件之外，你還要創造一種假象，盡量讓工作看起來富有意義。假如千禧一代不關心收入問題，但使命感可以給他們帶來巨大的鼓舞。你就要給他們創造一個使命。你告訴員工他們有多么特殊，加入這家公司是多么幸運。你告訴他們，在這里獲得一份工作要比考入哈佛大學難得多；公司之所以選擇他們去實現一個非常重要的使命，去改變世界，是因為他們具備超能力。你要制作一個團隊標識。給每個人發一頂帽子和一件T恤衫。你要編寫一套文化準則，談論如何創建一家所有人都熱愛的公司。你要用一些人可能一夜暴富的前景來吸引員工。

2014年末的一個星期四，我來到老板的辦公桌前，告訴他我得到了一個新的工作機會。新工作要在1月份入職，但我還是提前6周通知了他。他要求我重新考慮一下。但我告訴他，很感謝他的建議，但我已經下定決心。

我知道，很快就會有消息傳出，說我即將“畢業”。走出大學校園30年后，知道自己將再經歷一次“離校”儀式，是一種很奇怪但又令我感到滿足的感覺。我要像過去幾個月目睹的其他HubSpot畢業生一樣，“在下一次大冒險中發揮我的超能力！”

但當天晚上，“頭蓋骨”給所有HubSpot信徒的電子郵件中，對此事只字未提。這意味著，我被解雇了——那個周五將是我在公司的最后一天。

本文作者丹?萊昂斯，是HBO電視劇《硅谷》的編劇，也是一位小說家和電影編劇。他曾在《新聞周刊》擔任編輯。

《財富》雜志編者手記——

HubSpot于2014年8月25日申請IPO，同年10月在紐約證券交易所上市，交易代碼為HUBS，估值8.8億美元。本文作者丹?萊昂斯于2014年12月離職。他從未在公司的非貶低和保密文件上簽字。（HubSpot表示不會就員工協議發表意見。）2015年7月29日，HubSpot發布新聞稿稱，公司CMO邁克?沃爾普，也就是本文提到的“頭蓋骨”已被公司解雇，原因是他“試圖獲得”一本涉及HubSpot的書，“違反了公司商業操行與道德條例”。據推測，此書引用了本文內容。HubSpot后來向《財富》雜志確認此事。

《財富》雜志曾試圖通過電子郵件和電話征詢沃爾普先生對此事的意見，但聯系未果。針對萊昂斯在該公司的經歷，HubSpot公司CEO兼聯合創始人布萊恩?哈利干表示：“我們認為，當今要建立一家偉大的公司，關鍵是明白世界的變化方式，對于這些改變我們要做些什么，以及為什么我們的工作如此重要。10年前創建HubSpot時，我們就相信人們買賣商品的方式已經發生了根本性地改變。我們認為幫助公司適應這一改變存在巨大的機遇，今天，令我們引以為豪的是，有超過1.8萬名客戶選擇與我們合作，尋求轉變他們的營銷和銷售方式。”(財富中文網)

譯者：劉進龍/汪皓

審校：任文科

If you made a movie about a laid-off, sad-sack, fiftysomething guy who is given one big chance to start his career over, the opening scene might begin like this: a Monday morning in April, sunny and cool, with a brisk wind blowing off the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass. ?The man—gray hair, unstylishly cut; horn-rimmed glasses; button-down shirt—pulls his Subaru Outback into a parking garage and, palms a little sweaty, grabs his sensible laptop backpack and heads to the front door of a gleaming, renovated historic redbrick building. It is April 15, 2013, and that man is me. I’m heading for my first day of work at HubSpot, the first job I’ve ever had that wasn’t in a newsroom.

HubSpot’s offices occupy several floors of a 19th-century furniture factory that has been transformed into the cliché of what the home of a tech startup should look like: exposed beams, frosted glass, a big atrium, modern art hanging in the lobby. Riding the elevator to the third floor, I feel both nerves and adrenaline. Part of me still can’t believe that I’ve pulled this off. Nine months ago I was unceremoniously dumped from my job atNewsweek magazine in New York. I was terrified that I might never work again. Now I’m about to become a marketing guy at one of the hottest tech startups on the East Coast—a software company that has created an “inbound marketing” platform, which helps companies pull customers in (through blogs, social publishing, and other content), in contrast to outbound marketing (traditional advertising). There is one slight problem: I know nothing about marketing. This didn’t seem like such a big deal when I was going through the interviews and talking these people into hiring me. Now I’m not so sure.

I reassure myself by remembering that HubSpot seems pretty excited about having me come aboard. Cranium (my endearing name for the fellow), the chief marketing officer, or CMO, wrote an article on the HubSpot blog announcing that he had hired me. Tech blogs wrote up the story of the 52-year-old Newsweek journalist leaving the media business to go work for a software company.

A guy named Zack meets me and tells me he’s sorry Cranium isn’t here today, but he wants to give me a tour around the offices. Zack is in his twenties. He has a friendly smile and gelled hair. He reminds me of the interns at Newsweek, recent college graduates who did background research for the writers. I figure he must be someone’s assistant.

The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall. The office-as-playground trend was made famous by Google and has spread like an infection across the tech industry. Work can’t just be work; work has to be fun. HubSpot is divided into “neighborhoods,” each named after a section of Boston: North End, South End, Charlestown. One neighborhood has a set of musical instruments, in case people want to have an impromptu jam session, which Zack says never happens. Every neighborhood has little kitchens, with automatic espresso machines, and lounge areas with couches and chalkboard walls where people have written things like “HubSpot = cool” alongside inspirational messages like “There is a reason we have two ears and one mouth. So that we listen twice as much as we speak.”

On the ground floor an enormous conference room doubles as a game room, with the requisite foosball table, Ping-Pong table, indoor shuffleboard, and videogames. The cafeteria next door boasts industrial refrigerators stocked with cases of beer, cabinets with bagels and cereal, and, on one wall, a set of glass dispensers that hold an assortment of nuts and candy. It’s called the “candy wall,” and Zack explains that HubSpotters are especially proud of it. The wall is one of the first things they show off to visitors. It’s a young place, with lots of energy. Teams go on outings to play trampoline dodgeball and race go-karts and play laser tag.

Dogs roam HubSpot’s hallways, because like the kindergarten decor, dogs have become de rigueur for tech startups. At noon, Zack tells me, a group of bros meets in the lobby on the second floor to do push-ups together. Upstairs there is a place where you can drop off your dry cleaning. Sometimes they bring in massage therapists. On the second floor there are shower rooms, which are intended for bike commuters and people who jog at lunchtime, but also have been used as sex cabins when the Friday happy hour gets out of hand. Later I will learn (from Penny, the receptionist, who is a fantastic source of gossip) that at one point things got so out of hand that management had to send out a memo. “It’s the people from sales,” Penny tells me. “They’re disgusting.”

Later I also will hear a story about janitors coming in one Saturday morning to find the following things in the first-floor men’s room: a bunch of half-empty beers, a huge pool of vomit, and a pair of thong panties. The janitors were not happy. They get even more distressed when, one morning, a twenty-something guy from the HubSpot marketing department arrives wasted and, for reasons unknown, sets a janitor’s cart on fire.

Everyone works in vast, open spaces, crammed next to one another like seamstresses in Bangladeshi shirt factories, only instead of being hunched over sewing machines people are hunched over laptops. Nerf-gun battles rage, with people firing weapons from behind giant flat-panel monitors, ducking and rolling under desks. People hold standing meetings and even walking meetings, meaning the whole group goes for a walk and the meeting takes place while you’re walking.

Nobody has an office, not even the CEO. There is a rule about this. Every three months, everyone switches seats, in a corporate version of musical chairs. HubSpot calls this a “seating hack” and says the point is to remind everyone that change is constant. If you want privacy, you need to book one of the meeting rooms that are strung around the edges of the working spaces. Some meeting rooms are named after Red Sox players, others after “famous marketers”—I take a moment to let that sink in. Some have beanbag chairs instead of actual furniture, and in those rooms people sprawl out, with laptops propped on their knees.

Every new HubSpot employee has to go through training to learn how to use the software. That’s a good idea, and it also keeps me from having to worry about what I’m supposed to be doing here, or why Cranium, who hired me, still has never come by to say hello or talk about what he wants me to work on.

Training takes place in a tiny room, where for two weeks I sit shoulder to shoulder with 20 other new recruits, listening to pep talks that start to sound like the brainwashing you get when you join a cult. It’s everything I ever imagined might take place inside a tech company, only even better.

Our head trainer is Dave, a wiry, energetic guy in his forties with a shaved head and a gray goatee. On the first day we all go around and introduce ourselves, and tell everyone about something that makes us special. Dave’s thing is that he plays in a heavy-metal cover band on weekends.

Dave is part teacher and part preacher. Every two weeks he gets a batch of new recruits, and he goes through the same spiel, showing the same slides, telling the same jokes. He’s good at it. He loves HubSpot, he tells us, unabashedly. He’s had lots of jobs, and this is by far the best place he’s ever worked. This company has changed his life. He hopes it will change ours as well.

“We’re not just selling a product here,” Dave tells us. “HubSpot is leading a revolution. A movement. HubSpot is changing the world. This software doesn’t just help companies sell products. This product changes people’s lives. We are changing people’s lives.”

He tells a story about a guy named Brandon, a pool installer in Virginia. His business was struggling. He could barely get by. But then he started using HubSpot software, and his business took off. Soon his company was installing pools all around the country. He was rich! Eventually he was doing so well that he hired someone else to run his pool company so that he could become a motivational speaker. He travels the world spreading the gospel of inbound marketing, transforming the lives of thousands of other people.

“This guy has become a superstar,” Dave says. “He’s a rock star. And it all started with HubSpot. That’s what we’re doing here. That’s what you are part of.”

The truth is that we’re selling software that lets companies, most of them small businesses like pool installers and flower shops, sell more stuff. The world of online marketing, where HubSpot operates, though, has a reputation for being kind of grubby. Our customers include people who make a living bombarding people with email offers, or gaming Google’s search algorithm, or figuring out which kind of misleading subject line is most likely to trick someone into opening a message. Online marketing is not quite as sleazy as Internet porn, but it’s not much better either.

Nevertheless, Dave is laying it on thick, and the new recruits are nodding their heads and seem to be eating it up. Most of them are right out of college, clean-cut and well scrubbed. The guy next to me has a buzz cut and just graduated from some college in New Hampshire. He tells me that he lives with his parents and commutes an hour to get here, but he’s thinking about moving closer to Boston and getting his own place.

HubSpot doesn’t just sell this software—it also teaches people how to use it and in general how to be more effective at selling stuff online. At its annual customer conference, Inbound, thousands of online marketers flock to Boston to learn new tricks. One involves using a misleading subject line in an email—something like, “fwd: your holiday plans”—to dupe people into opening the message. “Boosting your open rate,” they call it. At the conference HubSpot also shows off new features and products, like one that puts a tracking cookie on the computer of everyone who visits your website and keeps track of every page the person visits. The software can even send you an alert when someone comes back to your website for a second visit—so you can call that person immediately and say, “Hey, I see you’re on our website! Is there something I can help you with?”

That’s the business we’re in: Buy our software, sell more stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not exactly how HubSpot bills itself or describes what it does. In training we’re taught that the billions of emails that we blast into the world do not constitute email spam. Instead, those emails are what we call “lovable marketing content.” That is really what our trainers call it. The convoluted logic behind this is that “spam” means unsolicited email, and we send email only to people who have handed over their contact information by filling out a form and giving us their permission to be contacted. Our emails might be unwanted, but they’re not, strictly speaking, unsolicited, and therefore they are not spam. And even though we and our customers send out literally billions of email messages, we’re not trying to annoy people—in fact we are trying to help them. Sending one message after another, each time with a different subject line, is how we discover what someone wants. We’re learning about them. We’re listening to them.

Thus, what we’re creating is not spam. In fact, the official line is that HubSpot hates spam and wants to stamp out spam. We want to protect people from spam. Spam is what the bad guys send, but we are the good guys. Our spam is not spam. In fact it is the opposite of spam. It’s antispam. It’s a shield against spam—a spam condom. HubSpot has even created a promotional campaign, with T-shirts that say make love not spam.

Arriving here feels like landing on some remote island where a bunch of people have been living for years, in isolation, making up their own rules and rituals and religion and language—even, to some extent, inventing their own reality. This happens at all organizations, but for some reason tech startups seem to be especially prone to groupthink. Every tech startup seems to be like this. Believing that your company is not just about making money, that there is a meaning and a purpose to what you do, that your company has a mission, and that you want to be part of that mission—that is a big prerequisite for working at one of these places.

At HubSpot, employees abide by precepts outlined in the company’s culture code, a document that codifies HubSpot’s unusual language and sets forth a set of shared values and beliefs. The culture code is a manifesto of sorts, a 128-slide PowerPoint deck titled “The HubSpot Culture Code: Creating a Company We Love.”

The code’s creator is HubSpot’s co-founder. Inside the company he is always referred to simply by his first name, Dharmesh, and some people seem to view him as a kind of spiritual leader. Dharmesh claims it took him 100 hours to make the slides. He sent me a link to the slide deck a few days after I interviewed with him and his co-founder, Brian Halligan, I suppose as an inducement to join the company. He said it was a slide deck that “describes HubSpot’s culture.”

The code depicts a kind of corporate utopia where the needs of the individual become secondary to the needs of the group—“team > individual,” one slide says—and where people don’t worry about work-life balance because their work is their life.

The culture code asks, “What does it mean to be HubSpotty?” and then defines the meaning of that term, explaining a concept that Dharmesh called HEART, an acronym that stands for humble, effective, adaptable, remarkable, and transparent. These are the traits that HubSpotters must possess in order to be successful. The ultimate HubSpotter is someone who can “make magic” while embodying all five traits of HEART.

Much of the code is “aspirational,” as Dharmesh concedes, meaning that some of these values are ones that HubSpot doesn’t actually put into practice yet but hopes to someday. One of HubSpot’s values involves being transparent, and not just transparent but “radically and remarkably transparent.”

The culture code has been an enormous PR coup for the company and a model that a lot of other startups have emulated. When Dharmesh posted his slides online they received more than 1 million views. This inspired him so much that now he is setting out to write a book about corporate culture.

Dharmesh’s culture code incorporates elements of HubSpeak. For example, it instructs that when someone quits or gets fired, the event will be referred to as “graduation.” In my first month at HubSpot I’ve witnessed several graduations, just in the marketing department. We’ll get an email from Cranium saying, “Team, just letting you know that Derek has graduated from HubSpot, and we’re excited to see how he uses his superpowers in his next big adventure!” Only then do you notice that Derek is gone, that his desk has been cleared out. Somehow Derek’s boss will have arranged his disappearance without anyone knowing about it. People just go up in smoke, like Spinal Tap drummers.

Nobody ever talks about the people who graduate, and nobody ever mentions how weird it is to call it “graduation.” For that matter I never hear anyone laugh about HEART or make jokes about the culture code. Everyone acts as if all of these things are perfectly normal.

HubSpotters talk about being “superstars with superpowers” whose mission is to “inspire people” and “be leaders.” They talk about engaging in “delightion,” which is a made-up word, invented by Dharmesh, that means delighting our customers.

The ideal HubSpotter is someone who exhibits a quality known as GSD, which stands for “get shit done.” This is used as an adjective, as in “Courtney is always in super-GSD mode.” The people who lead customer training seminars are called inbound marketing professors and belong to the faculty at HubSpot Academy. Our software is magical, such that when people use it—wait for it—one plus one equals three. Halligan and Dharmesh first introduced this alchemical concept at HubSpot’s annual customer conference, with a huge slide behind them that said “1 + 1 = 3.” Since then it has become an actual slogan at the company. People use the concept of one plus one equals three as a prism through which to evaluate new ideas. One day Spinner, the woman who runs PR, tells me, “I like that idea, but I’m not sure that it’s one-plus-one-equals-three enough.”

It turns out I’ve been naive. I’ve spent 25 years writing about technology companies, and I thought I understood this industry. But at HubSpot I’m discovering that a lot of what I believed was wrong.

I thought, for example, that tech companies began with great inventions—an amazing gadget, a brilliant piece of software. At Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built a personal computer; at Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed programming languages and then an operating system; Sergey Brin and Larry Page created the Google search engine. Engineering came first, and sales came later. That’s how I thought things worked.

But HubSpot did the opposite. HubSpot’s first hires included a head of sales and a head of marketing. Halligan and Dharmesh filled these positions even though they had no product to sell and didn’t even know what product they were going to make. HubSpot started out as a sales operation in search of a product.

Another thing I’m learning in my new job is that while people still refer to this business as the “tech industry,” in truth it is no longer really about technology at all. “You don’t get rewarded for creating great technology, not anymore,” says a friend of mine who has worked in tech since the 1980s, a former investment banker who now advises startups. “It’s all about the business model. The market pays you to have a company that scales quickly. It’s all about getting big fast. Don’t be profitable, just get big.”

That’s what HubSpot is doing. That’s why venture capitalists have sunk so much money into HubSpot, and why they believe HubSpot will have a successful IPO. That’s also why HubSpot hires so many young people. That’s what investors want to see: a bunch of young people, having a blast, talking about changing the world. It sells.

Another reason to hire young people is that they’re cheap. HubSpot runs at a loss, but it is labor-intensive. How can you get hundreds of people to work in sales and marketing for the lowest possible wages? One way is to hire people who are right out of college and make work seem fun. You give them free beer and foosball tables. You decorate the place like a cross between a kindergarten and a frat house. You throw parties. Do that, and you can find an endless supply of bros who will toil away in the spider monkey room for $35,000 a year.

On top of the fun stuff you create a mythology that attempts to make the work seem meaningful. Supposedly millennials don’t care so much about money, but they’re very motivated by a sense of mission. So, you give them a mission. You tell your employees how special they are and how lucky they are to be here. You tell them that it’s harder to get a job here than to get into Harvard and that because of their superpowers they have been selected to work on a very important mission to change the world. You make a team logo. You give everyone a hat and a T-shirt. You make up a culture code and talk about creating a company that everyone can love. You dangle the prospect that some might get rich.

One Thursday in late 2014, I stop by my boss’s desk and tell him I’ve been offered a new job. I won’t start until January, but I am giving him six weeks’ notice. He asks me to reconsider. I tell him I appreciate the offer, but I’ve made up my mind.

Soon, I know, word will get out that I am “graduating.” It’s a strange but somehow satisfying feeling to know that, roughly three decades after my college career has ended, I am set to go through that ritualized departure once more. I am going to be like so many other HubSpot graduates I’ve seen come and go over the past several months—“using my superpowers in the next big adventure!”

But the email that Cranium sends to the HubSpot faithful that evening doesn’t mention anything about any of that. It just implies that I’ve been fired—and that Friday will be my last day.

Dan Lyons, a writer for the HBO series Silicon Valley, is a novelist and screenwriter. He is a former editor at “Newsweek.”

HubSpot filed for an IPO on Aug. 25, 2014, and launched under the symbol HUBS on the New York Stock Exchange that October, with a market valuation of $880 million. Dan Lyons left HubSpot in December 2014. He never signed the nondisparagement and nondisclosure paperwork the company gave him. (HubSpot says it won’t comment on employee agreements.) On July 29, 2015, HubSpot issued a press release saying its CMO, Mike Volpe—the man called “Cranium” in Lyons’s book—had been terminated because he “violated the Company’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics” in his “attempts to procure” a copy of a book involving HubSpot, presumably the book excerpted above, a fact that HubSpot confirmed with Fortune?. We attempted by email and telephone to contact Mr. Volpe for comment; we were unable to reach him. When asked for comment on Lyons’s experience at the company, HubSpot CEO and co-founder Brian Halligan said the following: “We believe that to build a great company today, it’s essential to have a point of view on how the world has changed, what you are doing about it and why it matters. We started HubSpot a decade ago believing that the way people buy and sell had fundamentally changed. We saw an opportunity to help organizations adjust to that shift, and today we’re proud to have more than 18,000 customers who have chosen to partner with us to transform how they market and sell.”