How To Party Your Way Into a Multi-Million Dollar Facebook Job

From Gawker

Ryan Tate — If you want Facebook to spend millions of dollars hiring you, it helps to be a talented engineer, as the New York Times today suggests. But it also helps to carouse with Facebook honchos, invite them to your dad’s Mediterranean party palace, and get them introduced to your father’s venture capital pals, like Sam Lessin did [..]

We’ll let you in on a few things the Times left out: Lessin is not an engineer, but a Harvard social studies major and a former Bain consultant. His file-sharing startup drop.io was an also-ran competitor to the much more popular Dropbox, and was funded by a chum from Lessin’s very rich childhood. Lessin’s wealthy investment banker dad provided Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg crucial access to venture capitalists in Facebook’s early days. And Lessin had made a habit of wining and dining with Facebook executives for years before he finally scored a deal, including at a famous party he threw at his father’s vacation home in Cyprus with girlfriend and Wall Street Journal tech reporter Jessica Vascellaro. (Lessin is well connected in media, too.) Facebook platform chief Dave Morin was at that one, and at another exclusive party with Lessin in Cancun, which also featured Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz [..]

We mention all this not to begrudge Lessin his wealth but to use him as an educational case study, and a much fuller one that the Times presented this morning. With the right connections, some face time at the right parties, and perhaps the right father, maybe you too can unload your unprofitable startup, get a sexy new job at Facebook, and even somehow become a national newspaper’s poster child for “talent” along the way.