For years Dan Lyons was a leading tech journalist-- until the Friday his Newsweek boss called. His job? Gone. Fifty years old with two kids, Lyons was screwed. Then an idea hit. For years he'd seen people strike gold in the start-up boom. Why not him? One tech company, flush with $100 million, offered a pile of stock options. What could go wrong? His new employer made the world a better place-- by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: shower pods became hook-up dens, nerf-gun fights broke out at lunch, and absent bosses specialized in cryptic, jargon-filled emails. In the middle of this sat Lyons, old enough to be his coworkers' father.