“I guess my last question for you is: why do you want to work here?” A silver-haired man sat in a comfortable chair, marking up the notepad in front of him as he closed out the interview with a very predictable question.

The interviewee had heard this question dozens of times before, and had almost as many answers ready to respond with. But before reciting one of those stock answers, he reconsidered. His opponent in this low-stakes battle had likely heard many of those canned answers before, and a bit of simple honesty couldn’t hurt his case at this point. “That’s easy,” he started, a genuine smile coming to his face. “There’s nowhere else in this town where I can use my skills. And I really enjoy living in this city.”

A chuckle filled the air, telling him that this answer had been the correct one. The silver haired gentleman, who had introduced himself as both the CTO of the company and Douglas call-me-Doug Kingsman, followed the chuckle with, “Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to say that. If I’m honest, I was probably the first.”

“Oh?” The interviewee, who had introduced himself as both Gabriel Shophar and a senior-level software engineer, prompted politely. Doug’s comment was such an obvious sign that he wanted to brag that Gabriel knew it would only help him to listen.

“This is the second company that Len - he’s the CEO - and I have started together. I moved here after we sold the first company, and I fell in love with the mountains. So when Len called me up and said he wanted to start a second company, I agreed on the condition that I could open an office here.”

Thinking of the view of the mountains he had from his new condo downtown, Gabriel had a hard time disagreeing with this man’s choices. “That’s lucky for me then, since it gives me a place to do the work I love right alongside the place I chose to live,” he said, then his lips twisted a bit into a teasing smirk. “That is, of course, if you decide to hire me.”

Doug offered a handshake with another chuckle, and Gabriel took it. “The manager of the development team, Nereta Velveteen, is currently on leave, so introductions with her will have to wait. Before leaving, she asked me to fill the last open engineer position we had.” Before Gabriel could follow up with a question about his absentee supervisor, Doug continued, “Let me introduce you to your new co-workers.”

Gabriel could only smile at the man’s domination of the conversation - and his desire to show off his kingdom - and simply said, “I look forward to meeting them.”