The Intimidating First Conversation An Early Facebook Employee Had With Mark Zuckerberg

Noah Kagan was a Facebook employee who was infamously fired before any of his stock options vested. Kagan's first memory of Mark Zuckerberg was both intimidating and awkward. He described the encounter during a recent podcast with James Altucher.

On Kagan's first day at Facebook, his boss was fired. Mark Zuckerberg pulled Kagan into a meeting, delivered the news, and supposedly told him, "Don't f--- with my company."

Here's how Kagan remembers that day:

I was one of the early people [at Facebook]. I never got to meet Mark... until the day I started. The first day I started my boss got fired.

I walk into the office. It's a shit hole; it's like a frat house. It's in Palo Alto, which is really nice. They're kind of like 'Hey, go sit at that desk. Oh, here's a laptop; start working.'

I'm like, 'Oh, ok! What do I work on?'

My boss walks by, Doug, who says, 'Hey, I'll meet with you in an hour.'

So I'm like 'Ok" and I get on the internet. So Doug walks by about an hour later and says, 'Ok we'll talk after lunch.' Right then, Mark calls me into a meeting. This was the first time meeting Mark.

Mark, me and a few other people go into a small room. He looks at me, he's very quiet. I'm like, 'Holy shit, this is Mark Zuckerberg. I'm finally meeting the kid'...There was definitely something special with him. He was definitely awkward for sure, definitely kind of a geeky dude, but definitely something special.

So he goes, 'I just fired your boss. Welcome to Facebook.'

That was the first time I got to meet him. He was like, 'Don't f--- with my company, and you'll be fine here.'"

But nine months later, Kagan accidentally "f---ed" with the company and got fired. Here's what he did wrong.