Is it "poaching" when a company steals a rival's chef? At Google, executive chef Josef Desimone scrambled cruelty-free eggs by the truckload. Now Facebook has hired him to replace steam-heated trays of takeout with the kind of free food Googlers are used to. For engineers, Facebook is the new dreamland, and a company cafeteria is the kind of perk they've come to expect. But foodwise, Facebook's simply not as interesting a challenge as Google, with its thousands of employees and campuses dotted around the globe.

Professionally, this is a step down for Desimone. So why make the jump, besides the money? A simple reason: Personal loyalty to Sheryl Sandberg, the former Google executive who is now Facebook's chief operating officer. "Josef was Sheryl's favorite chef at Google," says an ex-Googler. "Every time she moved buildings, so did he."

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