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Comment by amyjess | Hacker News Reader

> Have you worked in an early- or mid-stage startup in NYC or the Bay Area in the past... 10 years?

...why do you think I have no desire to move to either of those parts of the country or to work for a startup? I like to describe Silicon Valley as "degenerate" for a few reasons, and this is one of them.

I'm perfectly happy working in the suburbs of Texas in a corporate environment (~500 employees, B2B telecom industry).

> and our baby to join whenever they wanted

Screaming baby in the office = I quit. I'm glad my current employer has "no children in the office" as written policy in our handbook.

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When I worked retail, one of the cashier brought her (12 year old?) daughter to work one day and left her in the break room the whole time.

One of the CSRs had a previously criminal history, but was a nice guy and did good work. That day, the daughter accused him of molesting her. Because he had a criminal record, he ended up going back to jail. I don't know if he did it or not, but the daughter should not have been there in the first place. Had the cashier followed company policy, the situation couldn't have happened.

I'm not judging anyone, and no matter what actually happened, it's a horrible tragedy.

That's really fucked up. It's not impossible to imagine a scenario where the daughter playfully started flirting with the cashier and that ended up fucking his life over.

The problem is rather that people get jailed without really strong independent evidence (more than "his word against hers").

> Screaming baby in the office = I quit. I'm glad my current employer has "no children in the office" as written policy in our handbook.

Clearly different environments work for different people. I'm not trying to suggest that I want to try to concentrate on software development next to a screaming baby (that obviously wouldn't be an ideal environment), but I would be pleased and encouraged to have an employer who was open to allowing families into the work space. That's the sort of thing that truly motivates me, far more than foosball tables and free snacks.

FWIW, not every company in the Bay Area is like that. I work for a small company in Palo Alto (< 50 people) where most people get in around 9 (some come earlier, some come later), and people will leave around 5 (some also leave earlier - SF people tend to leave around 3 to beat traffic). 1/3 of our company is also remote.

Unless I'm missing something, you weren't the person I was responding to, right?

I'm not saying that the startup environment is great for everyone, but it has produced a compelling critique of the corporate environment. Clearly.

Shared music, late nights, open plans, families, ping pong / pinball, and so on... These aren't per se the mark of a "boys club" in contrast to a "professional environment," they are a critique of the industry-style work environment, and one that has been enormously successful in two the most economically active cities in the USA.

This startup scene so far never made sense to me, but now thanks to you I can see the light: it was an artistic militant happening! Hurray!

"...industry-style work environment, and one that has been enormously successful..."

Seems to be confusing correlation with causation.

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