Fuck You Startup World (2016)
medium.com
medium.com
My comment from back then:
> Although I genuinely miss Valleywag and all the absurdity that it covered (e.g. Clinkle), I'm not sure if this is a fair critique of startup culture outside of having the excuse to say the F word a lot. As someone living in San Francisco, I can say that there are more to startups and startup culture than the stereotypes seen in Medium thought pieces and the Hacker News front page, although given the end of this particular Medium thought piece, that may be the point.
Given that the OP now works at WeWork, I suppose the startup world can't be f'ed forever.
Not worth reading in my opinion.
He/she/it thinks so? Maybe if it's a useless self improvement book. Perhaps he/she/it should practice their reading skills...
I read 1-2 books a week because I prioritize reading time. Usually an hour or two before going to sleep. I find quiet reading time really helps me wind down and sleep better. And, I read thing I enjoy - mostly science fiction novels, nothing heavy. Reading is my time.
More people should make time to just read.
Good book reading requires introspection, time to digest, etc. Also, why are you reading it in particular? Is it just a story? What for?
Obviously if your dyslexic and have problems reading (not all dyslexics do btw) I could accept some people could be slower
Just try to avoid the styles of “quantity oriented” reading practice taught in e.g. law school. Nothing is more guaranteed to make books unappealing as a pleasure activity. People with learning disabilities and reading-oriented jobs may have different experiences with those techniques, though.
If you're working 80-90 hour weeks, which isn't a crazy number from what I can tell at a lot of these startups, you aren't reading two or three books a week.
Or rather, it's very unlikely you have the mental capacity left to process what you're reading unless its mindless pap - which is fair, I can dig mindless pap - but that is almost the same creature as watching Netflix or 3 am infomercials.
If you are working two full time-jobs worth of hours each week and are still managing to read books, good job?
There's never any independent evidence, and to the extent that you can test the claims, they don't hold up. For example, if you look in the parking lots of these buildings at night or look for which office windows have lights on, it's obvious that they're nearly all empty, and that's always been the case. But both sides in the argument ("yeah I worked that hard" vs. "no one should work that hard") have an incentive to agree on inflated numbers, so they can argue about the rest.
I do remember one startup where the CEO would have a tantrum if someone left before midnight, but that was only for a brief period (the situation was unstable), and even at the peak of that insanity, no one worked close to 80-90 hours a week. People would just come in late the next day. They certainly thought they were working 80 hours though.
Having occasionally seen people working that much outside of crunch - only at one startup and in the game industry, admittedly - I've just been taking those claims at face value.
I do agree that prioritizing time to read is important but at different points in ones life the amount of time/energy available can fluctuate greatly.
Some nights we decide to use our "couples time" for reading, and that's nice but also doesn't happen too often because we do actually need some time to talk to each other as well. :)
- I don't drink, but I felt pressure to do it anyway, so I could be part of the team.
- There was an alcoholic on the team. Can't imagine what that was like for him.
- People would inevitably get drunk and do stupid shit. I remember when a senior employee got drunk and completely embarrassed herself in front of a client. She was fired the next day.
Can't we enjoy beer at home or at the bar? Why do we have to drink at work?
I get the feeling that for some people, startups are just a way to make college last for ever.
I work with several alcoholics, and they are ones that have no desire to get better. It is extremely uncomfortable when management says that you should go out to the bar so you can get to know them better, especially when you drink very little (or several people on my team, not at all). I'm left with the choice, do I socialize and get deal with the potential ramifications, or do I stay away and make myself an outsider?
I've never seen people forced to drink alcohol at social events BTW.
In the real world you have to realise that not everyone is exactly like you and how to get along and work with people from different backgrounds and cultures.
Not at all. I would object though if that meal only included dead animals.
> I've never seen people forced to drink alcohol at social events BTW.
Social pressure is very real.
> In the real world you have to realise that not everyone is exactly like you and how to get along and work with people from different backgrounds and cultures.
Very true. People need to realize that other people have very complex relationships with alcohol. For some people it's a fun party drink that helps you socialize. For others, it's a poison drink that ruined their family and perhaps took a loved one from them. In my opinion, being more sensitive to the latter is more important than catering to the former.
Even hearing "I don't drink" flies just fine.
Exactly. Why do they need to ask? Why do I need to invent some reason why I prefer to drink X over Y? If it was coffee over tea, coca-cola over lemonaid, or water over fruit juce, I wouldn't have to justify those choices to anyone but the most insufferable of people trying to transfer their life/health choices onto me. If a colleague is giving me a hard time every day over my choice to drink coffee because "hey, man, I stopped drinking coffee last week and I feel so much better," I'd be justified in telling them to shut up because I just don't care. But alcohol is on the table and I need to think of an excuse, regardless of whether I'm driving or not. It's bullshit.
One can arguably make a similar interpretation of this piece.
10x, Rockstar, Ninja, open office, stock over cash all tend to make me go the other way at this point.
There is also the issue of sweating blood for someone else's success or for toliet paper.
There are plenty of bootstrapped startups quietly humming along, working normal hours, where the employees enjoy life and family time without engaging in the culture. You don't hear about them as much.
And those kinds of business are much more my thing, so I am not throwing shade, but there is a difference.
What did the on-site interview consist of? I was scheduled quick meetings with various people in the chain of command, all of whom I had already spoken with (some at great length) and then I was to accompany the whole team out for drinks/happy hour at a local pub.
I don't drink. I told them I don't drink. This was a culture fit test, I never went to the interview as that wasn't a team I wanted to be a part of. I want to write code, work with people who are better/smarter/more experienced than I am in order to better myself - happy hour isn't going to do that.
Ironically, these words are a good example of start-up mentality.
Fuck reading a book a week. No one can read that fast. Let me repeat that -NO ONE CAN FUCKING READ THAT FAST.
Yes you can. If you find this difficult, please start reading regularly. You'll get better at it over time. This should not be a challenge.
Even on the fiction side the differences in size are huge (typically 100 pages to 1300 pages) and the ease of reading differs as well.
On the non fiction side the differences in reading speed can be 100x depending on difficulty and familiarity with the material. For example, I'd consider the workload of one semester of my university program equivalent to about three medium sized books, which amounts to two months per book, without a fulltime job on the side.
This is really bad. I see it very often and I really, really don't understand the reason for that.
Its just automation -- nothing to be bragged about. Silly stuff we all love.
Look, just because people care about some things that you don’t seem to care about doesn’t mean you get to step into their world and tell them that everything they do is wrong using vulgar language. If you don’t like the culture, leave.
If you think aspects of the culture can be improved, then help in identifying the problems and offer constructive solutions. Instead this guy just says “Fuck XYZ” a hundred times and thinks he has some unique insight to offer.
God forbid somebody's frustration with BS isn't productively expressed!
Reacting to BS with one's own BS is totally understandable given the emotions involved, I don't blame anyone for that. But ultimately it does nothing to help counter the BS that was being reacted to.. It mostly just provides an emotional outlet for the author (which is fine, a lot of great writing has no higher goal).
However, if someone's goal is to help change the state of things for the better, much better to start making shovels and passing them around, than to manufacture one's own "good" BS to counter preexisting "evil" BS. This is an observation about the world in general, nothing specific to this article. Less BS is always better than more BS, always and forever.
Everything in this world is about being productive
I just didn't find this piece compelling in any way. I think someone like DHH offers a more valuable criticism of the downsides to startup culture - and as a bonus he sets a real world example of some of the solutions he'd like to see more broadly by implementing some of them in his own company.
Meanwhile, this particular author writes a post like this and then goes and works for WeWork. There's a hint of irony somewhere here.