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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

The one thing I don't get about these companies is how all the employees, in particular higher ups and investors buy this stuff.

I mean if you read these articles about Neumann and his wife, elevating the world's conciousness, smoking weed everywhere, buying artificial wave companies for no reason, he doesn't even sound like a real person, he sounds like a Silicon Valley tv show character.

There's a lot of podcasts and articles about the famous people involved in this, but I just would like to hear what regular employees and managers think about this. How are you working at these companies for months and don't think you're in a cult?

The same thing about Theranos, I read the John Carreyrou book and it just sounds insane. How are people at a company for months that sounds like a Kafka novel, I truly don't get it.

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The problem here is optics. Let's say you believe the stuff they tell you while they recruit you, you're happy to get a new job, higher salary etc... and join WeWork. Then you walk into the place and it's a total shitshow. Crap. Now you have to decide if you want to take a hit on salary and position to get a job somewhere else and charitably leave WeWork out of your resume, or you try to make it to 1-2 years of tenure when you can actually leave and hope nobody will ever ask too many questions.

The funny thing about this is the incentives in the hiring market compound the problem tremendously, because most recruiters don't care to think about what situation you might be leaving, they only look at tenure and if too short they will immediately think you're a "problem employee".

I've lived your exact scenario. I left the shit show company and it is not listed on my CV. Actually, there are 5 jobs like that which are not on my resume.

I'm fortunate that I freelance and have many things going at once, so was able to "smooth" the dates and avoid having to explain any gaps.

Every company is a gradient scale of a "shit show". Some are just more deep in shit than others.

I totally agree with you, but - I used to know a guy who made the same tough decision when he started with a company called Enron back in the 90's. He decided he should stick it out for a little while for appearances and then, when the company managed to tank the entire world economy, he actually had trouble finding new work because he had that black stain on his resume. I suspect WeWork alumni are having similar problems - it's really a no-win situation for the low-level "grunts".

I just don't believe "low-level grunts" have serious problems that way. It wouldn't be rational.

A lot of these companies are filled with young "fresh meat" that just don't know any better. If you're just out of college and get hired at one of these places, why wouldn't you believe the spin? Everything is validating it. The media, the good salaries, the parties, the money is flowing, and your stock options are theoretically making you wealthy...

But there are also people that see through it all, but just don't stay long. This leaves only the people being fooled. A lot of the Theranos book involved people like Tyler Shultz, who saw through the Theranos mess and he left with a lot of drama that included his freaking former secretary of state grandfather trying to convince him otherwise. As for the "higher ups", they just find people who want to drink the kool-aid and are willing to take a salary doing it.

And when you are fresh out of school, finally facing the real world, many folks are in a place where they realize (maybe not consciously, yet) that they don't really have a purpose. No one really intends to create a cult. It just happens.

A lot of people that work at these companies totally buy the koolaid. Many of them have no direct access to the underlying fundamentals, if they see anything odd at all, it's easy to write it off with 'Adam knows best'. Many of these folks would never have a chance to work at a regular high-end startup so it was a real 'chance of a lifetime' for them.

And then 'non believers' probably just didn't feel the need to speak up - the business was growing after all, and by most outside measures it seemed legit.

Most folks would not be able to evaluate the quality of acquisitions anyhow - and frankly, many respected CEOs make really bad purchases all the time.

The same reasons perfectly intelligent people join and remain in actual cults.

Honestly, there are so many factors involved in it's hard to enumerate them all in an HN post.

For those who are intrigued by actual cults, I strongly recommend the podcast "Cults" on the ParCast network. It can come off as a little dry at first, but stay with it, they not only tell the story of the cults they cover they also reference real, mainstream psychological researching explaining the motivations of the cult leaders and members. It will change the way you think about all organizations, not just fanatical religions.

I mean, isn't that cult-like vibe pretty much par for the course at all unicorny startups, successful or not?

This essay, my favorite of those I read last year, has a lot of explanatory power for cases like this: https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/

TLDR: People (including you and me) will believe false things if it increases or maintains our social status.

The emperors new clothes is a real phenomenon. People fear truth telling (look at our president)

My partner is in to the things that the Neumann’s are in to. As strange as their beliefs are, they are pretty much harmless. It’s easy to take on this belief system because it doesn’t ask much of you and doesn’t take much.

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