In September 2020, somehow this all feels so dated and irrelevant, including talking about it here on Hacker News. The whole culture is past its zenith, ready to be processed and filed away.
I mean for a good while it was like, Google is the place to be because they only hire the smartest and they take really good care of their employees. But as time goes by, turns out what they do is just a job, their developers are all right, they've got tons of legacy code, etc.
I was offered to apply to their "apps" department (think Docs and co) in Germany, but it just did not sound appealing.
For example, my experience has been that the cryptocurrency/blockchain 'culture' reached its zenith at a point later than the more general 'startup/app culture'.
I suppose ML/AI stuff is still sort of on the way up, if not for the coronavirus putting everything on pause.
I know a bunch of people in their early-to-mid-twenties who are perfect 'canaries' for whatever is the next 'startup culture' and it's both interesting and slightly annoying to talk to them about it.
I feel to old to get caught up in all of it, but I admit that knowing what's hot can be helpful to find the type of work that I don't like but that pays the bills.
I'd argue that it was the same thing; startup culture was running out of gas and then a new, spicy tech showed up that revived the field and spawned a whole new galaxy of statups.