Startup Culture Runs on Bullshit
joanwestenberg.com
joanwestenberg.com
I think there's a case that chasing short-term profitability is bad and can inhibit making more profit in the long run. I don't think there's a case that organisational disfunction is fine – it basically prevents people with great ideas and great teams from reaching their goals. Look at companies such as Uber to see what can happen when you fix the extremely intense organisational problems in a company (under Dara Khosrowshahit Uber has basically had a massive turnaround).
There's the a16z theory that it's better to just throw as much money as it takes money at a problem because it takes too much time to work out a more efficient way to spend the money and you're going to be making infinite money soon. I actually think this is really dangerous – even if we assume that there's infinite money, there's only so much time that we can allocate to certain problems (because time is limited) and an inability to work out how to prioritise and allocate scarce resources in an effective way stops companies from growing.
The commodification of labor is also extremely damaging: it devalues experience, and creates a preference for credentials over skills.
Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein
The author displays a lack of familiarity with US startup culture: "seventy-hour weeks", "Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections."
Isn't that somewhat true? In Switzerland 40 to 43 hours is considered full time and the far majority never works more than that. And that's with 5-6 weeks of free holidays not accounted yet.
"Work during the weekends" was masked behind the "be passionate" mantra. Before investors everything was shiny, inside was a rotten apple. Management conducted themselves in a pompous and "self-entitling" way every single day.
Not sure if all startups are so, start like this and than change, or just I had the bad luck of finding one of the bad ones.
Regarding passion, in my opinion, it is for those who really are in for the creation process. Creating something new, something that really changes things. Something that also brings financial freedom or at least makes them feel very very good. Otherwise, there is no such thing as passion without satisfaction. You can’t transfer passion. You can’t make other people passionate (at least not, if you are not Gandhi or someone similar).
For actual startups (not small established companies adopting the startup nomenclature, ig Stripe, SpaceX, pharma etc) this is true.
Also for these same startups, look at how many non white/non eastern Asian/non southeast Asian men you'll find as compared to anyone else. If you look at a medical/health services startup, you'll find slightly more women.
Bay Area web app developers shouldn't be working 70 hours a week. By and large they don't.
SpaceX, counter to what you wrote, probably does push employees to work 60-ish hours a week. I recall reading job descriptions that said something to the effect of "expect to work weekends". Autists are likely the ones to be ensared by this trap.
Right. And we still hear voices buzzing around about "propaganda" from the East, how bad the "other side" is with its citizens. While working at a company, I would read their website and job postings for the future employees. And half of it was not true. Blatant lies. And instantly wondered how in a society that puts Truth on such a high pedestal, such companies still exist, are allowed to exist and are even praised.
For a person stepping, unknowingly, into such traps it might be their mental health which is on the line. These are not just innocent lies. They shape lives. Such lives are shaped, twisted and turned in all directions by people with money or greed or just careless with their words and actions.
Good write-up. Short. Straight. And to the point.
Didn't seem to be from a startup. Still bullshit if you ask me.
That one is easy: If you're a society that really puts the ability to tell good lies on a pedestal, you can easily lie to yourself that you only value the truth.
And I do think some revelation of lies and liars is widespread, otherwise we wouldn't talk so positive about "hustle culture", "fake it till you make it" etc or idolise people like P.T.Barnum, Gordon Gekko or Donald Trump.
(Not that I think we're worse than other societies here)
I get those without connections but women and minorities? Give me a break. Asians absolutely killing it and there are simply far fewer women in the industry.
Minorities, though I have no idea. Unless they mean there's a bias towards prestige degrees? Then sure.
If the economy is a contest to time compress things as much as possible and demand as many working hours from everyone as possible, things like raising children get sacrificed.
This is the simplest explanation for the extraordinarily low birth rates in some countries like South Korea that have normalized insanely demanding work cultures.
How is that the would-be investors problem? Can we say the industry is rife with misogyny like the author is implying here?
Also when you say "Asians absolutely killing it" I mean, Asians are a really big group! Some Asians are "absolutely killing it" and others are not.
I applaud (East) Asians for getting it done, but that still leaves MANY others. Most of the success stories tend to be East Asians, where Southeast Asians are mistreated and seen as a cheap labor source. The point stands.
> there are simply far fewer women in the industry.
And why do you think that is good sir?
Because on average they're less likely to prefer working in tech. They don't like it, it's that simple.
Again, why do you think that is?
If you're saying women are less capable, be direct.
Humans are social creatures and are designed to go where we're a part of the ingroup. That is the manifestation of the "preference" of working in tech. The tech sphere is often a bros club and exclusionary to women. There are many examples of talented women in our field being trampled out by the mob. Nobody, not even the godly You, wants be a part of a group that constantly hassles you.
This is an anonymous forum, if that's what I thought, I would say so. I have no reason to censor myself, could not care less about the points.
> The tech sphere is often a bros club and exclusionary to women.
There is no sphere or club, if the software you write provides value to some company or users you get paid for it. No one cares about your chromosomes.
>There are many examples of talented women in our field being trampled out by the mob.
What happened? Did paying customers suddenly boycott their favorite sofwtare upon finding out that a woman wrote the code for it? I'd love to hear some examples.
Don't go confusing online culture warriors with pesky things like facts or evidence :), this is the internet, sir. We run on outrage and accusation.
What about "they prefer different careers"?
Women and men just aren't the same. Few women love cold machines, anywhere in the world. Even in highly feminist cultures like Scandinavia, female engineers tend to be in the minority.
We can look to the arts as well. In literature, you have a fairly clear picture of women reading different stuff than men. Same with music. Taylor Swift really seems to speak to the female mind, much less to the male mind. In the metal scene, the situation is flipped.
These are mostly introverted activities (reading, listening to music) performed alone, and yet there is significant gender difference. The same is true about, uh, porn.
They don't like it?
Take a look (or don't) at the org charts for any 20 tech companies that are past Series A funding.
You will find that most of the execs are white men, most (not all, thankfully!) female leadership is in HR or PeopleOps, and any exec presence from non-Asian ethnic groups are for the company's diversity efforts (and we all know how HN feels about those).
I've been doing this tech thing for a while. It is extremely difficult to find folks at the top that look like me (a black Latino). Hell, it is difficult to find folks in leadership positions that look like me in almost any industry except government.
Women still get stomped over in meetings by men who have something to say, and women who challenge that are perceived as "cold."
No, it is not that simple.
> Women still get stomped over in meetings by men who have something to say
Narcissist alpha-males always have something to say (even if it's not relevant, useful or constructive), and they always stomp on everyone else, which obviously includes women, but also includes introvert, shy, geeky, nerdish men - who are equally fed-up with being ignored.
The author doesn't give any practical solution to the problem, or things anyone could do to improve their specific or general situation, we call that whining.
> The author doesn't give any practical solution to the problem, or things anyone could do to improve their specific or general situation.
Are you implying that nobody should be writing about anything they don't have a practical solution to ?
and
> we call that whining.
who is we ?
I think the commenter is implying that we live in a culture where people think they can change the world by whining loud enough and long enough about a problem so that someone else fixes it for them, rather than doing the hard work of fixing it themselves.
Sure, but once things are given a name and a cause, you typically find very few people willing to actually do the work. You'll find most people aren't much interested in the issues they claim to be passionate about once the cameras are off and social media has moved on to another topic.
Not to say we should all wait for the powers on high to fix things for us, but be realistic in our expectations about what most people are able to affect as a single person.
I'd also argue that what some would consider whining is in fact a solution or at least a prerequisite for one.
I can't play an instrument, but I can tell if you play one badly. I can't direct or write a movie, but I can give you my review and tell you if you should watch it.
The idea that someone pointing out problems _has_ to provide a solution or their critical evaluation is worthless is just bonkers.