I'm not surprised by his experience as it mirrors a bit of mine. This was previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2674841

Although in his post, he says:

"Another lesson learned: you can’t force cultural change. It has to start from the bottom up, and it needs breathing room to grow."

I would argue that cultural change has to also start from the top. You can't change the culture if the leaders of the company don't work with you on it.

The tendency of people at the bottom is to eventually start behaving like their managers as the managers project what is acceptable and not acceptable behavior. Trying to start change from the bottom up is a hard, hard thing to do, with a low probability of success if senior management isn't on board as well.