I don't think it's do-or-die, so much as, a lot of startups these days are founded by people without as brutally strong technical skills as in the past, as the

I don't think it's do-or-die, so much as, a lot of startups these days are founded by people without as brutally strong technical skills as in the past, as the businesses are a lot less technical, so a typical hiring strategy of "hire people who we communicate well with and aren't that expensive and work really hard" causes the yolo nodejs rockstar culture. You can't work smarter than the CTO - A hires A and B hires C, etc. None of this matters anyway though because the best talent knows how to find people like them, and the people who want yolo nodejs rockstars know how to find them too and everybody is happy. It follows that the middle ground companies will be those working on more technical problems with more technical founders/leadership, but it also follows that the hiring bar will be higher at those companies.