14 ms·

My year in startup hell

421 points by amirmc 11y ago

noir_lord 11y ago
As someone who has never worked in a SV startup I find the whole culture alien (fascinating but alien). I don't want an adult sized creche, I want somewhere quiet I can think.
- Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
  One of the most difficult things to do in today's young/modern/culture-y office is work.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Given that is true (I don't know not worked in that environment) that says interesting things about where the priorities are in a SV style start-up. If getting work done isn't the absolute focus then what is?.
    - a_bonobo 11y ago
      This is actually an interesting development that you can start to trace earlier - we've all had jobs where a minor part of the job was not to work, but to look busy, to sell an image of yourself to your superiors. It's stated in OP's text that one of the roles of the young people is not to work, but to project an image to potential investors: that they're young, full of ideas, full of disruption etc., ready to take over the market (doesn't matter that the market is sometimes undefined), all they need is the investors' money. This ties (somehow) into Graeber's On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ P.S.: The guy who wrote OP's post is also the guy who wrote Fake Steve Jobs
    - untog 11y ago
      I actually don't think it's true at all. It's easy to get work done, but the key part is that it's easier to stay at the office longer - eat lunch in the office, take a break to play ping pong for half an hour, have a beer with your coworkers towards the end of the day... it all results in you spending more and more time in the office, and leaving later in the day. So even if you aren't as efficient as you would be otherwise, the company makes up for it.
      - Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
        I suppose it differs based on your goals at work. As I get older, I seek much less camaraderie/company in the place of work. Ideally, I'd be mostly left to my tasks, complete them in 6-7 hours, then leave so I can pursue my non-work life (the one I value most). Most employers do not want to hear this.
        noir_lord 11y ago
        Absolutely this. Give me somewhere I can be quiet for 7 hours and I'll get everything done I need to and then go do something away from a screen. In my case my tolerance for dealing with bullshit that isn't work related seems to be proportional to my age.
        buserror 11y ago
        Likewise, I do most of my work between 7 and 10.. after that, the loud crowd arrives for their 'morning' and start discussing loudly about irrelevant things, and the concentration is gone... Luckily, I can leave at 3pm!
      - TickleSteve 11y ago
        ...then you reach your late 20's.... Kids come along, you become more choosy about the people that you socialise with, free time disappears in an instant. You still enjoy your job, but you can no longer justify spending more than 9-5 doing it, so what becomes more important then is to actually be productive during the 9-5 This means quiet, efficient "grown-up" offices.
        nostrebored 11y ago
        Except a number of things that are associated with lack of productivity in startup culture have actually been shown to increase productivity, like open floor plans.
        wott 11y ago
    - Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
      I'm not sure it's so directly tied to companies not prioritizing work getting done, in theory. I think what we see today is the result of a mash-up of several things going on at once: - a ridiculous amount of hours expected of employees, so employers pile on beer fridges and ping pong tables to lessen the blow - an obsession with "culture," which is such a difficult concept to define and control that the easiest ways to materialize it = beer fridges and ping pong tables and pep talks - a younger workforce that chooses to seek more "meaning" in work - generally speaking, inexperienced, improperly trained, and fearful people managers who only know "direct observance" as a management philosophy (this includes all those mostly useless meetings) - a shitty pattern of 10-12+ hour days as the new norm
    - phamilton 11y ago
      Retention. I say this only partially kidding. In the classic AcquiHire situation, sale price is determined by quantity of engineers. Retaining an employee is worth 1M a piece.
  - bunderbunder 11y ago
    Y'know, I've been working in one for 6 months now, and, despite some initial trepidation, I haven't found that to be true at all. Sometimes you do have to put on headphones to cut down on the auditory distraction, but otherwise it's been just fine. Granted, every office has a different culture. I'm guessing the most distracting offices are the ones where everyone is distracted to begin with. For example, if you're at a startup where everyone works 60-80 hour weeks and is so chronically sleep-deprived that their ability to concentrate for any length of time is shot, then yeah, that's going to be a hellhole.
    - CydeWeys 11y ago
      I'm in an open floor plan space with about one hundred desks in it and it's never particularly distracting to me. I barely ever even have to use headphones to concentrate. People simply don't have loud distracting conversations. It'd be different if I were mixed in with salespeople having phone conversations from their desks all day every day, but we're all engineers. I appreciate being able to easily ask my coworkers a question as it occurs to me immediately.
      - bunderbunder 11y ago
        OK, fair point. I did once get rearranged into an open plan office where all the teams were intermixed for I-still-don't-know-what reason. Half the staff was sales, and yeah, it was impossible to concentrate. Fortunately, we had a liberal work from home policy, so I had a means of escape when I had a deadline approaching. But I still only lasted for a few months after that. Just to reiterate, I don't think the open plan office was really the fundamental problem. It was the attempt to mix oil and water.
    - cwilkes 11y ago
      They are probably working 60 hours a week as they can't concentrate in the office. So then they work 65.
    - cballard 11y ago
      Wearing headphones every day will permanently damage your hearing. If you really want noise, put on headphones. Respectful quiet should be the default.
  - nraynaud 11y ago
    Funny, I work at a company managed by a very enterprisey guy, and he always drag me into useless meetings taking hours of my time for no real results. My point is that I don't feel like the normal corporate world really works more during the day.
    - sjg007 11y ago
      Say no? Ask what the agenda is? Meetings are largely about finding consensus and sometimes about social iq. See if formal meetings can be made more informal 5 min conversations.
      - nraynaud 11y ago
        I'm in the process of turning around this company culture, I just need time, it's been only 2 months I'm here, and we have a product to build at the same time I have to coach the CEO in efficiency and fast execution. The CEO needs time to adapt, he came here because startup seemed cool in his circles, but he was not really prepared for the storm I bring with me. He's a middle-aged man whose last job was head of a power plant at a utility company. So I have to order my battles, right now it's launching some boxes at the customers and see if it sticks. But yes, I'm pushing back on more and more of those. And also try to move on quicker during the meetings.
- thearn4 11y ago
  I think we have a pretty good intermediate where I work: closed offices of 3-4 people, with open collaborative workspaces available to anyone without needing to book them. It's gov't though, which tends to be neither an intellectual monoculture, nor a major hub for new creative ideas. It's somewhere between industry and academia, but after 8 years I'm still not sure precisely where it is on that workplace spectrum.
  - wott 11y ago
    Closed office of 2/3/4 people is indeed what I found the best (after home office). Alone in an office, I waste my time and get nothing done (strangely, it is not the case at home); above 4 people, it is a mess, I cannot concentrate and I labour.
- CM30 11y ago
  Same. I just want a simple office where I can work for eight hours in relative peace without the assumption the workplace is a bar/club/social gathering. I don't want a place where the assumption is that everyone should be friends and hang out with one another and treat the office like a college dorm. Unfortunately, it seems the average startup environment (not even just in Silicon Valley) is closer to a college fratenity than a workplace. It's like a lot of these people want to live like college students into their thirties and forties...
  - vadym909 11y ago
    You want Microsoft
    - scurvy 11y ago
      MS is drastically far from that.
  - serge2k 11y ago
    > I don't want a place where the assumption is that everyone should be friends and hang out with one another Yeah, those jerks who want to be friends are so annoying. How dare they! I only spend half my time with them, why would I ever want to be friends.
- piratebroadcast 11y ago
  This isn't SV, HubSpot is in Boston.
- argonaut 11y ago
  You do realize that HubSpot is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not Silicon Valley?
sajid 11y ago
I'm not sure if this is satire. 1 + 1 = 3 ? Orwell will be turning in his grave.
- roasm 11y ago
  I've seen a slide where 1 + 1 = 2, then the 2 is crossed off, then there's a 3, then the 3 is crossed off then there's an 11. So honestly, after I read that, I thought clearly Hubspot didn't go far enough. That math slide was followed by another slide with "synergistic" on it.
  - sdenton4 11y ago
    11 is 3 in binary. That's kind of an awesome joke.
    - HappyTypist 11y ago
      Or JavaScript 1 + "1".
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Great binary. If you must do things in base 2, then in fact: 01 + 01 = 10
      - altstar 11y ago
        He/she is right, 11 in binary is 3 in decimal. 11 does not mean 1 + 1.
        chris_wot 11y ago
        It's corporate doublespeak. Orwell was worried about the State, but he was on the wrong track - it's corporations we should now be concerned about.
- pfitzsimmons 11y ago
  I worked there, it wasn't anything as bad as what he makes it out to be. It was just shorthand for saying, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." Our whole sales pitch was that we were all-in-one software. So instead of running one system for your blog, another system for your home page, another system for email, another system for analytics, another system for your contacts database, etc, etc, you would just run HubSpot, and when all the tools work together you get much better results then when they are separated. To make good on that sales pitch, we had to be constantly thinking of ways of how we could add value by integrating pieces together and making things work well together. Hence we were told to always be thinking about how to make 1 + 1 equal 3.
patio11 11y ago
Hubspot (disclaimer: I hold a nominal number of shares I bought on IPO day, entirely because I like them) is, contrary to take in this article, a software company which makes a suite of things that are essentially me-in-a-box at a price point that a business with $500k in revenue can tolerate. With specific reference to the spam bit: they neither teach it nor allow it, because (like everyone else in email marketing) if one of their customers spams and they don't address that, Google/Yahoo/Microsoft will end their business. The basic model on that side of the business is really simple: teach people how to write things that good prospects would find useful. Get them to write those things. Trade a copy for their email address and permission to send more things they will like. Send them more things they like, including recommendations on what you have that they should buy. I know this sounds like black magic. It's not. Consider an insurance agent who sells to small businesses. They have zero software people in-house and perhaps 1.5 people who do marketing. You tell those people "Write about the businesses you work with. Write about the kind or risks they have. Write the stuff you know that they don't about E&O policies and bind documents and what own occupation LTD means and how it is superior to any occupation LTD. Get the emails of businesses who could purchase from you. Then, after becoming their trusted advisor in the confusing world of insurance, sell them insurance. They did not do the research on E&O because they were fascinated with the subject intellectually. They did it because they have a legitimate need for it. Do the work upfront on education and you will be the obvious place to buy it from." This works. Very well. I can't comment on the company culture. Many startups seem pretty wild to me on that score. At the end of the day, though? It's a bunch of people, with jobs, engaged in honest labor. Insurance agents need marketing software; Hubspot makes it; this leaves the world a bit better off.
- mtbcoder 11y ago
  > This works. Very well. Perhaps it does to some extent (especially if your competition is low), but eventually the pool installer from the article figured out that the real money was in selling others on the idea that "inbound marketing" works.
- analog31 11y ago
  I delete about fifty or those things a day.
CM30 11y ago
"For example, it instructs that when someone quits or gets fired, the event will be referred to as 'graduation.'" Well, they're certainly laying on the euphemisms here. I mean, maybe it's just me, but that reminds me an awful lot of 1984 esque newspeak and the Ministry of Love. It's all 'lets make the worst possible stuff sound like a good thing'.
- argonaut 11y ago
  This isn't that bad. A company will never announce internally whether or not someone got fired or is just quitting (a well-run one, at least), with some exceptions (e.g. the executive level). Companies will just say something to the effect of: someone is moving on from the company. There's nothing wrong with using "graduating" in place of "moving on from the company", "leaving," "moving on to a different opportunity," etc.
  - CM30 11y ago
    I guess, though moving on sounds a bit more neutral than graduating. One sounds like 'they didn't quite fit in and hence they're parting ways' and one sounds like 'they're a bit too good for this place, so now they're off to Google/Apple/some other company with a good reputation'.
    - argonaut 11y ago
      Neither is accurate. Everyone knows that saying someone is moving on does not imply "they didn't quite fit in." My point is, companies will try to be polite about announcing that people are leaving, so "graduating" is not that bad of a euphemism.
  - wott 11y ago
    It is absolutely wrong since it absolutely conflicts with the thing called 'reality'. Words do have a meaning.
    - argonaut 11y ago
cjbprime 11y ago
Wait. They hired Fake Steve Jobs and didn't make him sign an NDA? That's.. going to end a lot like this. o_O
- moritzplassnig 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure he signed an NDA when he accepted the offer (part of the employment agreement), but that's different from the nondisparagement/nondisclosure agreement mentioned in the article (normally done when somebody leaves a company).
  - analog31 11y ago
    The latter comes at a price, such as severance pay.
- dennisgorelik 11y ago
  Wow. I did not notice that the author is the Fake Steve Jobs.
equalsnil 11y ago
Step 1: Read the article. Step 2: Watch these videos: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sknnd-pkQ8A https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sknnd-pkQ8A https://www.youtube.com/embed/avzzEOWFj9k https://www.youtube.com/embed/avzzEOWFj9k
- dennisgorelik 11y ago
  Learn what promotional videos actually mean.
  - inflagranti 11y ago
    Business Maverick and humble genius? Does that really not sound completely over the top and ridiculous to you?
- shitgoose 11y ago
  it took me a while to clean up the vomit off my keyboard after watching these...
- ild 11y ago
  Inbound bowel movement.
h1fra 11y ago
The absurdity of this article make me laugh more than it should have. I'm still not quite sure if I red a testimony or a scenario from an arrested development/parks and recs Definitly saving it !
mooreds 11y ago
I wonder if the author bought into Newsweek's mission when he worked there, or if he was just as cynical?
- ghaff 11y ago
  The cynic is inclined to ask what Newsweek's mission is exactly these days. That snark aside, Dan Lyons seems to have largely shifted into a writing style that's more entertainment than journalism. And the Jon Stewarts of the world aside (and even there at times), it's a difficult blend to pull off. There's always this tradeoff between what is objectively balanced and accurate--and some would argue that's an impossible goal--and what attempts to convey an entertaining "truthiness" of a thing even is it plays a bit fast with specific facts.
nocarrier 11y ago
Apparently Hubspot did dirty tricks to try to obtain a copy of the manuscript, as well as blocking publication. The CMO and a VP are gone because of it. You can't make this stuff up. https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/23/documents-released-hubspot-probe-involving-author-dan-lyons/VZH4CN4kR5p7iyhsKEdwJI/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/23/documents-re... Edit: Here's the worst stuff the article mentioned, I figured it would be good to highlight the relevant quote. These are felonies. The documents also say there was an effort “to obtain sensitive information on individuals with access to the book’s transcript, or control of the publishing deal. The information found was then used as leverage in an attempt to prevent the book from reaching the market place.” The report also mentions “tactics such as email hacking and extortion” in the attempt “to railroad the book.”
- hitekker 11y ago
  This should be top comment. Especially because the apologists cropping up here will actively avoid and obfuscate the heart of the matter. [1] > Chief executive Brian Halligan was fined for failing to promptly alert the company’s board of directors after finding out about the incident. The actions were a result of an investigation by law firm Goodwin Procter on behalf of HubSpot’s board. > “really aggressive tactics,” but he [the CEO] refused to disclose further details of the unusual incident.[2] > “It was fishy enough that I definitely should have reported it,” Halligan said in the interview at the company’s offices. “I agree with the message they sent me. I agree that I showed poor judgment.” [2][3] Bro/frat-iness/childishness aside, if your culture condones criminal acts at the highest levels of power (yes, extortion is illegal) then your culture is screwed up. These acts do not happen in vacuum. They often-times happen when everyone drinks the kool-aid; when everyone is always right so long as they do everything to protect "us" vs "them" without question. So far as I can tell, only the bare minimum was done internally to address these felonies, so I'm not positive on Hubspot's future. [1] "Loyalty over morality", as someone once explained to me. [2] http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/07/31/fishiness-led-to-hubspot-firing/ http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/07/31/fishiness-led-to-h... [3] "Fishy", "poor judgement", such nice sounding words.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  I'm curious as to why there was no prosecution. Given the heavy hand wielded by the Feds in this region for other cases, you'd think extortion and hacking would be a slam dunk?
justinlaing 11y ago
Summary: guy gets hired by company he doesn't like in an industry he doesn't like by someone he doesn't like. Spends a year there doing things he doesn't like. Writes book about what he didn't like about it. I'm sure HunSpot isn't for everyone. But I'm also sure it's awesome for some people. They make a real product people find useful and helps them run their business. Don't believe everything you read. Especially when it's to promote something (like a book or a company).
- ghc 11y ago
  It's awesome for young people. Back when they were a lot smaller I had some friends there and considered joining, but all the parties they invited me to in an effort to recruit me made me feel too old, and I was still under 30 at the time. The book is exaggerated to sell books, sure, but in reading that article I didn't see anything grossly exaggerated based on what I've seen at their parties/events and what friends who work there have told me.
pfitzsimmons 11y ago
I worked at HubSpot for many years. (disclaimer - I do not have a financial interest in the company. But I do still have strong emotional and social connections, and I was there long enough that I feel some sense of ownership for the company culture). Remember that this article is written in order to entertain and sell books. Everything is hyper exaggerated. There are a few fair points (for instance we were very overcrowded, we could not lease new sections of the building we were in fast enough. And yeah, some of the "change the world through Inbound marketing" messaging was over-the-top and made my eyes roll). But a lot of it is either inaccurate or spun to seem bad when it wasn't (see my other comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370077 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370016). For the most part, HubSpot was a normal workplace where the vast majority of the time people worked hard and did their thing. People occasionally interrupted work for fun hijinks and we did sometimes have parties after work. By packing in every outrageous story into a few paragraphs, he makes it sound way crazier than it was. I should also add that overall work-life balance was pretty good, and the company made efforts not to be "ageist". I had both mothers and fathers on my team and they could get out of the office on time to be with their families. As we matured, we planned our fun team-building events in ways to ensure that parents could attend them. There is an implication by the author that he did not fit in because he was old, but I do not think that is a fair critique.
- mmf 11y ago
  I do not think he was implying that he did not fit because he's old. He implied that he did not fit because he's mature...
  - SFLemonade 11y ago
    I didn't get a total feeling of maturity from his writing. Did you read it? Mostly low-ball shots taken at startup practices that are pretty commonplace now, primarily for their proven effectiveness. Like the fact that he was disturbed to find that Zack, being so young, wasn't an assistant but a manager. It's like the idea of promoting individuals based on results and performance, rather than age and tenure, was foreign to the author. And ironically, he displayed a lot of ageist qualities himself there. I wouldn't exactly characterize that as maturity.
7ewis 11y ago
I don't understand why people dislike working in a startup environment. I work for a tech company that has really outgrown it's startup stages, but still acts like one. It's brilliant, I'd never want to work for a corporate company! We have regular parties, play table tennis daily, beers on Friday. It just makes work so much more enjoyable. Admittedly, this is only my second job, and I am only 20, but I can't imagine ever wanting to leave. The only company that may tempt me would be Google.
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- bunderbunder 11y ago
  I think it very well could be your age. For example, those of us who have families to get home to generally aren't going to be too keen on parties or beers after work on Fridays. Many of us also have noticed that the companies that have these kinds of perks also expect you to spend a lot more than 40h/wk at the office, if only implicitly, if only for "team-building" reasons. It's a precious few people who make it to their 30s and still want their life to be so centered on their job like that. (Edit: Which isn't to say there's anything wrong with that. Just that people change. At least for my part, things that would have jazzed me 20 years ago I now find to be rather alienating. Companies who want to attract both veterans and fresh talent have a tough row to hoe.)
- packetized 11y ago
  I cannot quite tell if this is soul-baring or satirical.
- walterclifford 11y ago
  > I don't understand why people dislike working in a startup environment Different people appreciate different things. It's totally fine for you to value "regular parties, play table tennis daily, beers on Friday" but you should be able to understand other people value other things. > Admittedly, this is only my second job, and I am only 20, but I can't imagine ever wanting to leave. You may feel differently in ten or twenty years. There were probably a lot of things you enjoyed when you were 10 that you don't enjoy now (or don't enjoy as much).
kordless 11y ago
> I’m heading for my first day of work at HubSpot Having been forced to use Hubspot, I can say their UI is fairly horrific.
4pm 11y ago
Can we create a thread called "my year in big company corporate IT department hell"? I'll go first: I reported to an incompetent business person who having failed at doing anything that required business sense, used his considerable political skills to lead a tech team instead. Management practices included lying to create enemities between team members. I am also writing a book about it. :) Would you rather work in a room full of motivated smart people who are building somthing useful, or a rigid heirarchy that lacks transparency and puts its own personal interests over the work they do? Hmmm hard choice.
- FLUX-YOU 11y ago
  The support ticket reads: "I can't upload this lab document to the site!" I call the person up for details, get the file they were trying to upload, and recreate the issue. I pull up the code for this site, run it on a local copy to get the exception, and find out that someone's string concatenating SQL queries from form inputs. This site was written in 2014. I bring it up in a meeting but we can't allocate time to fix that because it currently works well enough.
  - F_J_H 11y ago
    Using bind variables?
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  Would you rather work in a room full of motivated smart people who are building somthing useful, or a rigid heirarchy that lacks transparency and puts its own personal interests over the work they do? Hmmm hard choice. The former, obviously. The flaw in your argument is that in no way are startup employees the smart ones, and big corporations the dumb ones. In fact, part of what makes startup culture disconcerting is that everyone thinks they're too smart. Is there any evidence that HubSpot has higher-than-average numbers of smart people?
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ryandrake 11y ago
As someone closing in on 40, the depiction of this place does indeed seem like hell. To all the ex-Hubspot people getting defensive: This article isn't about that specific company. Hubspot was the author's convenient example. It's about the ideas that companies like it exemplify: That work has to be "a cross between a kindergarten and a frat house" (I'd add "a cult"). That work should include partying and nerf guns and dodgeball outings. That you have to always pretend your company is about "leading a revolution" or changing the world. That you have to follow its culture and believe in its mission and values. That your work has to be more than an exchange of your labor for money. That's what this article is about, and that's what all the cynicism about tech startup culture is aimed at--not Hubspot in particular.
- GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
  As someone closing in on 30, it sounds horrendous indeed.
- berkay 11y ago
  Cynicism is fairly easy, defining the alternative is harder. For example based on what you describe the characteristics of what makes the startup culture "like hell", it sounds like you prefer that work should be nothing more than an exchange of your labor for money, you don't interact with your colleagues other than work, company to not have a defined mission and values other than making money. A hired gun to do whatever we're paid to do. That's also definition of hell for many of us. I don't know whether the author has anything constructive in his book but judging what's in the article, looks like it's pure snark.
  - tariqali34 11y ago
    One man's utopia is another man's dystopia.
  - TickleSteve 11y ago
    Absolutely.... why would you work if you weren't getting paid for it?? I have better things to do with my time than make someone else's company more profitable at my expense. We're all here to make money... and yes, HubSpot sounds like a true hell to me (yes, I'm over 40).
billhendricksjr 11y ago
> “You don’t get rewarded for creating great technology, not anymore,” This resonated with me the most, as I learned it the hard way through my own failed startup. I was informed by several investors that tech was a commodity and they only wanted to discuss our go to market plans.
- rboyd 11y ago
  If indeed this is a bubble and we do pop, about the only enjoyable thing to watch will be all these junior associates that autodial on fishing expeditions scrambling around for new work. Never actually started a company but they've analyzed plenty of models.
cubano 11y ago
As a 50-something guy as well, I guess I see it much differently than this guy did. Firstly, IMO, there was nothing "hell"-ish about Hubspot's culture or business model. It seems to me they were just playing the game-as-given, and doing it quite well frankly. The proof of that is IPO. Personally, I find it beyond refreshing that management is making a powerful effort to change up the typical gray-flannel corporate work/life thingy. So old-school didn't get it, or even see beyond his own prejudices at the positive work culture meta-messages. That's on him, not Hubspot.
- oriolid 11y ago
  ELI5, "positive work culture meta-messages"
  - cubano 11y ago
    To me it means they are showing effort and interest in the workplace environment, and not just making it a drab cubicle farm, and messages something beyond just the actual stuff like dogs and music instruments. BTW, nothing personal but I hate trying to explain my writing as I am a big fan of metaphor and ambiguity.
    - cballard 11y ago
      I have dogs in my office. They run around and bark all the time. Their presence shows to me that serious engineering work is not important, but the image of being a "startup" is. The idea of a musical instrument being played while I am trying to focus on engineering is horrifying. There's also a whole world of potential designs besides "drab cubicle farm" and "kindergarten mashed-up with ComicCon". For example, the 37signals[1] office. If they want to show effort and interest in the workplace environment, they should try providing private offices with doors that close. [1] https://37signals.com/office https://37signals.com/office
cushychicken 11y ago
I have nothing but good things to say about HubSpot. I never worked there, but I did work in the same building for about two years, and I managed to sneak in to a few of their parties, as well as snag a few bowls of free cereal. (They play up the candy wall too much. The cereal wall was where it was at.)
rycfan 11y ago
Two reactions to this article (and I say this as someone near 50): 1. Dan's obviously not cut out for startup life. When he meets Zack, he assumes Zack must be someone's assistant because he is young. Dan has no concept of the fact that someone might have their position because they are skilled and perform well. In his mind, the only way to have a fancy title is tenure and age. 2. Sure, the language of startups is interesting (graduation as a euphemism for quitting or getting fired), but the clear message is that this is odd, and thus, wrong. As though normal corporate America is the one true way and is just fine. Bullshit. Let's make sure to keep the workplace exactly as it's been for the last 100 years and never evolve.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  But this is normal corporate America. Dan apparently isn't familiar with the history of IBM, which was so bonkers it had its own song book attempting to engineer a cult of personality around Thomas Watson. http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ibms-astonishingly-insane-1937-corporate-songbook/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ibm... This was back in the 1930s. Apparently not much has changed. In the 60s and 70s the DEC people used to talk about "Mother DEC" and "Father Ken (Olsen - CEO)" - and DEC was a vastly more pleasant company to work for, if you didn't mind meetings where people shouted at each other a lot. Elsewhere, this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RINizGmhrYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RINizGmhrYo US corporate culture is insane. It has always been insane. The insanity takes different forms, and the web startup version frequently manages to be both insane and infantilising. (See also, startup names that sound like baby talk - more of a thing before DotCom 1, but there are still a few relics today.) This is not what an adult professional culture looks like. Signifiers of playful childlike wonder and creativity shouldn't come in stick-on corporate office multipacks, especially not if they hide much uglier relationship dynamics in the office space. It's fascinating to wonder why this has been such a strong trend in the startup space. Obviously it's more likely to appeal straight-from-college CS grads than battle-hardened senior engineers. But my guess is it's also an evolutionary adaptation to trigger paternal (less often maternal) feelings in investors and VCs, who are more likely to feel generously disposed and still part of youth culture if they sponsor a brogrammer creche, and less likely to feel threatened by kids who look nothing like direct competitors. Social signalling in business is a very interesting thing, and maybe isn't questioned often enough.
jbuzbee 11y ago
Dan Lyons sure gets around. In another life, he was an early and vocal supporter of SCO in their lawsuits against Linux. At least in the end he finally came around and admitted that he'd been "Snowed By SCO" http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/19/software-linux-lawsuits-tech-oped-cx_dl_0919lyons.html http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/19/software-linux-lawsuits-tec... [edit for typo]
- keithpeter 11y ago
  Looks like he worked it out in the end. Meta: Forbes are convinced that I'm using an ad blocker to the extent that I had to google/cache the article linked above. I actually have no plug-ins at all, just accessing the site thru' and academic connection, suspect proxy may be blocking stuff. First time I've had that one.
pitchups 11y ago
I read the entire article trying to figure out what exactly was "hellish" about the experience - but couldn't find anything other than what can only be called a really bad culture fit.
- shitgoose 11y ago
  125 pages inspirational memo for starter. I have been working for a number of banks in the past years, but this level of BS is off the chart.
jpace121 11y ago
While this article somewhat makes fun of the overally idealistic, sugary, positive culture HubSpot built, I'd much rather work there then somewhere where everything is done out of fear.
- jonsterling 11y ago
  Everything likely is done out of fear—the kind of fear where you barf of dialectics at the proletarian youth league meeting to avoid having a struggle session in your honor.
jamesblonde 11y ago
How is it now in the valley - can you get a startup funded if you don't have a higher mission that workers work towards? Can you just say it will be a nice place to work and we will treat our workers with respect and pay them competitive rates? It all feels very 'power of nightmares' in making up bogus mission statements to create a shared sense of purpose, but done completely cynically (at least by the power-brokers). http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20su5f_the-power-of-nightmares-1-the-rise-of-the-politics-of-fear-bbc-2004_news http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20su5f_the-power-of-nightm...
chris_wot 11y ago
Holy shit - 1+1=3; what is this, the mind of George Orwell transplanted to the tech boom?
mathattack 11y ago
It's just a small point, but I like the idea of treating people who leave as "Graduating". Yes it's contrived, but it's better than silence or badmouthing which is a frequent alternative. (I have no connection to the company)
sjg007 11y ago
Love it. I can relate!

421 points by amirmc 11y ago

As someone who has never worked in a SV startup I find the whole culture alien (fascinating but alien). I don't want an adult sized creche, I want somewhere quiet I can think.

Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
One of the most difficult things to do in today's young/modern/culture-y office is work.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Given that is true (I don't know not worked in that environment) that says interesting things about where the priorities are in a SV style start-up. If getting work done isn't the absolute focus then what is?.
  - a_bonobo 11y ago
    This is actually an interesting development that you can start to trace earlier - we've all had jobs where a minor part of the job was not to work, but to look busy, to sell an image of yourself to your superiors. It's stated in OP's text that one of the roles of the young people is not to work, but to project an image to potential investors: that they're young, full of ideas, full of disruption etc., ready to take over the market (doesn't matter that the market is sometimes undefined), all they need is the investors' money. This ties (somehow) into Graeber's On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ P.S.: The guy who wrote OP's post is also the guy who wrote Fake Steve Jobs
  - untog 11y ago
    I actually don't think it's true at all. It's easy to get work done, but the key part is that it's easier to stay at the office longer - eat lunch in the office, take a break to play ping pong for half an hour, have a beer with your coworkers towards the end of the day... it all results in you spending more and more time in the office, and leaving later in the day. So even if you aren't as efficient as you would be otherwise, the company makes up for it.
    - Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
      I suppose it differs based on your goals at work. As I get older, I seek much less camaraderie/company in the place of work. Ideally, I'd be mostly left to my tasks, complete them in 6-7 hours, then leave so I can pursue my non-work life (the one I value most). Most employers do not want to hear this.
      - noir_lord 11y ago
        Absolutely this. Give me somewhere I can be quiet for 7 hours and I'll get everything done I need to and then go do something away from a screen. In my case my tolerance for dealing with bullshit that isn't work related seems to be proportional to my age.
        buserror 11y ago
        Likewise, I do most of my work between 7 and 10.. after that, the loud crowd arrives for their 'morning' and start discussing loudly about irrelevant things, and the concentration is gone... Luckily, I can leave at 3pm!
    - TickleSteve 11y ago
      ...then you reach your late 20's.... Kids come along, you become more choosy about the people that you socialise with, free time disappears in an instant. You still enjoy your job, but you can no longer justify spending more than 9-5 doing it, so what becomes more important then is to actually be productive during the 9-5 This means quiet, efficient "grown-up" offices.
      - nostrebored 11y ago
        Except a number of things that are associated with lack of productivity in startup culture have actually been shown to increase productivity, like open floor plans.
        wott 11y ago
  - Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
    I'm not sure it's so directly tied to companies not prioritizing work getting done, in theory. I think what we see today is the result of a mash-up of several things going on at once: - a ridiculous amount of hours expected of employees, so employers pile on beer fridges and ping pong tables to lessen the blow - an obsession with "culture," which is such a difficult concept to define and control that the easiest ways to materialize it = beer fridges and ping pong tables and pep talks - a younger workforce that chooses to seek more "meaning" in work - generally speaking, inexperienced, improperly trained, and fearful people managers who only know "direct observance" as a management philosophy (this includes all those mostly useless meetings) - a shitty pattern of 10-12+ hour days as the new norm
  - phamilton 11y ago
    Retention. I say this only partially kidding. In the classic AcquiHire situation, sale price is determined by quantity of engineers. Retaining an employee is worth 1M a piece.
- bunderbunder 11y ago
  Y'know, I've been working in one for 6 months now, and, despite some initial trepidation, I haven't found that to be true at all. Sometimes you do have to put on headphones to cut down on the auditory distraction, but otherwise it's been just fine. Granted, every office has a different culture. I'm guessing the most distracting offices are the ones where everyone is distracted to begin with. For example, if you're at a startup where everyone works 60-80 hour weeks and is so chronically sleep-deprived that their ability to concentrate for any length of time is shot, then yeah, that's going to be a hellhole.
  - CydeWeys 11y ago
    I'm in an open floor plan space with about one hundred desks in it and it's never particularly distracting to me. I barely ever even have to use headphones to concentrate. People simply don't have loud distracting conversations. It'd be different if I were mixed in with salespeople having phone conversations from their desks all day every day, but we're all engineers. I appreciate being able to easily ask my coworkers a question as it occurs to me immediately.
    - bunderbunder 11y ago
      OK, fair point. I did once get rearranged into an open plan office where all the teams were intermixed for I-still-don't-know-what reason. Half the staff was sales, and yeah, it was impossible to concentrate. Fortunately, we had a liberal work from home policy, so I had a means of escape when I had a deadline approaching. But I still only lasted for a few months after that. Just to reiterate, I don't think the open plan office was really the fundamental problem. It was the attempt to mix oil and water.
  - cwilkes 11y ago
    They are probably working 60 hours a week as they can't concentrate in the office. So then they work 65.
  - cballard 11y ago
    Wearing headphones every day will permanently damage your hearing. If you really want noise, put on headphones. Respectful quiet should be the default.
- nraynaud 11y ago
  Funny, I work at a company managed by a very enterprisey guy, and he always drag me into useless meetings taking hours of my time for no real results. My point is that I don't feel like the normal corporate world really works more during the day.
  - sjg007 11y ago
    Say no? Ask what the agenda is? Meetings are largely about finding consensus and sometimes about social iq. See if formal meetings can be made more informal 5 min conversations.
    - nraynaud 11y ago
      I'm in the process of turning around this company culture, I just need time, it's been only 2 months I'm here, and we have a product to build at the same time I have to coach the CEO in efficiency and fast execution. The CEO needs time to adapt, he came here because startup seemed cool in his circles, but he was not really prepared for the storm I bring with me. He's a middle-aged man whose last job was head of a power plant at a utility company. So I have to order my battles, right now it's launching some boxes at the customers and see if it sticks. But yes, I'm pushing back on more and more of those. And also try to move on quicker during the meetings.
thearn4 11y ago
I think we have a pretty good intermediate where I work: closed offices of 3-4 people, with open collaborative workspaces available to anyone without needing to book them. It's gov't though, which tends to be neither an intellectual monoculture, nor a major hub for new creative ideas. It's somewhere between industry and academia, but after 8 years I'm still not sure precisely where it is on that workplace spectrum.
- wott 11y ago
  Closed office of 2/3/4 people is indeed what I found the best (after home office). Alone in an office, I waste my time and get nothing done (strangely, it is not the case at home); above 4 people, it is a mess, I cannot concentrate and I labour.
CM30 11y ago
Same. I just want a simple office where I can work for eight hours in relative peace without the assumption the workplace is a bar/club/social gathering. I don't want a place where the assumption is that everyone should be friends and hang out with one another and treat the office like a college dorm. Unfortunately, it seems the average startup environment (not even just in Silicon Valley) is closer to a college fratenity than a workplace. It's like a lot of these people want to live like college students into their thirties and forties...
- vadym909 11y ago
  You want Microsoft
  - scurvy 11y ago
    MS is drastically far from that.
- serge2k 11y ago
  > I don't want a place where the assumption is that everyone should be friends and hang out with one another Yeah, those jerks who want to be friends are so annoying. How dare they! I only spend half my time with them, why would I ever want to be friends.
piratebroadcast 11y ago
This isn't SV, HubSpot is in Boston.
argonaut 11y ago
You do realize that HubSpot is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not Silicon Valley?

sajid 11y ago

I'm not sure if this is satire. 1 + 1 = 3 ? Orwell will be turning in his grave.

roasm 11y ago
I've seen a slide where 1 + 1 = 2, then the 2 is crossed off, then there's a 3, then the 3 is crossed off then there's an 11. So honestly, after I read that, I thought clearly Hubspot didn't go far enough. That math slide was followed by another slide with "synergistic" on it.
- sdenton4 11y ago
  11 is 3 in binary. That's kind of an awesome joke.
  - HappyTypist 11y ago
    Or JavaScript 1 + "1".
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Great binary. If you must do things in base 2, then in fact: 01 + 01 = 10
    - altstar 11y ago
      He/she is right, 11 in binary is 3 in decimal. 11 does not mean 1 + 1.
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        It's corporate doublespeak. Orwell was worried about the State, but he was on the wrong track - it's corporations we should now be concerned about.
pfitzsimmons 11y ago
I worked there, it wasn't anything as bad as what he makes it out to be. It was just shorthand for saying, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." Our whole sales pitch was that we were all-in-one software. So instead of running one system for your blog, another system for your home page, another system for email, another system for analytics, another system for your contacts database, etc, etc, you would just run HubSpot, and when all the tools work together you get much better results then when they are separated. To make good on that sales pitch, we had to be constantly thinking of ways of how we could add value by integrating pieces together and making things work well together. Hence we were told to always be thinking about how to make 1 + 1 equal 3.

patio11 11y ago

Hubspot (disclaimer: I hold a nominal number of shares I bought on IPO day, entirely because I like them) is, contrary to take in this article, a software company which makes a suite of things that are essentially me-in-a-box at a price point that a business with $500k in revenue can tolerate. With specific reference to the spam bit: they neither teach it nor allow it, because (like everyone else in email marketing) if one of their customers spams and they don't address that, Google/Yahoo/Microsoft will end their business. The basic model on that side of the business is really simple: teach people how to write things that good prospects would find useful. Get them to write those things. Trade a copy for their email address and permission to send more things they will like. Send them more things they like, including recommendations on what you have that they should buy. I know this sounds like black magic. It's not. Consider an insurance agent who sells to small businesses. They have zero software people in-house and perhaps 1.5 people who do marketing. You tell those people "Write about the businesses you work with. Write about the kind or risks they have. Write the stuff you know that they don't about E&O policies and bind documents and what own occupation LTD means and how it is superior to any occupation LTD. Get the emails of businesses who could purchase from you. Then, after becoming their trusted advisor in the confusing world of insurance, sell them insurance. They did not do the research on E&O because they were fascinated with the subject intellectually. They did it because they have a legitimate need for it. Do the work upfront on education and you will be the obvious place to buy it from." This works. Very well. I can't comment on the company culture. Many startups seem pretty wild to me on that score. At the end of the day, though? It's a bunch of people, with jobs, engaged in honest labor. Insurance agents need marketing software; Hubspot makes it; this leaves the world a bit better off.

mtbcoder 11y ago
> This works. Very well. Perhaps it does to some extent (especially if your competition is low), but eventually the pool installer from the article figured out that the real money was in selling others on the idea that "inbound marketing" works.
analog31 11y ago
I delete about fifty or those things a day.

CM30 11y ago

"For example, it instructs that when someone quits or gets fired, the event will be referred to as 'graduation.'" Well, they're certainly laying on the euphemisms here. I mean, maybe it's just me, but that reminds me an awful lot of 1984 esque newspeak and the Ministry of Love. It's all 'lets make the worst possible stuff sound like a good thing'.

argonaut 11y ago
This isn't that bad. A company will never announce internally whether or not someone got fired or is just quitting (a well-run one, at least), with some exceptions (e.g. the executive level). Companies will just say something to the effect of: someone is moving on from the company. There's nothing wrong with using "graduating" in place of "moving on from the company", "leaving," "moving on to a different opportunity," etc.
- CM30 11y ago
  I guess, though moving on sounds a bit more neutral than graduating. One sounds like 'they didn't quite fit in and hence they're parting ways' and one sounds like 'they're a bit too good for this place, so now they're off to Google/Apple/some other company with a good reputation'.
  - argonaut 11y ago
    Neither is accurate. Everyone knows that saying someone is moving on does not imply "they didn't quite fit in." My point is, companies will try to be polite about announcing that people are leaving, so "graduating" is not that bad of a euphemism.
- wott 11y ago
  It is absolutely wrong since it absolutely conflicts with the thing called 'reality'. Words do have a meaning.
  - argonaut 11y ago

cjbprime 11y ago

Wait. They hired Fake Steve Jobs and didn't make him sign an NDA? That's.. going to end a lot like this. o_O

moritzplassnig 11y ago
I'm pretty sure he signed an NDA when he accepted the offer (part of the employment agreement), but that's different from the nondisparagement/nondisclosure agreement mentioned in the article (normally done when somebody leaves a company).
- analog31 11y ago
  The latter comes at a price, such as severance pay.
dennisgorelik 11y ago
Wow. I did not notice that the author is the Fake Steve Jobs.

equalsnil 11y ago

Step 1: Read the article. Step 2: Watch these videos: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sknnd-pkQ8A https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sknnd-pkQ8A https://www.youtube.com/embed/avzzEOWFj9k https://www.youtube.com/embed/avzzEOWFj9k

dennisgorelik 11y ago
Learn what promotional videos actually mean.
- inflagranti 11y ago
  Business Maverick and humble genius? Does that really not sound completely over the top and ridiculous to you?
shitgoose 11y ago
it took me a while to clean up the vomit off my keyboard after watching these...
ild 11y ago
Inbound bowel movement.

h1fra 11y ago

The absurdity of this article make me laugh more than it should have. I'm still not quite sure if I red a testimony or a scenario from an arrested development/parks and recs Definitly saving it !

mooreds 11y ago

I wonder if the author bought into Newsweek's mission when he worked there, or if he was just as cynical?

ghaff 11y ago
The cynic is inclined to ask what Newsweek's mission is exactly these days. That snark aside, Dan Lyons seems to have largely shifted into a writing style that's more entertainment than journalism. And the Jon Stewarts of the world aside (and even there at times), it's a difficult blend to pull off. There's always this tradeoff between what is objectively balanced and accurate--and some would argue that's an impossible goal--and what attempts to convey an entertaining "truthiness" of a thing even is it plays a bit fast with specific facts.

nocarrier 11y ago

Apparently Hubspot did dirty tricks to try to obtain a copy of the manuscript, as well as blocking publication. The CMO and a VP are gone because of it. You can't make this stuff up. https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/23/documents-released-hubspot-probe-involving-author-dan-lyons/VZH4CN4kR5p7iyhsKEdwJI/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/23/documents-re... Edit: Here's the worst stuff the article mentioned, I figured it would be good to highlight the relevant quote. These are felonies. The documents also say there was an effort “to obtain sensitive information on individuals with access to the book’s transcript, or control of the publishing deal. The information found was then used as leverage in an attempt to prevent the book from reaching the market place.” The report also mentions “tactics such as email hacking and extortion” in the attempt “to railroad the book.”

hitekker 11y ago
This should be top comment. Especially because the apologists cropping up here will actively avoid and obfuscate the heart of the matter. [1] > Chief executive Brian Halligan was fined for failing to promptly alert the company’s board of directors after finding out about the incident. The actions were a result of an investigation by law firm Goodwin Procter on behalf of HubSpot’s board. > “really aggressive tactics,” but he [the CEO] refused to disclose further details of the unusual incident.[2] > “It was fishy enough that I definitely should have reported it,” Halligan said in the interview at the company’s offices. “I agree with the message they sent me. I agree that I showed poor judgment.” [2][3] Bro/frat-iness/childishness aside, if your culture condones criminal acts at the highest levels of power (yes, extortion is illegal) then your culture is screwed up. These acts do not happen in vacuum. They often-times happen when everyone drinks the kool-aid; when everyone is always right so long as they do everything to protect "us" vs "them" without question. So far as I can tell, only the bare minimum was done internally to address these felonies, so I'm not positive on Hubspot's future. [1] "Loyalty over morality", as someone once explained to me. [2] http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/07/31/fishiness-led-to-hubspot-firing/ http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/07/31/fishiness-led-to-h... [3] "Fishy", "poor judgement", such nice sounding words.
Spooky23 11y ago
I'm curious as to why there was no prosecution. Given the heavy hand wielded by the Feds in this region for other cases, you'd think extortion and hacking would be a slam dunk?

justinlaing 11y ago

Summary: guy gets hired by company he doesn't like in an industry he doesn't like by someone he doesn't like. Spends a year there doing things he doesn't like. Writes book about what he didn't like about it. I'm sure HunSpot isn't for everyone. But I'm also sure it's awesome for some people. They make a real product people find useful and helps them run their business. Don't believe everything you read. Especially when it's to promote something (like a book or a company).

ghc 11y ago
It's awesome for young people. Back when they were a lot smaller I had some friends there and considered joining, but all the parties they invited me to in an effort to recruit me made me feel too old, and I was still under 30 at the time. The book is exaggerated to sell books, sure, but in reading that article I didn't see anything grossly exaggerated based on what I've seen at their parties/events and what friends who work there have told me.

pfitzsimmons 11y ago

I worked at HubSpot for many years. (disclaimer - I do not have a financial interest in the company. But I do still have strong emotional and social connections, and I was there long enough that I feel some sense of ownership for the company culture). Remember that this article is written in order to entertain and sell books. Everything is hyper exaggerated. There are a few fair points (for instance we were very overcrowded, we could not lease new sections of the building we were in fast enough. And yeah, some of the "change the world through Inbound marketing" messaging was over-the-top and made my eyes roll). But a lot of it is either inaccurate or spun to seem bad when it wasn't (see my other comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370077 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370016). For the most part, HubSpot was a normal workplace where the vast majority of the time people worked hard and did their thing. People occasionally interrupted work for fun hijinks and we did sometimes have parties after work. By packing in every outrageous story into a few paragraphs, he makes it sound way crazier than it was. I should also add that overall work-life balance was pretty good, and the company made efforts not to be "ageist". I had both mothers and fathers on my team and they could get out of the office on time to be with their families. As we matured, we planned our fun team-building events in ways to ensure that parents could attend them. There is an implication by the author that he did not fit in because he was old, but I do not think that is a fair critique.

mmf 11y ago
I do not think he was implying that he did not fit because he's old. He implied that he did not fit because he's mature...
- SFLemonade 11y ago
  I didn't get a total feeling of maturity from his writing. Did you read it? Mostly low-ball shots taken at startup practices that are pretty commonplace now, primarily for their proven effectiveness. Like the fact that he was disturbed to find that Zack, being so young, wasn't an assistant but a manager. It's like the idea of promoting individuals based on results and performance, rather than age and tenure, was foreign to the author. And ironically, he displayed a lot of ageist qualities himself there. I wouldn't exactly characterize that as maturity.

7ewis 11y ago

I don't understand why people dislike working in a startup environment. I work for a tech company that has really outgrown it's startup stages, but still acts like one. It's brilliant, I'd never want to work for a corporate company! We have regular parties, play table tennis daily, beers on Friday. It just makes work so much more enjoyable. Admittedly, this is only my second job, and I am only 20, but I can't imagine ever wanting to leave. The only company that may tempt me would be Google.

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bunderbunder 11y ago
I think it very well could be your age. For example, those of us who have families to get home to generally aren't going to be too keen on parties or beers after work on Fridays. Many of us also have noticed that the companies that have these kinds of perks also expect you to spend a lot more than 40h/wk at the office, if only implicitly, if only for "team-building" reasons. It's a precious few people who make it to their 30s and still want their life to be so centered on their job like that. (Edit: Which isn't to say there's anything wrong with that. Just that people change. At least for my part, things that would have jazzed me 20 years ago I now find to be rather alienating. Companies who want to attract both veterans and fresh talent have a tough row to hoe.)
packetized 11y ago
I cannot quite tell if this is soul-baring or satirical.
walterclifford 11y ago
> I don't understand why people dislike working in a startup environment Different people appreciate different things. It's totally fine for you to value "regular parties, play table tennis daily, beers on Friday" but you should be able to understand other people value other things. > Admittedly, this is only my second job, and I am only 20, but I can't imagine ever wanting to leave. You may feel differently in ten or twenty years. There were probably a lot of things you enjoyed when you were 10 that you don't enjoy now (or don't enjoy as much).

kordless 11y ago

> I’m heading for my first day of work at HubSpot Having been forced to use Hubspot, I can say their UI is fairly horrific.

4pm 11y ago

Can we create a thread called "my year in big company corporate IT department hell"? I'll go first: I reported to an incompetent business person who having failed at doing anything that required business sense, used his considerable political skills to lead a tech team instead. Management practices included lying to create enemities between team members. I am also writing a book about it. :) Would you rather work in a room full of motivated smart people who are building somthing useful, or a rigid heirarchy that lacks transparency and puts its own personal interests over the work they do? Hmmm hard choice.

FLUX-YOU 11y ago
The support ticket reads: "I can't upload this lab document to the site!" I call the person up for details, get the file they were trying to upload, and recreate the issue. I pull up the code for this site, run it on a local copy to get the exception, and find out that someone's string concatenating SQL queries from form inputs. This site was written in 2014. I bring it up in a meeting but we can't allocate time to fix that because it currently works well enough.
- F_J_H 11y ago
  Using bind variables?
forgetsusername 11y ago
Would you rather work in a room full of motivated smart people who are building somthing useful, or a rigid heirarchy that lacks transparency and puts its own personal interests over the work they do? Hmmm hard choice. The former, obviously. The flaw in your argument is that in no way are startup employees the smart ones, and big corporations the dumb ones. In fact, part of what makes startup culture disconcerting is that everyone thinks they're too smart. Is there any evidence that HubSpot has higher-than-average numbers of smart people?

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ryandrake 11y ago

As someone closing in on 40, the depiction of this place does indeed seem like hell. To all the ex-Hubspot people getting defensive: This article isn't about that specific company. Hubspot was the author's convenient example. It's about the ideas that companies like it exemplify: That work has to be "a cross between a kindergarten and a frat house" (I'd add "a cult"). That work should include partying and nerf guns and dodgeball outings. That you have to always pretend your company is about "leading a revolution" or changing the world. That you have to follow its culture and believe in its mission and values. That your work has to be more than an exchange of your labor for money. That's what this article is about, and that's what all the cynicism about tech startup culture is aimed at--not Hubspot in particular.

GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
As someone closing in on 30, it sounds horrendous indeed.
berkay 11y ago
Cynicism is fairly easy, defining the alternative is harder. For example based on what you describe the characteristics of what makes the startup culture "like hell", it sounds like you prefer that work should be nothing more than an exchange of your labor for money, you don't interact with your colleagues other than work, company to not have a defined mission and values other than making money. A hired gun to do whatever we're paid to do. That's also definition of hell for many of us. I don't know whether the author has anything constructive in his book but judging what's in the article, looks like it's pure snark.
- tariqali34 11y ago
  One man's utopia is another man's dystopia.
- TickleSteve 11y ago
  Absolutely.... why would you work if you weren't getting paid for it?? I have better things to do with my time than make someone else's company more profitable at my expense. We're all here to make money... and yes, HubSpot sounds like a true hell to me (yes, I'm over 40).

billhendricksjr 11y ago

> “You don’t get rewarded for creating great technology, not anymore,” This resonated with me the most, as I learned it the hard way through my own failed startup. I was informed by several investors that tech was a commodity and they only wanted to discuss our go to market plans.

rboyd 11y ago
If indeed this is a bubble and we do pop, about the only enjoyable thing to watch will be all these junior associates that autodial on fishing expeditions scrambling around for new work. Never actually started a company but they've analyzed plenty of models.

cubano 11y ago

As a 50-something guy as well, I guess I see it much differently than this guy did. Firstly, IMO, there was nothing "hell"-ish about Hubspot's culture or business model. It seems to me they were just playing the game-as-given, and doing it quite well frankly. The proof of that is IPO. Personally, I find it beyond refreshing that management is making a powerful effort to change up the typical gray-flannel corporate work/life thingy. So old-school didn't get it, or even see beyond his own prejudices at the positive work culture meta-messages. That's on him, not Hubspot.

oriolid 11y ago
ELI5, "positive work culture meta-messages"
- cubano 11y ago
  To me it means they are showing effort and interest in the workplace environment, and not just making it a drab cubicle farm, and messages something beyond just the actual stuff like dogs and music instruments. BTW, nothing personal but I hate trying to explain my writing as I am a big fan of metaphor and ambiguity.
  - cballard 11y ago
    I have dogs in my office. They run around and bark all the time. Their presence shows to me that serious engineering work is not important, but the image of being a "startup" is. The idea of a musical instrument being played while I am trying to focus on engineering is horrifying. There's also a whole world of potential designs besides "drab cubicle farm" and "kindergarten mashed-up with ComicCon". For example, the 37signals[1] office. If they want to show effort and interest in the workplace environment, they should try providing private offices with doors that close. [1] https://37signals.com/office https://37signals.com/office

cushychicken 11y ago

I have nothing but good things to say about HubSpot. I never worked there, but I did work in the same building for about two years, and I managed to sneak in to a few of their parties, as well as snag a few bowls of free cereal. (They play up the candy wall too much. The cereal wall was where it was at.)

rycfan 11y ago

Two reactions to this article (and I say this as someone near 50): 1. Dan's obviously not cut out for startup life. When he meets Zack, he assumes Zack must be someone's assistant because he is young. Dan has no concept of the fact that someone might have their position because they are skilled and perform well. In his mind, the only way to have a fancy title is tenure and age. 2. Sure, the language of startups is interesting (graduation as a euphemism for quitting or getting fired), but the clear message is that this is odd, and thus, wrong. As though normal corporate America is the one true way and is just fine. Bullshit. Let's make sure to keep the workplace exactly as it's been for the last 100 years and never evolve.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
But this is normal corporate America. Dan apparently isn't familiar with the history of IBM, which was so bonkers it had its own song book attempting to engineer a cult of personality around Thomas Watson. http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ibms-astonishingly-insane-1937-corporate-songbook/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ibm... This was back in the 1930s. Apparently not much has changed. In the 60s and 70s the DEC people used to talk about "Mother DEC" and "Father Ken (Olsen - CEO)" - and DEC was a vastly more pleasant company to work for, if you didn't mind meetings where people shouted at each other a lot. Elsewhere, this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RINizGmhrYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RINizGmhrYo US corporate culture is insane. It has always been insane. The insanity takes different forms, and the web startup version frequently manages to be both insane and infantilising. (See also, startup names that sound like baby talk - more of a thing before DotCom 1, but there are still a few relics today.) This is not what an adult professional culture looks like. Signifiers of playful childlike wonder and creativity shouldn't come in stick-on corporate office multipacks, especially not if they hide much uglier relationship dynamics in the office space. It's fascinating to wonder why this has been such a strong trend in the startup space. Obviously it's more likely to appeal straight-from-college CS grads than battle-hardened senior engineers. But my guess is it's also an evolutionary adaptation to trigger paternal (less often maternal) feelings in investors and VCs, who are more likely to feel generously disposed and still part of youth culture if they sponsor a brogrammer creche, and less likely to feel threatened by kids who look nothing like direct competitors. Social signalling in business is a very interesting thing, and maybe isn't questioned often enough.

jbuzbee 11y ago

Dan Lyons sure gets around. In another life, he was an early and vocal supporter of SCO in their lawsuits against Linux. At least in the end he finally came around and admitted that he'd been "Snowed By SCO" http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/19/software-linux-lawsuits-tech-oped-cx_dl_0919lyons.html http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/19/software-linux-lawsuits-tec... [edit for typo]

keithpeter 11y ago
Looks like he worked it out in the end. Meta: Forbes are convinced that I'm using an ad blocker to the extent that I had to google/cache the article linked above. I actually have no plug-ins at all, just accessing the site thru' and academic connection, suspect proxy may be blocking stuff. First time I've had that one.

pitchups 11y ago

I read the entire article trying to figure out what exactly was "hellish" about the experience - but couldn't find anything other than what can only be called a really bad culture fit.

shitgoose 11y ago
125 pages inspirational memo for starter. I have been working for a number of banks in the past years, but this level of BS is off the chart.

jpace121 11y ago

While this article somewhat makes fun of the overally idealistic, sugary, positive culture HubSpot built, I'd much rather work there then somewhere where everything is done out of fear.

jonsterling 11y ago
Everything likely is done out of fear—the kind of fear where you barf of dialectics at the proletarian youth league meeting to avoid having a struggle session in your honor.

jamesblonde 11y ago

How is it now in the valley - can you get a startup funded if you don't have a higher mission that workers work towards? Can you just say it will be a nice place to work and we will treat our workers with respect and pay them competitive rates? It all feels very 'power of nightmares' in making up bogus mission statements to create a shared sense of purpose, but done completely cynically (at least by the power-brokers). http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20su5f_the-power-of-nightmares-1-the-rise-of-the-politics-of-fear-bbc-2004_news http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20su5f_the-power-of-nightm...

chris_wot 11y ago

Holy shit - 1+1=3; what is this, the mind of George Orwell transplanted to the tech boom?

mathattack 11y ago

It's just a small point, but I like the idea of treating people who leave as "Graduating". Yes it's contrived, but it's better than silence or badmouthing which is a frequent alternative. (I have no connection to the company)

sjg007 11y ago

Love it. I can relate!