"Come here and belong!" is the startup siren song. In my experience, even YC startups don't actually care for their employees outside of their contributions to

"Come here and belong!" is the startup siren song. In my experience, even YC startups don't actually care for their employees outside of their contributions to the team. The only things that matter are the customers, the investors, and the founders-- and sometimes not even the customers. The ideal of a small company worrying about its rank-and-file, fighting "evil" giant megacorp is frankly just a useful ruse to buy developers on the cheap. Why pay a wage when you can give kool-aid?