You missed this part: don't also take the dignity away from people making an actual difference in the world. Leave them with that Although he cites grand achi

You missed this part: don't also take the dignity away from people making an actual difference in the world. Leave them with that Although he cites grand achievements at first, this applies equally to teachers, nurses, or unseen infrastructure-maintainers. I.e. people making an incremental difference. There's a whole pyramid of unsexy jobs required so that a few of us can have the spare cycles to try trivial things (some of which will end up being non-trivial). I suspect that what really bothers the author is not startups, per se, but rather all the "Rah, rah, we're changing the world" attitude in the startup community. Personally, I think you can't separate the two. It's a throw-stuff against the wall and see what sticks system that created a lot of the grand achievements he praises. If it means I need to listen to a lot of semi-annoying young'ins going on about their retarded projects, then so be it. Some of them will be important.