16 ms·

After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

336 points by wolco 8y ago

dawhizkid 8y ago
According to the Wikipedia page the company was founded in 2000...I don’t think you can be called a “start-up” when you’re almost 20 years old...
- perennate 8y ago
  The article brings this up (but you can of course disagree with its conclusion): > I was initially mystified by how a company that’s been around since 2000 could still call itself a start-up. It turns out it’s not unusual for software companies to hold on to the start-up classification long after the point when businesses in other industries would be considered established. Software companies are forever “pivoting”—changing their business plans, chasing emerging markets, pushing their platform in new directions. The day I joined, Vision Critical had some 700 staff and two main offices: most of the execs, the sales team and I were housed in Toronto, high above Yonge and Bloor, while Andrew Reid and the majority of the devs were in Vancouver, where they’d taken over part of a tower that used to house the Vancouver Sun newsroom. The company also had sales offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. It was established, but it was also very much a start-up, and had only recently pivoted the business to cloud-based market research software.
  - flukus 8y ago
    That describes an established 18 year old company, they're not a startup just because they decide to take the business in a new direction. It's like describing IBM as a startup when they decided to move into computers.
    - perennate 8y ago
      Yeah I don't disagree with you, I was just pointing out something in the article that I believe the parent comment missed, since it referenced Wikipedia while the article mentioned 2000 directly.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    It's not a startup after 18 years. Most companies, and especially tech, have to constantly adapt but that doesn't make them a startup. Was Apple a startup when they got into MP3 players from computers? No.
- pcunite 8y ago
  startup = young They want to appear "hip" and "cool" ... forever.
  - consp 8y ago
    I can say from experience that calling yourself a startup give you certain leeway to stupid 'requirements' like 'having 5 senior software devs on the project. Big companies do this just on paper but if you are small, even though no longer a startup, you can get away with such requirements by calling yourself a startup. Also, if your company (if it's small enough) does 'relatively' small jobs a lot of clients pay faster and with less hassle than normal.
com2kid 8y ago
I am incredibly sick and tired of this stereotype: > The most common is the engineer who, slaving for hours in the proverbial garage, programs his (or, infrequently, her) way to glory and gets showered with millions by venture capitalists. He is the tech cliché—nerdy and socially awkward. At least 90% of the technical co-founders I know are well spoken, well dressed, and perfectly capable of attending social events. It seems like 100% of the problems with this company come from letting sales people (or in this case, men) fresh out of college dictate the culture. None of the startup founders I work with let their companies go this far, because at the end of the day they have work to do. I've ran teams that had Whisky Friday, at 5pm we opened a bottle and invited members from all teams to come, sit down, talk, and have a drink. Team culture doesn't require being horribly irresponsible. People who didn't drink at all came and enjoyed themselves just fine. (I can say that because for the majority of the time I ran the team, I didn't drink) Same team did have nerf guns, but we also had nuanced discussions about world politics, literature, and science. On a related note, what is up with places having beer available around the clock? Does anyone actually get up at 1pm and have a drink? tl;dr Give me a few million and I promise to build a responsible, respectful, team culture.
- burgerboy 8y ago
  When it stops being an accurate representation it will stop being a stereotype. Great job not being like that I guess? I don't know how your experience has any relation to the article nor the norms of reality.
- mcguire 8y ago
  "I've ran teams that had Whisky Friday, at 5pm we opened a bottle and invited members from all teams to come, sit down, talk, and have a drink." How late did whisky Friday run? On the clock or off?
  - com2kid 8y ago
    An hour or two, some people would split off to play board games, others would have a drink then hop on a bus or grab their carpool to go home. Plenty of families on the team, sometimes kids + spouses would stop by and chat as well.
pj_mukh 8y ago
tl;dr: "The legacy textbook publishers the company wants to disrupt aren’t perfect, sure, but that doesn’t mean they need to be destroyed. Those publishers do many things very well, and they do them slowly, with great care, for a reason. We should resist change for change’s sake. I’m being naïve, aren’t I?" No, you're being wrong? Source: I used TopHat's predecessor products in University and the predecessor was Terrible (with a capital -T) and made zero effort to fix things. I am guessing this is true for a large swath of largely profitable web-first companies like Top-hat. Bro culture is a deep-seated problem in tech that I'd love to see excised and tbh, as the author points out, this happens when a company has more sales people than "devs. But "gongs", incentives and aggressive sales goals are a tale as old as Capitalism. The author seems to try to lump a myriad of mostly inconsequential idiosyncrasies into a nice little bow called "bad". Or maybe, Canadian publishers like Toronto Life are just catching up to the tired old tech "expose's" American media has been writing for about 5 years now.
- rsynnott 8y ago
  > Bro culture is a deep-seated problem in tech that I'd love o see excised When did this start, actually? Where did it come from? I don't remember it really being a thing in the early noughties, but by the end of the decade it was deeply entrenched.
  - pj_mukh 8y ago
    The author alludes to the problem, I'd venture a guess it is a cultural import from Wall St. after the success of B2B companies in late 2000's.
    - gaius 8y ago
      No, it coincides precisely with the rise of RoR and is largely confined to webdev, even if the trendy language had changed to Node. You just don’t get C++ or R or Python brogrammers.
  - currymj 8y ago
    If you hire mostly men directly out of top US colleges you'll get a lot of this just by default, because that's the culture on those campuses. I get the sense that in the past, relatively fewer people came to tech through that particular pipeline.
pcunite 8y ago
Culture is an obsession at start-ups. They talk about it nearly as much as they talk about sales targets. Its a signal for: don't apply here if you're over 40.
- sethammons 8y ago
  Can you expand on that? I disagree completely, but my sample size is small. We have lots of people over 40 and we hire for culture too. We define it has folks who are happy, hungry, honest, and humble. If you fit those boxes, are enjoyable to work with, are customer focused, and interested in driving the product forward with colleagues, you will fit our culture. We guard that zealously. Edit: typo.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    True company culture can be anything. But if someone talks too much about culture, it just makes me think about all the extra non-work parties, get together a and events you'll be expected to go to. My idea of a good company culture is a place where everyone works hard during working hours and then goes home and leaves the work at work so they can relax and spend time with friends and family.
    - justinhj 8y ago
      This is absolutely right. A mature company should be hiring the best person for each role defined as the person that can do the job the best (of course price is another issue). Hiring people because of some preconceived idea of culture is usually code for agism or worse discriminations
  - goldfeld 8y ago
    But for how many decades do you expect someone to be honestly happily hungry when food turns out to continually taste like doritos?
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    We define it has folks who are happy, hungry, honest, and humble. Good for you. In a number of companies, "culture fit" became code for "looks like us, dresses like us, educated like us, thinks like us, is like us".
opportune 8y ago
The author didn't seem work with devs (who were on the other side of the country) or investors, so I have trouble fully accepting their generalizations of tech startups as a whole. Sure, they experienced a lot of tech-specific phenomena like free drinks at the office, but it sounds like most of the problems were just due to interacting with a lot of obnoxious young salesmen. The part where they act surprised at the use of normal business acronyms (they're 40 and weren't familiar with the term "ROI" ??) kind of hurts credibility too
- sethammons 8y ago
  Yeah, ROI and KPIs. Real cult stuff there. </s> And the part against "teammates" in favor of "co-workers." Some of this is really stretching. There were some toxic stuff going on there for sure, but there is a lot of padding going on to get that article long. I'm from a unicorn. Employee lower 30s. Still there. Free beer, trips to Mexico, all that. Stand ups, acronyms, etc. At no time have I perceived the environment as toxic.
  - Annatar 8y ago
    I'm from a unicorn. Employee lower 30s. Still there. Free beer, trips to Mexico, all that. Stand ups, acronyms, etc. At no time have I perceived the environment as toxic. Wow, that is horrid. Why the hell would any self-respecting, experienced and successful professional who loves what they do and are good at it put up with "trips to Mexico"? All that college nonsense is utter bullshit. If I want to go to Mexico, it better be of my own accord on the company's paid vacation time that I earned and nobody better give me any lip, not because of some "brogrammer" or "bromarketing" "team building" exercise... What. The. Hell!
    - sethammons 8y ago
      If I said that a company wants to get employees on the same page for company strategic goals and initiatives, would you think that utter BS? What if it were put forth that it was better to do this in a all-hands style but with presentations, and everyone physically in the same venue? BS? I don't think so. Now, what if I told you this was more affordable to do away from the home office due to geography distributed offices, and that it was more affordable to do in Mexico than in the US? Naw, just horrid.
verteu 8y ago
Sounds like that bizarre "brogrammer" archetype that journalists claimed represented Silicon Valley engineers. I'd imagine high-growth startups hire many low-experience SDRs like the ones described in the article -- is it possible people are conflating this 'tech' sales culture with engineering culture? Perhaps this is even done purposefully to provide a politically-correct narrative for the low proportion of female engineers.
fmajid 8y ago
The author really enjoys the sound of his own voice (written in this case), doesn't he? I couldn't make it past 20% of the logorrhea.
draw_down 8y ago
Our industry is insane and terrible, at the same time chipper and blithely inhospitable to normal human beings. The problem is, it’s the future.
lucidone 8y ago
I'm surprised by the amount of salt (for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) in the comments. I've worked at a Canadian start up. It was not a unicorn, but you were expected to work long hours, be a "10xer", always be responsive, and put in hours on the weekend. Those expectations were never made explicit, but the company had a lot of churn for those who didn't "fit the culture" or acquiesce to the cult of personality. I enjoyed the article - is this too strong a look in the mirror for most folks? My ideal job now is one where I can live in the bush, have boring but steady work, and otherwise not care about programming after 5pm and feel OK with myself for it.
- razzimatazz 8y ago
  There is a thread of a story in the article that is interesting but leaves a lot of 'what if?' questions - could this author have found something that fit between the bro-culture-10x sales targets and a magazine editor-change-isnt-always-good? How come when he interviewed at a dozen more start ups at the end of the story, he didn't find himself in an interview where he could discuss the 10x-start-up culture downfalls? Or maybe that middle road is extremely rare.
  - mcphage 8y ago
    > could this author have found something that fit between the bro-culture-10x sales targets and a magazine editor-change-isnt-always-good? Maybe they didn’t want to? They tried a few tech startups and didn’t like the experience; it seems natural to then say “I think I’ll do something else instead”.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I enjoyed the article; I find the description entirely plausible and totally depressing. It definitely reminds me of Dan Lyons' book "Disrupted", which was also perfectly believable. I've been around since Bubble 1.0; I started working in San Francisco in 1997. The thing I find horrifying about this article is the way Vision Critical apparently takes the worst aspects of startups and amplifies them, while taking the best aspects and perverting them. As example, I was an early Agile person; I went to the main US Agile conferences 2001 to 2008 or so. The whole point of things like sprints and standups was to control schedule pressure and keep our work lives sane. The point of agility was not to increase risk and fear, but to make it safe to take risks so that we could be both bold and serene. If you had focused on "maximizing productivity", you would have received stern talkings-to about "outcome, not output." The point was not to put on a show of working hard; it was to radically increase effectiveness. The sales-bro culture of competition and aggression is also nightmarish to me. It's inevitably short-sighted. I'm sure it works to generate rapid growth, but at what cost to the people and the long-term prospects of the company? It's a sign to me that they definitely aren't changing the world, but instead are likely pushing a mediocre-or-worse product on the world. As if that's new. For what it's worth, I have the impression that this sort of awfulness is is more common in tech startups that aren't in SF/SV. I take it as classic cargo culting: instead of adopting the important parts, they adopt the visible parts. So maybe some of the saltiness here is just where people are working.
walrus01 8y ago
Fratbros gonna fratbro.
brailsafe 8y ago
Seems like there's not a lot of circumspection happening in these responses. I truly don't know how true the "brogrammer" stereotype in SV or Toronto is, but my opinion changes dramatically between HN (in general) and say Blind, where engineers with the vocabulary and attitude of young children are regularly found waxing insecure about their 300k+ inflated salaries (as just one example). I imagine the culture can vary dramatically, but if it doesn't, then I'd wager that cultures fall into one of the extremes. Either the older antisocial stereotype, or the one described here. Not really going on a lot though.
- starkingclojure 8y ago
  What's Blind? Is it a community? Tried googling but could only find a consultancy of some sort.
  - brailsafe 8y ago
    Seems like that's what it is. Only heard about it recently through another offhand reference in another HN comment. https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics
    - Profan 8y ago
      Even just a quick glance at the stuff visible is pretty uhh.. interesting, I'd think it was a parody site if I didn't know better
      - rsynnott 8y ago
        Just looked. It does kind of come across as an elaborate parody...
        brailsafe 8y ago
        It really does. But in their FAQs they don't have a "Is this an elaborate joke?" question, and they appear to validate work email addresses.
nwatson 8y ago
The setup for this article sounds like a rip-off of Dan Lyons' book "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble." That was a fun book also about a journalist joining the marketing startup ... this one called Hubspot. Dan Lyons' blurb from Kindle edition: "Dan Lyons is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He is currently a co-producer and writer for the HBO series Silicon Valley. Previously, Lyons was technology editor at Newsweek and the creator of the groundbreaking viral blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." Lyons has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Wired. He lives in Winchester, MA."
- ralph84 8y ago
  Indeed, they're both pretty much the same story. Journalist uncomfortable with the very idea of sales and marketing takes a job in marketing and ends up unhappy. Neither story was particularly unique to startups, nor particularly insightful beyond "don't take a job in marketing if you're uncomfortable with sales and marketing".
- soniman 8y ago
  That was one of the few books that made me genuinely dislike the author. By the end of it everybody at the company hated him, he didn't do any work but wouldn't quit, he thought the job was beneath him and was contemptuous of the people who were actually doing their jobs.
andrew_ 8y ago
An incredible amount of butt-hurt and cynicism rolled up with well-worded storytelling and topped off with a bevy of stereotypes and buzzwords, quoted for effect. As I approach "the hill" and prepare to age over it, I have accumulated a metric ton of cynicism. But after spending nearly 20 years in the business and having worked for multiple startups there's just one thing that I can't get past with this article - the author just comes across as _incredibly outmoded and get-off-my-lawn-y_.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  It's just the opposite. This is exactly the writing of a thoughtful guy with an inch of self awareness, giving us his experience at a couple of startups.
ivanleoncz 8y ago
Raw and revealing. As I was reading the article, I started to wonder: is this the Holy Grail of everyone who wants to be disruptive, creative, productive, etc., when it comes to work with tech products? IMHO, independently of "the hat that one might be wearing", this "Zen of Star-ups" is too much (unnecessary). Dozens of companies forcing this way of life (snacks, beer, parties, video-games, etc.), creating a "cool world", when in fact, it is not. There are investments and decisions affecting the direction of a product (which must be successful for the sake of everyone). There is no paradise in this scenario. This is too serious. Instead of all this "blablabla", why not just keep a serious and cooperative environment? The "Zen of Startup" is a trap (most of the time). Sounds like a lack of reality, which could be addressed by a simple set of values between employer and employees: - honesty, cooperation, productivity, good compensations and missions Throw away beers, snacks, spas, video-games, etc. These five things above, are solid enough for a sustainable work environment, and things doing great or not, there's no "Never Land" feeling (no illusion). Someone has the money, and you might the have the skills that she/he wants. Period. K.I.S.S.
- vibrato 8y ago
  "honesty, cooperation, productivity, good compensations and missions" Competence is a lot more expensive than beer and pizza. And it encourages less time in the office, not more. It's easy to feel assured when everyone is at their desks (doing whatever).
mountainofdeath 8y ago
One litmus test I use is too look around physically and/or on the org. chart and see where the majority of people are. That highlights the focus of the company. If there are 15 senior sales people and an entourage of sales support staff to each engineer, then it's clear that engineers are not particularly valued not will they be.
skookumchuck 8y ago
For me the trouble with the company was the product was as dull as a spoon. I'd rather work at SpaceX.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Great post. I worked at a few startups (Unicorns) in Telecom. I was surrounded by amazing senior engineers, but otherwise it was like a 'regular company'. Kind of like a 'Verizon' if it were modernized, and they got rid of the ugly bureaucracy and maybe took a few pointers from startups. The SF youthful startup scene - no thanks - even in my youth - for the very reasons written in this article. These guys need some self awareness.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
I would be wary of joining any startup where a major shareholder is the Father of the founder. Unless you really knew a lot about it. Second major red flag is a company referring to itself as 'startup' after 18 years of operation.
- randompi 8y ago
  What's wrong with the 2 red flags?
  - qznc 8y ago
    I equate startup but downsides like longer hours, less salary, higher pressure. That is ok for a few years but not sustainable. If you are still working like that after 18 years, I would consider that a commercial failure.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Nothing wrong with family funded business but if after 18 years the 'dad' is the major shareholder it's a bad sign they were not able to raise much outside capital. It's not so bad, most companies are not 'high flying' but if they have 'startup culture' ... maybe not such a great thing. Also - family companies can be odd. It very much depends on the situation. An 18 year old company should simply not be referring to itself as a 'startup' and they should have at very least be settling into some kind of routine. It's fine if there isn't hypergalactic growth - but something fundamental should be there.
    - kalms 8y ago
      I find that a lot of companies that refer to themselves as being bearers of startup culture, is mostly trying to cater to younger people or at least a young mindset - not because they're necessarily trying to hide insane working hours or demands. Sometimes it truly is about passion and keeping a "beginner's mind". Definitely not for everyone, but to me it feels very inspiring and empowering. (I work for 15+ year company that like to view itself as a startup - but the partying is definitely optional)
    - 8y ago
kochikame 8y ago
More "Wolf of Wall Street" than "Silicon Valley"
wisdomoftheages 8y ago
"Competitive" company cultures are an enormous red flag for me, almost always a mechanism to help executives drain employees to a lifeless husk without having to actually pay for the privilege. In my experience, companies have three ways to motivate employees. One is to compensate them at a level commensurate with what is expected of them (too few companies do this, even in tech). One is to make them feel like they have a genuine stake in the performance of the company, either because they believe in the company's mission (usually impossible for a for-profit enterprise, except among the more gullible employees) or they actually have an ownership stake in the business (virtually impossible with the VC model, papier-mache stock options not withstanding) The third is to build an artificial "competitive culture", so everyone is so busy pushing themselves to the limit in competition with their coworkers that they never stop to realize that the only prize is more money in the bank account of their investors (who may peel a bills off the top and toss it to them in the form of a 'performance bonus')
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > One is to compensate them at a level commensurate with what is expected of them (too few companies do this, even in tech). Companies don't do this because it's not a coherent concept. No two people see the same workload in the same way. Payment is based on what it would cost to replace you, not on what you do.
  - fsloth 8y ago
    "Payment is based on what it would cost to replace you, not on what you do." I would perhaps rephraze this as 'payment is based on the market rate'. It has more into it than just cost of replacement. The replacement cost becomes a key metric when presenting a counter offer to an employee who got a better offer elsewhere.
    - consp 8y ago
      >> The replacement cost becomes a key metric when presenting a counter offer to an employee who got a better offer elsewhere. Do not forget that replacement cost the first few months to about half year is quite high. You are far less profitable to a company if you are new as you take time of others and are less up-to-speed. But that never gets taken into account when dealing with pay increases for retained employees. E.g. you should get significantly more than a new hire if you are with the company for longer as it usually a benefit. Though there are counter examples to this statement, so it is various shades of gray between new hires and paying retained employees more.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
It seems he joined a company that after a dozen years was still looking for product market fit and decent growth? it seems the company probably in normal circumstances should have died - but was on VC life support. As such any number of pathological symptoms would occur - if you were living day to day expecting to die any moment wouldn't you?
galfarragem 8y ago
> Some mornings, I had to reassure myself I hadn’t joined a cult. We were teammates, not co-workers, and our meetings would end with a rousing “Go team!” Most startups (if not all) are a cult: they have even 'evangelisers'. Why? They need money from investors and sometimes with nothing to show. So founders need to preach. Employees wake up one day in this environment also. Like in any cult, some people believe more and some people believe less. Some don't believe at all and some pretend to believe. Meanwhile money flows.
crunchyfrog 8y ago
Anyone else find it strange that this person worked in sales for one company which called itself a startup despite being nearly two decades old but keeps making these sweeping generalizations about startups and tech? > Here was the biggest surprise about working in tech: even though everyone wears their team T-shirts and hoodies, rah-rah chants at the monthly all-staff meetings and competes for the sombrero of shame at the tropical off-site, no one loves the start-up they work for. No one feels secure. No one is loyal. There’s no certainty your start-up will exist in a year—or next week. I can testify from personal experience all of these generalizations are false. Did it never occur to the author that maybe they were just being exploited by a crappy company?
- krageon 8y ago
  You've worked at enough companies to make your own generalization and can say with 100% certainty that they are false. The author happens to do the opposite. Seeing as you are both talking from (your own) experience, you might both be right. There's no way for the readers to know.
  - wh0knows 8y ago
    No, the author is making a sweeping generalization about ALL tech startups in an article published on a news website. The commenter on a forum is simply asserting that these facts are not true about ALL tech startups, and it's perfectly valid to discredit a generalization about ALL with one anecdote.
- finnthehuman 8y ago
  This is a key theme of all "tech" culture commentary. They play fast and loose with the distinction between "tech" as a business vertical, and the "tech" focused roles found inside any companies.
- seem_2211 8y ago
  Importantly, I would argue that this feeling that you need to feel some level of pressure is an important part of a sales organization, and is actually a good thing (when managed properly). Not in a hopeless, we are doomed way, but you can make a lot of money in sales, but you have to go out and make that happen. In your mid twenties you can make the equivalent of an investment banker or top lawyer, and you don't work anywhere as many hours as they do. Note: I work in external recruiting (which is a very sales heavy role).
herostratus101 8y ago
This writer really needs to learn how to edit his writing for length. No one is that interested in his experience and he repeats himself constantly.
- Odenwaelder 8y ago
  I found the article interesting and entertaining.
- CosmicShadow 8y ago
  I read the whole thing, even though I knew it was nothing that new, but if you look at where it's published and who the general demographic of reader would be, it would be much more riveting and informative than to people on HN where this is old news. I read it because it was well written and about Toronto companies, which is relevant to me based on my location. I got to see a bit inside companies of which I am aware of and/or have met the founders of. There are only so many large Canadian "Startups" so it's interesting to see a viewpoint from the inside and how they compare to SF companies. If you knew nothing of startups and happen to live in Toronto, this would be a great read to learn more about them, especially ones you've heard of. I'm pretty sure magazine style publications commonly have long articles, so I don't know what you would expect. How often are HN submissions short and/or designed for readers from HN?
mettamage 8y ago
In The Netherlands I see some similarities, but also a couple of differences. The startups that I have worked for (3) did: 1. Put in long hours (mostly as a result of deadline stress). 2. Have a mission/vision. 3. Acronyms and own company words that they invented themselves. Not necessarily a bad thing, a new word can mean a very specific concept. But they didn't have: 1. Stock options 2. An explicit company culture What they did have: 1. More direct than the companies described here. It wasn't brutally honest, but definitely more honest than whatever I read in this blog post. 2. Being more down to earth. These final two things are also much more ingrained in Dutch culture than in the US culture (and probably Canadian culture).
- CalRobert 8y ago
  That's sad to hear. A friend of mine has been trying to get me to work in NL for a while and she says a common hatred of overtime is a big plus. Maybe it's just the company and not the country.
  - stwr 8y ago
    This is true, Dutchies tend to hate overtime and often in the elevator at 16:59. but there are of course exceptions. The Netherlands is a great place to work though :)
    - adetrest 8y ago
      How is that a bad thing though? Why would you voluntarily work for free (overtime is rarely paid in tech) and long for it? Giving away your most valuable hours 5 days a week isn't enough, you should aspire to more? Screw that, you're an employee not the owner.
      - CalRobert 8y ago
        What?? I view it as a wonderful thing. Overtime is rarely paid, but the reality is the jobs I see in NL pay a lot less than my current one. Enough less that I haven't moved. I might look in to it in a few years when I'm not at a relatively high-cost stage of life (new family, buying first home, etc.)
scandox 8y ago
> A job for life also meant that your job was your life. You went into teaching or sports reporting or proctology because it was a calling—it was who you were meant to be. But it’s been a long time since anyone has been able to count on a job for life. The tech industry led the way: our shift to precarious employment was hastened by more efficient algorithms, apps and Amazon. What is the real history of employment stability? I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is even that really true? And that's for identifiable trades, which it seems were not even easy to get trained into. So maybe the reality is that employment for most people has always been precarious? Hasn't tech merely brought this instability to a social class that was exempted from it for the latter half of the 20th Century? Would love to know more from someone who has some grounding in this.
- carlmr 8y ago
  >I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is even that really true? I'm guessing in most countries a Blacksmith (a toolmaker if you will) was usually self-employed. Of course they were "in-for-life", nobody was there to fire them. But this doesn't mean that it was easy going, they could still have a bad economy or some other blacksmith underbidding on price (or offering much better quality, marketind, whatever). You can open your own toolmaker shop as a programmer. Your success won't depend on whether your boss likes you, but whether you can sell your tools, whether you can provide the appropriate quality, and whether you're not underbid by a large competition.
  - rebuilder 8y ago
    In medieval Europe, AFAIK trades were regulated by guilds. You couldn't just become a blacksmith, the job was hereditary. And the prices of goods were set by the guilds. I'm far from an expert on the matter, and I'm sure I'm painting the era with a very broad brush here. The point is, I don't think you can compare being a craftsman in previous ages to being self-employed today.
- sametmax 8y ago
  Well 2 of my grand father and my father worked in the same trade for their whole life. Their entourage mostly did. Now appart from very specific jobs like lawyers and doctors, I don't know many people around me that haven't already changed job several times. Just a data point of course.
leksak 8y ago
Who's hiring who doesn't fit this mold?
Delmania 8y ago
Whenever I find myself falling for this, I keenly remember the advice given to me from Your Money or Your Life, which is that you are at work for 1 reason and 1 reason only: money. Many people say they work for other reasons, like socialization, meaning, etc. Robinson (the author) makes a point that you can find these things in volunteer activities, and that your loyalty ends at the paycheck. Your company will not hesitant to eliminate you when it's financially viable. Why should you be any different?
- diminoten 8y ago
  Because your incentives are different from your company's incentives. I'm working for money, but why can't I "double up" these working hours to also get socialization and meaning out of them? Sure, I could volunteer, but that's not an efficient use of my time.
- golergka 8y ago
  Because you don't have to have only one reason to work. I mean, everybody needs some amount of money for basic neccessities, but after that, it's a complicated equation of different priorities. And if you choose money only, then you're spending the best time of your day maximizing only one resources, while letting everything else take the back seat. Why do it if you can get socialization and meaning from work too? Also, I don't understand your point about company not being hesitant to eliminate you. Yes, but so what? There are two parties in the work-for-hire transactions, and of course, both parties are looking out for their own self-interest. I see no reason why they should extract the same exact resources from this transaction, though.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Delmania 8y ago
    Some context is needed. The goal of Your Money or Your Life was to get more people familiar with financial independence, the idea being once you have saved enough to "retire" early, you can pick the projects you work on and the people you work with. So in that case, yes, you do optimize for resources.
zerogvt 8y ago
Reminded me of this excellent book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted
AdamSC1 8y ago
The Canadian startup scene is brutal. We have all of the downsides of valley startups with very few of the benefits. About five years ago, during my last job search, I interviewed at a well funded (Series B) AI company that was looking for a VP of Marketing. After a few months of interviews, including many early on where they had asked me for my salary expectations, they offered me a starting salary of $70,000 CAD saying that they had to "save money for Engineers because AI is expensive and engineering is more important." Another company I had worked at early in my career had two "co-CEOs" (who constantly bickered all the time in a power struggle). The claimed to have "flexible work hours" as long as you put in your regular hours and were there between the core hours of 10-3. Since it was a long drive away from me, I started doing a 7-3 shift to avoid the traffic. I noticed that the younger staff would arrive around 8:30 or 9am, but was told that they were staying until 7 or 8 at night and ordering pizza each night because nobody dared to leave before the CEOs, who were two young single guys just out of University. I felt guilted, and would end up putting in a few extra hours here and there, but, when it came time for my performance review, I was told I wasn't a "team player" because I wasn't staying to tough it out with the rest of them. The one other employee who had a family and didn't stay late said "You don't pay enough for this to be my full life" and the CEO said "well you make more than we do and look at all the time we put in" - he couldn't understand the difference in the fact that this was his company that he owned, and for others it was just a job. I've got probably a dozen stories of Canadian startups who expect top 0.1% talent, pay below market rates, and want you constantly in the office. They try and make themselves seem great with office dogs, and catered lunches but they are classic underpaid corporate jobs, with even higher expectations. After a few years, I could see why Canada faced such a brain drain of talent to the valley. Even the University of Waterloo, which is famous for its Engineers notes that Canada even companies in the city of Waterloo have trouble retaining their grads from going to the valley. I started working remote and haven't looked back. But, it's a real shame because I think Canada has such potential to be a great startup market and yet the culture is way off course.
- wolco 8y ago
  The Toronto startup scene is exactly like this. All of the negatives and no upside. My last company didn't allow me to work in my off hours. Paid below market, needy owner wanted to be part of the developer team so he checks in untested code at 3am.. mornings were fixing those commits. It's a culture issue maybe weaker real technical visions with ownership which creates 'medium' driven culture where everyone must be a sterotype. You are better off working for a small business. Entity in most cases should be ignored.
Annatar 8y ago
This description of a startup is exactly everything I ever think of when I hear or get offered "the next big opportunity": as an engineer, to me this would be the equivalent of going to a Gulag, 7000 days in Siberia. I cringed the entire time at the lucid descriptions of testosterone fueled football throwing and bell ringing, tempered by own personal experiences with sales and marketing (none of them ever useful, and often highly detrimental to the places I worked at). These descriptions are exactly as I remember it. A Gulag turned into a frenzy by testosterone. What a salt mine startups are! It's like volunteering for a labor concentration camp. I bow in silent respect to startup founders who toil away in their basements and garages on their own spare time and with their own money, taking none from anyone else. If you are reading this, perhaps it might make you smile a little to know that someone somewhere admires you.
lmm 8y ago
> Top Hat’s software could very well make higher education more efficient but possibly less rewarding and meaningful for the student. This seems like a variant on the just world fallacy - any improvement has to be balanced by an equal and opposite cost. It's not true. It's very possible to make things just better overall. And college textbook publishing would be close to the top of my list of candidates of things that are just bad for no real reason (other than lack of competition).
- skybrian 8y ago
  You both use possibly/possible and that's enough of a hedge that I don't think there's an actual disagreement here on facts, just on mood. It's possible that there is a way to improve on textbooks, but this company won't find it. Or maybe they will? It seems to me that writing just a single textbook (or equivalent content) well takes a lot of work, and improving on it would be harder than that.
joshstrange 8y ago
Annoying bro-style salesmen? Say it isn’t so! Good thing they only exist in the tech startup world... /s I’m not saying startups are a perfect, far from it, but this whole article focuses only on the non-tech side of tech startups. Again, even for those in tech, startups are far from perfect but still, it seems like the author happened to interface with only the most juvinelle/brainwashed groups at a company.
Shihan 8y ago
Did I miss something, what was the mistake the author was referring to?
- btbuildem 8y ago
  Right? Bit of a long read for no conclusion
- joeax 8y ago
  The story was a bit anti-climatic. I was waiting for that "oh crap" key moment where he uncovered something profound and it would punch me in the gut as a reader. The title could have been something as plain as "What I learned working at a couple startups in Toronto"
michaco33 8y ago
The article is so cringy... made me say 'aww' a few times. I don't know - sure, it's an outsiders take. Alright. I kind of want my 6 minutes back, why is this even here?
asianthrowaway 8y ago
Why all the animosity towards "frat bros"? I worked in a "nerd only" environment before and I felt incredibly lonely. Nobody ever wanted to go out for drinks, nobody even talked during lunch.
- skybrian 8y ago
  We're talking in stereotypes, but I think it has more to do with your feelings about competition than about lunchtime conversation. When I was working I really enjoyed lunch (with the right people) and I'm definitely more into nerdy things.
diminoten 8y ago
This is textbook bad culture fit. It's okay to not fit, but pretending like no one will fit is wrong. I like being "on call" 24/7, I like working 12+ hour days, I like being drawn away from social situations because of a work issue. Why do I have to conform to the author's idea of what an employee is? This article is a lot of words to say, "I didn't fit in with the culture of this company, here are their names and you should think less of this company because I didn't fit in."
hartator 8y ago
> I would be overseeing an in-house propaganda There is nothing wrong with content creation to reach marketing goals. It can be informative, less intrusive than ads, and help company better reach marketing fit.
teagee 8y ago
Fittingly, the wikipedia page for this startup [1] warns: > This article appears to contain a large number of buzzwords. Wikipedia's definition sure falls neatly into the author's thesis: > ...often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used to impress others... Examples of overworked business buzzwords include synergy, vertical, dynamic, cyber and strategy... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Critical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Critical
hartator 8y ago
> That aura is also what seduces investors into betting millions on every tech founder with a half-decent PowerPoint pitch If only.
hartator 8y ago
> So we quietly hired an outside consultant to conduct a study of the brand and make a recommendation for a new name. That seems a very bad decision from the author.
jpm_sd 8y ago
We're going to look back on these days as a modern tulip mania. So many of these companies (and serial startup employees) are not even living "fake it until you make it", they are on a new and better plan: "fake it here until you have to go fake it somewhere else, with someone else's money"
gerbilly 8y ago
I've been at a few Canadian startups on the tech side, some as lead Architect, and the thing I took away from them is that while they all called themselves tech startups, what they really are are sales organizations. In each startup I worked at[1] the sales guys would write deals that were nearly impossible for the tech people to deliver on. And when we did manage to deliver on them, it wasn't a 'win' for us. For one thing it kept us in firefighting mode all the time because we were never given the time to do the job right and and two, it just emboldened the sales guys to write even bigger deals. I burned out so bad from those jobs that I developed some medical issues as a result. I'm mostly ok now, but in my opinion it's not worth it. If you aren't a founder, those options won't ever be worth anything, and you will never get those years back. Even worse, if you burn out too badly, you may end up with permanent health issues. [1] I won't name them cos I have nothing good to say about them. [2] The graphic midway down the article where someone responds to a text about work from bed hit too close to home for me. I can't tell you how many pings I got on slack about some server being down sometimes as the last thing I saw before going to bed, or often as the first thing I saw in the morning.
onemoresoop 8y ago
Personal anecdote: Worked for a startup for 14 months a couple of years ago. The pay was on the low range with promises for the future. The perks: they offered $10 for lunch on Seamless and one unlimited metro-card per month. And $20 for dinner if we stayed after 8:30pm IIRC. The implicit untold cost was that we were not supposed to leave the office during lunch since it would be delivered there. In order to get edible food I had to put 10 myself since it would not meet the minimum for delivery and the ones that did were trash. In no time did I realize that we were paying for the lunch ourselves by working the other half hour of the lunch break. The 8:30 dinner was obvious what it was:) Cart food was an option that I started taking after a while. Food was the same and I would de-tense during the break. GC sponsored employees did not dare do that. When new clients were visiting the office (once in a while) we were supposed to become animated and chatty, draw diagrams and seem deeply involved with some problem; in a few instances 3 remote contractors that were doing design work for us were asked to come to the office to make it look as if the company is larger than it seems. They were thinking of buying a Foosball table and play during those visits to impress potential customers. I left before they they got it.

336 points by wolco 8y ago

According to the Wikipedia page the company was founded in 2000...I don’t think you can be called a “start-up” when you’re almost 20 years old...

perennate 8y ago
The article brings this up (but you can of course disagree with its conclusion): > I was initially mystified by how a company that’s been around since 2000 could still call itself a start-up. It turns out it’s not unusual for software companies to hold on to the start-up classification long after the point when businesses in other industries would be considered established. Software companies are forever “pivoting”—changing their business plans, chasing emerging markets, pushing their platform in new directions. The day I joined, Vision Critical had some 700 staff and two main offices: most of the execs, the sales team and I were housed in Toronto, high above Yonge and Bloor, while Andrew Reid and the majority of the devs were in Vancouver, where they’d taken over part of a tower that used to house the Vancouver Sun newsroom. The company also had sales offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. It was established, but it was also very much a start-up, and had only recently pivoted the business to cloud-based market research software.
- flukus 8y ago
  That describes an established 18 year old company, they're not a startup just because they decide to take the business in a new direction. It's like describing IBM as a startup when they decided to move into computers.
  - perennate 8y ago
    Yeah I don't disagree with you, I was just pointing out something in the article that I believe the parent comment missed, since it referenced Wikipedia while the article mentioned 2000 directly.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  It's not a startup after 18 years. Most companies, and especially tech, have to constantly adapt but that doesn't make them a startup. Was Apple a startup when they got into MP3 players from computers? No.
pcunite 8y ago
startup = young They want to appear "hip" and "cool" ... forever.
- consp 8y ago
  I can say from experience that calling yourself a startup give you certain leeway to stupid 'requirements' like 'having 5 senior software devs on the project. Big companies do this just on paper but if you are small, even though no longer a startup, you can get away with such requirements by calling yourself a startup. Also, if your company (if it's small enough) does 'relatively' small jobs a lot of clients pay faster and with less hassle than normal.

com2kid 8y ago

I am incredibly sick and tired of this stereotype: > The most common is the engineer who, slaving for hours in the proverbial garage, programs his (or, infrequently, her) way to glory and gets showered with millions by venture capitalists. He is the tech cliché—nerdy and socially awkward. At least 90% of the technical co-founders I know are well spoken, well dressed, and perfectly capable of attending social events. It seems like 100% of the problems with this company come from letting sales people (or in this case, men) fresh out of college dictate the culture. None of the startup founders I work with let their companies go this far, because at the end of the day they have work to do. I've ran teams that had Whisky Friday, at 5pm we opened a bottle and invited members from all teams to come, sit down, talk, and have a drink. Team culture doesn't require being horribly irresponsible. People who didn't drink at all came and enjoyed themselves just fine. (I can say that because for the majority of the time I ran the team, I didn't drink) Same team did have nerf guns, but we also had nuanced discussions about world politics, literature, and science. On a related note, what is up with places having beer available around the clock? Does anyone actually get up at 1pm and have a drink? tl;dr Give me a few million and I promise to build a responsible, respectful, team culture.

burgerboy 8y ago
When it stops being an accurate representation it will stop being a stereotype. Great job not being like that I guess? I don't know how your experience has any relation to the article nor the norms of reality.
mcguire 8y ago
"I've ran teams that had Whisky Friday, at 5pm we opened a bottle and invited members from all teams to come, sit down, talk, and have a drink." How late did whisky Friday run? On the clock or off?
- com2kid 8y ago
  An hour or two, some people would split off to play board games, others would have a drink then hop on a bus or grab their carpool to go home. Plenty of families on the team, sometimes kids + spouses would stop by and chat as well.

pj_mukh 8y ago

tl;dr: "The legacy textbook publishers the company wants to disrupt aren’t perfect, sure, but that doesn’t mean they need to be destroyed. Those publishers do many things very well, and they do them slowly, with great care, for a reason. We should resist change for change’s sake. I’m being naïve, aren’t I?" No, you're being wrong? Source: I used TopHat's predecessor products in University and the predecessor was Terrible (with a capital -T) and made zero effort to fix things. I am guessing this is true for a large swath of largely profitable web-first companies like Top-hat. Bro culture is a deep-seated problem in tech that I'd love to see excised and tbh, as the author points out, this happens when a company has more sales people than "devs. But "gongs", incentives and aggressive sales goals are a tale as old as Capitalism. The author seems to try to lump a myriad of mostly inconsequential idiosyncrasies into a nice little bow called "bad". Or maybe, Canadian publishers like Toronto Life are just catching up to the tired old tech "expose's" American media has been writing for about 5 years now.

rsynnott 8y ago
> Bro culture is a deep-seated problem in tech that I'd love o see excised When did this start, actually? Where did it come from? I don't remember it really being a thing in the early noughties, but by the end of the decade it was deeply entrenched.
- pj_mukh 8y ago
  The author alludes to the problem, I'd venture a guess it is a cultural import from Wall St. after the success of B2B companies in late 2000's.
  - gaius 8y ago
    No, it coincides precisely with the rise of RoR and is largely confined to webdev, even if the trendy language had changed to Node. You just don’t get C++ or R or Python brogrammers.
- currymj 8y ago
  If you hire mostly men directly out of top US colleges you'll get a lot of this just by default, because that's the culture on those campuses. I get the sense that in the past, relatively fewer people came to tech through that particular pipeline.

pcunite 8y ago

Culture is an obsession at start-ups. They talk about it nearly as much as they talk about sales targets. Its a signal for: don't apply here if you're over 40.

sethammons 8y ago
Can you expand on that? I disagree completely, but my sample size is small. We have lots of people over 40 and we hire for culture too. We define it has folks who are happy, hungry, honest, and humble. If you fit those boxes, are enjoyable to work with, are customer focused, and interested in driving the product forward with colleagues, you will fit our culture. We guard that zealously. Edit: typo.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  True company culture can be anything. But if someone talks too much about culture, it just makes me think about all the extra non-work parties, get together a and events you'll be expected to go to. My idea of a good company culture is a place where everyone works hard during working hours and then goes home and leaves the work at work so they can relax and spend time with friends and family.
  - justinhj 8y ago
    This is absolutely right. A mature company should be hiring the best person for each role defined as the person that can do the job the best (of course price is another issue). Hiring people because of some preconceived idea of culture is usually code for agism or worse discriminations
- goldfeld 8y ago
  But for how many decades do you expect someone to be honestly happily hungry when food turns out to continually taste like doritos?
- EliRivers 8y ago
  We define it has folks who are happy, hungry, honest, and humble. Good for you. In a number of companies, "culture fit" became code for "looks like us, dresses like us, educated like us, thinks like us, is like us".

opportune 8y ago

The author didn't seem work with devs (who were on the other side of the country) or investors, so I have trouble fully accepting their generalizations of tech startups as a whole. Sure, they experienced a lot of tech-specific phenomena like free drinks at the office, but it sounds like most of the problems were just due to interacting with a lot of obnoxious young salesmen. The part where they act surprised at the use of normal business acronyms (they're 40 and weren't familiar with the term "ROI" ??) kind of hurts credibility too

sethammons 8y ago
Yeah, ROI and KPIs. Real cult stuff there. </s> And the part against "teammates" in favor of "co-workers." Some of this is really stretching. There were some toxic stuff going on there for sure, but there is a lot of padding going on to get that article long. I'm from a unicorn. Employee lower 30s. Still there. Free beer, trips to Mexico, all that. Stand ups, acronyms, etc. At no time have I perceived the environment as toxic.
- Annatar 8y ago
  I'm from a unicorn. Employee lower 30s. Still there. Free beer, trips to Mexico, all that. Stand ups, acronyms, etc. At no time have I perceived the environment as toxic. Wow, that is horrid. Why the hell would any self-respecting, experienced and successful professional who loves what they do and are good at it put up with "trips to Mexico"? All that college nonsense is utter bullshit. If I want to go to Mexico, it better be of my own accord on the company's paid vacation time that I earned and nobody better give me any lip, not because of some "brogrammer" or "bromarketing" "team building" exercise... What. The. Hell!
  - sethammons 8y ago
    If I said that a company wants to get employees on the same page for company strategic goals and initiatives, would you think that utter BS? What if it were put forth that it was better to do this in a all-hands style but with presentations, and everyone physically in the same venue? BS? I don't think so. Now, what if I told you this was more affordable to do away from the home office due to geography distributed offices, and that it was more affordable to do in Mexico than in the US? Naw, just horrid.

verteu 8y ago

Sounds like that bizarre "brogrammer" archetype that journalists claimed represented Silicon Valley engineers. I'd imagine high-growth startups hire many low-experience SDRs like the ones described in the article -- is it possible people are conflating this 'tech' sales culture with engineering culture? Perhaps this is even done purposefully to provide a politically-correct narrative for the low proportion of female engineers.

fmajid 8y ago

The author really enjoys the sound of his own voice (written in this case), doesn't he? I couldn't make it past 20% of the logorrhea.

draw_down 8y ago

Our industry is insane and terrible, at the same time chipper and blithely inhospitable to normal human beings. The problem is, it’s the future.

lucidone 8y ago

I'm surprised by the amount of salt (for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) in the comments. I've worked at a Canadian start up. It was not a unicorn, but you were expected to work long hours, be a "10xer", always be responsive, and put in hours on the weekend. Those expectations were never made explicit, but the company had a lot of churn for those who didn't "fit the culture" or acquiesce to the cult of personality. I enjoyed the article - is this too strong a look in the mirror for most folks? My ideal job now is one where I can live in the bush, have boring but steady work, and otherwise not care about programming after 5pm and feel OK with myself for it.

razzimatazz 8y ago
There is a thread of a story in the article that is interesting but leaves a lot of 'what if?' questions - could this author have found something that fit between the bro-culture-10x sales targets and a magazine editor-change-isnt-always-good? How come when he interviewed at a dozen more start ups at the end of the story, he didn't find himself in an interview where he could discuss the 10x-start-up culture downfalls? Or maybe that middle road is extremely rare.
- mcphage 8y ago
  > could this author have found something that fit between the bro-culture-10x sales targets and a magazine editor-change-isnt-always-good? Maybe they didn’t want to? They tried a few tech startups and didn’t like the experience; it seems natural to then say “I think I’ll do something else instead”.
wpietri 8y ago
I enjoyed the article; I find the description entirely plausible and totally depressing. It definitely reminds me of Dan Lyons' book "Disrupted", which was also perfectly believable. I've been around since Bubble 1.0; I started working in San Francisco in 1997. The thing I find horrifying about this article is the way Vision Critical apparently takes the worst aspects of startups and amplifies them, while taking the best aspects and perverting them. As example, I was an early Agile person; I went to the main US Agile conferences 2001 to 2008 or so. The whole point of things like sprints and standups was to control schedule pressure and keep our work lives sane. The point of agility was not to increase risk and fear, but to make it safe to take risks so that we could be both bold and serene. If you had focused on "maximizing productivity", you would have received stern talkings-to about "outcome, not output." The point was not to put on a show of working hard; it was to radically increase effectiveness. The sales-bro culture of competition and aggression is also nightmarish to me. It's inevitably short-sighted. I'm sure it works to generate rapid growth, but at what cost to the people and the long-term prospects of the company? It's a sign to me that they definitely aren't changing the world, but instead are likely pushing a mediocre-or-worse product on the world. As if that's new. For what it's worth, I have the impression that this sort of awfulness is is more common in tech startups that aren't in SF/SV. I take it as classic cargo culting: instead of adopting the important parts, they adopt the visible parts. So maybe some of the saltiness here is just where people are working.

walrus01 8y ago

Fratbros gonna fratbro.

brailsafe 8y ago

Seems like there's not a lot of circumspection happening in these responses. I truly don't know how true the "brogrammer" stereotype in SV or Toronto is, but my opinion changes dramatically between HN (in general) and say Blind, where engineers with the vocabulary and attitude of young children are regularly found waxing insecure about their 300k+ inflated salaries (as just one example). I imagine the culture can vary dramatically, but if it doesn't, then I'd wager that cultures fall into one of the extremes. Either the older antisocial stereotype, or the one described here. Not really going on a lot though.

starkingclojure 8y ago
What's Blind? Is it a community? Tried googling but could only find a consultancy of some sort.
- brailsafe 8y ago
  Seems like that's what it is. Only heard about it recently through another offhand reference in another HN comment. https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics
  - Profan 8y ago
    Even just a quick glance at the stuff visible is pretty uhh.. interesting, I'd think it was a parody site if I didn't know better
    - rsynnott 8y ago
      Just looked. It does kind of come across as an elaborate parody...
      - brailsafe 8y ago
        It really does. But in their FAQs they don't have a "Is this an elaborate joke?" question, and they appear to validate work email addresses.

nwatson 8y ago

The setup for this article sounds like a rip-off of Dan Lyons' book "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble." That was a fun book also about a journalist joining the marketing startup ... this one called Hubspot. Dan Lyons' blurb from Kindle edition: "Dan Lyons is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He is currently a co-producer and writer for the HBO series Silicon Valley. Previously, Lyons was technology editor at Newsweek and the creator of the groundbreaking viral blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." Lyons has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Wired. He lives in Winchester, MA."

ralph84 8y ago
Indeed, they're both pretty much the same story. Journalist uncomfortable with the very idea of sales and marketing takes a job in marketing and ends up unhappy. Neither story was particularly unique to startups, nor particularly insightful beyond "don't take a job in marketing if you're uncomfortable with sales and marketing".
soniman 8y ago
That was one of the few books that made me genuinely dislike the author. By the end of it everybody at the company hated him, he didn't do any work but wouldn't quit, he thought the job was beneath him and was contemptuous of the people who were actually doing their jobs.

andrew_ 8y ago

An incredible amount of butt-hurt and cynicism rolled up with well-worded storytelling and topped off with a bevy of stereotypes and buzzwords, quoted for effect. As I approach "the hill" and prepare to age over it, I have accumulated a metric ton of cynicism. But after spending nearly 20 years in the business and having worked for multiple startups there's just one thing that I can't get past with this article - the author just comes across as _incredibly outmoded and get-off-my-lawn-y_.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
It's just the opposite. This is exactly the writing of a thoughtful guy with an inch of self awareness, giving us his experience at a couple of startups.

ivanleoncz 8y ago

Raw and revealing. As I was reading the article, I started to wonder: is this the Holy Grail of everyone who wants to be disruptive, creative, productive, etc., when it comes to work with tech products? IMHO, independently of "the hat that one might be wearing", this "Zen of Star-ups" is too much (unnecessary). Dozens of companies forcing this way of life (snacks, beer, parties, video-games, etc.), creating a "cool world", when in fact, it is not. There are investments and decisions affecting the direction of a product (which must be successful for the sake of everyone). There is no paradise in this scenario. This is too serious. Instead of all this "blablabla", why not just keep a serious and cooperative environment? The "Zen of Startup" is a trap (most of the time). Sounds like a lack of reality, which could be addressed by a simple set of values between employer and employees: - honesty, cooperation, productivity, good compensations and missions Throw away beers, snacks, spas, video-games, etc. These five things above, are solid enough for a sustainable work environment, and things doing great or not, there's no "Never Land" feeling (no illusion). Someone has the money, and you might the have the skills that she/he wants. Period. K.I.S.S.

vibrato 8y ago
"honesty, cooperation, productivity, good compensations and missions" Competence is a lot more expensive than beer and pizza. And it encourages less time in the office, not more. It's easy to feel assured when everyone is at their desks (doing whatever).

mountainofdeath 8y ago

One litmus test I use is too look around physically and/or on the org. chart and see where the majority of people are. That highlights the focus of the company. If there are 15 senior sales people and an entourage of sales support staff to each engineer, then it's clear that engineers are not particularly valued not will they be.

skookumchuck 8y ago

For me the trouble with the company was the product was as dull as a spoon. I'd rather work at SpaceX.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Great post. I worked at a few startups (Unicorns) in Telecom. I was surrounded by amazing senior engineers, but otherwise it was like a 'regular company'. Kind of like a 'Verizon' if it were modernized, and they got rid of the ugly bureaucracy and maybe took a few pointers from startups. The SF youthful startup scene - no thanks - even in my youth - for the very reasons written in this article. These guys need some self awareness.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

I would be wary of joining any startup where a major shareholder is the Father of the founder. Unless you really knew a lot about it. Second major red flag is a company referring to itself as 'startup' after 18 years of operation.

randompi 8y ago
What's wrong with the 2 red flags?
- qznc 8y ago
  I equate startup but downsides like longer hours, less salary, higher pressure. That is ok for a few years but not sustainable. If you are still working like that after 18 years, I would consider that a commercial failure.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Nothing wrong with family funded business but if after 18 years the 'dad' is the major shareholder it's a bad sign they were not able to raise much outside capital. It's not so bad, most companies are not 'high flying' but if they have 'startup culture' ... maybe not such a great thing. Also - family companies can be odd. It very much depends on the situation. An 18 year old company should simply not be referring to itself as a 'startup' and they should have at very least be settling into some kind of routine. It's fine if there isn't hypergalactic growth - but something fundamental should be there.
  - kalms 8y ago
    I find that a lot of companies that refer to themselves as being bearers of startup culture, is mostly trying to cater to younger people or at least a young mindset - not because they're necessarily trying to hide insane working hours or demands. Sometimes it truly is about passion and keeping a "beginner's mind". Definitely not for everyone, but to me it feels very inspiring and empowering. (I work for 15+ year company that like to view itself as a startup - but the partying is definitely optional)
  - 8y ago

kochikame 8y ago

More "Wolf of Wall Street" than "Silicon Valley"

wisdomoftheages 8y ago

"Competitive" company cultures are an enormous red flag for me, almost always a mechanism to help executives drain employees to a lifeless husk without having to actually pay for the privilege. In my experience, companies have three ways to motivate employees. One is to compensate them at a level commensurate with what is expected of them (too few companies do this, even in tech). One is to make them feel like they have a genuine stake in the performance of the company, either because they believe in the company's mission (usually impossible for a for-profit enterprise, except among the more gullible employees) or they actually have an ownership stake in the business (virtually impossible with the VC model, papier-mache stock options not withstanding) The third is to build an artificial "competitive culture", so everyone is so busy pushing themselves to the limit in competition with their coworkers that they never stop to realize that the only prize is more money in the bank account of their investors (who may peel a bills off the top and toss it to them in the form of a 'performance bonus')

thaumasiotes 8y ago
> One is to compensate them at a level commensurate with what is expected of them (too few companies do this, even in tech). Companies don't do this because it's not a coherent concept. No two people see the same workload in the same way. Payment is based on what it would cost to replace you, not on what you do.
- fsloth 8y ago
  "Payment is based on what it would cost to replace you, not on what you do." I would perhaps rephraze this as 'payment is based on the market rate'. It has more into it than just cost of replacement. The replacement cost becomes a key metric when presenting a counter offer to an employee who got a better offer elsewhere.
  - consp 8y ago
    >> The replacement cost becomes a key metric when presenting a counter offer to an employee who got a better offer elsewhere. Do not forget that replacement cost the first few months to about half year is quite high. You are far less profitable to a company if you are new as you take time of others and are less up-to-speed. But that never gets taken into account when dealing with pay increases for retained employees. E.g. you should get significantly more than a new hire if you are with the company for longer as it usually a benefit. Though there are counter examples to this statement, so it is various shades of gray between new hires and paying retained employees more.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

It seems he joined a company that after a dozen years was still looking for product market fit and decent growth? it seems the company probably in normal circumstances should have died - but was on VC life support. As such any number of pathological symptoms would occur - if you were living day to day expecting to die any moment wouldn't you?

galfarragem 8y ago

> Some mornings, I had to reassure myself I hadn’t joined a cult. We were teammates, not co-workers, and our meetings would end with a rousing “Go team!” Most startups (if not all) are a cult: they have even 'evangelisers'. Why? They need money from investors and sometimes with nothing to show. So founders need to preach. Employees wake up one day in this environment also. Like in any cult, some people believe more and some people believe less. Some don't believe at all and some pretend to believe. Meanwhile money flows.

crunchyfrog 8y ago

Anyone else find it strange that this person worked in sales for one company which called itself a startup despite being nearly two decades old but keeps making these sweeping generalizations about startups and tech? > Here was the biggest surprise about working in tech: even though everyone wears their team T-shirts and hoodies, rah-rah chants at the monthly all-staff meetings and competes for the sombrero of shame at the tropical off-site, no one loves the start-up they work for. No one feels secure. No one is loyal. There’s no certainty your start-up will exist in a year—or next week. I can testify from personal experience all of these generalizations are false. Did it never occur to the author that maybe they were just being exploited by a crappy company?

krageon 8y ago
You've worked at enough companies to make your own generalization and can say with 100% certainty that they are false. The author happens to do the opposite. Seeing as you are both talking from (your own) experience, you might both be right. There's no way for the readers to know.
- wh0knows 8y ago
  No, the author is making a sweeping generalization about ALL tech startups in an article published on a news website. The commenter on a forum is simply asserting that these facts are not true about ALL tech startups, and it's perfectly valid to discredit a generalization about ALL with one anecdote.
finnthehuman 8y ago
This is a key theme of all "tech" culture commentary. They play fast and loose with the distinction between "tech" as a business vertical, and the "tech" focused roles found inside any companies.
seem_2211 8y ago
Importantly, I would argue that this feeling that you need to feel some level of pressure is an important part of a sales organization, and is actually a good thing (when managed properly). Not in a hopeless, we are doomed way, but you can make a lot of money in sales, but you have to go out and make that happen. In your mid twenties you can make the equivalent of an investment banker or top lawyer, and you don't work anywhere as many hours as they do. Note: I work in external recruiting (which is a very sales heavy role).

herostratus101 8y ago

This writer really needs to learn how to edit his writing for length. No one is that interested in his experience and he repeats himself constantly.

Odenwaelder 8y ago
I found the article interesting and entertaining.
CosmicShadow 8y ago
I read the whole thing, even though I knew it was nothing that new, but if you look at where it's published and who the general demographic of reader would be, it would be much more riveting and informative than to people on HN where this is old news. I read it because it was well written and about Toronto companies, which is relevant to me based on my location. I got to see a bit inside companies of which I am aware of and/or have met the founders of. There are only so many large Canadian "Startups" so it's interesting to see a viewpoint from the inside and how they compare to SF companies. If you knew nothing of startups and happen to live in Toronto, this would be a great read to learn more about them, especially ones you've heard of. I'm pretty sure magazine style publications commonly have long articles, so I don't know what you would expect. How often are HN submissions short and/or designed for readers from HN?

mettamage 8y ago

In The Netherlands I see some similarities, but also a couple of differences. The startups that I have worked for (3) did: 1. Put in long hours (mostly as a result of deadline stress). 2. Have a mission/vision. 3. Acronyms and own company words that they invented themselves. Not necessarily a bad thing, a new word can mean a very specific concept. But they didn't have: 1. Stock options 2. An explicit company culture What they did have: 1. More direct than the companies described here. It wasn't brutally honest, but definitely more honest than whatever I read in this blog post. 2. Being more down to earth. These final two things are also much more ingrained in Dutch culture than in the US culture (and probably Canadian culture).

CalRobert 8y ago
That's sad to hear. A friend of mine has been trying to get me to work in NL for a while and she says a common hatred of overtime is a big plus. Maybe it's just the company and not the country.
- stwr 8y ago
  This is true, Dutchies tend to hate overtime and often in the elevator at 16:59. but there are of course exceptions. The Netherlands is a great place to work though :)
  - adetrest 8y ago
    How is that a bad thing though? Why would you voluntarily work for free (overtime is rarely paid in tech) and long for it? Giving away your most valuable hours 5 days a week isn't enough, you should aspire to more? Screw that, you're an employee not the owner.
    - CalRobert 8y ago
      What?? I view it as a wonderful thing. Overtime is rarely paid, but the reality is the jobs I see in NL pay a lot less than my current one. Enough less that I haven't moved. I might look in to it in a few years when I'm not at a relatively high-cost stage of life (new family, buying first home, etc.)

scandox 8y ago

> A job for life also meant that your job was your life. You went into teaching or sports reporting or proctology because it was a calling—it was who you were meant to be. But it’s been a long time since anyone has been able to count on a job for life. The tech industry led the way: our shift to precarious employment was hastened by more efficient algorithms, apps and Amazon. What is the real history of employment stability? I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is even that really true? And that's for identifiable trades, which it seems were not even easy to get trained into. So maybe the reality is that employment for most people has always been precarious? Hasn't tech merely brought this instability to a social class that was exempted from it for the latter half of the 20th Century? Would love to know more from someone who has some grounding in this.

carlmr 8y ago
>I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is even that really true? I'm guessing in most countries a Blacksmith (a toolmaker if you will) was usually self-employed. Of course they were "in-for-life", nobody was there to fire them. But this doesn't mean that it was easy going, they could still have a bad economy or some other blacksmith underbidding on price (or offering much better quality, marketind, whatever). You can open your own toolmaker shop as a programmer. Your success won't depend on whether your boss likes you, but whether you can sell your tools, whether you can provide the appropriate quality, and whether you're not underbid by a large competition.
- rebuilder 8y ago
  In medieval Europe, AFAIK trades were regulated by guilds. You couldn't just become a blacksmith, the job was hereditary. And the prices of goods were set by the guilds. I'm far from an expert on the matter, and I'm sure I'm painting the era with a very broad brush here. The point is, I don't think you can compare being a craftsman in previous ages to being self-employed today.
sametmax 8y ago
Well 2 of my grand father and my father worked in the same trade for their whole life. Their entourage mostly did. Now appart from very specific jobs like lawyers and doctors, I don't know many people around me that haven't already changed job several times. Just a data point of course.

leksak 8y ago

Who's hiring who doesn't fit this mold?

Delmania 8y ago

Whenever I find myself falling for this, I keenly remember the advice given to me from Your Money or Your Life, which is that you are at work for 1 reason and 1 reason only: money. Many people say they work for other reasons, like socialization, meaning, etc. Robinson (the author) makes a point that you can find these things in volunteer activities, and that your loyalty ends at the paycheck. Your company will not hesitant to eliminate you when it's financially viable. Why should you be any different?

diminoten 8y ago
Because your incentives are different from your company's incentives. I'm working for money, but why can't I "double up" these working hours to also get socialization and meaning out of them? Sure, I could volunteer, but that's not an efficient use of my time.
golergka 8y ago
Because you don't have to have only one reason to work. I mean, everybody needs some amount of money for basic neccessities, but after that, it's a complicated equation of different priorities. And if you choose money only, then you're spending the best time of your day maximizing only one resources, while letting everything else take the back seat. Why do it if you can get socialization and meaning from work too? Also, I don't understand your point about company not being hesitant to eliminate you. Yes, but so what? There are two parties in the work-for-hire transactions, and of course, both parties are looking out for their own self-interest. I see no reason why they should extract the same exact resources from this transaction, though.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Delmania 8y ago
  Some context is needed. The goal of Your Money or Your Life was to get more people familiar with financial independence, the idea being once you have saved enough to "retire" early, you can pick the projects you work on and the people you work with. So in that case, yes, you do optimize for resources.

zerogvt 8y ago

Reminded me of this excellent book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted

AdamSC1 8y ago

The Canadian startup scene is brutal. We have all of the downsides of valley startups with very few of the benefits. About five years ago, during my last job search, I interviewed at a well funded (Series B) AI company that was looking for a VP of Marketing. After a few months of interviews, including many early on where they had asked me for my salary expectations, they offered me a starting salary of $70,000 CAD saying that they had to "save money for Engineers because AI is expensive and engineering is more important." Another company I had worked at early in my career had two "co-CEOs" (who constantly bickered all the time in a power struggle). The claimed to have "flexible work hours" as long as you put in your regular hours and were there between the core hours of 10-3. Since it was a long drive away from me, I started doing a 7-3 shift to avoid the traffic. I noticed that the younger staff would arrive around 8:30 or 9am, but was told that they were staying until 7 or 8 at night and ordering pizza each night because nobody dared to leave before the CEOs, who were two young single guys just out of University. I felt guilted, and would end up putting in a few extra hours here and there, but, when it came time for my performance review, I was told I wasn't a "team player" because I wasn't staying to tough it out with the rest of them. The one other employee who had a family and didn't stay late said "You don't pay enough for this to be my full life" and the CEO said "well you make more than we do and look at all the time we put in" - he couldn't understand the difference in the fact that this was his company that he owned, and for others it was just a job. I've got probably a dozen stories of Canadian startups who expect top 0.1% talent, pay below market rates, and want you constantly in the office. They try and make themselves seem great with office dogs, and catered lunches but they are classic underpaid corporate jobs, with even higher expectations. After a few years, I could see why Canada faced such a brain drain of talent to the valley. Even the University of Waterloo, which is famous for its Engineers notes that Canada even companies in the city of Waterloo have trouble retaining their grads from going to the valley. I started working remote and haven't looked back. But, it's a real shame because I think Canada has such potential to be a great startup market and yet the culture is way off course.

wolco 8y ago
The Toronto startup scene is exactly like this. All of the negatives and no upside. My last company didn't allow me to work in my off hours. Paid below market, needy owner wanted to be part of the developer team so he checks in untested code at 3am.. mornings were fixing those commits. It's a culture issue maybe weaker real technical visions with ownership which creates 'medium' driven culture where everyone must be a sterotype. You are better off working for a small business. Entity in most cases should be ignored.

Annatar 8y ago

This description of a startup is exactly everything I ever think of when I hear or get offered "the next big opportunity": as an engineer, to me this would be the equivalent of going to a Gulag, 7000 days in Siberia. I cringed the entire time at the lucid descriptions of testosterone fueled football throwing and bell ringing, tempered by own personal experiences with sales and marketing (none of them ever useful, and often highly detrimental to the places I worked at). These descriptions are exactly as I remember it. A Gulag turned into a frenzy by testosterone. What a salt mine startups are! It's like volunteering for a labor concentration camp. I bow in silent respect to startup founders who toil away in their basements and garages on their own spare time and with their own money, taking none from anyone else. If you are reading this, perhaps it might make you smile a little to know that someone somewhere admires you.

lmm 8y ago

> Top Hat’s software could very well make higher education more efficient but possibly less rewarding and meaningful for the student. This seems like a variant on the just world fallacy - any improvement has to be balanced by an equal and opposite cost. It's not true. It's very possible to make things just better overall. And college textbook publishing would be close to the top of my list of candidates of things that are just bad for no real reason (other than lack of competition).

skybrian 8y ago
You both use possibly/possible and that's enough of a hedge that I don't think there's an actual disagreement here on facts, just on mood. It's possible that there is a way to improve on textbooks, but this company won't find it. Or maybe they will? It seems to me that writing just a single textbook (or equivalent content) well takes a lot of work, and improving on it would be harder than that.

joshstrange 8y ago

Annoying bro-style salesmen? Say it isn’t so! Good thing they only exist in the tech startup world... /s I’m not saying startups are a perfect, far from it, but this whole article focuses only on the non-tech side of tech startups. Again, even for those in tech, startups are far from perfect but still, it seems like the author happened to interface with only the most juvinelle/brainwashed groups at a company.

Shihan 8y ago

Did I miss something, what was the mistake the author was referring to?

btbuildem 8y ago
Right? Bit of a long read for no conclusion
joeax 8y ago
The story was a bit anti-climatic. I was waiting for that "oh crap" key moment where he uncovered something profound and it would punch me in the gut as a reader. The title could have been something as plain as "What I learned working at a couple startups in Toronto"

michaco33 8y ago

The article is so cringy... made me say 'aww' a few times. I don't know - sure, it's an outsiders take. Alright. I kind of want my 6 minutes back, why is this even here?

asianthrowaway 8y ago

Why all the animosity towards "frat bros"? I worked in a "nerd only" environment before and I felt incredibly lonely. Nobody ever wanted to go out for drinks, nobody even talked during lunch.

skybrian 8y ago
We're talking in stereotypes, but I think it has more to do with your feelings about competition than about lunchtime conversation. When I was working I really enjoyed lunch (with the right people) and I'm definitely more into nerdy things.

diminoten 8y ago

This is textbook bad culture fit. It's okay to not fit, but pretending like no one will fit is wrong. I like being "on call" 24/7, I like working 12+ hour days, I like being drawn away from social situations because of a work issue. Why do I have to conform to the author's idea of what an employee is? This article is a lot of words to say, "I didn't fit in with the culture of this company, here are their names and you should think less of this company because I didn't fit in."

hartator 8y ago

> I would be overseeing an in-house propaganda There is nothing wrong with content creation to reach marketing goals. It can be informative, less intrusive than ads, and help company better reach marketing fit.

teagee 8y ago

Fittingly, the wikipedia page for this startup [1] warns: > This article appears to contain a large number of buzzwords. Wikipedia's definition sure falls neatly into the author's thesis: > ...often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used to impress others... Examples of overworked business buzzwords include synergy, vertical, dynamic, cyber and strategy... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Critical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Critical

hartator 8y ago

> That aura is also what seduces investors into betting millions on every tech founder with a half-decent PowerPoint pitch If only.

hartator 8y ago

> So we quietly hired an outside consultant to conduct a study of the brand and make a recommendation for a new name. That seems a very bad decision from the author.

jpm_sd 8y ago

We're going to look back on these days as a modern tulip mania. So many of these companies (and serial startup employees) are not even living "fake it until you make it", they are on a new and better plan: "fake it here until you have to go fake it somewhere else, with someone else's money"

gerbilly 8y ago

I've been at a few Canadian startups on the tech side, some as lead Architect, and the thing I took away from them is that while they all called themselves tech startups, what they really are are sales organizations. In each startup I worked at[1] the sales guys would write deals that were nearly impossible for the tech people to deliver on. And when we did manage to deliver on them, it wasn't a 'win' for us. For one thing it kept us in firefighting mode all the time because we were never given the time to do the job right and and two, it just emboldened the sales guys to write even bigger deals. I burned out so bad from those jobs that I developed some medical issues as a result. I'm mostly ok now, but in my opinion it's not worth it. If you aren't a founder, those options won't ever be worth anything, and you will never get those years back. Even worse, if you burn out too badly, you may end up with permanent health issues. [1] I won't name them cos I have nothing good to say about them. [2] The graphic midway down the article where someone responds to a text about work from bed hit too close to home for me. I can't tell you how many pings I got on slack about some server being down sometimes as the last thing I saw before going to bed, or often as the first thing I saw in the morning.

onemoresoop 8y ago

Personal anecdote: Worked for a startup for 14 months a couple of years ago. The pay was on the low range with promises for the future. The perks: they offered $10 for lunch on Seamless and one unlimited metro-card per month. And $20 for dinner if we stayed after 8:30pm IIRC. The implicit untold cost was that we were not supposed to leave the office during lunch since it would be delivered there. In order to get edible food I had to put 10 myself since it would not meet the minimum for delivery and the ones that did were trash. In no time did I realize that we were paying for the lunch ourselves by working the other half hour of the lunch break. The 8:30 dinner was obvious what it was:) Cart food was an option that I started taking after a while. Food was the same and I would de-tense during the break. GC sponsored employees did not dare do that. When new clients were visiting the office (once in a while) we were supposed to become animated and chatty, draw diagrams and seem deeply involved with some problem; in a few instances 3 remote contractors that were doing design work for us were asked to come to the office to make it look as if the company is larger than it seems. They were thinking of buying a Foosball table and play during those visits to impress potential customers. I left before they they got it.