9 ms·

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

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.
- sn41 8y ago
  > classic cargo culting: instead of adopting the important parts, they adopt the visible parts. This is the most succinct description of cargo cutting I have come across. Thanks, will use it :)
  - titzer 8y ago
    I will think of this every time I see a getter/setter pair on a class. The illusion of modularity and encapsulation with net negative in code quality.
    - raducu 8y ago
      Let's not forget about one Interface for one Class, because that adds flexibility in the future :)
      - mdpopescu 8y ago
        I never understood this objection. The interface adds flexibility in the present - it allows other classes to depend on an abstraction instead of a concrete class. The future is absolutely irrelevant here, since YAGNI.
        pjc50 8y ago
        > it allows other classes to depend on an abstraction instead of a concrete class. ... which has exactly zero concrete advantages if there's only one implementation of the class.
        asianthrowaway 8y ago
        A good programmer plans ahead. Edit: of course it is up to individual judgement on a case by case basis, and there are instances were it is obvious that no other concrete implementation of an interface will be required. But otherwise, writing an interface is good practice because it helps safeguard against time consuming future refactoring.
dmix 8y ago
Working for a big company/megacorp without valuable good stock options/bonuses on weekends and off-hours is dumb and abusive. On the other hand these startups are voluntary organizations. You choose to work there or not. I don't see anything wrong with a company deciding on a culture/work enviornment which attracts people who are very dedicated to the company (and hope to be rewarded in the long term as such) and are willing to sacrifice personal time more than typically expected at a usual company. Some people love working and solving hard problems (and having tens/hundreds of thousands of people use their software) more than going to restaurants or night clubs or having family - at that point in their lives. It's one thing to work obsessively and to the detriment of your health. But that doesn't mean a small team of "10xers" is necessarily a toxic/abusive arrangement that people are forced to engage with. There will always be plenty of 9-5, no nighttime/weekend type jobs for software developers. You just won't find them as often at high-growth/high-risk+high-reward type startups. That said, not all high risk/reward agencies require an obsessive/super hard worker type either. But that type of commitment isn't necessarily a bad thing either (unless they do it to the point of hurting their own health, which hurts the intellectual/physical ability and ultimately their contribution to the company). I know for a fact it's possible to put above average commitment into a company, while still being entirely health. But it's certainly not for everyone, nor should it be. That also doesn't mean you should feel bad for getting fired or pushed out of such a company because it's not for you.
- fsloth 8y ago
  "it's possible to put above average commitment into a company, while still being entirely health. " Healthy or not, if the employee does not get above average renumeration for their above average efforts they are being ripped off. That's what the financial pathology here is - if everyone is working with an above average output, but thei pay is average, from the point of view of the company the cost of labour for above average output is less than the market rate, and it's harder to get fair compensation. I don't think there is anything wrong in working ones ass off, but if the worker is just an employee they should make sure their compensation is fair, versus the market rate. People often imagine that they will get a fair compensation for their work, while generally actually they get only the compensation which they ask for. That's why this 'work hard party hard' culture can be detrimental IMO - it easily blinds people to the financial realities of their situation. That's not to say that professional 10x operations would not exist where labour is rewarded faiy, but that the employee must be aware of what the unspoken gameplan actually is. Is it cultish razzle dazzle to get cheap labour or actual 'entrepreneurial spec ops' type activity.
pm90 8y ago
I think there is a well deserved backlash against startups for exploiting (tell me if there’s a better word that describes this) their employees, to the extent that this is acceptable behavior. If companies instead genuinely tried to care for their employees, I think the sentiment would be very different.
raducu 8y ago
Did the company also pay 10x the market rates? Of course not, because they aren't really hiring 10x programmers (whatever that is), they are just hiring low self-esteem people, slap the 10xer label on them, strap them on the hamster wheel and work them to death. It's a bit like the series "The Good Place" -- "heeeyyyy we only hire 10xers, you're a 10xer, aren't you proud? Right, now go prove you're a 10xer by working your butt off".
- gaius 8y ago
  “My boss bet me I couldn’t work 100 hours this week and I proved him wrong!” is how I look at things like this. People actually brag about how exploited they are, it’s bizarre.
  - avgDev 8y ago
    I may be a shitty person because of this.....but I exploit people like this sometimes, especially 'bros'. This works well when surrounded by a group of people. All you gotta say is...man there is no way anyone would do this, you would have to be a bad ass....smarter people usually ignore it but there is often one dude seeking attention that will do something stupid because he wants to be that bad ass.
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  I found this to be a really eye opening article: https://hbr.org/2018/02/if-youre-so-successful-why-are-you-still-working-70-hours-a-week https://hbr.org/2018/02/if-youre-so-successful-why-are-you-s... on what the author calls "insecure overachievers".
lmm 8y ago
> I enjoyed the article - is this too strong a look in the mirror for most folks? I enjoyed the article but I do think it's very wrong as a general claim. I like my job (is that so wrong?) and don't want to see it smeared by association with two badly-behaved companies that happen to be in the same broad category. Plenty of startups won't expect you to work after 5pm - I never did, across several companies. Plenty of staid non-tech companies expect unreasonable hours.
adetrest 8y ago
> 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. Would love to find such a job, but sadly they don't seem to exist. It's either startups like described in the article, or major companies cheating the system and building startups within so they can hire contractors instead of employees and pay start-up rates. Every company in Toronto does it, even the large ones (hello banks, telcos)
- foepys 8y ago
  I can only speak for Germany but there are tons of such jobs here. Americans regularly mock German IT wages but I can go home around 4pm consistently without anybody looking at me weirdly. I might not have a snooker table or free soft drinks in the office but I don't need to live there because my free time is actually my free time.
  - adetrest 8y ago
    In Canada now, but it isn't much better. As the article says, we get the worst of both worlds: lower wages and shitty work conditions. Seriously considering Europe in the near future. Not sure every EU country is equal on that front though, the UK (although not technically EU anymore) seems to have the same unhealthy relationship to work as North America does.
    - Accacin 8y ago
      > the UK (although not technically EU anymore) seems to have the same unhealthy relationship to work as North America does. We're still in the EU and I've no idea why you think we are anything like the US in terms of overworking. I've never had a job that required me to work overtime really, sometimes I've stayed behind in my latest job as I got lost in the moment and lost track of time, but usually someone will ask me "Why are you still here?". My manager even told me not to work overtime, as it often hid problems more than anything else. In fact I don't know anyone in Web Development in the UK that does work overtime. Maybe it's different in London though...
diminoten 8y ago
For me, it's a frustration with the writer and people like him because they project their problems onto everyone else. Not everyone agrees with what your ideal job is, why are you making sweeping statements about how bad the company is, when in reality there are plenty of people who do enjoy this "10xer" culture? It's classic, "I know more than you" mentality, where the author believes the people who buy into the culture are being duped, and he's the only one who can see clearly. I'm so sick of being told to be less optimistic and positive about the company I work for, because my optimism is just me subscribing to the "cult". It reeks of that classic teenage "it's cool to hate/dislike/criticize stuff" attitude that I'd expect my colleagues to have grown out of by now.
- purple_ducks 8y ago
  Keep drinking the KoolAid and you'll never be thirsty for common sense again.
hartator 8y ago
To be fair, the original article was very salty as well.
tarnith 8y ago
Sounds like we've had similar Canadian startup experiences. Expectations quickly rose to time on weekends, responsiveness to emails and requests at all hours of the day, and job duties ranging from DevOps and app development, to customer and client support for all issues after they let go of their customer support team. I'm about ready for a bush somewhere.

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.

sn41 8y ago
> classic cargo culting: instead of adopting the important parts, they adopt the visible parts. This is the most succinct description of cargo cutting I have come across. Thanks, will use it :)
- titzer 8y ago
  I will think of this every time I see a getter/setter pair on a class. The illusion of modularity and encapsulation with net negative in code quality.
  - raducu 8y ago
    Let's not forget about one Interface for one Class, because that adds flexibility in the future :)
    - mdpopescu 8y ago
      I never understood this objection. The interface adds flexibility in the present - it allows other classes to depend on an abstraction instead of a concrete class. The future is absolutely irrelevant here, since YAGNI.
      - pjc50 8y ago
        > it allows other classes to depend on an abstraction instead of a concrete class. ... which has exactly zero concrete advantages if there's only one implementation of the class.
        asianthrowaway 8y ago
        A good programmer plans ahead. Edit: of course it is up to individual judgement on a case by case basis, and there are instances were it is obvious that no other concrete implementation of an interface will be required. But otherwise, writing an interface is good practice because it helps safeguard against time consuming future refactoring.

dmix 8y ago

Working for a big company/megacorp without valuable good stock options/bonuses on weekends and off-hours is dumb and abusive. On the other hand these startups are voluntary organizations. You choose to work there or not. I don't see anything wrong with a company deciding on a culture/work enviornment which attracts people who are very dedicated to the company (and hope to be rewarded in the long term as such) and are willing to sacrifice personal time more than typically expected at a usual company. Some people love working and solving hard problems (and having tens/hundreds of thousands of people use their software) more than going to restaurants or night clubs or having family - at that point in their lives. It's one thing to work obsessively and to the detriment of your health. But that doesn't mean a small team of "10xers" is necessarily a toxic/abusive arrangement that people are forced to engage with. There will always be plenty of 9-5, no nighttime/weekend type jobs for software developers. You just won't find them as often at high-growth/high-risk+high-reward type startups. That said, not all high risk/reward agencies require an obsessive/super hard worker type either. But that type of commitment isn't necessarily a bad thing either (unless they do it to the point of hurting their own health, which hurts the intellectual/physical ability and ultimately their contribution to the company). I know for a fact it's possible to put above average commitment into a company, while still being entirely health. But it's certainly not for everyone, nor should it be. That also doesn't mean you should feel bad for getting fired or pushed out of such a company because it's not for you.

fsloth 8y ago
"it's possible to put above average commitment into a company, while still being entirely health. " Healthy or not, if the employee does not get above average renumeration for their above average efforts they are being ripped off. That's what the financial pathology here is - if everyone is working with an above average output, but thei pay is average, from the point of view of the company the cost of labour for above average output is less than the market rate, and it's harder to get fair compensation. I don't think there is anything wrong in working ones ass off, but if the worker is just an employee they should make sure their compensation is fair, versus the market rate. People often imagine that they will get a fair compensation for their work, while generally actually they get only the compensation which they ask for. That's why this 'work hard party hard' culture can be detrimental IMO - it easily blinds people to the financial realities of their situation. That's not to say that professional 10x operations would not exist where labour is rewarded faiy, but that the employee must be aware of what the unspoken gameplan actually is. Is it cultish razzle dazzle to get cheap labour or actual 'entrepreneurial spec ops' type activity.

pm90 8y ago

I think there is a well deserved backlash against startups for exploiting (tell me if there’s a better word that describes this) their employees, to the extent that this is acceptable behavior. If companies instead genuinely tried to care for their employees, I think the sentiment would be very different.

raducu 8y ago

Did the company also pay 10x the market rates? Of course not, because they aren't really hiring 10x programmers (whatever that is), they are just hiring low self-esteem people, slap the 10xer label on them, strap them on the hamster wheel and work them to death. It's a bit like the series "The Good Place" -- "heeeyyyy we only hire 10xers, you're a 10xer, aren't you proud? Right, now go prove you're a 10xer by working your butt off".

gaius 8y ago
“My boss bet me I couldn’t work 100 hours this week and I proved him wrong!” is how I look at things like this. People actually brag about how exploited they are, it’s bizarre.
- avgDev 8y ago
  I may be a shitty person because of this.....but I exploit people like this sometimes, especially 'bros'. This works well when surrounded by a group of people. All you gotta say is...man there is no way anyone would do this, you would have to be a bad ass....smarter people usually ignore it but there is often one dude seeking attention that will do something stupid because he wants to be that bad ass.
bradleyjg 8y ago
I found this to be a really eye opening article: https://hbr.org/2018/02/if-youre-so-successful-why-are-you-still-working-70-hours-a-week https://hbr.org/2018/02/if-youre-so-successful-why-are-you-s... on what the author calls "insecure overachievers".

lmm 8y ago

> I enjoyed the article - is this too strong a look in the mirror for most folks? I enjoyed the article but I do think it's very wrong as a general claim. I like my job (is that so wrong?) and don't want to see it smeared by association with two badly-behaved companies that happen to be in the same broad category. Plenty of startups won't expect you to work after 5pm - I never did, across several companies. Plenty of staid non-tech companies expect unreasonable hours.

adetrest 8y ago

> 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. Would love to find such a job, but sadly they don't seem to exist. It's either startups like described in the article, or major companies cheating the system and building startups within so they can hire contractors instead of employees and pay start-up rates. Every company in Toronto does it, even the large ones (hello banks, telcos)

foepys 8y ago
I can only speak for Germany but there are tons of such jobs here. Americans regularly mock German IT wages but I can go home around 4pm consistently without anybody looking at me weirdly. I might not have a snooker table or free soft drinks in the office but I don't need to live there because my free time is actually my free time.
- adetrest 8y ago
  In Canada now, but it isn't much better. As the article says, we get the worst of both worlds: lower wages and shitty work conditions. Seriously considering Europe in the near future. Not sure every EU country is equal on that front though, the UK (although not technically EU anymore) seems to have the same unhealthy relationship to work as North America does.
  - Accacin 8y ago
    > the UK (although not technically EU anymore) seems to have the same unhealthy relationship to work as North America does. We're still in the EU and I've no idea why you think we are anything like the US in terms of overworking. I've never had a job that required me to work overtime really, sometimes I've stayed behind in my latest job as I got lost in the moment and lost track of time, but usually someone will ask me "Why are you still here?". My manager even told me not to work overtime, as it often hid problems more than anything else. In fact I don't know anyone in Web Development in the UK that does work overtime. Maybe it's different in London though...

diminoten 8y ago

For me, it's a frustration with the writer and people like him because they project their problems onto everyone else. Not everyone agrees with what your ideal job is, why are you making sweeping statements about how bad the company is, when in reality there are plenty of people who do enjoy this "10xer" culture? It's classic, "I know more than you" mentality, where the author believes the people who buy into the culture are being duped, and he's the only one who can see clearly. I'm so sick of being told to be less optimistic and positive about the company I work for, because my optimism is just me subscribing to the "cult". It reeks of that classic teenage "it's cool to hate/dislike/criticize stuff" attitude that I'd expect my colleagues to have grown out of by now.

purple_ducks 8y ago
Keep drinking the KoolAid and you'll never be thirsty for common sense again.

hartator 8y ago

To be fair, the original article was very salty as well.

tarnith 8y ago

Sounds like we've had similar Canadian startup experiences. Expectations quickly rose to time on weekends, responsiveness to emails and requests at all hours of the day, and job duties ranging from DevOps and app development, to customer and client support for all issues after they let go of their customer support team. I'm about ready for a bush somewhere.