This is not it. Having worked at some startups before, there's a difference between folks slowly getting off the boat because "party time is over", and the cha

This is not it. Having worked at some startups before, there's a difference between folks slowly getting off the boat because "party time is over", and the chaos described by OP. In the former situation, these people are usually easily replaceable because they weren't committed to start with. I have probably seen over a dozen engineers leaving over the course of a year when more money required better processes and more accountability, and to be frank, nothing really happened. In the latter though, the high performing, highly committed engineers leave in droves, and create a sort of expertise vacuum that is hard to fill just with new hires.