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100% agree. I think it's also important to acknowledge the extent to which financial distortion can cause cognitive distortion. Some other comments here have po

100% agree. I think it's also important to acknowledge the extent to which financial distortion can cause cognitive distortion. Some other comments here have pointed out that this person probably made between three and five million US Dollars per year, and the commenters have used this information to reach some relatively specious conclusions (e.g. that comments against the work culture are not founded due to the amount of money in play). It is true that most people cannot even imagine making enough money to buy six to ten million Jack in the Box tacos every year. I am a public defender, and this person's alleged salary exceeds the annual budget of most places I have worked, and the five-year budget of some of them. I think it's precisely this effect that makes the article itself so problematic. Nobody would care what this person thought about work culture (or hire them to consult on the topic) if they didn't graduate from a SV unicorn that generated mythic profit. But many people, especially hopeful managers will read this, and try to emulate the obviously toxic and harmful practices espoused by the author. Emulation will be more harmful than the original practice, because organizations who emulate will not have junior level employees who can buy four to seven reasonably priced single family homes in NYC every year. I say "organizations" rather than "companies" because fetishization of the hypercapitalist "grow fast and get rich" myth is not limited to the for-profit world. Plenty of government agencies and nonprofits will read blogs like this and plunder their organizations in a misguided quest for success. Entangled with this is a causation fallacy. There is actually no reason to believe that Stripe was successful because of its culture. I acknowledge that this is not the author's explicit thesis, but one must make that underlying assumption to engage with the article. I think the most we should responsibly believe (I'm doing my best to be generous to the author), is that all of the toxic policies and cultural artifacts described in the article were endemic in the industry at the time. For example, everyone was expected to eat dinner at work, but it just felt good at this time and place because of the culture. With that frame, it's just as easy to infer that the causal link is reversed: it was more tolerable to work at Stripe because the company was sufficiently funded that it could hire the author at a salary which allowed her to buy a fully loaded Tesla Model X either three or four times every month.

camgunz 4y ago
Absolutely. What the "this person probably made 3-5M a year" comments say to me is "if you pay someone enough, you can do whatever you want to them". We got rid of "right to contract" > 100 years ago for a reason: it's deeply exploitative. > There is actually no reason to believe that Stripe was successful because of its culture. Even if there is (and I agree there isn't), I would argue that cultures like this exist in order to compete in a race to the bottom of who can exploit their workers the most. That's certainly the feeling in presidential campaigns: you can't control a lot, but you can control how hard you work, so work the hardest. We need legislation to protect workers here, but in the absence of that, we need unions and leaders in the workplace to firmly reject this culture. > Nobody would care what this person thought about work culture (or hire them to consult on the topic) if they didn't graduate from a SV unicorn that generated mythic profit. Again agree. I will say there were some things in there that I liked and didn't think were toxic: the encouragement of open communication, the focus on precise language (something I constantly fail at), an emphasis on documentation, building teams (relying on others and being a person that can be relied on). But the overwork is just pure toxicity, e.g. this quote: > He looked down at his coffee for a moment. “I’m afraid I’m never going to see my best work again.” Far from being my best work, my worst work materialized because I worked 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week, and my brain was so broken afterwards I was afraid I would never see my best work again. I've mostly recovered, but I can still feel a difference. My experience isn't singular or even rare, though I don't know if it's the norm. I've read about this happening to others in other sectors (gaming, FAANG through stress and toxicity). It's a real concern. I'm being pretty stark and unsentimental because I want to push strongly against any notion that this is romantic or honorable. Like you said, there's a real danger of this kind of mentality spreading and causing significant harm. Again, worth it for war (and maybe politics, I'm bearish though); not worth it for SV.

camgunz 4y ago

Absolutely. What the "this person probably made 3-5M a year" comments say to me is "if you pay someone enough, you can do whatever you want to them". We got rid of "right to contract" > 100 years ago for a reason: it's deeply exploitative. > There is actually no reason to believe that Stripe was successful because of its culture. Even if there is (and I agree there isn't), I would argue that cultures like this exist in order to compete in a race to the bottom of who can exploit their workers the most. That's certainly the feeling in presidential campaigns: you can't control a lot, but you can control how hard you work, so work the hardest. We need legislation to protect workers here, but in the absence of that, we need unions and leaders in the workplace to firmly reject this culture. > Nobody would care what this person thought about work culture (or hire them to consult on the topic) if they didn't graduate from a SV unicorn that generated mythic profit. Again agree. I will say there were some things in there that I liked and didn't think were toxic: the encouragement of open communication, the focus on precise language (something I constantly fail at), an emphasis on documentation, building teams (relying on others and being a person that can be relied on). But the overwork is just pure toxicity, e.g. this quote: > He looked down at his coffee for a moment. “I’m afraid I’m never going to see my best work again.” Far from being my best work, my worst work materialized because I worked 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week, and my brain was so broken afterwards I was afraid I would never see my best work again. I've mostly recovered, but I can still feel a difference. My experience isn't singular or even rare, though I don't know if it's the norm. I've read about this happening to others in other sectors (gaming, FAANG through stress and toxicity). It's a real concern. I'm being pretty stark and unsentimental because I want to push strongly against any notion that this is romantic or honorable. Like you said, there's a real danger of this kind of mentality spreading and causing significant harm. Again, worth it for war (and maybe politics, I'm bearish though); not worth it for SV.