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Fascinating. We may have worked for the same founders at some point, as I have had nearly the exact same experience (I was an engineer at the 2nd startup with a
by scruple 4y ago
Fascinating. We may have worked for the same founders at some point, as I have had nearly the exact same experience (I was an engineer at the 2nd startup with a ~0.5% stake (before dilution, of course!) -- the payout was nice but it was not a life changing event).
One detail in my story is that I found out a lot about the personal lives of the founders and their friends. They all came from obscene wealth to begin with. The founders father was on the board of a major tech company in the Bay that bought the first startup and financially backed the second.
The nepotism I've seen in my career disenchanted me long, long ago.
- q845712 4y agoI've been working on re-framing nepotism as "selective altruism" -- it's like there's an "in" group, within which the members feel completely justified and even a little obligated to help each other out. So it's our usual human tribal stuff, basically, but we can recognize the altruism in there. Of course the next step would be leveraging this thought to propose a mechanism to convince them to expand their notion of "in-group" to include, i dunno, everyone who works for them? Everyone who was integral in their success? Every living being with whom they share a planet? So that the altruistic instinct could be expanded to be helpful to many many more. ... no particular ideas atm, but commenting in case it helps someone else reach an actionable insight :)