Oh, I thought startups actually were like that, since I've never worked at one because being in perpetual crunch-mode sounds terrible. Plus I feel like any prom

Oh, I thought startups actually were like that, since I've never worked at one because being in perpetual crunch-mode sounds terrible. Plus I feel like any promise of some payoff in the future is really a setup to get fucked by someone who understands finance better than me. I'm not going to grind my life into dust so someone else can have 4 vacation homes instead of 3, then turn around and give me a $5k "attaboy". DHH calls the all-consuming startup lifestyle a "pervasive myth". I really don't know how much of a myth it is, but if a myth becomes pervasive enough, it's as good as reality in many scenarios. If enough people believe a dollar has zero value, then it does.