5 ms·

Startup Culture Runs on Bullshit

56 points by cratermoon 3y ago

iancmceachern 3y ago
See: Weird Al "Mission Statement" https://youtu.be/GyV_UG60dD4?si=KVhLdP0SQoGo0MzO https://youtu.be/GyV_UG60dD4?si=KVhLdP0SQoGo0MzO
- nunez 3y ago
  I would say this is more of a dig on enterprisey executive corporate speak, but I can see it applying to the startup world too
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    In my experience being through 3 big acquisitions there is usually a time where one morphs into the other.
andrei_says_ 3y ago
Dan Lyon’s book Disrupted is a mandatory reading.
molteanu 3y ago
"Startup job descriptions read more like religious vocations or calls to service than realistic previews of work conditions." Right. And we still hear voices buzzing around about "propaganda" from the East, how bad the "other side" is with its citizens. While working at a company, I would read their website and job postings for the future employees. And half of it was not true. Blatant lies. And instantly wondered how in a society that puts Truth on such a high pedestal, such companies still exist, are allowed to exist and are even praised. For a person stepping, unknowingly, into such traps it might be their mental health which is on the line. These are not just innocent lies. They shape lives. Such lives are shaped, twisted and turned in all directions by people with money or greed or just careless with their words and actions. Good write-up. Short. Straight. And to the point.
- nottorp 3y ago
  "Unleash Your Potential with a Game-Changing Job Offer" read a message I received on Linkedin. Didn't seem to be from a startup. Still bullshit if you ask me.
- xg15 3y ago
  > And instantly wondered how in a society that puts Truth on such a high pedestal, such companies still exist, are allowed to exist and are even praised. That one is easy: If you're a society that really puts the ability to tell good lies on a pedestal, you can easily lie to yourself that you only value the truth. And I do think some revelation of lies and liars is widespread, otherwise we wouldn't talk so positive about "hustle culture", "fake it till you make it" etc or idolise people like P.T.Barnum, Gordon Gekko or Donald Trump. (Not that I think we're worse than other societies here)
lilsoso 3y ago
Yes, startup culture is bullshit although not for the cliched reasons outlined in the article. The author displays a lack of familiarity with US startup culture: "seventy-hour weeks", "Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections."
- herbst 3y ago
  > "seventy-hour weeks" Isn't that somewhat true? In Switzerland 40 to 43 hours is considered full time and the far majority never works more than that. And that's with 5-6 weeks of free holidays not accounted yet.
  - pr07ecH70r 3y ago
    I worked for 2 years in a pharma-startup in Basel. First (and last) try from my side to work in a startup. I left early on. Now it is struggling for survival, cutting more than 50% of staff. My my experience there, I could say that it fits the profile described in the article. "Work during the weekends" was masked behind the "be passionate" mantra. Before investors everything was shiny, inside was a rotten apple. Management conducted themselves in a pompous and "self-entitling" way every single day. Not sure if all startups are so, start like this and than change, or just I had the bad luck of finding one of the bad ones. Regarding passion, in my opinion, it is for those who really are in for the creation process. Creating something new, something that really changes things. Something that also brings financial freedom or at least makes them feel very very good. Otherwise, there is no such thing as passion without satisfaction. You can’t transfer passion. You can’t make other people passionate (at least not, if you are not Gandhi or someone similar).
- John23832 3y ago
  >The author displays a lack of familiarity with US startup culture: "seventy-hour weeks", "Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections." For actual startups (not small established companies adopting the startup nomenclature, ig Stripe, SpaceX, pharma etc) this is true. Also for these same startups, look at how many non white/non eastern Asian/non southeast Asian men you'll find as compared to anyone else. If you look at a medical/health services startup, you'll find slightly more women.
hnaccountme 3y ago
There was a book written about this Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein
elektrontamer 3y ago
"Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections" I get those without connections but women and minorities? Give me a break. Asians absolutely killing it and there are simply far fewer women in the industry.
- iteria 3y ago
  Startups run on long hours and heroic efforts. That selects against women who are time sensitive due to caretaking duties. Even if a woman doesn't have a child, they're often still time constrained by other obligations to family. Minorities, though I have no idea. Unless they mean there's a bias towards prestige degrees? Then sure.
  - api 3y ago
    It's interesting seeing a lot of people from tech culture recently freaking out over birth rates, led by characters like Elon Musk. Yet at the same time they insist on perpetuating an economy that is structurally hostile to reproduction, especially among high achievers (and not just women). They're complaining about a social phenomenon they're driving. If the economy is a contest to time compress things as much as possible and demand as many working hours from everyone as possible, things like raising children get sacrificed. This is the simplest explanation for the extraordinarily low birth rates in some countries like South Korea that have normalized insanely demanding work cultures.
    - EchoChamberMan 3y ago
      They want to have their cake, and eat it too.
  - elektrontamer 3y ago
    > Even if a woman doesn't have a child, they're often still time constrained by other obligations to family. How is that the would-be investors problem? Can we say the industry is rife with misogyny like the author is implying here?
- 3y ago
AymanJabr 3y ago
Defeatist mentality. The author doesn't give any practical solution to the problem, or things anyone could do to improve their specific or general situation, we call that whining.
- NilMostChill 3y ago
  So i have two genuine questions: > The author doesn't give any practical solution to the problem, or things anyone could do to improve their specific or general situation. Are you implying that nobody should be writing about anything they don't have a practical solution to ? and > we call that whining. who is we ?
  - tharne 3y ago
    > Are you implying that nobody should be writing about anything they don't have a practical solution to ? I think the commenter is implying that we live in a culture where people think they can change the world by whining loud enough and long enough about a problem so that someone else fixes it for them, rather than doing the hard work of fixing it themselves.
    - cratermoon 3y ago
      The first step to addressing a problem is to give it a name and cause. Solutionism without understanding is a waste of effort.
      - tharne 3y ago
        > The first step to addressing a problem is to give it a name and cause. Solutionism without understanding is a waste of effort. Sure, but once things are given a name and a cause, you typically find very few people willing to actually do the work. You'll find most people aren't much interested in the issues they claim to be passionate about once the cameras are off and social media has moved on to another topic.
      - EchoChamberMan 3y ago
sealeck 3y ago
The thing which really irks me about "bullshit culture" is that it inhibits running companies properly. For example a lot of startups don't focus on quality of execution and efficiency (although this is changing) because they convince themselves that what they are going to discover/create will be _so_ impactful that basically everything else is immaterial in comparison (once they've created X it will make so much money that it doesn't matter how much they burn now) and things like work culture/organisational problems/profitability are not to be prioritised. I think there's a case that chasing short-term profitability is bad and can inhibit making more profit in the long run. I don't think there's a case that organisational disfunction is fine – it basically prevents people with great ideas and great teams from reaching their goals. Look at companies such as Uber to see what can happen when you fix the extremely intense organisational problems in a company (under Dara Khosrowshahit Uber has basically had a massive turnaround). There's the a16z theory that it's better to just throw as much money as it takes money at a problem because it takes too much time to work out a more efficient way to spend the money and you're going to be making infinite money soon. I actually think this is really dangerous – even if we assume that there's infinite money, there's only so much time that we can allocate to certain problems (because time is limited) and an inability to work out how to prioritise and allocate scarce resources in an effective way stops companies from growing.
- EchoChamberMan 3y ago
  Maybe worse than short term profits is the assumption of infinite growth - endless, year-over-year, growth. Uncontrolled growth in the human body is called cancer. The commodification of labor is also extremely damaging: it devalues experience, and creates a preference for credentials over skills.
tharne 3y ago
To be fair, most jobs where one is sitting on a computer all day run on bullshit.
krapp 3y ago
Yes. Bullshit and Adderall.

56 points by cratermoon 3y ago

See: Weird Al "Mission Statement" https://youtu.be/GyV_UG60dD4?si=KVhLdP0SQoGo0MzO https://youtu.be/GyV_UG60dD4?si=KVhLdP0SQoGo0MzO

nunez 3y ago
I would say this is more of a dig on enterprisey executive corporate speak, but I can see it applying to the startup world too
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  In my experience being through 3 big acquisitions there is usually a time where one morphs into the other.

andrei_says_ 3y ago

Dan Lyon’s book Disrupted is a mandatory reading.

molteanu 3y ago

"Startup job descriptions read more like religious vocations or calls to service than realistic previews of work conditions." Right. And we still hear voices buzzing around about "propaganda" from the East, how bad the "other side" is with its citizens. While working at a company, I would read their website and job postings for the future employees. And half of it was not true. Blatant lies. And instantly wondered how in a society that puts Truth on such a high pedestal, such companies still exist, are allowed to exist and are even praised. For a person stepping, unknowingly, into such traps it might be their mental health which is on the line. These are not just innocent lies. They shape lives. Such lives are shaped, twisted and turned in all directions by people with money or greed or just careless with their words and actions. Good write-up. Short. Straight. And to the point.

nottorp 3y ago
"Unleash Your Potential with a Game-Changing Job Offer" read a message I received on Linkedin. Didn't seem to be from a startup. Still bullshit if you ask me.
xg15 3y ago
> And instantly wondered how in a society that puts Truth on such a high pedestal, such companies still exist, are allowed to exist and are even praised. That one is easy: If you're a society that really puts the ability to tell good lies on a pedestal, you can easily lie to yourself that you only value the truth. And I do think some revelation of lies and liars is widespread, otherwise we wouldn't talk so positive about "hustle culture", "fake it till you make it" etc or idolise people like P.T.Barnum, Gordon Gekko or Donald Trump. (Not that I think we're worse than other societies here)

lilsoso 3y ago

Yes, startup culture is bullshit although not for the cliched reasons outlined in the article. The author displays a lack of familiarity with US startup culture: "seventy-hour weeks", "Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections."

herbst 3y ago
> "seventy-hour weeks" Isn't that somewhat true? In Switzerland 40 to 43 hours is considered full time and the far majority never works more than that. And that's with 5-6 weeks of free holidays not accounted yet.
- pr07ecH70r 3y ago
  I worked for 2 years in a pharma-startup in Basel. First (and last) try from my side to work in a startup. I left early on. Now it is struggling for survival, cutting more than 50% of staff. My my experience there, I could say that it fits the profile described in the article. "Work during the weekends" was masked behind the "be passionate" mantra. Before investors everything was shiny, inside was a rotten apple. Management conducted themselves in a pompous and "self-entitling" way every single day. Not sure if all startups are so, start like this and than change, or just I had the bad luck of finding one of the bad ones. Regarding passion, in my opinion, it is for those who really are in for the creation process. Creating something new, something that really changes things. Something that also brings financial freedom or at least makes them feel very very good. Otherwise, there is no such thing as passion without satisfaction. You can’t transfer passion. You can’t make other people passionate (at least not, if you are not Gandhi or someone similar).
John23832 3y ago
>The author displays a lack of familiarity with US startup culture: "seventy-hour weeks", "Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections." For actual startups (not small established companies adopting the startup nomenclature, ig Stripe, SpaceX, pharma etc) this is true. Also for these same startups, look at how many non white/non eastern Asian/non southeast Asian men you'll find as compared to anyone else. If you look at a medical/health services startup, you'll find slightly more women.

hnaccountme 3y ago

There was a book written about this Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein

elektrontamer 3y ago

"Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections" I get those without connections but women and minorities? Give me a break. Asians absolutely killing it and there are simply far fewer women in the industry.

iteria 3y ago
Startups run on long hours and heroic efforts. That selects against women who are time sensitive due to caretaking duties. Even if a woman doesn't have a child, they're often still time constrained by other obligations to family. Minorities, though I have no idea. Unless they mean there's a bias towards prestige degrees? Then sure.
- api 3y ago
  It's interesting seeing a lot of people from tech culture recently freaking out over birth rates, led by characters like Elon Musk. Yet at the same time they insist on perpetuating an economy that is structurally hostile to reproduction, especially among high achievers (and not just women). They're complaining about a social phenomenon they're driving. If the economy is a contest to time compress things as much as possible and demand as many working hours from everyone as possible, things like raising children get sacrificed. This is the simplest explanation for the extraordinarily low birth rates in some countries like South Korea that have normalized insanely demanding work cultures.
  - EchoChamberMan 3y ago
    They want to have their cake, and eat it too.
- elektrontamer 3y ago
  > Even if a woman doesn't have a child, they're often still time constrained by other obligations to family. How is that the would-be investors problem? Can we say the industry is rife with misogyny like the author is implying here?
3y ago

AymanJabr 3y ago

Defeatist mentality. The author doesn't give any practical solution to the problem, or things anyone could do to improve their specific or general situation, we call that whining.

NilMostChill 3y ago
So i have two genuine questions: > The author doesn't give any practical solution to the problem, or things anyone could do to improve their specific or general situation. Are you implying that nobody should be writing about anything they don't have a practical solution to ? and > we call that whining. who is we ?
- tharne 3y ago
  > Are you implying that nobody should be writing about anything they don't have a practical solution to ? I think the commenter is implying that we live in a culture where people think they can change the world by whining loud enough and long enough about a problem so that someone else fixes it for them, rather than doing the hard work of fixing it themselves.
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    The first step to addressing a problem is to give it a name and cause. Solutionism without understanding is a waste of effort.
    - tharne 3y ago
      > The first step to addressing a problem is to give it a name and cause. Solutionism without understanding is a waste of effort. Sure, but once things are given a name and a cause, you typically find very few people willing to actually do the work. You'll find most people aren't much interested in the issues they claim to be passionate about once the cameras are off and social media has moved on to another topic.
    - EchoChamberMan 3y ago

sealeck 3y ago

The thing which really irks me about "bullshit culture" is that it inhibits running companies properly. For example a lot of startups don't focus on quality of execution and efficiency (although this is changing) because they convince themselves that what they are going to discover/create will be _so_ impactful that basically everything else is immaterial in comparison (once they've created X it will make so much money that it doesn't matter how much they burn now) and things like work culture/organisational problems/profitability are not to be prioritised. I think there's a case that chasing short-term profitability is bad and can inhibit making more profit in the long run. I don't think there's a case that organisational disfunction is fine – it basically prevents people with great ideas and great teams from reaching their goals. Look at companies such as Uber to see what can happen when you fix the extremely intense organisational problems in a company (under Dara Khosrowshahit Uber has basically had a massive turnaround). There's the a16z theory that it's better to just throw as much money as it takes money at a problem because it takes too much time to work out a more efficient way to spend the money and you're going to be making infinite money soon. I actually think this is really dangerous – even if we assume that there's infinite money, there's only so much time that we can allocate to certain problems (because time is limited) and an inability to work out how to prioritise and allocate scarce resources in an effective way stops companies from growing.

EchoChamberMan 3y ago
Maybe worse than short term profits is the assumption of infinite growth - endless, year-over-year, growth. Uncontrolled growth in the human body is called cancer. The commodification of labor is also extremely damaging: it devalues experience, and creates a preference for credentials over skills.

tharne 3y ago

To be fair, most jobs where one is sitting on a computer all day run on bullshit.

krapp 3y ago

Yes. Bullshit and Adderall.