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Absolutely! It's funny, I'm reading a lot of blog posts about "We have unlimited vacation and beer Fridays!" from startups, but no mention of how their company

Absolutely! It's funny, I'm reading a lot of blog posts about "We have unlimited vacation and beer Fridays!" from startups, but no mention of how their company actually functions (I'll echo "Valve and Github excepted"). Any psychopath can get a small group of people together and raise some money to throw at fancy laptops and build a product, and then proceed to run the business like their own personal kingdom. Startup doesn't equate to "awesome work environment" but for some reason people think it does, which ignores a large part of human evolution and psychology. Living in NYC, I hear horror stories from programmers who have left well-known "startups" in the area that are chock-full of "dysfunctional company bullshit". Yes, they produce products and people pay them for it, but they can't keep folks working there (which is a nice side effect for my company :D). Without having a fundamental sense of how to build an innovative company, all these startups are doing is cargo-culting the trappings of culture. "Sure, we give you standup desks and a MacBook Pro, but we also don't trust you at all."

michaelochurch 14y ago
Startup doesn't equate to "awesome work environment" but for some reason people think it does, which ignores a large part of human evolution and psychology. The nice thing about startups is the freedom from legacy and the small program size-- at least in theory. The reality is that multi-programmer single programs ultimately end up with one "blazer" and N-1 chumps who keep up with the blazer's changes. You have to do Unix philosophy small-program development or else almost no one is getting the one Startup Perk that actually matters: high productivity. I would rather be in a corporate R&D lab (if they still existed) than a typical startup. I am fine with upper-middle-class financial mediocrity, but don't make me do mediocre shit. Without having a fundamental sense of how to build an innovative company, all these startups are doing is cargo-culting the trappings of culture. Bingo. I am 29 years old and have already had the experience of getting career-fucking health problems from too much time in an open-plan office. I don't give the square root of a fuck about foosball tables and other diversions. At 8:30, I am at home with my wife, not playing XBox with co-workers. From my perspective, videogames peaked during Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, and Terranigma. Valve figured it out and focused on the one Perk actually worth giving a shit about: autonomy.

michaelochurch 14y ago

Startup doesn't equate to "awesome work environment" but for some reason people think it does, which ignores a large part of human evolution and psychology. The nice thing about startups is the freedom from legacy and the small program size-- at least in theory. The reality is that multi-programmer single programs ultimately end up with one "blazer" and N-1 chumps who keep up with the blazer's changes. You have to do Unix philosophy small-program development or else almost no one is getting the one Startup Perk that actually matters: high productivity. I would rather be in a corporate R&D lab (if they still existed) than a typical startup. I am fine with upper-middle-class financial mediocrity, but don't make me do mediocre shit. Without having a fundamental sense of how to build an innovative company, all these startups are doing is cargo-culting the trappings of culture. Bingo. I am 29 years old and have already had the experience of getting career-fucking health problems from too much time in an open-plan office. I don't give the square root of a fuck about foosball tables and other diversions. At 8:30, I am at home with my wife, not playing XBox with co-workers. From my perspective, videogames peaked during Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, and Terranigma. Valve figured it out and focused on the one Perk actually worth giving a shit about: autonomy.