The founder/engineer social class division is one of the reasons why I expect the Silicon Valley ecosystem to implode and will be disappointed if it doesn't. F

The founder/engineer social class division is one of the reasons why I expect the Silicon Valley ecosystem to implode and will be disappointed if it doesn't. First, there are two types of founders: Made Founders and Hustling (it's a nicer word than "Marginal") Founders. Made Founders (often called "serial entrepreneurs") already have it worked out that, unless they rip off their VCs, they'll get a soft landing. I won't say that they don't work, but they have enough investor-rank friends that they don't really worry about anything, because if their companies tank, they'll be lined up with VP-level positions where they'll probably make twice the salary that they had as founders (typically, founders don't make more than $175k). They probably put in 30-60 hours per week, but they work on the fun stuff and have double-digit equity so... yeah. They worry more about managing up into the investor ranks than running a company, for obvious reasons. (If you build a successful company but lose control and most of your reward, you lost. If you fail but the investors like you and make you a Partner at their VC firm, you won.) It ain't a bad gig, although it's a bit boring because, well, you're a corporate executive. Being a Made Founder is based on pre-existing social class; either something you're born with, or something you luck into. Merit's not a part of it. Hustling Founders are the ones who don't have investor-level people pulling strings all the time and who really, really, really fucking have to pound the pavement-- and hope that a Made Founder doesn't decide to compete in their space, because then they're up against someone who's going to have 50 times the capital. In the 1960s, all founders were of the Hustling variety because the pedigreed people were still in banking, during the Bateman days when it wasn't a real job (3-martini lunch), and in a time when the pedigreed asswipes still thought the West Coast unprestigious. What the OP is describing is a cultural shift as pedigreed people with generational social connections jump into the game as Made Founders. They've never been employees or subordinates of any kind (except to VCs) so they don't have the empathy that it takes to run a company, and they tend to be low on competence spectrum (since the mainstream business elite puts its successes in hedge funds and private equity to manage billion-dollar deals, and throws its failures into VC and VC-funded tech). What hoodwinks a lot of people is that the Made Founders are great at presenting the appearance of Hustling Founders, and thereby they justify getting 100 times the equity as the employees they manage. In reality, most of the Hustling Founders (a middle-class crew) have been driven out and are unfundable due to a lack of social connections, and also because the amount of stress involved in dealing with VCs and abusive investor-level personalities is such a mental-health crusher that even normal people become paralytically neurotic after about 5 years in that game.