
Ask HN: Where did you find your “cult”? (As described in Zero to One by Thiel) - drhectapus
Just finished reading Zero To One by Peter Thiel and there&#x27;s an interesting chapter where he talks about how the best kind of startups almost resembles a cult.<p>The idea is that a culture of total dedication that looks almost crazy from the outside is required to make a startup succeed. In exchange, &quot;members&quot; experience strong feelings of belonging.<p>I find this idea fascinating because in my 30 years of life I still haven&#x27;t found a place where I &quot;belong&quot;.<p>So HN: where did you find your place of belonging? Was it in a new city&#x2F;country? University? A hackathon? A meetup of some kind?
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badrabbit
When you call an organization a cult,you are essentially saying that the
members accept leadership and belief without thinking for themselves and
applying rationality.

Theiel's palantir is a good example. A ton of smart people and good products
but as it appears not a single person doubts the organization's mission and
the horrific impact it has on society. Why? It's a cult, don't doubt
leadership,just be a good hacker and hack as you're told.

To each his own. For me, I can't imagine living like that. Even in the
military you can doubt and question unlawful commands/orders.

I would rather be an outcast and a failure than succeed, be well connected and
accepted by the group at the price of abandoning whatever conscious and
principles I have. I guess you can say I am not much of a joiner?

~~~
infinitone
And to that end, palantir is slowly failing, they lost a big NYPD contract due
to their bad PR and inability to have their software be interopable with other
vendors.

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mud_dauber
If you want to join an organization with a sense of mission & belonging,
consider who benefits from its success.

If it's the world at large - the underserved, the unlucky, the overlooked -
you've got a better chance of being able to look at yourself in the mirror
each morning.

I'd grimace if I saw Thiel in the mirror.

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reureu
I've worked for a few startups that have had a cult-like following, and it's
never gone well. If you gave notice, you immediately got the cold shoulder
from all of the execs - to the point that there weren't officially sanctioned
goodbye parties. People got pushed out if they asked any questions that could
be perceived as critical of the company or product. At one company I worked
at, people would cheer absolutely everything in company meetings ("we missed
our Q3 goals by 60%" _loud applause_ "Don't worry, we'll get it next time!").
Company has layoffs, and nobody would believe that it could be due to poor
performance, so they went with other implausible explanations.

The unfortunate thing about these cultures is that they self-select for the
worst kind of employee. If you think there are areas of improvement in your
company or product, and that's viewed as not being loyal, then you end up only
with employees who already believe the company or product is perfect.
Personally, I'd rather work with people who recognize the faults in their
product and are actively working to fix them.

The only exception I've encountered is where there's a cult-like following AND
verifiable performance of the product. Apple has a cult-like following among
employees and enthusiasts, but they also make products people love and you can
tell that objectively from their quarterly earnings calls [note: I'm aware
that Apple certainly has it's own sets of issues with its product and work
culture, my point is simply that a cult following of Apple is different from a
cult following of your shitty benefits platform].

These experiences led me to a, perhaps, cynical conclusion: the more cult-like
the culture, the easier it is for the executives and investors to fleece the
employees. While everybody is cheering the quarterly losses, and
unquestioningly supporting every product release, your executives are
negotiating parachutes for when the company gets acquired for dimes on the
dollar. It completely makes sense to me that Peter Thiel thinks this is a good
thing: he's benefiting from those cults.

~~~
xstartup
I think some low-level employees will greatly benefit from a class in
philosophy.

It's not about the fault or that if the employee is right.

Founder makes a promise to customers. He comes with an initial vision. It
might be a flawed vision but if the product has got any traction before you
even joined. It means his flawed vision works in the market.

Don't mistake market for the world. Don't mistake your world-view for the
complete truth of market or world.

Your worldview is just another way of seeing this world and unproven way since
that's not what got him his first customers. Why do you want him to bet on
your unproven worldview? I see newbie traders making this mistake over and
over.

That's the only thing which matters.

That's his worldview and his company took off within his worldview, there is
no reason to change that. Unless of course, you have an axe to the grind and
you are clearly irreplaceable, try that and if he is any good and catches you
halfway, next you are out of the company.

It doesn't matter who is right. It doesn't matter what is right. What matters
how consistent you are in your worldview. That's what gives company success.

If you have a superior worldview, best a founder can do is - fire you, so you
are set free and you start your own company, compete with them and then lose
until you correct your worldview.

They do not want to bet on your worldview, you are not above the founder, no
employee really is.

That's what you need to understand.

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justboxing
I think 'Cult' = 'Tribe' as described by Seth Godin.

[https://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/CurrentTribes...](https://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/CurrentTribesCasebook.pdf)

A better summary describing tribes. [https://blog.12min.com/tribes-summary-
seth-godin/](https://blog.12min.com/tribes-summary-seth-godin/)

To answer OP, you can't 'Join' a tribe. (see link above that expains why)

~~~
badrabbit
In a tribe you don't neccesarily have to blindly follow leadership. Cult means
you accept their values as-is,no questions allowed.

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rsp1984
I think this is widely misunderstood. Don't look for a "cult" with "members"
where you "belong". Instead look for a "tribe" of like-minded people that you
feel good being around.

The core difference is that cults defines themselves through a belief system
that each member has to submit to, whereas the tribe is founded on a wider set
of core values but allows or welcomes variety in its members.

Of course not all "tribes" will be for you. In fact most of them won't. You
know it's a good fit when meetings and conversations feel effortless and you
feel your opinions and ideas are understood and valued. Finding your tribe is
like a startup finding product-market-fit. It requires active search.

That said it's also entirely possible you won't find your tribe in your
workplace. In that case try to find it outside of work by joining
associations, clubs etc.

~~~
drhectapus
When I used the word "cult", it seems like many other commenters have taken it
in its literal sense (despite being in quotes). But yes I mean tribe.

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sp527
I worked at a Peter Thiel cult. In no uncertain terms: you don’t want to work
at a Peter Thiel cult.

~~~
pfarrell
Boy, I wish some sort of throwaway account or pastebin would fill in details
on that statement...

~~~
45h34jh53k4j
You can probably guess:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/agent-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/agent-
of-intelligence-how-a-deviant-philosopher-built-palantir-a-cia-funded-data-
mining-juggernaut/#72879fa97785)

------
neilk
At least under capitalism as we know it, no one workplace can supply the
meaning of your life. You could have a personal mission for what you want to
do with your professional life. But in any workplace, you and your employer
are only committed to each other as long as it's economically advantageous.

Run away from any CEO who says something like "we're a family". Your family is
committed to you no matter how economically valuable you are. That's not how
it is at the workplace. And you probably don't want it to be any other way.

Thiel goes even further and says that he wants a cult? Maybe that works out if
you happen to be CEO and also have a callous disregard for your employees'
health.

In terms of deriving belonging from projects: I think there are things to
learn here from Fred Turner, who has examined how Silicon Valley culture
interacts with Burning Man culture. I'm not saying Burning Man is good or even
better, but it offers a contrast between voluntary/amateur communities and
professional workplaces.

[https://logicmag.io/03-dont-be-evil/](https://logicmag.io/03-dont-be-evil/)

Quote:

"At Burning Man, what you’re rehearsing is project-based collaborative labor.
Engineers flowing in from the Valley are literally acting out the social
structures on which Valley engineering depends. But they can do something at
Burning Man that they can't do in the Valley: they can own the project. They
can experience total “flow” with a team of their own choosing. In the desert,
in weirdly perfect conditions, they can do what the firm promises them but
can’t quite deliver."

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45h34jh53k4j
This group identity philosophy is very destructive. Build your own identity
first before you sacrifice autonomy to groupthink.

~~~
xstartup
Sometimes, group exits before you. It has more experience under its belt.

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arsenide
I want to bring up a slightly different perspective, as an employee of a
relatively large corporation -- not a startup.

I'll preface by stating that my manager is fantastic. Within our team, we have
the capability of collaborating and making decisions amongst ourselves without
fear of reprimand from the higher-ups (in effect, shielded by our manager). We
don't hold standups. We don't have weekly team meetings. There is no mention
of "scrum" or "agile" or "standup" or any management buzzwords. Yet, our
domain is relatively complex.

Business-centric managers (project managers in particular) have no insight
into our day-to-day work partly because of the involved complexity -- we rely
on involved mathematics and algorithms to do our job. There is no need for PMs
to dig deeper to break things out since we always go above and beyond the
plain corporate expectations. This is while my manager (previously individual
contributor in a similar space for 20+ years) has never given me a direct
order on what to work on.

We make decisions based on the team's own best judgments and then act on them
to deliver great products. Business guidance (context) is given to us as a
team by this fantastic manager, based on his input, derived from the countless
meetings he attends on the team's behalf. But we have the final say as to what
is important to deliver after informal discussions explaining context -- never
in the setting of a meeting: just conversations.

This sense of belonging that I feel with my team and the organization goes
hand in hand with full autonomy over my work and believing in what we are
doing: to deliver the best products we can for the customers.

I can't speak for the rest of my team, but I feel this dedication. For me,
this is because of two things: a belief that we (within our space, greater
than just the team I am a part of) are the best at what we do, and that I feel
as though I have the autonomy to act in the way that I believe is best.

To address some of the other commenters: sure, it is likely that my
contributions affect the company's profits by more than a full order of
magnitude, compared to my salary. But I'm happy here in my autonomy, able to
live comfortably, and I am able to make a difference based on my own judgment.

To me, this is the most important thing for me to keep living happily within
my "cult".

------
segmondy
What kind of place do you think you will belong to? what characteristics are
you looking for? For me, it was the hacker and demo scene in my teen years.
There was no money involved, it was all fun. Money changes the dynamic of
things and people don't play nice since it's a zero sum game. The only
environment that I see today like that is the open source scene, but
unfortunately once a product gets popular it quickly get's commercialized.

------
cowpig
I'm going to have to question the premise of your question.

I don't believe that the "best" startups resemble cults. I don't think you
should feel like you're missing something because you haven't experienced
that.

I'd more likely use the word "worst" to describe places with cult-like
cultures, because Mr. Thiel and value very different things.

Peter Thiel is a venture capitalist interested in short-term profitability and
has a very dog-eat-dog moral framework, whereas I care about long-term
sustainability and the net effect of businesses on humankind. I suspect most
of us are probably better off thinking more like me and less like Thiel.

That's not to say that I don't see a place for obsessiveness or singular-
minded pursuits. Profit-motivated enterprises with that sort of culture are
nearly always bad news though, and I even outside of that I'm pretty wary of
the sort of tribal mentality that those cultures cultivate.

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mcphage
> The idea is that a culture of total dedication that looks almost crazy from
> the outside is required to make a startup succeed. In exchange, "members"
> experience strong feelings of belonging.

So few startups out there _deserve_ that kind of dedication from its members.
If the result of its success is (a) the owners make a lot of money, and (b)
another chat app exists within the world, neither of those are good enough
goals to deserve that level of dedication.

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HiroshiSan
Perhaps the question is not where you belong but what dent do you want to make
in the world? For instance, say you wanted to get humans on Mars, then you'd
most likely want to work for SpaceX.

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hkmurakami
An Accelerator.

Hobby (sports) group.

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codeonfire
Thiel is a Trumpist and neo-fascist. Would not be taking advice from him.

~~~
codeonfire
See for yourself:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoysIfCPn6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoysIfCPn6w)

An apologist and enabler. These people would enslave America while saying they
don't support the things that their leader does or says.

