
After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake - wolco
https://torontolife.com/tech/truth-tech-insider-got/
======
lucidone
I'm surprised by the amount of salt (for lack of a better word in my
vocabulary) in the comments. I've worked at a Canadian start up. It was not a
unicorn, but you were expected to work long hours, be a "10xer", always be
responsive, and put in hours on the weekend. Those expectations were never
made explicit, but the company had a lot of churn for those who didn't "fit
the culture" or acquiesce to the cult of personality.

I enjoyed the article - is this too strong a look in the mirror for most
folks? My ideal job now is one where I can live in the bush, have boring but
steady work, and otherwise not care about programming after 5pm and feel OK
with myself for it.

~~~
dmix
Working for a big company/megacorp without valuable good stock options/bonuses
on weekends and off-hours is dumb and abusive.

On the other hand these startups are voluntary organizations. You choose to
work there or not. I don't see anything wrong with a company deciding on a
culture/work enviornment which attracts people who are very dedicated to the
company (and hope to be rewarded in the long term as such) and are willing to
sacrifice personal time more than typically expected at a usual company.

Some people love working and solving hard problems (and having tens/hundreds
of thousands of people use their software) more than going to restaurants or
night clubs or having family - at that point in their lives.

It's one thing to work obsessively and to the detriment of your health. But
that doesn't mean a small team of "10xers" is necessarily a toxic/abusive
arrangement that people are forced to engage with.

There will always be plenty of 9-5, no nighttime/weekend type jobs for
software developers. You just won't find them as often at high-growth/high-
risk+high-reward type startups.

That said, not all high risk/reward agencies require an obsessive/super hard
worker type either. But that type of commitment isn't necessarily a bad thing
either (unless they do it to the point of hurting their own health, which
hurts the intellectual/physical ability and ultimately their contribution to
the company).

I know for a fact it's possible to put above average commitment into a
company, while still being entirely health. But it's certainly not for
everyone, nor should it be. That also doesn't mean you should feel bad for
getting fired or pushed out of such a company because it's not for you.

~~~
wpietri
> On the other hand these startups are voluntary organizations. You choose to
> work there or not.

I think this sounds good in theory and is very shaky in practice.

For example, look at indentured servitude [1], where people can sell
themselves into time-limited slavery. Once common, it has been banned. You
will find people suggesting we bring it back while waving the banner of
"freedom".

It's especially erroneous here. This whole article is about how he thought he
was getting into one thing based on the hype, but that the reality was deeply
different. He talks about it as cult-like, cults being organizations that take
advantage of flaws in human cognition to manipulate people.

If free choice is to mean anything, it must be a choice that was honestly
informed and unmanipulated. To use it as an excuse in a situation like this is
just victim-blaming.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude)

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
He talks about it as "cult-like" because they had standup meetings and used
industry-standard acronyms. It certainly does feel weird to transfer into a
new industry where there's a huge set of conventional wisdom you don't know,
but that's not exactly manipulative.

~~~
wpietri
Whether or not those are industry standard, they can be used in cult-like
ways. E.g., I love stand-ups myself and have promoted them vigorously. But as
with many Agile terms, a lot of the use I see and hear about is definitely
cargo-culted: ritualistic, dogmatic, and not very effective compared with
people who use them as tools to improve their work.

Here in particular he makes clear it's a veneer: "Six months in, I started to
see through the acronyms and the carefully maintained optimism of my
teammates. For all the talk of agility and disruption and 10X, there was a
deep fear of fucking up."

Real cults regularly use reasonable-sounding religious jargon and performative
optimism to paper over deep flaws. So I think he correctly describes this as
cultish. And that's before we even get into the other cult-ish signs. You can
do your own scoring here:
[http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html](http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html)

------
wisdomoftheages
"Competitive" company cultures are an enormous red flag for me, almost always
a mechanism to help executives drain employees to a lifeless husk without
having to actually pay for the privilege.

In my experience, companies have three ways to motivate employees.

One is to compensate them at a level commensurate with what is expected of
them (too few companies do this, even in tech).

One is to make them feel like they have a genuine stake in the performance of
the company, either because they believe in the company's mission (usually
impossible for a for-profit enterprise, except among the more gullible
employees) or they actually have an ownership stake in the business (virtually
impossible with the VC model, papier-mache stock options not withstanding)

The third is to build an artificial "competitive culture", so everyone is so
busy pushing themselves to the limit in competition with their coworkers that
they never stop to realize that the only prize is more money in the bank
account of their investors (who may peel a bills off the top and toss it to
them in the form of a 'performance bonus')

~~~
thaumasiotes
> One is to compensate them at a level commensurate with what is expected of
> them (too few companies do this, even in tech).

Companies don't do this because it's not a coherent concept. No two people see
the same workload in the same way.

Payment is based on what it would cost to replace you, not on what you do.

~~~
fsloth
"Payment is based on what it would cost to replace you, not on what you do."

I would perhaps rephraze this as 'payment is based on the market rate'. It has
more into it than just cost of replacement. The replacement cost becomes a key
metric when presenting a counter offer to an employee who got a better offer
elsewhere.

~~~
consp
>> The replacement cost becomes a key metric when presenting a counter offer
to an employee who got a better offer elsewhere.

Do not forget that replacement cost the first few months to about half year is
quite high. You are far less profitable to a company if you are new as you
take time of others and are less up-to-speed. But that never gets taken into
account when dealing with pay increases for retained employees. E.g. you
should get significantly more than a new hire if you are with the company for
longer as it usually a benefit. Though there are counter examples to this
statement, so it is various shades of gray between new hires and paying
retained employees more.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Similarly, the replacement cost of a new employer is also high for an employee
if they have a family and don’t want to move and/or can’t gamble on the
conditions at a new employer. I would say thaumasiotes is correct in saying an
employee is paid what it would cost to replace them, in 99.9% of cases. Of
course the buyer takes risks such as not finding as good of an employee, cost
of training, legal risks of terminating or hiring, and the cost of the message
it sends to others, but it’s still the same concept.

No buyer wants to pay more than they have to, hence when the value an employee
adds is commoditized, you see that they get paid exactly what it costs to
replace them, hence the minuscule pay and terrible work conditions of retail,
restaurants, and hotels.

------
opportune
The author didn't seem work with devs (who were on the other side of the
country) or investors, so I have trouble fully accepting their generalizations
of tech startups as a whole. Sure, they experienced a lot of tech-specific
phenomena like free drinks at the office, but it sounds like most of the
problems were just due to interacting with a lot of obnoxious young salesmen.

The part where they act surprised at the use of normal business acronyms
(they're 40 and weren't familiar with the term "ROI" ??) kind of hurts
credibility too

~~~
sethammons
Yeah, ROI and KPIs. Real cult stuff there. </s>

And the part against "teammates" in favor of "co-workers." Some of this is
really stretching.

There were some toxic stuff going on there for sure, but there is a lot of
padding going on to get that article long.

I'm from a unicorn. Employee lower 30s. Still there. Free beer, trips to
Mexico, all that. Stand ups, acronyms, etc. At no time have I perceived the
environment as toxic.

------
AdamSC1
The Canadian startup scene is brutal. We have all of the downsides of valley
startups with very few of the benefits.

About five years ago, during my last job search, I interviewed at a well
funded (Series B) AI company that was looking for a VP of Marketing. After a
few months of interviews, including many early on where they had asked me for
my salary expectations, they offered me a starting salary of $70,000 CAD
saying that they had to "save money for Engineers because AI is expensive and
engineering is more important."

Another company I had worked at early in my career had two "co-CEOs" (who
constantly bickered all the time in a power struggle). The claimed to have
"flexible work hours" as long as you put in your regular hours and were there
between the core hours of 10-3. Since it was a long drive away from me, I
started doing a 7-3 shift to avoid the traffic. I noticed that the younger
staff would arrive around 8:30 or 9am, but was told that they were staying
until 7 or 8 at night and ordering pizza each night because nobody dared to
leave before the CEOs, who were two young single guys just out of University.
I felt guilted, and would end up putting in a few extra hours here and there,
but, when it came time for my performance review, I was told I wasn't a "team
player" because I wasn't staying to tough it out with the rest of them. The
one other employee who had a family and didn't stay late said "You don't pay
enough for this to be my full life" and the CEO said "well you make more than
we do and look at all the time we put in" \- he couldn't understand the
difference in the fact that this was his company that he owned, and for others
it was just a job.

I've got probably a dozen stories of Canadian startups who expect top 0.1%
talent, pay below market rates, and want you constantly in the office. They
try and make themselves seem great with office dogs, and catered lunches but
they are classic underpaid corporate jobs, with even higher expectations.

After a few years, I could see why Canada faced such a brain drain of talent
to the valley. Even the University of Waterloo, which is famous for its
Engineers notes that Canada even companies in the city of Waterloo have
trouble retaining their grads from going to the valley.

I started working remote and haven't looked back. But, it's a real shame
because I think Canada has such potential to be a great startup market and yet
the culture is way off course.

~~~
wolco
The Toronto startup scene is exactly like this. All of the negatives and no
upside.

My last company didn't allow me to work in my off hours. Paid below market,
needy owner wanted to be part of the developer team so he checks in untested
code at 3am.. mornings were fixing those commits.

It's a culture issue maybe weaker real technical visions with ownership which
creates 'medium' driven culture where everyone must be a sterotype.

You are better off working for a small business. Entity in most cases should
be ignored.

~~~
wpietri
I really feel for you here. And I think you're right that this comes from deep
weakness at the top. The investors want to get in on the Silicon Valley money.
The founders channel the Silicon Valley hype. But once you've started
pretending you are a genius who will make billions, you can't really switch to
the sort of humility that it takes to really get things done well. So the
whole company turns into an extension of the sham performance of the founders.

E.g., really great people I know are constantly sweating effectiveness. They
look at _outcomes_. They want to be sure they're having the desired impact on
customers, on the company, on its people. Plenty of mediocre people focus on
metrics, on following the rules, on seeking efficiency. Those aren't
intrinsically bad, but can turn that way when the proximate measures don't
align with outcomes. But the really scary ones I've met focus on _appearance_.
They want butts in seats, the later the better. They create artificial
deadlines and dramatic launches. They look at metrics and find ways to
manipulate them with no regard for actual outcomes.

If those fools were only harming themselves, I'd be ok with it. But when they
harm others, often hundreds of others over the course of their companies, it's
truly enraging.

------
scandox
> A job for life also meant that your job was your life. You went into
> teaching or sports reporting or proctology because it was a calling—it was
> who you were meant to be. But it’s been a long time since anyone has been
> able to count on a job for life. The tech industry led the way: our shift to
> precarious employment was hastened by more efficient algorithms, apps and
> Amazon.

What is the real history of employment stability? I mean I can imagine that a
Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is
even that really true? And that's for identifiable trades, which it seems were
not even easy to get trained into. So maybe the reality is that employment for
most people has always been precarious?

Hasn't tech merely brought this instability to a social class that was
exempted from it for the latter half of the 20th Century?

Would love to know more from someone who has some grounding in this.

~~~
carlmr
>I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for
life back in the day, but is even that really true?

I'm guessing in most countries a Blacksmith (a toolmaker if you will) was
usually self-employed. Of course they were "in-for-life", nobody was there to
fire them. But this doesn't mean that it was easy going, they could still have
a bad economy or some other blacksmith underbidding on price (or offering much
better quality, marketind, whatever).

You can open your own toolmaker shop as a programmer. Your success won't
depend on whether your boss likes you, but whether you can sell your tools,
whether you can provide the appropriate quality, and whether you're not
underbid by a large competition.

~~~
rebuilder
In medieval Europe, AFAIK trades were regulated by guilds. You couldn't just
become a blacksmith, the job was hereditary. And the prices of goods were set
by the guilds. I'm far from an expert on the matter, and I'm sure I'm painting
the era with a very broad brush here. The point is, I don't think you can
compare being a craftsman in previous ages to being self-employed today.

------
Delmania
Whenever I find myself falling for this, I keenly remember the advice given to
me from Your Money or Your Life, which is that you are at work for 1 reason
and 1 reason only: money.

Many people say they work for other reasons, like socialization, meaning, etc.
Robinson (the author) makes a point that you can find these things in
volunteer activities, and that your loyalty ends at the paycheck. Your company
will not hesitant to eliminate you when it's financially viable. Why should
you be any different?

~~~
golergka
Because you don't have to have only one reason to work. I mean, everybody
needs some amount of money for basic neccessities, but after that, it's a
complicated equation of different priorities. And if you choose money only,
then you're spending the best time of your day maximizing only one resources,
while letting everything else take the back seat. Why do it if you can get
socialization and meaning from work too?

Also, I don't understand your point about company not being hesitant to
eliminate you. Yes, but so what? There are two parties in the work-for-hire
transactions, and of course, both parties are looking out for their own self-
interest. I see no reason why they should extract the same exact resources
from this transaction, though.

~~~
Delmania
Some context is needed. The goal of Your Money or Your Life was to get more
people familiar with financial independence, the idea being once you have
saved enough to "retire" early, you can pick the projects you work on and the
people you work with. So in that case, yes, you do optimize for resources.

~~~
golergka
> the idea being once you have saved enough to "retire" early

That assumes that you have a very high natural ability to lay off
gratification to pursue your goals. If so, good for you, most people don't,
and this quality (conscientiousness from the big 5) is not really mutable
above very early age. So, if you do try such a strategy, most likely you will
fail because you don't have willpower for it, won't be able to suffer through
the job that you hate and took only for the money, and will hate yourself for
it.

------
crunchyfrog
Anyone else find it strange that this person worked in sales for one company
which called itself a startup despite being nearly two decades old but keeps
making these sweeping generalizations about startups and tech?

> Here was the biggest surprise about working in tech: even though everyone
> wears their team T-shirts and hoodies, rah-rah chants at the monthly all-
> staff meetings and competes for the sombrero of shame at the tropical off-
> site, no one loves the start-up they work for. No one feels secure. No one
> is loyal. There’s no certainty your start-up will exist in a year—or next
> week.

I can testify from personal experience all of these generalizations are false.
Did it never occur to the author that maybe they were just being exploited by
a crappy company?

~~~
krageon
You've worked at enough companies to make your own generalization and can say
with 100% certainty that they are false. The author happens to do the
opposite. Seeing as you are both talking from (your own) experience, you might
both be right. There's no way for the readers to know.

~~~
wh0knows
No, the author is making a sweeping generalization about ALL tech startups in
an article published on a news website.

The commenter on a forum is simply asserting that these facts are not true
about ALL tech startups, and it's perfectly valid to discredit a
generalization about ALL with one anecdote.

------
ivanleoncz
Raw and revealing.

As I was reading the article, I started to wonder: is this the Holy Grail of
everyone who wants to be disruptive, creative, productive, etc., when it comes
to work with tech products?

IMHO, independently of "the hat that one might be wearing", this "Zen of Star-
ups" is too much (unnecessary). Dozens of companies forcing this way of life
(snacks, beer, parties, video-games, etc.), creating a "cool world", when in
fact, it is not. There are investments and decisions affecting the direction
of a product (which must be successful for the sake of everyone). There is no
paradise in this scenario. This is too serious. Instead of all this
"blablabla", why not just keep a serious and cooperative environment? The "Zen
of Startup" is a trap (most of the time). Sounds like a lack of reality, which
could be addressed by a simple set of values between employer and employees:

\- honesty, cooperation, productivity, good compensations and missions

Throw away beers, snacks, spas, video-games, etc. These five things above, are
solid enough for a sustainable work environment, and things doing great or
not, there's no "Never Land" feeling (no illusion).

Someone has the money, and you might the have the skills that she/he wants.
Period. K.I.S.S.

~~~
vibrato
"honesty, cooperation, productivity, good compensations and missions"
Competence is a lot more expensive than beer and pizza. And it encourages less
time in the office, not more. It's easy to feel assured when everyone is at
their desks (doing whatever).

------
gerbilly
I've been at a few Canadian startups on the tech side, some as lead Architect,
and the thing I took away from them is that while they all called themselves
tech startups, what they really are are _sales organizations_.

In each startup I worked at[1] the sales guys would write deals that were
nearly impossible for the tech people to deliver on.

And when we did manage to deliver on them, it wasn't a 'win' for us.

For one thing it kept us in firefighting mode all the time because we were
never given the time to do the job right and and two, it just emboldened the
sales guys to write even bigger deals.

I burned out so bad from those jobs that I developed some medical issues as a
result. I'm mostly ok now, but in my opinion it's not worth it. If you aren't
a founder, those options won't ever be worth anything, and you will never get
those years back.

Even worse, if you burn out too badly, you may end up with permanent health
issues.

[1] I won't name them cos I have nothing good to say about them.

[2] The graphic midway down the article where someone responds to a text about
work from bed hit too close to home for me. I can't tell you how many pings I
got on slack about some server being down sometimes as the last thing I saw
before going to bed, or often as the first thing I saw in the morning.

------
sonnyblarney
I would be wary of joining any startup where a major shareholder is the Father
of the founder. Unless you really knew a lot about it. Second major red flag
is a company referring to itself as 'startup' after 18 years of operation.

~~~
randompi
What's wrong with the 2 red flags?

~~~
sonnyblarney
Nothing wrong with family funded business but if after 18 years the 'dad' is
the major shareholder it's a bad sign they were not able to raise much outside
capital.

It's not so bad, most companies are not 'high flying' but if they have
'startup culture' ... maybe not such a great thing.

Also - family companies can be odd. It very much depends on the situation.

An 18 year old company should simply not be referring to itself as a 'startup'
and they should have at very least be settling into some kind of routine. It's
fine if there isn't hypergalactic growth - but something fundamental should be
there.

~~~
hvidgaard
> Nothing wrong with family funded business but if after 18 years the 'dad' is
> the major shareholder it's a bad sign they were not able to raise much
> outside capital.

Or they didn't have a need to. Why depend on other peoples money if you're
fine without?

~~~
sonnyblarney
Because family rounds would have been earlier, and typically want less risk.
Also, there are almost 0 companies that can do just as well with $10M as they
can with 100.

More money is a powerful sign of momentum, and it generally increases
valuation.

So sure, maybe $50M is enough and 'more' just comes on worse terms ... but a
small company avoiding going past Round A ... it's far more likely they just
couldn't raise.

------
galfarragem
_> Some mornings, I had to reassure myself I hadn’t joined a cult. We were
teammates, not co-workers, and our meetings would end with a rousing “Go
team!”_

Most startups (if not all) are a cult: they have even 'evangelisers'. Why?
They need money from investors and sometimes with nothing to show. So founders
need to preach. Employees wake up one day in this environment also. Like in
any cult, some people believe more and some people believe less. Some don't
believe at all and some pretend to believe. Meanwhile money flows.

------
joshstrange
Annoying bro-style salesmen? Say it isn’t so! Good thing they only exist in
the tech startup world... /s

I’m not saying startups are a perfect, far from it, but this whole article
focuses only on the non-tech side of tech startups. Again, even for those in
tech, startups are far from perfect but still, it seems like the author
happened to interface with only the most juvinelle/brainwashed groups at a
company.

------
Annatar
This description of a startup is exactly everything I ever think of when I
hear or get offered "the next big opportunity": as an engineer, to me this
would be the equivalent of going to a Gulag, 7000 days in Siberia.

I cringed the entire time at the lucid descriptions of testosterone fueled
football throwing and bell ringing, tempered by own personal experiences with
sales and marketing (none of them ever useful, and often highly detrimental to
the places I worked at). These descriptions are exactly as I remember it.

A Gulag turned into a frenzy by testosterone. What a salt mine startups are!
It's like volunteering for a labor concentration camp.

I bow in silent respect to startup founders who toil away in their basements
and garages on their own spare time and with their own money, taking none from
anyone else. If you are reading this, perhaps it might make you smile a little
to know that someone somewhere admires you.

------
mountainofdeath
One litmus test I use is too look around physically and/or on the org. chart
and see where the majority of people are. That highlights the focus of the
company. If there are 15 senior sales people and an entourage of sales support
staff to each engineer, then it's clear that engineers are not particularly
valued not will they be.

------
pcunite
_Culture is an obsession at start-ups. They talk about it nearly as much as
they talk about sales targets._

Its a signal for: don't apply here if you're over 40.

~~~
sethammons
Can you expand on that? I disagree completely, but my sample size is small. We
have lots of people over 40 and we hire for culture too. We define it has
folks who are happy, hungry, honest, and humble. If you fit those boxes, are
enjoyable to work with, are customer focused, and interested in driving the
product forward with colleagues, you will fit our culture. We guard that
zealously.

Edit: typo.

~~~
jjeaff
True company culture can be anything. But if someone talks too much about
culture, it just makes me think about all the extra non-work parties, get
together a and events you'll be expected to go to.

My idea of a good company culture is a place where everyone works hard during
working hours and then goes home and leaves the work at work so they can relax
and spend time with friends and family.

~~~
justinhj
This is absolutely right. A mature company should be hiring the best person
for each role defined as the person that can do the job the best (of course
price is another issue). Hiring people because of some preconceived idea of
culture is usually code for agism or worse discriminations

------
lmm
> Top Hat’s software could very well make higher education more efficient but
> possibly less rewarding and meaningful for the student.

This seems like a variant on the just world fallacy - any improvement has to
be balanced by an equal and opposite cost.

It's not true. It's very possible to make things just better overall. And
college textbook publishing would be close to the top of my list of candidates
of things that are just bad for no real reason (other than lack of
competition).

~~~
skybrian
You both use possibly/possible and that's enough of a hedge that I don't think
there's an actual disagreement here on facts, just on mood.

It's possible that there is a way to improve on textbooks, but this company
won't find it. Or maybe they will?

It seems to me that writing just a single textbook (or equivalent content)
well takes a lot of work, and improving on it would be harder than that.

------
brailsafe
Seems like there's not a lot of circumspection happening in these responses. I
truly don't know how true the "brogrammer" stereotype in SV or Toronto is, but
my opinion changes dramatically between HN (in general) and say Blind, where
engineers with the vocabulary and attitude of young children are regularly
found waxing insecure about their 300k+ inflated salaries (as just one
example). I imagine the culture can vary dramatically, but if it doesn't, then
I'd wager that cultures fall into one of the extremes. Either the older
antisocial stereotype, or the one described here. Not really going on a lot
though.

~~~
starkingclojure
What's Blind? Is it a community? Tried googling but could only find a
consultancy of some sort.

~~~
brailsafe
Seems like that's what it is. Only heard about it recently through another
offhand reference in another HN comment.

[https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics](https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics)

~~~
Profan
Even just a quick glance at the stuff visible is pretty uhh.. interesting, I'd
think it was a parody site if I didn't know better

~~~
rsynnott
Just looked. It does kind of come across as an elaborate parody...

~~~
brailsafe
It really does. But in their FAQs they don't have a "Is this an elaborate
joke?" question, and they appear to validate work email addresses.

------
mettamage
In The Netherlands I see some similarities, but also a couple of differences.
The startups that I have worked for (3) did:

1\. Put in long hours (mostly as a result of deadline stress).

2\. Have a mission/vision.

3\. Acronyms and own company words that they invented themselves. Not
necessarily a bad thing, a new word can mean a very specific concept.

But they didn't have:

1\. Stock options

2\. An explicit company culture

What they did have:

1\. More direct than the companies described here. It wasn't brutally honest,
but definitely more honest than whatever I read in this blog post.

2\. Being more down to earth.

These final two things are also much more ingrained in Dutch culture than in
the US culture (and probably Canadian culture).

~~~
CalRobert
That's sad to hear. A friend of mine has been trying to get me to work in NL
for a while and she says a common hatred of overtime is a big plus. Maybe it's
just the company and not the country.

~~~
stwr
This is true, Dutchies tend to hate overtime and often in the elevator at
16:59. but there are of course exceptions.

The Netherlands is a great place to work though :)

~~~
adetrest
How is that a bad thing though? Why would you voluntarily work for free
(overtime is rarely paid in tech) and long for it? Giving away your most
valuable hours 5 days a week isn't enough, you should aspire to more? Screw
that, you're an employee not the owner.

~~~
CalRobert
What?? I view it as a wonderful thing.

Overtime is rarely paid, but the reality is the jobs I see in NL pay a lot
less than my current one. Enough less that I haven't moved. I might look in to
it in a few years when I'm not at a relatively high-cost stage of life (new
family, buying first home, etc.)

~~~
adetrest
I might have replied to the wrong comment by mistake because yes, we're
essentially saying the same thing :)

------
Shihan
Did I miss something, what was the mistake the author was referring to?

~~~
joeax
The story was a bit anti-climatic. I was waiting for that "oh crap" key moment
where he uncovered something profound and it would punch me in the gut as a
reader. The title could have been something as plain as "What I learned
working at a couple startups in Toronto"

------
onemoresoop
Personal anecdote: Worked for a startup for 14 months a couple of years ago.
The pay was on the low range with promises for the future. The perks: they
offered $10 for lunch on Seamless and one unlimited metro-card per month. And
$20 for dinner if we stayed after 8:30pm IIRC. The implicit untold cost was
that we were not supposed to leave the office during lunch since it would be
delivered there. In order to get edible food I had to put 10 myself since it
would not meet the minimum for delivery and the ones that did were trash. In
no time did I realize that we were paying for the lunch ourselves by working
the other half hour of the lunch break. The 8:30 dinner was obvious what it
was:)

Cart food was an option that I started taking after a while. Food was the same
and I would de-tense during the break. GC sponsored employees did not dare do
that.

When new clients were visiting the office (once in a while) we were supposed
to become animated and chatty, draw diagrams and seem deeply involved with
some problem; in a few instances 3 remote contractors that were doing design
work for us were asked to come to the office to make it look as if the company
is larger than it seems. They were thinking of buying a Foosball table and
play during those visits to impress potential customers. I left before they
they got it.

------
sonnyblarney
Great post.

I worked at a few startups (Unicorns) in Telecom. I was surrounded by amazing
senior engineers, but otherwise it was like a 'regular company'. Kind of like
a 'Verizon' if it were modernized, and they got rid of the ugly bureaucracy
and maybe took a few pointers from startups.

The SF youthful startup scene - no thanks - even in my youth - for the very
reasons written in this article.

These guys need some self awareness.

------
nwatson
The setup for this article sounds like a rip-off of Dan Lyons' book
"Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble." That was a fun book also
about a journalist joining the marketing startup ... this one called Hubspot.

Dan Lyons' blurb from Kindle edition: "Dan Lyons is a novelist, journalist,
and screenwriter. He is currently a co-producer and writer for the HBO series
Silicon Valley. Previously, Lyons was technology editor at Newsweek and the
creator of the groundbreaking viral blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs."
Lyons has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Wired.
He lives in Winchester, MA."

~~~
soniman
That was one of the few books that made me genuinely dislike the author. By
the end of it everybody at the company hated him, he didn't do any work but
wouldn't quit, he thought the job was beneath him and was contemptuous of the
people who were actually doing their jobs.

------
zerogvt
Reminded me of this excellent book
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted)

------
jpm_sd
We're going to look back on these days as a modern tulip mania. So many of
these companies (and serial startup employees) are not even living "fake it
until you make it", they are on a new and better plan: "fake it here until you
have to go fake it somewhere else, with someone else's money"

------
hartator
> That aura is also what seduces investors into betting millions on every tech
> founder with a half-decent PowerPoint pitch

If only.

------
hartator
> I would be overseeing an in-house propaganda

There is nothing wrong with content creation to reach marketing goals. It can
be informative, less intrusive than ads, and help company better reach
marketing fit.

------
teagee
Fittingly, the wikipedia page for this startup [1] warns:

> This article appears to contain a large number of buzzwords.

Wikipedia's definition sure falls neatly into the author's thesis:

> ...often have much of the original technical meaning removed through
> fashionable use, being simply used to impress others... Examples of
> overworked business buzzwords include synergy, vertical, dynamic, cyber and
> strategy...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Critical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Critical)

------
kochikame
More "Wolf of Wall Street" than "Silicon Valley"

------
leksak
Who's hiring who doesn't fit this mold?

------
lifeisstillgood
It seems he joined a company that after a dozen years was still looking for
product market fit and decent growth?

it seems the company probably in normal circumstances should have died - but
was on VC life support.

As such any number of pathological symptoms would occur - if you were living
day to day expecting to die any moment wouldn't you?

------
michaco33
The article is so cringy... made me say 'aww' a few times. I don't know -
sure, it's an outsiders take. Alright. I kind of want my 6 minutes back, why
is this even here?

------
hartator
> So we quietly hired an outside consultant to conduct a study of the brand
> and make a recommendation for a new name.

That seems a very bad decision from the author.

------
dawhizkid
According to the Wikipedia page the company was founded in 2000...I don’t
think you can be called a “start-up” when you’re almost 20 years old...

~~~
perennate
The article brings this up (but you can of course disagree with its
conclusion):

> I was initially mystified by how a company that’s been around since 2000
> could still call itself a start-up. It turns out it’s not unusual for
> software companies to hold on to the start-up classification long after the
> point when businesses in other industries would be considered established.
> Software companies are forever “pivoting”—changing their business plans,
> chasing emerging markets, pushing their platform in new directions. The day
> I joined, Vision Critical had some 700 staff and two main offices: most of
> the execs, the sales team and I were housed in Toronto, high above Yonge and
> Bloor, while Andrew Reid and the majority of the devs were in Vancouver,
> where they’d taken over part of a tower that used to house the Vancouver Sun
> newsroom. The company also had sales offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia and
> Australia. It was established, but it was also very much a start-up, and had
> only recently pivoted the business to cloud-based market research software.

~~~
flukus
That describes an established 18 year old company, they're not a startup just
because they decide to take the business in a new direction. It's like
describing IBM as a startup when they decided to move into computers.

~~~
perennate
Yeah I don't disagree with you, I was just pointing out something in the
article that I believe the parent comment missed, since it referenced
Wikipedia while the article mentioned 2000 directly.

------
verteu
Sounds like that bizarre "brogrammer" archetype that journalists claimed
represented Silicon Valley engineers.

I'd imagine high-growth startups hire many low-experience SDRs like the ones
described in the article -- is it possible people are conflating this 'tech'
sales culture with engineering culture?

Perhaps this is even done purposefully to provide a politically-correct
narrative for the low proportion of female engineers.

------
walrus01
Fratbros gonna fratbro.

------
asianthrowaway
Why all the animosity towards "frat bros"? I worked in a "nerd only"
environment before and I felt incredibly lonely. Nobody ever wanted to go out
for drinks, nobody even talked during lunch.

~~~
skybrian
We're talking in stereotypes, but I think it has more to do with your feelings
about competition than about lunchtime conversation. When I was working I
really enjoyed lunch (with the right people) and I'm definitely more into
nerdy things.

------
pj_mukh
tl;dr: "The legacy textbook publishers the company wants to disrupt aren’t
perfect, sure, but that doesn’t mean they need to be destroyed. Those
publishers do many things very well, and they do them slowly, with great care,
for a reason. We should resist change for change’s sake. I’m being naïve,
aren’t I?"

No, you're being wrong? Source: I used TopHat's predecessor products in
University and the predecessor was _Terrible_ (with a capital -T) and made
zero effort to fix things. I am guessing this is true for a large swath of
largely profitable web-first companies like Top-hat.

Bro culture is a deep-seated problem in tech that I'd love to see excised and
tbh, as the author points out, this happens when a company has more sales
people than "devs. But "gongs", incentives and aggressive sales goals are a
tale as old as Capitalism. The author seems to try to lump a myriad of mostly
inconsequential idiosyncrasies into a nice little bow called "bad".

Or maybe, Canadian publishers like Toronto Life are just catching up to the
tired old tech "expose's" American media has been writing for about 5 years
now.

~~~
rsynnott
> Bro culture is a deep-seated problem in tech that I'd love o see excised

When did this start, actually? Where did it come from? I don't remember it
really being a thing in the early noughties, but by the end of the decade it
was deeply entrenched.

~~~
pj_mukh
The author alludes to the problem, I'd venture a guess it is a cultural import
from Wall St. after the success of B2B companies in late 2000's.

~~~
gaius
No, it coincides precisely with the rise of RoR and is largely confined to
webdev, even if the trendy language had changed to Node. You just don’t get
C++ or R or Python brogrammers.

------
herostratus101
This writer really needs to learn how to edit his writing for length. No one
is that interested in his experience and he repeats himself constantly.

~~~
CosmicShadow
I read the whole thing, even though I knew it was nothing that new, but if you
look at where it's published and who the general demographic of reader would
be, it would be much more riveting and informative than to people on HN where
this is old news.

I read it because it was well written and about Toronto companies, which is
relevant to me based on my location. I got to see a bit inside companies of
which I am aware of and/or have met the founders of. There are only so many
large Canadian "Startups" so it's interesting to see a viewpoint from the
inside and how they compare to SF companies.

If you knew nothing of startups and happen to live in Toronto, this would be a
great read to learn more about them, especially ones you've heard of. I'm
pretty sure magazine style publications commonly have long articles, so I
don't know what you would expect. How often are HN submissions short and/or
designed for readers from HN?

------
fmajid
The author really enjoys the sound of his own voice (written in this case),
doesn't he? I couldn't make it past 20% of the logorrhea.

------
com2kid
I am incredibly sick and tired of this stereotype:

> The most common is the engineer who, slaving for hours in the proverbial
> garage, programs his (or, infrequently, her) way to glory and gets showered
> with millions by venture capitalists. He is the tech cliché—nerdy and
> socially awkward.

At least 90% of the technical co-founders I know are well spoken, well
dressed, and perfectly capable of attending social events.

It seems like 100% of the problems with this company come from letting sales
people (or in this case, men) fresh out of college dictate the culture.

None of the startup founders I work with let their companies go this far,
because at the end of the day they have work to do.

I've ran teams that had Whisky Friday, at 5pm we opened a bottle and invited
members from all teams to come, sit down, talk, and have a drink. Team culture
doesn't require being horribly irresponsible. People who didn't drink at all
came and enjoyed themselves just fine. (I can say that because for the
majority of the time I ran the team, _I_ didn't drink)

Same team did have nerf guns, but we also had nuanced discussions about world
politics, literature, and science.

On a related note, what is up with places having beer available around the
clock? Does anyone actually get up at 1pm and have a drink?

tl;dr Give me a few million and I promise to build a responsible, respectful,
team culture.

~~~
mcguire
" _I 've ran teams that had Whisky Friday, at 5pm we opened a bottle and
invited members from all teams to come, sit down, talk, and have a drink._"

How late did whisky Friday run? On the clock or off?

~~~
com2kid
An hour or two, some people would split off to play board games, others would
have a drink then hop on a bus or grab their carpool to go home.

Plenty of families on the team, sometimes kids + spouses would stop by and
chat as well.

------
skookumchuck
For me the trouble with the company was the product was as dull as a spoon.
I'd rather work at SpaceX.

------
andrew_
An incredible amount of butt-hurt and cynicism rolled up with well-worded
storytelling and topped off with a bevy of stereotypes and buzzwords, quoted
for effect.

As I approach "the hill" and prepare to age over it, I have accumulated a
metric ton of cynicism. But after spending nearly 20 years in the business and
having worked for multiple startups there's just one thing that I can't get
past with this article - the author just comes across as _incredibly outmoded
and get-off-my-lawn-y_.

~~~
sonnyblarney
It's just the opposite. This is exactly the writing of a thoughtful guy with
an inch of self awareness, giving us his experience at a couple of startups.

------
diminoten
This is _textbook_ bad culture fit. It's okay to not fit, but pretending like
no one will fit is wrong. I like being "on call" 24/7, I like working 12+ hour
days, I like being drawn away from social situations because of a work issue.
Why do I _have_ to conform to the author's idea of what an employee is?

This article is a _lot_ of words to say, "I didn't fit in with the culture of
this company, here are their names and you should think less of this company
because I didn't fit in."

