
What Your Startup Culture Really Says: the toxic lies afoot in Silicon Valley - mllerustad
http://blog.prettylittlestatemachine.com/blog/2013/02/20/what-your-culture-really-says/
======
mindstab
I'm actually quite surprised how offended some people are getting over this.
It seems like a pretty reasonable article trying to bring awareness to how
some of the things we laud thoughtlessly can be used as tools against us or
others and actually not further our ideals. I had assumed HN was more open
minded and deep enough to accept a critique and learn from it. Instead I see
it getting flagged, and people dismissing it and being offended.

For a culture that's supposed to love disruption, have anarchistic tendencies
and be counter culture, it seems everyone's pretty easy to hurt, easily
offended, a little close minded, and not at all open to anything questioning
them.

A little disappointed in the HN culture. We should always be reevaulutating
and in a state on constant flux. Status Quo is death because then we become
the old and some new group who isn't us will out innovate, out manoeuvre us.
Being status quo by definition means you aren't disrupting or innovating any
more. Why should we only focus on technology and not culture? It seems a big
weakness.

------
argonaut
Though these generalizations are certainly dripping with bitterness, I have
definitely seen bits and pieces of these phenomena in the startups I've worked
at and the startups I've been around/interacted with through my work.

I've definitely seen cases where lack of defined roles leads to not a flat
culture but in fact a culture where unspoken dynamics rule. I've seen
"cultural fit" used to basically exclude a few introverts who aren't able to
hit it off on a personal level with the founders (in this case, this meant
liking to party and drink and talk superficially), which meant passing over
some extraordinarily brilliant people. I've seen a lack of meetings lead not
to collaboration, but to siloing of different activities. This is often not
necessarily intentional, and the founders actually mean well, but it happens
more often than you think.

------
mindstab
Hey, unflag this, it's a really decent interpretation and can help wake some
people up and let them form better startup culture!

------
ChuckMcM
This reads like someone didn't get the offer they wanted, and the reason given
was that they were not a good fit for the company's culture.

First, if this _was_ the motivation for this post then I'd recommend you take
a deep breath and relax. Its not about you, its about them. And trust me when
I say if someone doesn't hire you because they don't think you would fit into
their culture, thank them. Nothing is worse for your own self esteem and
sanity than trying to get stuff done in a company trying to reject you
culturally.

Second, understand that culture rejections are like date rejections, sometimes
its the real reason, sometimes its a more polite way of saying 'no thank you'
but in either case move on.

That said, you spend a lot of time at the office, and you interact with these
people in a day to day way, startups are by their nature small and like
families small issues can be big problems (do you squeeze the toothpaste from
the bottom or the middle?). Unlike families, you get the opportunity to pick a
new startup when one doesn't fit. Avail yourself of that opportunity.

~~~
harryh
Your guess is wrong, and an easy way for you to dismiss the issues that the
blog post brings up.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I was trying to be nice.

~~~
harryh
You were dismissive. That's not nice.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I would be interested in what gave you the impression I was being dismissive,
I was shooting for compassionate.

Tell you what, now that I have a bit of time, allow me to share with you my
reasoning on why I responded the way I did, and perhaps you can share what you
got out of our author's post.

I have always held that 'snark' is a unit of emotional hurt, and this
particular posting appeared to be quite snarky. When I read provocative prose
with words like 'lies' and 'nuevo-social' and '1% poster children' I see
snark. And in this case 'I got no pony!'[1] level of snark. Thus I read the
posting with the impression that the author had suffered a strong emotional
blow and was venting. With that much hurt (perceived) I gave them slack for
their otherwise very sloppy reasoning.

Our author asserts, _"Culture is about power dynamics, unspoken priorities and
beliefs, mythologies, conflicts, enforcement of social norms, creation of
in/out groups and distribution of wealth and control inside companies."_ which
is a highly arguable statement. I would posit that culture is about creating a
structure to both set expectations and define success in an environment.
Nothing about power over you or creating "in" or "out" groups or wealth or any
of the things our author asserts. Our author further asserts that _"Culture is
exceedingly difficult to talk about honestly."_ which is also not true, they
are attempting to be "honest" here in spite of their own declaration.

As the topical 'setup' for what is an emotional rant, the entire position
statement in the first five paragraphs says exactly one thing "I (the author)
am mad that I am unable to understand (or possibly to accept) what people are
asking of me with regards to my behavior around others."

What follows then are a series of "sound bytes" pulled out as sub-heads with
the author's flawed understanding of what they mean. The author has gone out
of their way at times to attribute a level of deceit and malice to others that
borders on paranoid but let's stick with what they wrote and go over it shall
we?

On the sound bite "We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit" the
author claims the intent is _" ... We have implemented a loosely coordinated
social policy to ensure homogeneity in our workforce. We are able to reject
qualified, diverse candidates on the grounds that they aren't a culture fit.
while not having to examine what that means ..."_

That reads very much like they (or someone they knew) considered themselves
"qualified" and yet their application for employment was "rejected as a poor
cultural fit." It seems they have taken the path that it is simpler to blame
this on some malicious prep school like club when, on closer inspection it
never is. The fact is that startups are desperate for qualified talent, that
is what makes them go, however if the way in which a candidate comports
themselves suggests they will cause friction with people who are already hired
then, even if they are qualified, hiring them would be a bad decision if it
increased problems at work.

Let's used a contrived example, lets say that three guys decide to start a
company and they have always had a rich tradition of commenting their code. In
fact they often exchange ideas in comments as they check things into a source
repository. They find that this transparency in the thought process allows
them to evolve the code based faster in a compatible way. Now, when
interviewing to employee #1 (or #10 doesn't really matter) they ask about
writing comments in code and the candidate replies : "Writing comments in code
just slows me down, anyone to stupid to not be able to see what the code does
shouldn't be reading my code." They may stop right there and say, "Thanks, but
your not a cultural fit for company."

Nothing about power, nothing about secret societies, just a knowledge that
working with this candidate won't "flow" because they depend on that dialog in
comments and this candidate is unwilling to write comments. It's the founder's
company, and this is a classic case of find people who are "a cultural fit."

Sound byte number two is "Meetings are evil and we have them as little as
possible." which our author conveniently translates to _"We have a collective
post-traumatic stress reaction to previous workplaces that had hostile,
unnecessary, unproductive and authoritarian meetings."_

One asks (and I did) "Where did that come from?" And I answered myself with "I
wonder if this person doesn't have any tools for keeping in touch with what is
going on, and so a lack of meetings threatens them." Because keeping in touch
as a developer is as straight forward as reading the commit log and talking to
people. Now from a strategy, vision, mission perspective? Sure you want
someone to let you know where you are heading, but most engineers hate a
weekly status meetings that don't provide any value. So it seems our author
has again projected their own mis-understanding into some malicious deceit.

One which stuck right out was the response to "We don't have a vacation
policy." The authors interpretation of this is _"We fool ourselves into
thinking we have a better work/life balance when really people take even less
vacation than they would when they had a vacation policy."_

It would have helped had the author suggested what they interpret that to
imply (wow that is a lot of indefinits!) but they chose not to so we have to
speculate. Immature individuals will interpret a 'no vacation policy' to mean
they can take vacation whenever, and for as long as, they want. A more
reasoned interpretation is that folks can count on taking some time off to
rest and recover _once their product ships._ A 'no explicit policy' does _not_
mean that folks don't care how much you produce, rather it has always meant
that you take time off to keep your productivity high when you are at work.
Some people cannot handle that level of responsibility, either through lack of
maturity or through mixed expectations. It isn't the culture that is evil
though. Its like teachers who don't grade the homework, they still expect you
to do it so that you have satisfied _yourself_ that you understand the
material. It doesn't mean "woo hoo we don't have to do the homework!"

Every single 'culture' point our author attacks they do so in a way the
imputes some amazing ill will on the person espousing the point.

The most charitable interpretation I could come up with was that this person
was feeling hurt, I accept that it is possible they are simply quite immature,
or unable to internalize the concept of a culture model based on peer respect
rather than explicit rules. I don't know if they read HN but on the off chance
they did, I was trying to express, compassionately, that people aren't trying
to deceive you with this discussion of culture, they are trying to
communicate. Once you understand what they are saying you will understand
better whether or not you want to work with them. I guess I failed at that.

[1] <http://i-want-a-pony.com/>

~~~
harryh
Let's say a couple of guys start a company to make it easy for people to send
money back and forth to each other over email. They, like all startups, are
desperate for talent so they recruit like mad. But it's important to them not
only to get folks with engineering chops, but that they get folks who will fit
in with their culture. In fact, one time they reject someone because he said
that he liked to play hoops and they thought that was a funny way to say
basketball.[1]

Fast forward to another tech boom. We've got another company, vaguely similar
to the first, but this time they want to make it easier for websites to accept
credit card based payments. They also recruit like mad and care a lot about
culture. In fact they have something called a Sunday Test: "if this person
were alone in the office on a Sunday would that make you more likely to come
in and want to work with them?" It's a bit less clear what that means in this
case, but it certainly sounds like they are optimizing for homogeneity.[2]

Those two stories are both about culture. They're both about companies working
hard to define their own internal culture in a way that they think will make
them more successful. Further I think that, in many ways, that they are right
about this guess! Monocultures are very very useful in small early stage
startups!

But aren't the effects of this kind of fucked up? Shouldn't we at least
acknowledge the fact that not making a job offer to a guy because he used the
word "hoops" is a little weird? And this doesn't even get into related issues
of race or gender or class backgrounds.

Much of Shanley's post is about this sort of thing. She's not saying that
meetings are great, or flat hierarchies are bad or that free lunches are
bullshit. But she is saying that these things aren't 100% good. They come with
some significant downsides that are rarely acknowledge inside of the
"everything we do is awesome" startup bubble.

I don't think she is imputing ill will (well mostly, she is a bit). Rather
she's just trying to throw some water in the face of a very self satisfied
startup culture. She's saying "look around you guys! Some of these values that
you think are 100% awesome have some big downsides!" And I think that is very
laudable.

Apparently some of her rhetoric was a bit off the mark as some people are
dismissing her post as bitter. That's too bad, because I think that she brings
up some very real and very important issues.

1\. [http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-
cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay)

2\. [http://firstround.com/article/How-Stripe-built-one-of-
Silico...](http://firstround.com/article/How-Stripe-built-one-of-Silicon-
Valleys-best-engineering-teams)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Ok, well I think I see where we part ways, lets see if I can communicate it.

I'd like to preface this discussion with a simple question, "Have you
experienced working a company where you did not fit with the culture?"

I think it is important to consider that question in the context of discussing
culture because it is informs on the downside, or the negatives associated
with a poor fit. From reading your response, and shanley's post, I do not see
that experience in your writing.

Before getting to your specific argument, its important to know if you agree,
or at least acknowledge, that a cultural misfit can be very impactful on how
somone experiences a situation. The sexism of a 'brogrammer' culture, casual
racism of a supremicist culture, or even the passivity of a conformance
culture. So let us agree on what we mean when we say what is 'culture' and
what is 'not culture.'

When I say that our company has a 'we have a culture', I mean it to encompass
those "principles we value", the "expectations we put on behavior", and the
"judgments we apply to our interactions". In its simplest form it defines the
kinds of qualities and behaviors we admire in our co-workers and those
qualities and behaviors we dislike. I would further stipulate that for any
group of people who spend time together, the degree with which those values
and judgments align directly correlates with the 'pleasure' of spending time
together.

I think if you can't understand these claims about what I mean when I talk
about culture, then its safe to say we'll not make a lot of progress :-)

So lets look at your argument.

You use as your first example, Max Levchin discussing the importance of a
consistent culture at PayPal in the early days, and their decision not to hire
someone because they called the game of basketball 'hoops'. And you agree with
Max's claim that a small group of people that share a very similar culture are
more productive. Then you add this: _"But aren't the effects of this kind of
fucked up? Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the fact that not making a job
offer to a guy because he used the word 'hoops' is a little weird?"_

What Max says in this is that the general consensus on the existing team is
that sports are a waste of time. I know a number of engineers who hold that
view, they are amazed you can earn 9 figure incomes by throwing a ball around.
Max seems to recognize that if this candidate came in and talked about "march
madness" (the NCAA Tournament) they might be chided or kidded for their
enthusiasm, snarky comments would be made about going to 'waste their time
bouncing a ball while the team gets the product done' or something equally
lame. Max was _protecting_ this candidate and protecting the team at the same
time. People can be very passionate about sports teams, and not respecting
their team, or their sport, often gets translated into not respecting them.
That is corrosive.

Your second example came from a recent article that was shared on HN where the
folks at Stripe talked about the 'Sunday Test' question. That isn't a
candidate question, that is an _interviewer_ question. The interviewer asks
themselves, "Is this candidate so awesome that if they felt they needed to be
here Sunday to get what they were doing done, _would I want to come in here
and help them get it done?_ "

I don't know if you read it that way, but it is a 'gut check' on the part of
the interviewer to see if they feel the kind of chemistry (or cultural fit)
with this person that would inspire them. Given the challenge of finding
people, and the down side of picking poorly, it's a way to try to get around
how much you might "like" their presentation to see how you really feel. That
level of self awareness doesn't come naturally to people, so tools like this
help.

So I think you answered your question, the effect is _not_ fucked up, the
effect is that the team doesn't get distracted and this possible future
employee doesn't feel alienated. Paypal avoided hiring people who would feel
bad at work, Stripe gave their interviewers a way to ask themselves "how do
you really feel about hiring this person."

And yes, its about culture, but it isn't about lying, its about _honesty_ and
knowing how the current team values things.

You added, _"Much of Shanley's post is about this sort of thing. She's not
saying that meetings are great, or flat hierarchies are bad or that free
lunches are bullshit. But she is saying that these things aren't 100% good.
They come with some significant downsides that are rarely acknowledge inside
of the 'everything we do is awesome' startup bubble."_

And this is where I think we read different articles :-) Shanley was calling
out what she perceived to be lies. She didn't call them "often misinterpreted
statements" or "meaning perhaps not what you think they mean". She said,
_"This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often contribute
value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the much deeper,
systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and the
materialistic trappings that can disguise them."_ and then goes on to assert
that each sound bite is code for some rampant abuse of trust or an attempt at
deception.

Shanley argument fails the test of truth, which is one way to analyze her
rhetoric. She asserts time and again with the lead "What your culture might
actually be saying is ..." So follow that lead. Now take any one of her sound
bites and say "Ok we stipulate this is the actual culture." Now does it pass
the sniff test? Does it even make sense?

Start with #1: We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit

Stipulate her assertion: We reject qualified candidates based on superficial
and unimportant reasons.

Now go find a startup where this assertion holds and the startup has made it
through seed funding much less a series A.

#2: Meetings are evil

Stipulate: We avoid projects that require strict coordination across the
company so that we don't have to have meetings.

Find a company that does that.

#3: We have people responsible for making work fun.

Stipulate: A mostly female team exists that gets the mostly male workforce to
stay late.

Etc, etc. They all fall down. Startups don't do those things, they can't
afford to.

There is nothing in her article that supports any of her assertions, even
anecdotes, its all snark as far as I can see, and by now I think I've read it
four or five times. She is either very inexperienced, very hurt, or both, but
I don't think she has surfaced any deep cover up or deception.

~~~
tptacek
Chuck, this thread stops being so benign when it starts offering up defenses
for Levchin's hiring advice, which is frankly odious. That Levchin note is
prefixed with a recommendation to actively resist diversity early on, and is
followed by a rationalization for gender discrimination.

If "culture fit" starts becoming a shibboleth for prejudice, that's just fine
with me. One problem my company has never had is discrimination, but the
occasional genuflection to "culture" in our hiring process has always annoyed
the hell out of me; it was never more than the excuse we made for making
hiring decisions without evidence.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Fair enough, let's not confuse ourselves though.

Shanley's blog post asserted as motivation malice (vicious lies) to some
common phrases used to describe some company cultures. She didn't really
support any of her argument and used a lot of emotionally charged language
that I interpreted to mean she had been told that she wasn't a good 'culture
fit' for a job.

harryh here, felt I was being dismissive (pejoratively) of her accusations,
which I sought to understand better as that wasn't my intent. He proceeds to
try to put together an argument around the emotion shanley wrote.

The basis for my compassion to shanley's emotion was that I have experienced
people who are trying to work in a place that is incompatible with a company's
culture, and so I see 'cultural fit' as a legitimate line of reasoning for not
offering someone a job. I've also seen those same people flourish when they
found a better fit for their style of work.

That said, any part of a company's culture that is based on sex, age, race,
religion, or sexual orientation is fundamentally illegal. But that isn't what
we're talking about here, people who "love sports" are not a protected class.

So perhaps it is required that one stipulate in a discussion on culture that
any culture that subverts existing anti-discrimination laws either by intent
or by proxy is bad and should be called out as such. Prosecuted even. If so,
consider it so stipulated.

And I would be the first person to say, in a discussion of company culture
that the more inclusive and supporting a culture is of diversity and
viewpoints, it is both healthier and more successful for the company over all
as it is welcoming to the largest number of potential employees.

But that is not what this thread was about. Not for me. This thread was about
ascribing malice and deceit to some concepts that are bandied about in the
form of company culture. I see it as unfair to those companies who really care
about their employees, and offering up one of these as a company value only to
find the well poisoned by a someone such as shanley. To what end?

~~~
tptacek
I agree with 'harryh that you were being dismissive, but also like 'harryh I
don't think that's a big deal. It's just a message board.

Rather than take the time to write a coherent response, I'm just going to hose
the room down with bullets:

* If a tech company was heard to be rejecting candidates for not liking sports --- for instance, if well-qualified applicants were turned away for not knowing which teams were in the American League Central --- nerds would be on their lawn with pitchforks and torches.

* There are plenty of "classes" of that aren't protected. For instance, your political affiliation is fair game under the law. Discriminating based on personal politics seems reasonable to approximately zero of us.

* Age discrimination is both not regulated in the class of companies occupied by most startups and rampant across the industry.

* Lots of non-protected behaviors are in reality proxies for protected behaviors; in particular, "culture fit" is an extremely common proxy method to filter out older works and mothers.

* In the post we're talking about, the post linked in this thread, and even in Paul Graham's essays, there's a theme of startups having the privilege to ignore antidiscrimination laws early on. It does us no good to pretend that everyone's on the same page about protected employment classes when the most widely cited writings in the field say that the ability not to hire women who might have children† is a benefit of starting a company.

* Environments where team members can't fit in if they don't drink, don't work noon-9:00PM, don't listen to the same music, don't play foosball, or don't each lunch with the team are common in startuplandia, but aren't intrinsic to the concept of a startup. You say you know people who were happier when they left these kinds of companies. But people are also happier when they leave companies where they're harassed. Surely that's not a justification for harassment!

* You say you picked up emotional language in the post, and thus (we infer) engaged with the content differently. You should be aware that studies show that people --- men and women alike --- engage with women differently than they do men.† In particular, the ability to write a blog post and have it not be read as "emotional" is at least in part a male privilege. Try rereading the post, but this time, instead of coming to an early conclusion that it's emotional, tell yourself "this is a radically different perspective on startup culture than I have; what can I learn from it?"

I'm an arrogant guy, but I'm not arrogant enough to assume everyone is on
board with this (yet): it is immoral to reject candidates for reasons other
than predicted ability to produce for the team, and it is immoral to
rationalize non-performance rejections by inventing grounds to predict poor
performance (like "culture fit"). In most circumstances, I think it's probably
immoral to run companies in a manner that would prevent qualified parents of
small children from contributing. There are real culture fit issues, but the
air has been so thoroughly poisoned by startup misbehavior that we're probably
going to have to invent a new term to describe them.

† _Can you spot the problem with this logic?_

†† _Here's a recent study pertaining to the
sciences:<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109*>

~~~
ChuckMcM
I was unpersuaded by the argument shanley put forward that specific phrases in
use by startups were in fact code for abusive and immoral behavior. So yes, I
was (and continue to be) dismissive of _the argument_. Until harryh mentioned
it, I had no knowledge of their sex.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I care very much about good corporate culture and
effective teams. And have worked at various times, and various places, to
change behaviors that were antithetical to that. Weeding out and shutting down
those 'proxies' you mention. I see that as part of what 'management' does,
when its working well. I don't believe I've ever stated that I condone any
form of discrimination, direct, indirect, or proxied.

I also recognize in myself a tendency to react strongly to speech which
indiscriminately maligns what are generally good conceptual frameworks. A
similar example was Steve Yegge's maligning the entire concept of Agile
programming. It hits a sort of conversational reflexive kneecap in me,
resulting in a nearly involuntary response in rebuttal.

It is, as you say, 'just a message board.'

~~~
tptacek
I'm not here to judge you. If you think the gender of the author had no impact
on you, that's great. I'm just suggesting that we keep our subconscious biases
in mind as we evaluate arguments.

I don't know what forms of discrimination you do or don't condone. You point
out that love of sports is not a protected class; from that, I infer that you
might be OK with the idea of discriminating based on that; you are, in fact,
(gently) sticking up for that behavior.

I also don't know what forms of discrimination you're aware of. It is clear to
me that the operators of many tech startups are not aware of the impact their
"culture" has on their inclusiveness. Most of those operators would claim not
to be biased against e.g. mothers, but many would in fact be creating
environments hostile to them anyways.

When we start to venture into this discussion, it's important for you to
realize that we are also validating the post that you've dismissed. Perhaps
we're using language that is more congenial to you; that's a fair thing to
point out, but if so, again, I suggest you re-read and re-evaluate the post,
because you may have missed other things in it.

It is all love† with me and this comment.

† _And procrastination_

~~~
ChuckMcM
_"I suggest you re-read and re-evaluate the post, because you may have missed
other things in it."_

This is shaney's thesis statement:

"Culture is about power dynamics, unspoken priorities and beliefs,
mythologies, conflicts, enforcement of social norms, creation of in/out groups
and distribution of wealth and control inside companies. Culture is usually
ugly. It is as much about the inevitable brokenness and dysfunction of teams
as it is about their accomplishments. Culture is exceedingly difficult to talk
about honestly. The critique of startup culture that came in large part from
the agile movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest
slogans."

You agree that this is a fair and true characterization of "culture" ? You
were persuaded by her text that this is an accurate description of what
motivates a corporate culture?

~~~
tptacek
I found that asking the questions she asked about different elements of
startup culture was in fact a useful exercise.

~~~
ChuckMcM
You didn't answer my question :-) That's okay of course. When I read her
thesis it struck me as so patently false, I found myself asking the question
"What sort of event set this off?" not "Are there insights here I should
consider?"

A neighbor of mine had his home seized by the bank, it was underwater, and
they weren't willing to negotiate the terms of the loan. He posted a piece
that was not a whole lot different than shaney's except that he asserted that
Banks were an immoral and illegal institution run by the 1% to fleece the rest
of us of our money, he made several "points" about how what they said they
were doing one thing, when the reality was that those activities were just a
cover for taking more of your money. He uniformly ignored any market impact
banks had and screamed in rage at their inhumanity.

He wasn't successfully making any sort of argument that banks have no reason
to exist other than to fleece us. Nor did he develop any insights about how
banks might be improved, or what we could use to replace them. He was angry,
and hurt, and sad, and bitter. Banks, and the shadowy 'them' that run them,
became the focus of his anger.

I get it that you and harryh saw a deeper question about culture in the
article than I did. I just saw what looked, in form at least, venting and
anger. Just like my neighbor's bank screed.

~~~
mindstab
I'll weigh in, I had no problem with her thesis. What about it did you have a
problem with?

As for her questions, they weren't a blanket judgement, more sometimes this is
how far wrong what you say with good intention can go. It's a warning. And I'm
sure it wouldn't be too hard to back each up with at least one example which
is all that's needed to demonstrate we need to be more careful and more aware
of our internal company culture.

------
devindotcom
The most bitter possible interpretations of these ideas, but still possible
interpretations.

That said, the merging of work and hobby is at a very advanced state in SV,
which is a good and a bad thing. It's not so odd that they should overlap
policy-wise.

~~~
neilk
Blanket statements wouldn't be fair, but she's caveating it with "might" every
paragraph. But I think these dysfunctional patterns are more the norm than the
exception today.

------
zmansiv
While I'm sure these are completely valid truths in some startups, I can't
help but feel that the author doesn't really know what it's like to be
successful in that sort of environment. You can paint things a hundred
different ways depending on your perspective, but if this sort of "culture"
works for so many people and they're happy with it, I don't really see an
issue. OP was simply not a good fit for the startup scene's culture, and that
isn't a BS statement meant to bar out anyone who doesn't fit the mold.

~~~
zalambar
Your response seems to suggest that the OP has not been successful and is no
longer a member of the "startup scene". I don't see why you would assume any
of that to be true or to be the motivation for this post.

I found it to be a useful reminder that practices I am often excited to see
are not necessarily indicators of a healthy culture I would want to be a part
of. I enjoy stoping for a minute to think "wait, could that apply to us?". I
think it is important to consider if the culture behind a given practice is
positive and empowering or how much it has shifted toward being dysfunctional
or harmful.

------
dysinger
irony <https://twitter.com/shanley/status/299286770594508801>

~~~
mindstab
or possibly sarcasm :P

and demonstrating the point. Life can rock. it doesn't have to be a grind.

------
bruceclark
This reads like someone just learned what big words are. This is one of the
least communicative articles I've seen in a long time.

I couldn't even get through it because everything was over-elaborated and
dramatized.

