I feel ashamed to work at a startup, reading this. Thankfully I've seen how dysfunctional A16Z is up-close and don't have much hope for their future competence.
They are doing whatever they can for attention because all of their investments and “blockchain” nonsense have been poor showing the company just got lucky and is run by idiots.
Yeah, I lost respect for A16Z after they launched their some-300M crypto fund a few years ago. This hire just cements that loss of respect, not that the guy is any bad but the fact that they wanted to hire this guy speaks volumes in terms of how biased their hiring process is for non-partner positions in the firm.
My efforts and labor are always wasted working for someone else. I tend to work for startups because it feels like I'm donating time to a cause or effort that could help people in need.
When venture capital spends their (precious) money courting unqualified nobodies, they remind us all that they are less mature than the people they sponsor and reward exactly the wrong actors. These are mistakes that don't get made by legacy employers in FAANG and Fortune 500, because they have a basic understanding of self preservation.
It reaffirms to me that the right way to spend my career is on meaningless but benign work that doesn't go to benefit madmen with a hole burnt through their pocket. A16Z is absolutely reprehensible in this respect, with YC as a close second in many ways. I'm lucky that much of the work I've seen under their patronage will never come to light and ruin my CV.
Ah, an idealist! God bless you, my friend. We need more people like you.
I understand what you mean in regards to your efforts and labor are always wasted working for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've done weeks, sometimes months, of research to determine the best possible way to move forward on a project, given it's constraints, only for the so-called "decision makers" to take a totally different path, that leads to additional work and eventual ruin.
