Startups are the most efficient organisations in the economy. Because you have to get shit done and can't fuck around. A lot of people love to fuck around and do "fake work". Only output and impact matter. Hard work is "hard", and at startups you can't hide "not working". It sounds pedantic but that's quite the reality, a lot of people just don't know what "work" feels like, and don't want to do it.
working hard does not mean shit. whenever you hear someone saying they want hard workers you should turn around and run.
delivering results is where it’s at. people do this at startups and companies of all sizes. nobody is gonna keep you and pay you if it does not make financial sense.
what happens in the case of a startup is that a lot of corners are cut in order to get something out the door and gain customers/marker share. it’s do or die. but: this corner cutting has its cost that, if successful, you will pay back with interest in the later stages. it’s not good or bad. it just is what it is.
bigger companies have more structure and are better about both optimizing for cost (ie we don’t want to build something that will cost us X now and 100X over the next 5 years) and optimizing for risk (if X leaves or we learn about Y market factor we should be able to keep going without going bankrupt).
the “what work feels like” is some bs. you define what work is for you and diminish other people that just don’t know the feeling. please.
Lol! It is possible to work hard but expend time and effort in the wrong things. Startups, especially if founding teams fo not have deep industry experience, spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel and rediscovering various footguns because they often cannot afford experienced professionals who know better. So there is quite a bit of wasted motion at startups.
There’s all kinds of BS you work on at a startup. Dumb projects to impress some VC to get that next round of funding... or chase something because the charismatic founder or influential investor is dead set on a crazy direction... or the CTO decides this company is their personal tech playground... or tech being overbuilt for scale that doesn’t exist yet... VCs that hold the company to impress their friends instead of actually being invested in the company’s outcomes... politics between competing groups of investors...
