[Noseshine]

I used to work for a non-US company's US Bay Area office during the dot com boom. I recognize a lot of this, especially the parts about our own company. And about myself and my coworkers at the time - worrying a lot about status and superficial issues, a lot more than about our product and what we were actually doing there (nobody really had a clue). That startup didn't even tank but was sold for a few hundred million - because the "market" carried us and at least some people, especially the developers, did some work, and because the Dilbert world is everywhere.

The good thing: I learned that there is no magic in either SV and/or venture capital, they muddle through like everybody else. I learned that I suck at anything "business" (I'm a good techie and communicator, that must suffice).

I also learned that while an American business may be really horrible in many of the details - but on the executive level I experienced (as a techie "guest listener") that when it comes down to business the 0.1% they get right blows most everybody else out of the water. It was so embarrassing for my own executives. At those high-level meetings I gained a huge respect for some of the guys at the top of American firms. It seems they figured out what's important and what is only "nice to have" and concentrate on the former. They also managed to ask exactly the right questions - we didn't have an answer for a single one of them. But we still felt very, very important...

It's not just Silicon Valley though. I remember that my 2nd job after university was with that (foreign) startup (at first in their country). The very first conversation getting a coffee in the kitchen when I came in Monday morning for my first day was a guy heavily complaining about perceived injustices and "office politics": Will I get the (big) office I deserve? I should get the group leader position, that other guy is a leader then so should I be, etc. It was all about status. My 1st job had been with a major multinational company, and while politics certainly existed it wasn't that... childish. Most of the time we thought about and cared about what we were doing, not about status. That's a side effect of joining a huge organization where there isn't nearly as much dynamics, so much less fear of missing out on opportunities of quick advancement. In that startup you have people go from barely-graduated to department head in a very short time (and this was a several hundred people "startup" by that time becoming a "leader" wasn't just an empty title on business cards). Personal connections to the founders mattered a lot!

I think there's a lesson in this. High growth and opportunity for advancing quickly can be quite dangerous for what people are focused on.