[vinceguidry]

It's the ideal the whole industry segment is founded on. Just like every other ideal, it's attainable only by the extremely lucky. Everybody else has to deal with the externalities.

Strip the ideal away and people will leave in droves. Without a differentiator, startups are just like everything else.

[grosjona]

One thing that I've learned though is that you should try to work for rich people who believe that we're in a meritocracy. When these people see talent, they tend to think that it's much more valuable than it actually is.

[Viliam1234]

If those people are rich enough, they can surround themselves with talent, and notice that while talented people are a small fraction of population, in absolute numbers it is still a large number of people who need to somehow pay their bills.

Then it's time to play the game of "compete against each other, and the worst 10% gets fired". Suddenly the talent becomes cheaper, and stops talking about work-life balance.