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by crtlaltdel 2434 days ago
every startup i’ve been involved with that is compromised of mostly first-time employees (either little work experience in general or no previous startup experience) has exhibited similar tendencies:

1. emphasis on drinking: “gotta have happy hour/get a keg”

2. off-site team building exercises that eat into personal/family time

3. disparaging competition, especially incumbents, often based on superficial things like the dated look of their UI or branding

4. periodic episodes where potential investors or current board members are brought to the office and the staff is expected to all be on-site and “look productive”

for context, i’ve been in large enterprises and a number of startups. the startups where the core staff had been through the process before lacked what often gets pegged as the “brogrammer fratdev shop” vibe.

also, almost every shop that got a keggerator or pingpong table ended up using those items to store things...

[note: edited for formatting]

3 comments

Just a Keg Light weights - I recall our small core network team got through £400 of sake at a Christmas do and that was in the mid 80's
#2 #3 #4 are common at big companies that employ all genders.
If I can't play some ping pong during my interview, I'm not interested.