[mlthoughts2018]

It’s the same with the article “Great Hackers” and Graham’s previous impassioned advocacy of private offices for every knowledge worker, even in dense urban centers.

It’s frankly hypocritical of Graham not to ensure YC and its companies embody values like this.

Instead he and other “thought leaders” around VC want to be viewed as progressive, forward-thinking people with an advocacy to avoid commodity thinking towards workers & their lives and workspaces.

But it’s all lip service - bluster so Graham can sound like he’s the good guy but actually just function as the same exploitative commodity thinking old boys club kind of investor privately.

All the PR credit without actually putting his money where his mouth is.

[ptero]

> It’s frankly hypocritical of Graham not to ensure YC and its companies embody values like this.

That is a strange sentiment, sorry. PG is not some omnipotent being that can "ensure" anything for the companies he originally helped launch. His "enforcement" options are probably minimal, based on his (by now many times diluted) ownership. The best he can do is advocate, leveraging a lot of respect he still commands in the startup community. And this is what he is doing there. My 2c.

[mlthoughts2018]

Nah sorry, the leaders of organizations set the values and expectations, and if they make it a cultural priority, others will follow.

He is just profiting from pushing worse working conditions onto the end employee - conditions he has himself criticized but nonetheless does not actually put his money where his mouth is to engage in much more direct advocacy or culture building within YC & its companies - most likely because his views actually are hypocritical.

When it was himself and a few people dealing with a small family of startups, then he cared. He did not want those people treated in a commodity way. When his stake is in a nameless batch of companies each trying to grow huge staffs while offering very poor total comp (even accounting for equity) on false promises that YC startup workplaces would let you avoid the bureaucratic blockers of established companies that pay better, his view has shifted to see those workers as commodities, not to be invested in to do good work, but to be given the most threadbare open office working environments with the least investment and high built in expectations of turnover due to employees gradually realizing how poor the total comp is (even accounting for equity). YC is a sort of nicely branded start-up mill. Not an incubator, but a mill.

This is obviously much lower status than what Graham wants to be known for, so he talks a big game like it’s a very productivity-centric incubator environment, while tacitly endorsing practices that make it more like a mill, with poor commodity treatment of workers in terms of total comp and workplace conditions.

“Diluted ownership” is a poor attempt at an excuse for that.

[tomnipotent]

pg has never actually run a large workforce, so I take all of his advice on this subject with a (huge) grain of salt.

[mlthoughts2018]

It’s interesting to see it in contrast to Joel Spolsky, who actually did put his money where his mouth is and give employees private offices, even in Manhattan, and has continued doubling down on private offices as the right strategy year after year.