Anyone in SV or a startup should 100% read Disrupted. The book is hilarious and does indeed show the complete and utter divergence between what Hubspot leadership et al.”say” what their culture is and how the culture is actually experienced.
Worth noting the book is from 2016. Some times it takes a punch in the gut to make a change, but that change is possible. See: Uber after they replaced their CEO.
I have no idea how things look at HS now, but I can't imagine it's exactly as bad as it was four years ago.
Quite a big difference between the two examples, wouldn't you say?
The worst thing said about Hubspot in the book is that it's a cold-calling meat grinder for new college grads, and that company basically embodied all the ridiculous rah-rah stereotype of startup culture. That's what I remember at least.
Uber OTOH had a culture of sexism and sexual harrassment that the CEO failed to address, while also flouting taxi laws in several countries and losing unimaginable amounts of money chasing pipe dreams like self-driving cars.
> FBI documents accessed by journalists via a freedom of information request revealed that HubSpot attempted "multiple failed attempts to manipulate and extort people” with the intention of stopping the book's publication.
One of my favourite books. So fun. I read it at the same time than a few other coworkers and, sadly, we found ourselves in a very similar environment. From that point on we were just laughing around at every situation that resembled situations from this book.