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> In a note to employees, obtained by TechCrunch, former CEO and founder Abraham Shafi encouraged employees to “adapt” and “be disciplined,” citing that WhatsApp grew to 450 million users with a team of just 55.

> “Becoming one of these iconic, impactful companies is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics. In fact, probably more challenging,” Shafi wrote in the memo, which was full of similarly outlandish analogies. “Like the Olympics, we know most people don’t want to be Olympians. In the same way, not everyone will want to walk the path we are walking. But for those that want to push their limits and find out what they are capable of, this culture is for you.”

With every day that passes I become more convinced that Silicon Valley was a documentary.

[lumost]

> But for those that want to push their limits and find out what they are capable of, this culture is for you.

Its really unclear to me why a startup would expect their employees to be game for this in 2023. Once upon a time, the equity grants could be worth something. For an average exit, an early employee could easily see a life changing amount of money - for a late employee, they'd still get a down payment or something meaningful.

If I'm at a company that capped the upside of my equity, that created an equity pool which is only meaningful on surprise upside, that is not doing well... why would I suddenly be game for increasing my workload by 20-30%?

[heavyset_go]

It screams of a mindset that says "I think my employees are idiots who deserve to be exploited if can convince them to be." No way in hell would that CEO ever be convinced of his own argument if he were in his employees' shoes.

I can see why it works, though. There are people who are motivated by the belief that they're more hardworking/better/etc than other people, and if you offer them a metric that could make them feel "better" than someone else, they'll try to meet it even if its to their own detriment. Hustle culture depends on these types existing.