[Aurornis]

> In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate.

My anecdote, FWIW, is that some of the worst performing startups do these tricks too.

There's something about flashy events and boondoggles that sound good on LinkedIn that draws bad founders into spending waaay too much on parties and fun activities.

Stripe obviously isn't in that category, but never assume that because a company spends a lot on parties and events that they're doing well.

[JeremyNT]

> My anecdote, FWIW, is that some of the worst performing startups do these tricks too.

I absolutely agree with this. Monkey see, monkey do.

I think the big winners who make it "fun" are the exceptions that prove the rule. Whatever they really have that leads to success (be it simply luck, timing, connections, market fit, whathaveyou) is a lot less visible and harder to replicate than the lazy, obvious stuff like "make the workplace fun for developers" which any wannabe can emulate.

[Solvency]

Seriously. Half of the Silicon Valley show was lampooning this corporate excess of frivolous indulgence.

[sokoloff]

My wife is not in tech (and so enjoyed Silicon Valley quite a bit less than I did when we watched it together).

Every so often, she'd express frustration about the "over the top writing" in Silicon Valley. Way over half the time, I could tie whatever it was she was complaining about to some concrete story from our industry.

[hyggetrold]

I read a great article about the making of the show and there were many real-life stories they couldn't include because they felt people wouldn't believe it was real.

I think their go-to example was meeting up with a Google X person in their offices and that person getting huffy about something or other and then trying to storm out. But then they had trouble with their keycard so there was that awkward pause because they couldn't just storm out and slam the door. Best part was that they were on inline skates (and rocking a pony tail!) so it was a totally Mike Judge perfect moment - weird silent tension as pony tail skate master is trying to beep himself out of the room.

I've definitely seen and heard about lots of strange things in SV that people simply wouldn't believe if they heard it.

[mlrtime]

Exact same situation here...

My wife thought the show couldn't be reality. I told her I'm confident that almost everything you see in this show happened in SV to at least someone, just not the same company/people in a short amount of time.

It's like if you took every story in SV history and compressed it to one company in 6 years.

[zilti]

I know wannabe-execs who unironically think the "tres commas" guy is cool