[lilsoso]

Yes, startup culture is bullshit although not for the cliched reasons outlined in the article.

The author displays a lack of familiarity with US startup culture: "seventy-hour weeks", "Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections."

[John23832]

>The author displays a lack of familiarity with US startup culture: "seventy-hour weeks", "Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections."

For actual startups (not small established companies adopting the startup nomenclature, ig Stripe, SpaceX, pharma etc) this is true.

Also for these same startups, look at how many non white/non eastern Asian/non southeast Asian men you'll find as compared to anyone else. If you look at a medical/health services startup, you'll find slightly more women.

[lilsoso]

The startups you're describing are bad deals -- excluding the rare unicorn liquidity event. The DEIA candidates can afford to be pickier, as their applications are boosted in cushier companies (explicit quotas, etc).

Bay Area web app developers shouldn't be working 70 hours a week. By and large they don't.

SpaceX, counter to what you wrote, probably does push employees to work 60-ish hours a week. I recall reading job descriptions that said something to the effect of "expect to work weekends". Autists are likely the ones to be ensared by this trap.

[herbst]

> "seventy-hour weeks"

Isn't that somewhat true? In Switzerland 40 to 43 hours is considered full time and the far majority never works more than that. And that's with 5-6 weeks of free holidays not accounted yet.

[pr07ecH70r]

I worked for 2 years in a pharma-startup in Basel. First (and last) try from my side to work in a startup. I left early on. Now it is struggling for survival, cutting more than 50% of staff. My my experience there, I could say that it fits the profile described in the article.

"Work during the weekends" was masked behind the "be passionate" mantra. Before investors everything was shiny, inside was a rotten apple. Management conducted themselves in a pompous and "self-entitling" way every single day.

Not sure if all startups are so, start like this and than change, or just I had the bad luck of finding one of the bad ones.

Regarding passion, in my opinion, it is for those who really are in for the creation process. Creating something new, something that really changes things. Something that also brings financial freedom or at least makes them feel very very good. Otherwise, there is no such thing as passion without satisfaction. You can’t transfer passion. You can’t make other people passionate (at least not, if you are not Gandhi or someone similar).