[samrus]

Counter argument to that is that startups are the few (sole?) Type of modern corporation that set up the environment and incentives properly to foster hard, rewarding work.

Perhaps everyone would work just as hard but normal companies just dont foster that by, as the author says, "spending more time strategizing against their employees than their competitors".

Maybe your thinking is subject to a survivor bias, where you think only the people you see working hard are capable of hard work, when the rest were too but had it crushed by their employers