[205guy]

I feel the OP raised 2 strawmen:

1) Many jobs are at startups now, and those startups are roughly similar, therefore it's not cool anymore ("is the novelty even there").

That is just bad logic. It may be that startups replicated high pressure low gratification corporate jobs, but that's not inherent in the argument that there are more startup jobs. It could also be the case that the tech economy has really shifted from large corporations to small agile (and sometimes fun to work at) startups.

2) Startup jobs turn into corporate jobs, so you shouldn't take them in the first place.

That change is not a given, nor is it that the change will be done poorly, nor is it that the employee won't want the change by then. Anyways, if you get 1-3 years of startup experience that you enjoy, make contacts, have a chance at a payout, then there's nothing wrong with taking the startup job with the knowledge it may change and you may want out later--in fact, in every US employment contract, it's a given that the employee or the company may change their minds later.

I do agree with the idea that we need to demystify the startup scene. Being beholden to a VC is no different than to a corporate middle manager, they're both trying to carve out their little empires with your work. I think the interpersonal cost is real in certain cases, and the comment about fetishizing disruption is right on. But the 2 logical errors above weaken the message, especially since they are above the more lucid observations.

[obstacle1]

1) The author isn't arguing that. He is objecting to the portrayal of startups as more free, open, and fluid than traditional enterprise. Unless I'm bad at reading the author didn't even mention the ratio of startup:traditional jobs, so that isn't relevant. And the objection wasn't to the fact that all startups are roughly equivalent (which was, though, a point made). The objection was that startups are roughly equivalent to traditional enterprise in structure, form, and execution (i.e. Super Cool Startup is just as non-free, non-open, and non-fluid as Enterprise Shop Inc., and this is systemic). The equivalence comes from the startup scene having been wholly co-opted by a system (VC-istan, anyone?) that amounts to traditional enterprise (formulaic, mass-producing, repeatable templates). This is a textbook binary deconstruction: the startup/corporate dichotomy as it exists in popular consciousness is false.

Food for thought, see pg's comment in this thread: apparently there is now a formula for creativity and rebellion. Questions: if you can formulaically rebel, how is that rebellion? By definition your 'rebellion' is deterministic -- how is that possible? If 'creativity' can come by formula, what are you creating? The 'new' is just a function of what you already knew, i.e., it already existed. So the 'new' is by definition not new at all.

2) Again, the author didn't make this point. He argued that people considering taking a startup job should consciously look through popular delusion and consider the bad with the good. There was no mention that one should or shouldn't take a particular kind of job.