[rdtsc]

> Engineers in the startup world are like engineers everywhere else in technology work: second-class workers who exist to expend their life in the form of labor for (relatively) token compensation in return

Be careful, that breaks the marketing veil too much ;-)

The problem is that to attract and keep engineers busy and happy it is important to tell them stories about changing the world, "breakthrough technologies", paradigm shifts. Also it is important to explain inability of many engineers to discern how equity gets allocated, how options and stock work and so on. "oh look you get 10000 shares!" type tricks.

Now, granted, those are not mutually exclusive, some do work on breakthrough technologies.