A few comments coming from person living in the heart (brain?) of Silicon Valley. I've worked at big law firms, a couple start-ups and am now at a huge tech company. And these comments have some broad generalizations not intended to excuse some notably bad behavior by SV execs:

1. The start-up culture, and its translation into a quasi start-up mentality in big tech companies, arose from small groups of individuals who worked ridiculous long hours for minimal to no pay because they wanted to - no HAD to. Most of these guys (yes - almost all guys) are grown-up versions of our own kids - intense, driven and most of all perseverative to the nth degree. You already know what this looks like. Your kid will fall down stairs because she's reading while walking, right? Your kid won't eat, sleep or even go to the bathroom until they absolutely have to. These are the "kids" that are at the base of the startup culture.

It makes no sense to them that their colleagues aren't likewise perseverative. They have "no-limit-on-vacation" policies, because who the heck wants a vacation anyway? In another time and place, they'd be scientists who never make it home from the lab, or writers who can't put down their pens. It's not that they don't love their families, their hobbies, etc. It's just that they honestly can't put down their work.

And competitive? You bet. But mostly not out of an "I'm better than you" thing. Remember - in the start-up culture, most folks are getting minimal pay/promotions anyway. It's about a gut level need to make it right. The merit goes to the one who solves the problems. And that person is the one that finally gets to scratch his brain itch.

And yes - the press has made much of the get glittering possibilities ($$$) a successful start-up presents. But 'round these parts, we've seen that (a) a start-up that isn't driven by somebody who NEEDS to make it work JUST RIGHT is almost certain to fail before anybody gets rich and (b) most start-ups fail even if they do have these sorts of folks. The pets.com style free-flowing millions are far in the past.

The trouble arises when the successful start-up needs to scale up. There simply are not enough of the persevartive people to populate a huge company. But lots of folks want to jump on the pre-IPO start-up bandwagon or into the hot tech company of the year, seeking excitement or $$$ or both. Thus - housing prices around here .... sheesh!

But most of these folks aren't wired the same way. They don't have the same NEED to be at work, the same need to pick at everything until it's JUST RIGHT. So the hours and the competition and the whole workplace environment is awful to them in an incomprehensible way. From their point of view - the culture is needlessly intense. They may try to fake the same level of intensity until they burn out. Or they may demand change, forgetting the source of the company's success in the first place .... The people that rise to the top of these companies have to be that sort of perseverative person, because that's inherent in what makes the company tick.

I'll freely admit that I'm not one of those perseverative start-up founder types. I love going to work with them, and I can hang with the culture for a while. It's exhilarating, but exhausting. After a while I have to step off and catch my breath. But I don't expect them to change to accommodate me. It's their essence, and changing it would kill the company. [Caveat - excepting of course the need for the culture to improve with respect to discrimination issues, and the need to be humane to their employees. But my experience has been that these folks actually want to change this. They just don't have any understanding of what it takes to make it happen.]

2. Does anybody but me think it's funny that Netflix keeps getting listed as one of these "Top Tier" firms. I love Netflix, think they have a brilliant future, realize they are a S&P 500 component, and don't mean to offend anybody who works there. But it seems they are in this discussion just because of their new maternity leave policy, which - see above re "who wants to take vacation anyway?" But anyway - bravo to the Netflix marketing/HR departments. They've surely upped Netflix's recruiting power!

3. I don't know how any of this would translate into the NY/Goldman Sachs/finance part of the world. I don't know a thing about what drives those folks. It must be something more than money, though, right?

Fun philosophizing with you all,
Sue