After reading this article, and the one from Fortune[0], and his post on LinkedIn[1], it feels like he's out there scraping together blatant PR for his new book. And it makes me honestly wonder whether he went to work for HubSpot looking for a story to write in the first place... and being a writer for the "Silicon Valley" TV series doesn't really help his credibility in that sense.
Disclaimer: I really don't know anything about this story. Something just feels off. Maybe HubSpot really is that bad, who knows.
After listening to the interview from @CPLX's response[2] I have to agree, he doesn't seem outlandish or anything. And all of the points he makes about HubSpot's content model being complete spam I agree with. I've definitely never liked interacting with HubSpot as a consumer, that much I know.
I feel like in these scenarios he's incentivized to get outlandish PR for his book, so some of the things I'd take with a grain of salt--sentences like, "The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall." But there is probably a lot truth to his story as well.
@ghaff also summed it up well: "That said, I find it's a cogent perspective even if it probably shouldn't be taken as literally accurate reportage."
He comes across as quite lucid and nuanced in my opinion, and also credible, as he has been covering the tech industry for decades and has a sense of context (he was also fake Steve Jobs by the way) rather than a "look at these crazy start up kids" point of view.
I have a certain level of discomfort with embellished storytelling presented as journalism (think Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson though I don't put Dan at that level). And, in his book, Dan makes some cracks that are arguably reverse-ageist. That said, I find it's a cogent perspective even if it probably shouldn't be taken as literally accurate reportage.
While I get what you're objecting to, the world would have been a lesser place without HST's writing (in my opinion anyway).
There's a broad grey line between "factual objective news reporting" and "storytelling" and the word journalism isn't specifically defined enough for it to be strictly towards the news reporting edges of that grey area. As Wikipedia puts it (with all the lack-of-credibility of quoting Wikipedia as a source, I'll admit): "Journalism, however, is not always confined to the news media or to news itself, as journalistic communication may find its way into broader forms of expression, including literature and cinema."
To me, journalism as commissioned by The Rolling Stone is _supposed_ to be "embellished storytelling". The front page of the NY Times? Sure, that's supposed to be "news" not story telling. But a long-ish form article in the "Sunday Review" section of the Times? At least my expectations lean closer to a Rolling Stone story than a hard hitting fact checked piece of investigative journalism...
I don't really disagree. OTOH, the UVA story in Rolling Stone was supposed to be journalism as opposed to something supposedly "truthy" and heads rolled as a result. I'm not opposed to new journalism as it was called at one point but I think I can feel a bit of legitimate discomfort when the boundaries blur (even when they're net positive as in the case of HST).
There was another, longer excerpt featured on HN recently does anyone have the link? I think it was also on the NYT. Or maybe it was a profile about HubSpot written by another person. Not sure anymore.
I worked in tech for a while and nothing he says sounds implausible or strange. Most jobs in tech are bad, all the perks are there just to confuse young suckers about who's taking advantage of who, and the libertarian streak of tech worker is carefully cultivated to make us weaker as a category.
The only glimmer of hope is that personally I'm noticing my peers and friends working all over the Bay Area are starting to notice. Maybe in a few years we'll do something about it.
I'm not sure I can even understand how your arrive at this conclusion? Looking over the entire set of available jobs, tech is clearly one of the best fields to be in. From pay to autonomy to working conditions, etc etc. You want to see a bad job? Coal mining is a bad job.
This is crab-bucket thinking, though. "You don't have it that bad!" Maybe labor, period, kind of has it bad, and that the tug-of-war between labor and capital is in a bad spot right now?
Being a little bit less screwed doesn't make you not screwed, it makes you less screwed.
Let me work in news industry for a while and write about how terrible the management is, how honest journalism is rejected and shitty PR articles are the way to go, the sheer amount of pointless meetings and asshole co-workers.
I am not sure if you would be happy to work in such a workplace and that describes most of the corporate culture. People are fond of bashing startups for what they are while conveniently ignoring how much more work they get done while keeping everyone happy. Don't like it? Get a job at IBM.
Dan Lyons was Fake Steve Jobs, then was a gadget writer where he was a frequent doomsayer of Apple and complained endlessly about the lack of access and review units Apple gave him. When he left that job and went to an advertising startup it was assumed that he'd just burned all of his tech writing bridges and had to resort to writing ad copy, but looking back I'd say it's a fair shot that he wanted an angle to write about startups so he took a job at one.
I don't know Lyons, but I do know HubSpot, and everything he's saying tracks with what I've heard from other people. And not just people with the temerity to be old, but just with the misfortune to be able to read a social group and make some conclusions about it. The company is a culture mob, there is aggressive practice of neuro-linguistic programming all over the place (never mind that it doesn't work, of course), and the whole thing is notably cultish and terrifying, in a startup world where "cultish and terrifying" is part of the standard playbook in the first place.
I do not much like them, if that is not obvious.
What makes me a little bit sad is when I meet somebody who works there--it's Boston, if you are in tech circles you are going to meet HubSpot people--and they're bought-in hard enough to not see that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. They hire a lot of good kids and try to kill them, or at least turn them into Dilbert-esque sodden gray rags, by the end of their second year. They're not the only company to do it, and not the only company to do it here in Boston, but they are a stand-out offender.
Ed, I like that you've kept that perspective without having to had experience it. TBF I don't think it's been like that forever, but it's definitely taken on the role of the primary Good Engineer Burnout machine in Boston.
Most of the positive things I read about company cultures, the "best places to work" lists, the glowing pieces on the founders, the TechCrunch articles, the phony Glassdoor reviews, are infinitely more self-aggrandizing fluff PR pieces than anything Lyons has written. No doubt about it, he's promoting his book and his show, but I'm glad some other sides of the story are being told.
It's maybe useful not to confuse specific criticisms of HubSpot with more general criticisms of the culty stage-managed hyper-enthusiasm that surrounds startup culture in general.
Just because someone is earning $150k doesn't mean they're not being sweated and exploited. To its owner, an expensive machine is still just a machine, and not an equal partner.
The tell is always the quality and genuineness of the relationships between employees and owners. It's completely possible for owners to take a genuine interest in the welfare of employees, and to see them as colleagues instead of productive units to be sweated.
But this may not happen as much as it should. And the boilerplate puppies-on-adderall always-crushing-it change-the-world so-very-excited incredible-journey rhetoric turns out to be an excellent smoke screen for owners who have no interest in anything except personal gain - and aren't even slightly concerned if they leave a trail of human wreckage behind them.
And even if you start off wanting to be a humane founder, there's no guarantee investors will let you run your company like that.
So it's easy to criticise Lyons for playing to the gallery with his book. But that doesn't mean that what he's playing is an improvised fiction.
Like the Silicon Valley TV show, the truthfulness of the specifics of this story aren't really the important part. If public perception of startups is as childish frat house like cults, that is a problem whether or not specific startups are in fact childish frat house like cults. I mean that is the exact reason why we use the phrase "frat house" as a pejorative regardless of the merits of specific fraternities.
Actually, what you are asking for is cumulative correct reporting of individual cases leading to a correct impression of the whole sector. I may just have downvoted you (fat finger error, and no way to reverse a vote on HN) but I agree.
I'm an older tech worker (sounded weird when I just read it out :-p ) and I've found there are two gross classes of startups. The ones that have a fire fast mentality, burn workers to the ground, etc. mentality and others which take it like a marathon as opposed to a sprint. I wish we had names for these two kinds of startups because they would save everyone some time when it comes to figuring out who to work for. Both are good in certain situations and for certain clases of people IMHO.
No I'm not. I'm looking for more information, because I don't want to buy into outlandish-sounding PR articles on their basis alone. While you were writing this comment, I was editing my comment with insights from the interview that @CPLX linked to ;) and I agree with him.
I read it that way, too. Why does it matter that the guy is writing a book? Why does it matter that the article is marketing for the book? Is it true? Sounds like it is.
I read your comment after the edits were applied, and I still thought it was one of those sneaky sorts of "homeopathic ad hominem" attacks where you don't make the attack directly, but instead allude to the "questions" that invoke the attack when considered by the reader.
> Why does it matter that the guy is writing a book? Why does it matter that the article is marketing for the book? Is it true? Sounds like it is.
Are you asking me: why does it matter what existing motivations a person has when trying to uncover which parts of their account is truthful? Seems pretty obvious why that information is important...
Going solely off of "Is it true? Sounds like it is." sounds like an easy way to end up just confirming your own biases all of the time.
Sorry you took my comment that way, that's not how I intended it. I was honestly curious because I knew nothing about him, and the few articles I found seemed suspect, so I wanted to know if others felt the same, or if he was legit. And with people's replies with more information, I can now say for myself that it seems like he's more legit than not.
> It turned out I’d joined a digital sweatshop, where people were packed into huge rooms, side by side, at long tables. Instead of hunching over sewing machines, they stared into laptops or barked into headsets, selling software.
> Tech workers have no job security.
> The free snacks are nice, but you also must tolerate having your head stuffed with silly jargon and ideology about being on a mission to change the world.
> The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall.
> Dogs roam HubSpot’s hallways, because like the kindergarten decor, dogs have become de rigueur for tech startups.
> On the second floor there are shower rooms, which are intended for bike commuters and people who jog at lunchtime, but also have been used as sex cabins when the Friday happy hour gets out of hand.
> Arriving here feels like landing on some remote island where a bunch of people have been living for years, in isolation, making up their own rules and rituals and religion and language—even, to some extent, inventing their own reality.
> Inside the company he is always referred to simply by his first name, Dharmesh, and some people seem to view him as a kind of spiritual leader.
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I'm not saying there isn't truth to what he's saying, and with others chiming in as to his credibility, it seems like there's more truth than I assumed. I was simply asking for context, because a lot of these things do seem slightly blown out of proportion to make the articles sound more interesting, and thus to sell more copies of his book.
He did start the book to sort of mock the company; from his NPR interview:
>when I first sold the book and start to write it, it was meant to be sort of a modern-day "Office Space ... I wanted to write just a funny story about being in a kooky company. It was just a comedy.
On one hand I think it's sort of disingenuous - the company culture was never a good fit for him and he shouldn't harm others because of his mistake (I know people who have had negative non-fiction stories written about them, and it can take a personal toll - I hope he left names and specifics out). It doesn't seem like HubSpot ever tries to hide their culture like Amazon has been known to do.
On the other hand, it really is an interesting story. I'm old enough that I'd never work at a place like HubSpot, so to me it's an interesting perspective on an interesting work environment that is common in the new millennial world. In other words, real journalism :)
> the company culture was never a good fit for him and he shouldn't harm others because of his mistake
How about the company shouldn't try to harm its workers? Because they do. Most startups do (it's practically part of the business plan, underpay your workers and dilute their equity 'til, if you are a mega-success, selling out might make up the delta between your underpaying salary and the one they could have gotten at a normal company), most tech companies do (though in other ways, hello collusion and managerial gaslighting). And shining a light on that is, if not noble, at least necessary.
That was my read too after listening to the fresh air interview. He said he thought it could be fun working with a bunch of out of college kids doing something exciting in a growing company. He had that experience before, afterall.
I'm not informed enough to have an opinion on Dan as a person or on HubSpot, but this is the third article I've seen posted to HN that all pretty much say the same thing, and are all obvious attempts to sell his book. Why do these articles keep getting voted up?
It's good to poke fun at childishness and pretentiousness in the startup world (and there is plenty of it without the need to embellish), but yeah, this is wearing a bit thin.
> I feel like in these scenarios he's incentivized to get outlandish PR for his book, so some of the things I'd take with a grain of salt--sentences like, "The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall." But there is probably a lot truth to his story as well.
Surely this is clearly an observation? When I read this I read it as opinion, and a personal observation he had - after all, it speaks of his kids' preschool and it is a judgement he makes.
This sort of comment is done in long-form journalism all the time. The fact you spotted it as subjective commentary almost immediately means it is commentary!
The book he wrote is a commentary on his personal experiences with HubSpot, interspersed with his views. I honestly don't see where the issue is, it's still factual but as with any article or book like this the author is giving his considered view on the material he is writing about. It's perfectly reasonable to disagree, of course, but is it really to get PR for his book?
> I feel like in these scenarios he's incentivized to get outlandish PR for his book, so some of the things I'd take with a grain of salt--sentences like, "The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall." But there is probably a lot truth to his story as well.
Sounds like Google. It's famously decorated in preschool chic.
Not pathological, productive... productive damn it. And we won't hire you if you don't toe the party line and rhetoric. Ever. Enjoy being blacklisted for not behaving yourself. /s
A lot of tech offices do look like freaking playschools now. One I went to looked like a cat therapist's waiting room, with cartoons of fishes and cats on the walls.
After reading this article, and the one from Fortune[0], and his post on LinkedIn[1], it feels like he's out there scraping together blatant PR for his new book. And it makes me honestly wonder whether he went to work for HubSpot looking for a story to write in the first place... and being a writer for the "Silicon Valley" TV series doesn't really help his credibility in that sense.
Disclaimer: I really don't know anything about this story. Something just feels off. Maybe HubSpot really is that bad, who knows.
[0]: http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyo...
[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-comes-age-bias-tech-comp...
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Edit:
After listening to the interview from @CPLX's response[2] I have to agree, he doesn't seem outlandish or anything. And all of the points he makes about HubSpot's content model being complete spam I agree with. I've definitely never liked interacting with HubSpot as a consumer, that much I know.
I feel like in these scenarios he's incentivized to get outlandish PR for his book, so some of the things I'd take with a grain of salt--sentences like, "The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall." But there is probably a lot truth to his story as well.
@ghaff also summed it up well: "That said, I find it's a cogent perspective even if it probably shouldn't be taken as literally accurate reportage."
[2]: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473097951/laid-off-tech-journa...