I don’t know if it’s me having worked full-time for nine organisations already (five of them for-profit #startups), the industry itself having changed, me getting old and grumpy, or a combination of all of the above, but too often now, the typical start-up attitude feels almost disgusting to me.
The jargon, the buzzwords, the grandiose goals, the productivity hacks, the hyped substacks or podcasts, the cheesy taglines, the obsession with “growth” and “disruption”…
I still love #tech and the #web, I think #software is still eating the world, and I believe in great organisations developing novel ideas with a net positive impact.
But “Silicon Valley”, which used to be a parody, became a docu-series with the passage of (little) time.
Perhaps it was always that way, and I’ve grown more mature. Or maybe things got worse.
Thoughts?
I think you got it spot on with 1st comment here.
@tripu it is and has always been a snake oil industry hinged on marketing. Everyone is up-selling their own unique brand of junk, and best you can hope to be is a lowly shaman that at least makes actual oil from actual snakes, and maybe a couple of salves on the side. It’s hard to find a customer facing term that is not a buzzword, including whatever “web” is supposed to mean.
(This realisation was prompted by a few serendipitous things this week: a previous co-worker promoting with majestic words a new venture on LinkedIn, seeing the pretentious profile of another old workmate who just joined #bigtech, reading about the eccentricities of #JackDorsey…)