Two reactions to this article (and I say this as someone near 50):
1. Dan's obviously not cut out for startup life. When he meets Zack, he assumes Zack must be someone's assistant because he is young. Dan has no concept of the fact that someone might have their position because they are skilled and perform well. In his mind, the only way to have a fancy title is tenure and age.
2. Sure, the language of startups is interesting (graduation as a euphemism for quitting or getting fired), but the clear message is that this is odd, and thus, wrong. As though normal corporate America is the one true way and is just fine. Bullshit. Let's make sure to keep the workplace exactly as it's been for the last 100 years and never evolve.
But this is normal corporate America. Dan apparently isn't familiar with the history of IBM, which was so bonkers it had its own song book attempting to engineer a cult of personality around Thomas Watson.
This was back in the 1930s. Apparently not much has changed.
In the 60s and 70s the DEC people used to talk about "Mother DEC" and "Father Ken (Olsen - CEO)" - and DEC was a vastly more pleasant company to work for, if you didn't mind meetings where people shouted at each other a lot.
US corporate culture is insane. It has always been insane. The insanity takes different forms, and the web startup version frequently manages to be both insane and infantilising. (See also, startup names that sound like baby talk - more of a thing before DotCom 1, but there are still a few relics today.)
This is not what an adult professional culture looks like. Signifiers of playful childlike wonder and creativity shouldn't come in stick-on corporate office multipacks, especially not if they hide much uglier relationship dynamics in the office space.
It's fascinating to wonder why this has been such a strong trend in the startup space. Obviously it's more likely to appeal straight-from-college CS grads than battle-hardened senior engineers. But my guess is it's also an evolutionary adaptation to trigger paternal (less often maternal) feelings in investors and VCs, who are more likely to feel generously disposed and still part of youth culture if they sponsor a brogrammer creche, and less likely to feel threatened by kids who look nothing like direct competitors.
Social signalling in business is a very interesting thing, and maybe isn't questioned often enough.
Great point on this actually being part of corporate America. I had neglected/forgotten that point, when I'm pretty sure buzzword bingo predated the rise of startups (synergy, touch base, strategic alignment were all part of the lingo when I worked at larger companies).
I wasn't really commenting on the healthiness of the startup culture, just how out of touch and corporate Dan was (apparently so out of touch he doesn't even realize he's out of touch). But you make some really good points about this trend. I'll have to think about that some more.
A lot of this sounds extremely similar to corporate America. BS euphemisms, 1+1=3 (synergy, ya'll!), and a lot of hype about how you are helping the world when you are just doing a job to make money (and often employing skeezy/immoral tactics to accomplish those goals).
My take away from this article is that start-ups are not as "think different" as they like to pretend.
True, but the article implied at startups it was weird and wrong, when (as you correctly point out), it's actually part of corporate America as well. Which defeats his point that startup language is cultish and weird/wrong.
"the language of startups is interesting (graduation as a euphemism for quitting or getting fired), but the clear message is that this is odd, and thus, wrong"
What makes it 'wrong' is that 'graduation' is deceptive when employees are being fired or quitting because they hate the company.
Surely, some / many employees are leaving for positive reasons ('graduating' to something bigger / better) but if Lyons is right that that was the general term used for people who left the company, it is not only odd but Orwellian.
As others have pointed out, that's not unique to startup culture and completely demolishes Dan's point. Corporate America gave us "downsized, right sized, offboarding, redundant, outsourcing, reduction in force)". It might not be right, but it's not the fault of startups.
1. Dan's obviously not cut out for startup life. When he meets Zack, he assumes Zack must be someone's assistant because he is young. Dan has no concept of the fact that someone might have their position because they are skilled and perform well. In his mind, the only way to have a fancy title is tenure and age.
2. Sure, the language of startups is interesting (graduation as a euphemism for quitting or getting fired), but the clear message is that this is odd, and thus, wrong. As though normal corporate America is the one true way and is just fine. Bullshit. Let's make sure to keep the workplace exactly as it's been for the last 100 years and never evolve.