Toxic Startup Mantras, Wrapped.
Four trendy adages that need to peace out with 2022
When Steve Jobs died in 2011, he lost the ability to deliver inspirational quotes and catchy principles for building breakthrough businesses.
“Stay hungry, stay foolish,” has been his most enduring phrase (originally from The Whole Earth Catalog, an eco-focused, stakeholder-capitalist mag from the ‘60s.) And while it’s meant to encourage leaders to try new things and avoid settling into complacency, it’s also given many fools lots of room to be foolish.
Under the guise of creating a “better world” and making oopsies along the way, young and hungry CEOs created an environment that’s free of accountability. Where the if/then logic their software is built on doesn’t apply to them. (See noted Steve Jobs stangirl Elizabeth Holmes.)
Without trusty turtlenecked wisdom to heed in the 2010’s, startups turned to up-and-coming jerks like Mark Zuckerberg and his generational ilk: Hoodied boy-and-girl wonders who were compelled to “make a dent in the universe,” even if their “dent” turned out to be a nuclear crater. And with their ascent, a new grab-bag of business tropes was born.
Which brings us to this list:
Toxic Startup Mantras, Wrapped.
Like all language, none of these are inherently bad (except one — you’ll see.)
Most mean well, but because they’re easy stock phrases that leaders can slap onto their corporate ethos without context or consideration, they’ve been perverted into empty promises at best, excuses for operational chaos at worst.
Here are four phrases we need to let go of along with 2022.
“Move fast and break things”
Facebook (where the term originated as an internal slogan) supposedly doesn’t use this anymore. Maybe it’s because they moved fast and broke national elections and the mental wellbeing of teen girls. Or because they turned their once quaint hub of human connection into an outrage hellhole. (Mark Zuckerberg moved fast and turned his platform into a global Bumfights 2.0.)
As teased earlier, there’s only one phrase on this list that’s inherently bad, and “move fast and break things” is it. (See? You didn’t have to wait long.)
The only time this directive makes sense is if you’re about to rob a jewelry store, or you’re embracing a “growth at all costs” startup culture that ignores toxic effects that ripple out like corporate oil spills.
If you work at a startup where people say this explicitly, or it’s an implicit part of daily business, it’s time to get out.
As an engineer, a better approach is to start small and keep adding value each sprint. That means starting by promising one single good feature, and when that one is done, promising another small useful and related feature. Engineers would be productive, the work environment is healthy, users are happy, and investors are happy.
— Israel Antonio Rosales Laguan, Senior Full Stack Engineer, Colombia
“Bring your whole self to work”
Nice idea, terrible practice.
No matter how humane, empathetic or fun your company culture is, remember you're still inside a late-capitalist structure that values your productivity and profitability above all else.
You’ll feel this most at early-stage startups because aside from their ping pong tables (do these still exist?) or virtual happy hours, they simply don’t have the resources (let alone cultural maturity) to accommodate anyone’s entire soul and identity.
Perhaps your manager is wonderful and thinks the world of you. I promise you at the end of a looooong workday, they’d rather you just bring your work-self to work and leave the rest at home.
This doesn’t mean you need to go all-business-automaton on the job.
If work takes up most of your life, it’s impossible to compartmentalize the worky parts of your personality with your more complex and interesting self. It’s easy to fall into a trap of bringing your baggage through the door, especially when the baggage is getting packed at work.
Again, this tracks back to culture: Companies that encourage your whole self show up for the job are essentially asking for all of you all of the time, which is too much.
The intention of a “whole self” culture is accepting vulnerability in leaders and encouraging workers to ask for help,. But the common iteration is an environment free of personal boundaries that, left unchecked, gives toxic coworkers grade-A ammo to attack and undermine others. (I’ll expound on this with a personal whole-self tragedy another time.)
So go work somewhere that gives you ample time outside of work to be your non-work self and take care of non-work business. That’s what helps you be your best work self when you’re on the job, which is all employers want anyway.
“Fake it til you make it”
This is a popular phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous that goes along with the concept of “acting as if.” It’s offered to program newcomers as advice for diving into sober life.
The idea is to “act as if” you are the type of person who doesn’t need to drink a bottle of wine to feel comfortable in a social setting. “Act as if” you are someone who wakes up, makes their bed, practices gratitude, doesn’t accidentally come home drunk after going out to do laundry, etc.
This type of mental framing has a positive impact on self-esteem and it’s central to James Clear’s Atomic Habits. It’s also how a lot of inexperienced and under-talented people position themselves as “experts,” while charging the same fee as industry veterans.
At the far end of the spectrum, it’s how we get people like Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried defrauding their investors.
Most commonly, it’s how founders rationalize the “smoke and mirrors” that go into crafting their pitch decks. The line between solid projections and aspirational goals gets fuzzy. The product timelines sound great because they’re basically impossible.
This isn’t completely the founders’ faults.
VCs don’t just write blank checks to anyone who wasn’t in their fraternity at Stanford, so the pressure on founders to overpromise-then-work-like-hell to deliver kicks off an impossible cycle.
Often when startups get the funds they need to move forward, it’s used to catch up on work they’ve promised has been done already, as well as hitting new milestones that are a condition of the funding.
This means everyone on the team is working on eliminating business debt and increasing valuation simultaneously, which will give any workplace that shady Boiler Room feel.
“Fake it til you make it” is dangerous. Anyone remember Fyre festival?
— Sevan Abnous, Product Manager, California
So, if you’re an IC or a manager feeling some imposter syndrome? By all means, fake it til you make it (without overcorrecting it).
If you’re a founder making wild promises (or funny spreadsheets) to investors…maybe tread carefully on the faking? Handcuffs are real!
And now for the fourth and final item….
“We’re a startup!”
This is tied with “We’re a family!” because they’re both used to excuse all sorts of dysfunction.
Getting frustrated with business priorities that change as often as the CEO’s blood sugar level? You’ll likely hear, “Hey, we’re a startup” from your manager.
Alerting your CEO to a chaos agent who's been spreading lies about you and your direct reports? “You’re like two fighting sisters!” they might say.
These early, seemingly innocuous concepts intended to motivate and bring teams together often end up being the basis for culture, a very difficult boat to turn once sailing.
- Kelly Ceynowa, Executive Coach | Organizational Change Consultant, New York
Similar to bringing your whole self to work, a “family” dynamic is completely inappropriate in an office. Families are messy, complicated and can be passive aggressive. Work should be organized and straightforward with clearly communicated goals.
Even in the most casual environments, even if pushback and feedback are free-flowing, there should be a level of decorum and professional respect you don’t see at Thanksgiving dinner. (“Pass the potatoes, Loser.”)
I’m sure there are 1,000 others I’ve left out, so feel free to bomb the comments below.
Thanks to everyone on LinkedIn who chimed into my original post on the topic, especially those who allowed me to repurpose their words here.
If I don’t speak to you before then….
Happy frickin’ New Year, y’all! I’m gonna try to squeeze in one more newsletter before the end of the year. I’m thinking a Best (and maybe worst?) List of Brands with mini-ranting/raving case studies. Have any ideas? I’ll take them.
As I mentioned last week, I’m also mad at Apple, so more on that sooner or later.
Later, gators!
Yes startups still have ping pong tables which I think is very funny. Sometimes I wonder if they’re doing it to be ironic?