What we learned in studying the most effective founders

I had to write this long introduction because you started name calling. Apparently everyone who doesnt want to work in sweatshop like conditions only works for a salary. Maybe this is news for you, but most people want an easy job that treats them well. But treating employees well (e.g. fancy office in trendy part of town, cool company swag with logos) is not really aligned with the priorities of a cash starved startup. The startup probably should try to cut its expenses to the bone and focus on necessities - by for example running first from a garage, or a home. It is very likely that the startup will pivot its business model few times before it becomes cash positive, so it should try to limit cash outflows as much as possible (even just to survive for the next round). Yes, there are startups that become cash positive fast (what is probably great way of doing business), but it is relatively rare. Most start ups need to survive few lean years. Although there are obviously companies made to grow as much as possible and sell the bag (of shit) to some bagholders - their CEOs focus most on marketing than building a product that actually works. Every start-up is after all a promise - we need your cash now, that we will translate into a successful equity later.

But coming back to the alignment between what companies/start-ups wand and what employees want - they want different things. Companies mostly want to generate cash (or the owners want to sell the bag to someone else if they cannot generate cash), while employees want a nice salary. Yeah, some want to do impressive stuff, but most people dont. Those people who want a salary probably dont fit the start-up crowd anyway, but can you really tell? Squeezing some fresh grads like lemons in a start-up happens all the time. They just dont know better and accept the biggest sin of sweatshop-like companies: overtime.

Startups are known for overtime. If the leader can get some cult-like group who will sit 70 hours per week, then there is a bigger possibility of success than a start-up where workers work 40 hours. Although this is not an easy subject, because hours spent probably not always translate to effective hours. Someone can do 30 effective hours out of a 40 hour work week, while someone can have 50 hours out of 70. It is also possible that someone has 10 out of 70. But generally the overtime is sort of productive, even if this leads to burnt out employees, as I wrote before - those fresh grads are fueled by enthusiasm and dont know better. So a sociopath who will exploit them makes a great leader.

And mission of the organization is just to earn as much cash as possible for its owners and employees. Most companies dont have any real vision, it is some marketing bullshit (for start-ups), or something done by consultants on a corporate retreat. Even in a startup most employees probably dont know the vision. Or they are smart enough to know it, but do they believe in it? If your start-up is rewriting Excel pivot tables in Rust, is there really some grand vision? "We are building revolutionary product that will ease up lives of many people". Seriously, take the vision of one company and apply it into another - often it works. And I dont say that lack of vision is bad. But most companies just want to make the top product that is the first choice for customers. This means happy customers and money for the company. Rest of this is just marketing trying to build some sort of a cult. Unless your startup plants trees in Amazon or cures cancer, the vision is just to be a successful company. Obviously you cannot tell that to people, a good CEO is supposed to do the dance and create a whole brand (preferably out of nothing - because there is no money for marketing). Probably easier to sell bullshit if you believe in it, but at the end of the day is still bullshit. I also have to sell bullshit from time to time (everyone who manages people does), but at least I know that it is bullshit. And yeah, I know the mission of my organization, it actually makes a lot of sense, but still it is just bullshit used to hide the real reason why the company operates - to earn cash for owners and (to some degree) employees. If you earn doing something that is good, then even better, but come on - how many Jupiter notebooks can you rewrite in Go and will your C++ uber for pets will be really revolutionary?

If you take CEO A, who builds this hypothetical uber for pets and sells some bull that makes the employees work 70 hours per week and compare to CEO B, who makes them work 40 hours, the first one will probably be more successful. At the few year time frames (life before a start-up succeeds or fails), the employees from company A will probably not burn out, while company B can burn out its cash reserves and have no product.

Not all start-ups are made equally; some probably have the abusive culture that you describe while others are more fair to their employees and have a more win-win outcome.