Millennials are being dot.conned by cult-like tech companies | Hacker News Reader

Millennials are being dot.conned by cult-like tech companies

nypost.com

33 pointsAndrewUnmuted13 comments

Hmm. Reminds me of the Google office in Pittsburgh.

The main room was literally decorated in bright childish colors like a kindergarden with legos included, they boasted nerf wars and almost "no management" to exist. The question of salary was always a running target and I could only wonder how some real work could ever get done on those conditions.

At the time I was disappointed. So, I've witnessed in person at least one other office similar to hubspot in the wild.

In Pittsburgh especially, I think that's because recruiting students/recent grads is such a concern here (and becoming more of one as competition for talent becomes fiercer here). There's definitely an assumption that a "fun" office appeals to that audience. And it clearly does in a lot of ways. Figuring out how to strike a balance is the hard part.

My idea of a fun workplace is one where everyone has their own office, with a large window to the outside, a door and walls that go up to the ceiling.

Won't the glass get in the way of the super awesome nerf battle, though? For shame, true_religion. For shame. :)

Indeed. I'm not even asking a view to some nature, but definitively something that isn't a cubicle nor "open space".

Well, can't complain anymore about offices. Founded a startup and now work anywhere, most notably on coffee houses and while traveling on the train (we're based in Europe).

New York Post is (at best) one step up from tabloids. Also, this article is looking at a single company (based in Massachusetts, no less) and generalizing it to the whole industry.

The New York Post makes a faulty generalization based on the (alleged) activities of a single company to throw shade at one of the largest industries in our economy. For a publication that praises free market economics as much as it does, this seems like an ironic knee jerk reaction to have.

But hey, these are the same "journalists" who think all brown people with backpacks are terrorists [1] so we can't really expect much of them.

[1] http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/10/01/ny-post-settles-laws...

This is just an expanded version of the press release for Dan Lyon's book. That being said there are plenty of startups that are like this. Thankfully, most are not.

I think there's an interesting article idea here, but NY post is not the publication to pull it off.

To be honest, some of this seems like a pretty fun working environment. I don't see anything egregious about these work conditions, other than the terrible work life balance, the worthless stock options and below market rate salaries. If you can find a better salary elsewhere with good work/life balance, then do it. Just because people choose to work in these environments doesn't mean they've been duped. As for the stock options, generally speaking, you shouldn't expect too much value out of those.

Agree with the overarching theme but the article comes across as petty. A lot of companies try to be overly fun and expect you to live at the office, one guy wrote on article on how to make your company a "cult" https://www.scribd.com/doc/93939940/Cult-Creation

I don't understand the logic of extrapolating industry-wide pathology from one pathological example. That's not to say that millennials aren't "being dot.conned by cult-like tech companies" -- but this article gives me absolutely no reason to believe that this is the case.

Being a techy that in Boston, I still don't get why anyone wants to work at HubSpot. Moreover, I still don't know what their product does.

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