Imagine you sign up to be a startup founder at YC. It’s a salary job, and the pay is low, very low. The promotion schedule is pre-determined, almost invariant of your success. You develop a specialty and your team is assigned to you, rotating once every two years. Most teams only work on one problem, but if you are one of the very best, you get called to work on many small problems. There is almost no requirement for entry into the program except an extremely brutal training that keeps most people out of it. There are only two benefits. First, you get to be part of something that might change the world for everybody else. Secondly, you will gain respect, experience, and trust to start your own business when you get out.

So there you are, on a team with a bunch of people you have never met before. You are now stuck together. If somebody is a problem, you deal with the problem because you can’t get rid of the person. There is a structure, but you’re all on the same path to those roles. All your grievances point to YC and not your team. You’re all getting screwed equally, but no matter how bad it gets, you all chose this, and you all depend on each other.

You get a problem you didn’t choose. You might think it’s stupid. Too bad. Your team owns it now, and they depend on you. You succeed or fail together - nobody cares about praise or blame. Your team makes all the decisions. Nobody is looking over your shoulder. Nobody inserts their suggestions. You report only on a need-to-know basis. Nobody can tell you what to do. If you do something wrong, it will come back to you later in the report out, but not now. The only way to get rid of you is by trial of your peers for an ethical violation.

So what it comes down to, is that you just do your job, and you don’t worry about anything else. You can and must work effectively with almost anybody in that situation.