Do you feel like it helps in other functions of startup life, say product management?
That's not the most common mix, so i've probably just de-anonymised myself :P
At the time of writing this I'm employed by the government to write algorithms, do analytics and produce numbers. I guess I'm pretty much a data scientist. I wrote this: https://communities.sas.com/docs/DOC-2462 in my spare time, and now i'm working on a similar/analytics project written in Common Lisp.
I can't really speak for the philosophy degree itself, but I definitely prefer working with other people who are philosophically inclined. People with a wide array of interests and questioning, skeptical minds. I've found you'll hear a lot of things from the tech community which are taken on face value, which could be said for most areas of life. Personally, there's a whole bunch of marketing material and propaganda out there in machine learning, stats, big-data and AI circles at the moment on what things actually do or can actually do, and I feel having already been involved with some of the philosophy of such fields helps me separate the wheat from the chaff because I've already considered the nature of knowledge, what we can know, and what we can find out.
But on the other hand it can be somewhat frustrating, because there's another personality type that appears a lot in compsci/numbers/engineering who most certainly does not want to deal with theory/ambiguity, and indeed they were attracted to the field in part because they thought they wouldn't have to deal with such ambiguities.
That and I find myself analyzing/taking apart whatever system I'm in, and i quickly become uncomfortable with it, which means moving around jobs/projects alot. But that might just be a general intelligence/hacker thing, and not specifically a philosophy thing.
Well, that was rambly...
When you say you get uncomfortable with a system, though, d'you mean ethically? Or just bored?
Bored-wise i'll enter a job, get acquainted with a practice, and almost immediately see failings/things to improve/things I can automate. Then I will. It'll be great, and then I'll have sorted the problems that exist within the context of my little environment over which I have control, and everything will be going 2-3 times better, but then i become bored again... In the best case scenarios, if there's not scope for any new challenges/problems in the job/company, I tend to move on amicably at that point.
However, there's been a few points where I've clashed "ethically". And this probably does have to do with philosophy, because its quite clear I've thought quite deeply about how I think I should live my life, and the minimum values I expect those around me to hold, and other's can be quite surprised/offended/awkward when you don't just go along with it all. I won't work with certain employers/jobs/industries (probably not what people are thinking, I'm not religious). So far this hasn't hindered me in terms of putting food on the table and living a comfortable life, but i accept it could one day, and I don't know what i'll do if I ever were to fall upon particularly hard times. But I try to live simply compared to most anyway :P Generally I try to do the right thing, then I'll leave if i can't. Its only really happened once so far, and the jobs I find obviously objectionable i've never applied for/accepted in the first place. I've taken some risks here and there which other people probably wouldn't have in that regard...
Now, being a general philosophical person, I do wonder about the ethics of what I do, and god, looking back i've probably got some reflections and thoughts about that one...but I can sleep comfortably at night and don't really have any regrets yet :) I'm trying to work towards going it alone (or at least in charge) myself eventually....
That, I think, is why you get lots of "xyz startup is changing the world!" rhetoric. Because whether or not it is true, people worry about the optics of what they do, and need something meaningful to point to. To actually care about ethics involves making painful choices of the sort that it sounds like you've done. Say, choices that keep you from dying on the inside, but which are still painful. So kudos to you.
I know exactly what you're talking about with the startup culture: "Saving the world with an advertising/smart-phone-app/messaging service". Every time Zuckerberg opens his mouth I wonder whether he believes or has thought about what he's saying, whether he's just saying it to use investor money to achieve his own ends, or whether he's just saying it to try to placate the public/silicon valley/himself. Which, look, I guess you just have to laugh at it. But i also guess that not buying into the workplace culture makes such places awkward to work at.
I'm currently facing new moral dilemmas. Looking to move on again, but I'm seriously considering some of the grey areas I'd written off before (say working for big banks), primarily for the money. I reason if they can use me in a fraud analysis or something, maybe I could live with myself. Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to think about such things :P
Frankly, the business and econ education is not helpful at all for a programmer. But I guess the hassle I went through did help me become a good product maker. I mean when you write code for code, you're just writing code; but when you code with a business perspective, you're making a real, legit product that actually means something.
To answer your question: the transition was quite difficult. Think installing Mac OS on a PC. Things I got hung up: gosh so many things. Think installing Mac OS on a PC... Things I find easy: gosh so many things. Think having a Mac OS on a PC... Does it help: Yes it helps. I'm always the best programmer in the business teams, and the best business guy in the technical teams. Knowing something about everything makes you flexible and capable.
I'm not sure if I can pick particular things out and be like, oh understanding Foucault is particularly good for this aspect of startup life, but in general I find myself to have a more solid value system than many people i know in the tech industry, able to figure things out quicker and on my own, and generally find my knowledge much more well-rounded.
I have never run into any problems related to not having a CS degree. The tech industry is, in general, the most purely meritocritous social and business system I've seen. If you can demonstrate an ability to write quality working code, nothing else matters, they'll hire you. (The very few tech industry people who care about you having a CS degree as such are not often people you'd want to work for anyway.)
Having a phil degree helps in better understanding other people's worldviews, which is indirectly useful in many areas of startup life.
I got into web stuff before going to college, but decided that a CS major wasn't really for me even though I wanted to make software for a living. Philosophy was my favorite subject so I decided to major in it. I don't regret that decision at all. I think my coursework has been very valuable to my career (even if not all employers would necessarily agree) in terms of my analytical thinking and problem-solving skills.
I found it well after graduation from college, when I needed to get data from point a to point b without re-keying. Eventually, I went back to school and got a master's in computer science.
I would say that the ability to think abstractly, and the experience of having to express yourself clearly, help.