Y Combinator
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2023
17:58 · 96K views · Feb 5, 2023
Y Combinator partners Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell discuss how startups shifted from attracting outsiders to status- and money-seeking conformists. They give advice for nonconformist founders.
Linked in threads about YC culture and big tech burnout, as YC partners themselves acknowledging the trend.
5 comments from Hacker News
> that over the past 20 years the cultural gap between typical SV "tech employee" and typical SV "tech leader/founder" has widened dramatically Maybe something to do with the change in the type of people wanting to work in tech - it used to be geeks and now it is a high status job and attracts status/money seekers. Great discussion on “The cult of conformity in Silicon Valley” this video [LINK] 2000’s - “the Dark Ages you and I went to school in the early and mid 2000s” - “it's probably hard for us to explain to a current college kid how uncool Tech was” - “I was a Yale 05 graduate and in my graduating year Yale graduated 10 CS majors in a class of 1200 kids” - “status seeking thing that a gunner should want to go after:” Finance, Consulting, Law, or Medicine (not startups, not tech) 2020’s - “now things have changed you know fast forward um a little less than 20 years and Tech is now attracting conformists” - “college kids today obsess with getting jobs at Facebook and Google. They study how they interview just as much as people study how to interview how to get into Goldman Sachs” - “they want the status they want the money that used to be associated with these Finance or professional jobs: bam, they're all now associated with big Tech” - “at first you see the explosion of CS majors in school and I think you would think to yourself oh man that means that there are a lot more people who are interested in building but that's not actually the case like it's it's it's uh it's dece
What helped me was surround myself with people I like - I mean, work wise. That’s much easier said than done. Michael and Dalton touch on this on a recent video where they compare modern FAANG with Goldman Sachs: this video The founder culture is so full of kool-aid that it can be tough to find those people there, too, but I found overall that that was the best place for me. Interestingly, I found the older and more successful people to be much more sane, and super happy to meet smart sane young people. I have a lot of older friends now; many are founders of large companies who are just glad to have normal conversations - the kind of people that as a FAANG middle manager would be status contacts to brag about but now are just nice folks to grab a pint with. The good people in tech still exist, and they’re often at key positions. But at Goldman Sachs I mean FAANG you’ll have a tough time fighting through middle management. And BOY was that FAANG culture bad for my mental health… I hope this makes some sense. Watch the video, I think it will cheer you up big time:).
I think there is merit to this stereotype and you should not use personal anecdotes to argue ("i have never met/seen/found") against it. Having a talent for programming imo means being good at abstracting away subproblems into nice encapsulated code units and having a passion for such tasks or the technical environment around it is like being a hobby bureaucrat. Now, tell me, this is normal :) I could also use personal anecdotes of me, a classic nerd, rubbing incompatible company culture the wrong way. Previously on HN: Y Combinator - The Cult of Conformity in Silicon Valley this video
Yes, and YC is aware of this trend also. Michael and Dalton (YC partners) talk about it here: this video Since they’re aware, if the trend continues, they might actually believe this conformist archetype has equal or greater chance at success in today’s environment. If that's the case, it's probably bc the archetype tends to overlap with other skillsets that correlate with success (e.g. fundraising, recruiting, management).
Yes. Even YC veterans like Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell have talked about it in videos like these below [0]. They call these people "conformists" [0] this video