The Cult of Conformity in Silicon Valley
Why Hacker News recommends it
Linked in threads about YC culture and big tech burnout, as YC partners themselves acknowledging the trend.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2023 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends robocat · 2023-02 · on “Tech's Elite Hates Labor”
> 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 gunn
Recommends earthnail · 2023-02 · on “Ask HN: Burnt out from big tech. What's next?”
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 contact
Cites throwaway-3-2-1 · 2023-04 · on “The Epistemology of Software Quality”
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]
Cites fairity · 2023-05 · on “Ask HN: Is YC becoming less of a home for hackers and more for MBA-types?”
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).
Cites codegeek · 2023-05 · on “Ask HN: Is YC becoming less of a home for hackers and more for MBA-types?”
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]