<nettime> shem > Fuck You Startup World

[nettime's_burnout <nettime@kein.org>]

< https://medium.com/@shemag8/fuck-you-startup-world-ab6cc72fad0e#.va2ztzqkl >

shem

Football and programming, in that order. Android developer at
@myrollgallery
http://shem8.github.io/

Oct 11

Fuck You Startup World

That's right, I said it.

Fuck your startup scene with your 30 minute morning routines
of reading TechCrunch, TNW, Wired, Gizmodo, Mashable, The
Verge and ProductHunt- all so you don't feel 'left out'. Fuck
your weird fucking conversations, things like "OMG did you
see Snapchat's new feature? OMG Instagram is totally copying
Snapchat? Did you see Zuck's live townhall? OMG did you see
what Elon Musk tweeted? OMG Uber raised another round!" Fuck
that. Nobody cares.

Fuck your crazy work hours. Nobody gives a fuck that Elon
musk is working 100 hours a week, and that Marissa Mayer
pulling in a 130 hour work week while still breastfeeding her
newborns. You're not Elon Musk- you ain't Marissa Mayer,
you're not going to get to space, and you won't build the
next Space X. Do me a favor, put your fucking Mac away and go
play with your kids.

Fuck your drinking culture too. Please stop celebrating every
fucking imaginary milestone with whisky, beer, or pizza and
beer. Like, every 'cool' company has a bar now? Oh, OK, I'll
come work for you because you have the Glenlivet 17 and not
the 15. That's why I show up to work every day.

Fuck your eating disorders, why the fuck does everything has
to be so extreme with you? On one end of the scale you've got
the pizza-guzzling, office-snack hoarding monster, and on the
other end you have the 'I-must-optimize-every-living-second'
douche that only drinks fucking Soylent. Seriously, what the
fuck?

And fuck all those parties after raising money. Don't you get
it? You just dug your grave a little bit deeper. You should
celebrate any day that you don't have to sell off another
part of your company.

Fuck your open space floor plans- You really think Zucks
builds Facebook's 2017 roadmap while a nerf war is raging
outside? Fuck your standing desk, exercise ball desk, laying
desk, and treadmill desk. It ain't gonna mitigate all those
fucking doritos you just munched on, so just shut the fuck up
and sit in a normal chair like normal people.

Fuck reading a book a week. No one can read that fast. Let me
repeat that -NO ONE CAN FUCKING READ THAT FAST. How about
actually reading that god damn book?! Fuck your references to
Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Ariely, and stop fucking quoting
Lean Startup, for Christs sake. We've all fucking read it.

Fuck "entrepreneurs" nowadays, seriously- Everybody is a
fucking entrepreneur now. Especially all those
straight-out-of-college-entrepreneurs. Just so you know- it's
called "unemployed". Fuck your bootstrapping, too. Fuck
working out of garages and fuck your 2.5 square meters
"workspace". "But hey! At least I can bring my dog to work!".
Fuck you, seriously.

Fuck you productivity freaks. You try to make me feel bad
because I woke up "only" at 6AM. Shit, you woke up at 4:30,
meditated for 30 minutes, reviewed your quarterly and yearly
"goals" for another 30 minutes, and slurped on a delicious
Soylent shake while checking daily retention trends. Fuck
your noise cancelling headphones and Pomodoro timers, your
fucking to-do lists, apps, notes, sticky notes, and God knows
what else.

Fuck you for telling me that TV is a waste of time but you're
all about the Netflix and chill. You all fucking watch the
same TV shows. Stop fucking talking about how Mr. Robot is
kind of like you, because you like to geek out on that shit.
You're just a fucking robot, that's different. Keep laughing
about how HBO's Silicon Valley is sooooo realistic instead of
asking why. But stop fucking telling me to "Always ask Why".

Fuck you and your stupid interview questions. Who the fuck
thinks of these stupid fucking questions? I never had to
shift a bit in a C array in my life! And I never got a
compilation error on a white board, when I need a hash set in
Java I just use HashSet- I don't fucking care about the
complexity of this code block because I can afford another
EC2 instance! So fuck you.

Fuck your fucking jargon and acronyms. Fucking DAU's, WAU's,
MAU's, ARPU, LTV, CPM, CPI, CPC, PPC, CPA, CTR, SEO, ASO,
YoY, WoW, Fuck over Fuck. Who the fuck can keep track of all
this shit? And the fucking networking events, my fucking
lord. Everyone there is the CEO of something-something and
they're all building a MVP to disrupt the who gives a fuck
market and that hockey-stick growth is guaranteed.

Fuck the transparency trend, the post mortem and the 5 whys.
We can fucking see right through you. Fuck having a Design
sprint in EVERY sprint, pushing to production 100 times a
day, using no staging environment and building a micro
services architecture. Fuck your feature flags and endless
variants in your A/B testing. I want to get the same version
of your site every time I refresh it, stop fucking changing
it up on me.

Fuck you startups with your extravagant parties and crazy
off-site events that cost way too much money, you're supposed
to buy some fucking servers instead! Fuck spending money on
ping pong tables that no one ever uses, fucking music rooms,
nap rooms, meditation rooms, stress-free rooms, and pilates
rooms. Fuck the ridiculous incentives that you give, too.
Fuck your unlimited vacation policy, it's fucking bullshit.
We all know that your employees will take less time off.

But more than all, start-up world, fuck you for making me one
of you.



Special thanks to Omri Aloni for helping me write this. Fuck
you, bro.

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