I've seen several, and most work environments are dysfunctional. I live in New York. Finance goes from C+ to C-; VC-istan is much worse (F). I've never worked in California so I can't evaluate Silicon Valley VC-istan but what I've heard is that it's not much better.
Including the companies where I've been brought in to consult (where I can be less specific) I've probably seen 20 corporate cultures. About a quarter are neutral or healthy; three-quarters are deeply broken.
The best work environments I've seen were in government research think-tanks. Basic research (outside of academia) has the only really good cultures that I've seen. Academia's culture is less mean-spirited than Corporate America but failure is more final (getting fired in business is no big deal in the long run; in academia, missing tenure is deadly).
I've learned some uncomfortable truths along the way. One of those is that, in a subordinate role, overperformance is dangerous-- far more perilous to your job security than the alternative.
That doesn't mean people should slack off and give up. No fucking way. It's better to excel and accept the volatility. It's more virtuous, you enjoy it more, and eventually when you find your tribe or are expected to lead, it pays off to be excellent. However, in most subordinate roles, overperformance is short-term dangerous. I don't think anyone who's been around for long enough doubts that.
You seem to have had a negative experience which has caused you to invent a venture capital funded employment dystopia in your mind. This isn't entirely surprising if you are located in New York as there is always a subset in Silicon Alley that seems more inspired by "Boiler Room" than "The Social Network." However, working at a VC funded startup in California is almost nothing like the fun house mirror distortion you continually elaborate upon in your Hacker News posts. There are negatives, but they usually are at the boring and goofy end of the why-work-sucks spectrum.
The VC darlings are terrible. Unethical management, and investors do nothing. (In a couple cases, I've informed.) Really awful people. This isn't just my negative experience (I've had some bad ones, for sure) but comes from what a lot of my friends have seen.
Here’s some shit I’ve either seen, or been credibly informed of, in the past 24 months, most of which was never in the news: no-poach agreements, attempted blacklisting of whistleblowers, a rescinded job offer based on a rumor that suggested PTSD, abuse of process within large companies, extortion of ex-employees, gross breaches of contract, frivolous lawsuits, threats of frivolous lawsuits, price fixing among venture capitalists, bait-and-switch hiring tactics, retaliatory termination, and fraudulent, no-product startups designed to embezzle angel investors. That took me about 60 seconds; two minutes more and the list would be three times as long.
So, yeah, there are some horrible people out there. There are also good people out there. I think VC-istan gives the bad ones an advantage, however.
There are good startups. Some take VC. Some don't. There don't seem to be many of them.
However, the mainstream of VC-istan is really ugly. I don't think it's limited to NYC.
But are there humane, interesting, and all-around excellent VC-funded companies? Absolutely. They are rare, and "the cool kids" (a bunch of wankers) won't be interested in them, but they exist.
I blew the whistle on Google (which I regret, because Google has pockets of evil but, on the whole, isn't that bad) although I haven't given the whole story. Google's a case of a decent company (for its size) with some terrible managers, though. I don't mean to cast aspersion on the whole thing. If you get a good manager, I'd still recommend it. There's some really cool stuff happening at Google and if you can get good projects, even now it's a great place to work.
Two of the companies included are defunct. Two are of unknown status (not places I worked).
One is a close friend of mine who eventually got a severance. If I spilled, I'd expose what he told me and risk his package, so no. I shouldn't know, myself.
There's one where I still hold The Card and I'm debating it. I could probably cripple the company, but I'm afraid that it would hurt the engineers (some of whom, I'm still friends with) more than the assholes in charge. That's the real problem. I have enough experience with whistleblowing to know that it's a blunt instrument. You don't get to pick who gets hurt. So I'm being cautions with that case.
Since it was just over a year ago, I feel like the window has passed. However, any individual who wants to ask me if an NYC education startup is That One can email me and I'll confirm or deny. They have truly evil management that deeply deserves to fail, not just at this company but in the future. What keeps me from naming that firm is concern for the lower-level people.
