Nowadays, every startup, especially in tech, follows the exact same boilerplate, using all the same buzzwords, all the same marketing, all the same tools, and all the same methodologies. And whether they intend to or not, every “new” thing they add back into the structure of the company, is just another bar on the cage of the cubicle that they’re putting us back into.

Hiring

Job Listings

We Work Remotely has become one of the most popular go-tos for posting tech jobs. Luckily, this at least ensures that jobs really will be remote, as opposed to companies that only wish to appear innovative and flexible, but actually pull a bait-and-switch along the lines of “Oh sure, the job can be done remotely, but you still need to be local to our city.”

The problem starts with the actual listings, where they all use the same kind of job titles and outline language. Titles like: “Developer Ninja” or “Design Rockstar” or “Customer Happiness Engineer” . Outlines include language like: “We need someone who wakes up with a smile everyday, and doesn’t look at problems as something that holds them back, but challenges they’re excited to conquer!” or they try to be hip and funny “Bob’s our senior developer, but don’t ask him questions too early in the morning before he’s had his coffee… unless you have a cat gif ready to go. He sure likes his cat gifs.”

Most job listings read like the person who wrote them just looked at all the other listings to see what they said, as opposed to actually having something original of substance to say, based on a company that really has true freedom and values to talk about. They all talk about how cool they are, what a great culture it is, the flexibility they offer, and make the same “we’re a fun and friendly place to work” cat jokes.

Job Applications

They then send you to a third-party form to apply, one of several commonly used like Workable, because modern startups have an unhealthy addiction to adding yet another app, service, or piece of software to handle some menial task (more on that later). The application itself usually has all the same questions: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?,” “What’s an exceptionally tough problem you had with a customer and how did you overcome it?,” “Why do you want to work here?,” or “What salary are you looking for?”

And look, not all clichés are bad; sometimes there’s a good reason that something is a cliché, because it’s useful, but there are always a few questions on these applications that are rude or pointless, meaning they’re only asking it because they’ve seen that it was asked on other forms, not because they have some deep, psychological analysis that they’re doing.

I’d confidently put money on the fact that they quickly skim over some of those answers because it doesn’t actually mean anything to them or whether they’ll hire you or not, because they themselves were only trying to appear “smarter” or “professional” to someone above them by padding the listing and asking what other popular companies ask.

The Test

Next up, you’ll receive a follow-up email after about a week (after sorting through the often hundreds of applicants), letting you know whether they’re interested or passing. In my case, they’re almost always interested because I generally only apply for gigs that I’m perfectly suited for, if not over-qualified for in the first place.

I would only be guessing on this part, but I think the fact that I don’t care whether they hire me or not (I’m usually just taking a flyer on something to see if it’s a good fit and somewhere I might actually enjoy working), helps in terms of confidence, as opposed to the desperate “I’ll jump through any hoop.” mentality of a normal candidate.

At this phase in the process, they’ll typically give you one final test before getting to the true interview. The test is usually designed to give them an idea of your skills or common sense. In other words, they’re weeding out the dumb-dumbs that lied about their experience.

The Interview

If you make it past the Indiana Jones like booby traps, you can now set a day and time through yet another third-party app (something like Calendly) before moving onto the final boss, which is the inevitable video interview (which is almost always done through Zoom) with the big man himself, which is often the CEO (on a side note, can we stop with all these archaic, overblown titles — I’ve started many businesses and I’ve never once called myself the “CEO” of it).

A Word About Zoom

This should really be its own article, but seriously, fuck Zoom; we need to talk about this. Would you install a mandatory keylogger on your computer imposed by a company? No? Then why in the hell would you ever install Zoom, a far worse form of malware. Zoom records your “private” meetings. That means video and audio of you, and everything you’re doing and saying, and outright using and selling that data. This is common knowledge and most people in general heard about it in 2020 during the massive uprise in its popularity due to the virus, which came with much more scrutiny of its weak security (Zoom is not end-to-end encrypted) and its even weaker company policies.

I can understand how a lot of organizations like companies in non-tech industries, schools, churches, etc. continue using the software because they may not know any better, but tech companies who definitely do know better, also continue to force their employees to use this software. I’m really not sure how that’s legal to endanger your people’s right to privacy like that, but I’m no lawyer. I’m not a fan of this style of communication for all my own reasons anyway, but there are always safer alternatives.

The problem, as is usually the case when it comes to privacy issues, is complacency. People don’t care about their own privacy, let alone other people’s. It’s also harder. I’m not perfect; there are many ways I could improve upon my own bad habits, but acknowledging the problem is at least better than nothing, and it’s never too late to improve, even if it’s a slow process.

One of the best parts of working on a remote team was getting to work at home, rolling out of bed, not worrying about how you look or your stinky cat walking around in the background, playing in your unmade bed. But now, in this new move to devolve remote teams back into “the office experience” as much as possible, we’re forced to stick a camera in our face to do our work? It’s just creepy and I refuse.

And we’re back.

Aside from the technology being creepy, I can at least understand that the main point of this step is that they want to “meet” you, see your face, hear your voice (though for my own privacy, I’d rather they not). While I personally don’t give a shit about this (when I hire someone all I care about is that they can do the work and have a good work ethic), I’m not a complete monster; I get it. It really is just the tech that makes it creepy.

Imagine going into a real, physical office to have an interview. Sure, you might be nervous, but it’s a fairly innocuous experience overall. But, now imagine that there’s some lady standing in the corner with a camera on a tripod recording you, while she also takes notes. This is going to be pretty awkward and you’re definitely going to ask.

You: “This is being recorded?”

Them: “Yes.”

You: “Why?”

Them: “Oh don’t worry about it. We record all of ABC Inc.’s meetings.”

You: “Do you work here? Is this for training purposes or something?”

Them: “No, we don’t work here. ABC Inc. has just given us permission to record all their meetings.”

You: “For what purpose?”

Them: “For marketing and research purposes. By entering this room, you too have agreed to these terms.”

You get the idea. It’s definitely not okay. Not to mention that the company you’re working for itself is likely keeping a copy of the recordings (they legally have to disclose this by the way — that doesn’t necessarily mean they will though), and storing it forever for reasons that benefit you in no way whatsoever, including for potential legal purposes to be used against you later if there’s a dispute.

Another big purpose of the video interview is as a precursor to the unwritten policy of…

Company Culture

Because of discrimination and harassment laws, they can’t come right out and say it, but another common theme in this new startup boilerplate model is culture. That is, more or less, you need to be able to be friends with your co-workers in order to be accepted onto the team. Rather than being something that occurs naturally among co-workers if it’s going to happen or not, which is fine too, it’s now kind of a requirement.

If like me, you’d rather just keep your head down, get your work done, and keep your personal and work life separate, it could honestly mean you’re not getting hired or you might not last there very long.

Retreats

A major new fad for startups, but an age-old staple of the corporate world is the retreat. Flying the team out for a week-long work vacation to some domestic or exotic tourist destination. There are a lot of things at play here. Most likely, the boss has read about how team-building exercises out in the wild can improve productivity in the “office.”

I’m not going to argue the pros and cons of this. Certainly, there may be benefits for a certain kind of company, but tech teams really don’t work shoulder to shoulder together where those benefits would be most useful. In a tech company, everything is extremely compartmentalized, and everyone is doing work that’s highly specific and tedious to just them. The only communication really needed is just to let each team member or department know your ETA for X or if you’re having issues with Y.

In any case, I don’t care what the benefits might be, I’m not into it. And even if the retreat isn’t mandatory (it often is outright stated that it is in fact mandatory), going back to culture, it really just is. If you don’t “fit in,” you might find yourself being pushed out or just quitting because you’re tired of being forced to have play dates with your co-workers.

There’s a reason I work remotely in the first place. Having to leave home, travel to the airport, get on a plane, and then spend a week in a house or hotel with what are essentially strangers is the absolute antithesis to the joy of working from home. I’d rather they just took that couple grand they spent on each of us for a retreat, and give us half as a bonus, gaining happier employees and saving money at the same time.

The Work

This is what it was all about, the work; the joy of the project. But, being able to do that work with complete autonomy and time flexibility. Not being micromanaged; not being fixed to any kind of 9-5 like window; just being able to work in your own way, using the tools you like to use, and in your own time. It didn’t matter where you were in the world, what your sleep schedule was like, as long you got your work done within every 24-hour period, and as long as you checked in every now and then and obviously respond to any direct communications to you.

Autonomy

The freedom to keep it simple and use the tools you want to use.

Startups no longer build their own tools or methodologies to keep it all sane and less convoluted. They all just use the same obligatory third-party services:

• Google Workspace
• Slack
• Basecamp
• Zoom
• Help Scout

I’m not saying that I don’t also use some of these tools, or that there’s inherently anything wrong with them, but the point is all about how every startup now is just a carbon copy of one-another, instead of doing things in a smarter, simpler, more minimalistic way. To stop doing things like the corporate dinosaurs of the past.

Flexibility

The freedom to wake up at whatever time you wake up wherever you are in the world, whether that be 7am, noon, midnight, or whenever.

And it didn’t matter because you got your work done within the 24-hour work cycle. You don’t need to commute anywhere, you work with people all around the world with all their own varying schedules, so it just didn’t matter. That’s how time management is supposed to work.

Now, the modern startup keeps chipping away at those freedoms to return to the traditional corporate regime of being available between 9-5 in whatever timezone they decide to designate (usually where the boss lives) and to attend incessant meetings, that have been proven to not increase productivity, and in fact, just waste time.

Conclusion

What the hell happened, why, and can anything be done to stop it?

What?

Whenever there is some kind of anarchy or push back against the ways of old, those systems eventually catch-up and find a way to appear as the new thing, while still implementing their control to serve their bottom line. It happens with all things, from cable to streaming, from books to audiobooks, from radio to podcasts, and from corporations to startups.

In the end, the old always finds a way to get its claws into the new.

Why?

I think the fact that being a nerd has become cool plays a big part in this. There’s Nerd Classic and then there’s the new class of nerds, who are often just Jocks 2.0. Originally, the Jobs and Wozniak dynamic was common among tech companies, but for a short while the Wozniaks took over, and everyone on the team was a Wozniak.

Where rebelling and quitting your day job to revolt and go into business for yourself, to show the dinosaurs in suits that you could do it better, with less bullshit and red tape used to be what a startup was all about, but the suits and conmen caught on and now they play the part of a Wozniak and call their corporations startups for the trendiness of it.

But, while no one’s looking, they keep peeling back the ideals of a true startup, and still touting the claims about being open, fair, free, autonomous, flexible, original, and innovative, are sneaking all the old ways in through the backdoor. The reason for this I think comes from two places, money and ego.

Money

There have been a lot of innovations in business, mainly what a waste of money it is to lease office space. If they can cut costs on all that, but also keep tabs on you with tools like Zoom (the modern equivalent of taking a stroll through the office and watching people work over their shoulder), win-win. Save money, but also keep control? Sure sounds good for the bottom line.

Ego

Admittedly, we might have taken the whole “everyone is equal, no one has a job title” thing in the beginning of the revolution a little too far. I think there has to be some kind of hierarchy to keep the train moving, but there’s definitely a balance. On the opposite spectrum, we see people starting very small independent projects and giving themselves the title of CEO.

It’s just a little much. I think there are people who start projects that already have delusions of grandeur and then sometimes, a Wozniak becomes a Jobs type character after making a lot of money. Money changes people, and they suddenly feel self-important. I think there’s a certain make-believe aspect to it. To appear cooler, more sexy, I think a lot of these people like to play the role and be seen as aggressive, business-savvy operators.

Stop?

Can it be stopped? I don’t see how. That said, I’m sure there are still rare gems out there that really are a joy to work for and truly offer freedom instead of a corporate repackaging of it where all the same buzzwords are used, without any of the actual freedoms.

Of course, history repeats itself over and over and over. At first, innovations like tiny houses, nomadic van life, and startups say “Fuck you and fuck your rules; we’re going to do it our way.” But eventually, the monster catches you and eats you and the revolution is now just the new norm, and it too, will need to be rebelled against.

All I can say is that whenever I hire someone, I do my best to get the hell out of their way. That’s my idea of win-win.

We’ve probably all heard the quote:

“Those who cannot learn from the past, are doomed to repeat it.”

— Paraphrased from George Santayana

In some variant, in some piece of fiction: book, movie, TV show, and is usually words of caution shared to a group of people by a wise elder, often as a remark to warn against events like Nazi Germany from happening again.

I always assumed there was something to it beyond it just sounding like a cool line for an eccentric character to say, but I’d never actually experienced it myself. I imagine you have to live long enough before you can experience it first-hand because it generally takes 10, 20, 30 years for a cycle to make a full circle.

In the past decade alone, I’ve seen startups, streaming services, and digital currencies all essentially come around to just being the same thing they were supposed to disrupt in the first.

Startups

The entire point of the modern startup, was to break away from the shackles, limitations, and dinosaur ways of the old corporate formula.

For a solid 5 years, I think it was a success. We did away with the physical office space and the overhead that went along with it; we did away with the commute, being able to work remotely from home; we did away with limiting the talent you could reach from your geographical area and instead, being able to work with a team of people from all around the world.

Sure, that’s all still there, but we’ve lost all the most important parts of why we really did it to begin with, the philosophy. It wasn’t just about convenience or reach, it was about freedom, autonomy, and creativity. You were free to keep your own schedule as long as you got your work done, had the control to manage your own time and focus on doing what you were good at, and being able to create your own methods and use your own favorite tools to get it done.

Everyone was their own boss and morale was naturally high; people actually enjoyed working on the project. But, it didn’t last long. Any time something new and popular comes along, it doesn’t take long before the suits come along and take something that was natural and beautiful and put it through the machine to make something more formulaic for efficiency.

Every startup seems to be a clone of one-another now, without their own imagination or philosophies. We Work Remotely is a great site for finding remote jobs at startups, but if you apply for enough gigs there, you’ll soon realize, that none of these companies are trailblazers; none of them have the heart of the original intent of the modern startup.

There’s an unwritten handbook that they all seem to be following, and a lot of it is just about getting back to the corporate restrictions we wanted to get away from, now wrapped in a cuter package.

Here’s the same formula, I see over and over again:

• You must work 8-4 or 9-5 in a specific timezone (usually wherever the boss lives) and sometimes even need to clock-in
• You have to use an absurd amount of apps that defeat the whole purpose of simplifying: Zoom, Slack, etc.
• You’re hammered with a bunch of extraneous tasks that distract from your main area of expertise (imagine a programmer making sure to put time aside each day to clean toilets and you get my point — corporate wants to maximize every possible minute of time that you’re being paid for)
• You’re forced (of course, it’s “optional,” but the kind of optional that’ll get you fired, so not really optional) into a yearly retreat for “team-building”

Basically, all the best parts that made the new age startup so appealing in the first place, are being forced back into a corporate mold.

What I think really happened is the traditional business person caught on to all the savings of the modern startup, so they exploited those, but then started to slowly remove the freedoms that benefited the human, but not the bottom line.

We got rid of the stuffy office and the boardroom where 90% of the meetings were pointless, and brought that back with Zoom. So innovative. Now we can simulate the time-wasting and redundancy of the classic meeting from the comfort of our own home!

We got rid of the archaic structure of the 9-5 and hourly pay, so that we could all make sure to get enough sleep and focus on our tasks with clear minds and for only as long we needed to, not a long, drawn out 8 hours just to appease the higher-ups who are more concerned over quantity than quality.

We got rid of commute and stuffy business attire and said fuck it, “For now on, every single day is Casual Friday!” We came up with cool ideas, found people that complimented what we did, and built some cool shit. We made it up as we went along and we naturally created a bond.

But now, that “culture” has become an unwritten rule of the formula of startups. Company retreats aren’t based on a natural desire to get together (something that’s a pain in the ass — there’s a reason we like to work from home), it’s team dating arranged my bosses who saw one too many documentaries on Google or Facebook, and saw that creating a “fun culture” for the team environment helped to improve morale, efficiency, and the quality of work.

The only problem now is that there’s this creepy pressure put on the team to all be friends and develop inside jokes and camaraderie; it’s all just too forced. I’ve never been a team player, but when things were good, I actually did enjoy it. Being exhausted by these new phony innovators who are just traditional companies in disguise has motivated me to work even harder at building my own projects so that I don’t have to get stuck in these new digital cubicles.

Streaming Services

Netflix is king. They were a massive disruption to cable TV and video rental stores; that’s common knowledge now, but as an early adopter of Netflix, I could see the writing on the wall way before most people. I predicted that Netflix was a cable and Blockbuster killer 10 years ago!

With the success of Netflix streaming, a whole slough of new services followed suit, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and most recently, Apple TV+ and Disney+. Also, many of the singular channels like HBO, Showtime, ESPN, etc. broke off with their own streaming services and apps.

But, now that all the channels have gone solo… something interesting is starting to happen. With the annoyance and cost of having to buy all these separate subscriptions for consumers, we’re starting to see bundled services for a better price, like Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ all bundled together. Hmm, where have we seen this before?

We’re essentially just solving new problems with old solutions, from the days of DISH, DirecTV, and Comcast. One of the reasons these new freedoms were finally given to us, out of the hands of the cable cartels, allowing cable-cutters to cut those cables, was the rise of piracy. With easier access and lower costs, people were willing to “go legit.” But now that things are becoming complicated once again, I suspect that the reformed ex-pirates will once again put on their tricornes, and raise their swords.

Digital Currencies

This is my friend and partner Trent Lapinski‘s arena. I’m one of those people that just simply never “got it.” At the height of the crypto craze, I tried my best to learn. I watched the videos, I read the articles, I listened to Trent’s pleas for me to take it all more seriously because there was money to be made, and I just fell short; my brain turned to mush.

As someone who cares very strongly about security and privacy, I loved that aspect of it and have used Bitcoin a handful of times, but I couldn’t ever get excited about it or have it click how I could make any money in that space. It wasn’t, isn’t, and never will be romantic for me. While I’m definitely a tech nerd and can take a deep-dive on some very eccentric and technical things, my passions are usually more creative and artistic.

I think the biggest hurtle to the adoption of cryptocurrencies is convenience. It’s just really, really hard for the average person to use. And of course, the more convenient you make something, the more you generally have to strip away security and privacy features; that’s always the give and take balance. And as things become more popular and easier to use, comes more regulation, oversight, and reintroducing the very problems that were being solved in the first place.

Conclusion

The greatest irony about this entire article, is probably the fact that someone noticing the cycles and then trying to warn the other village folk about those patterns is itself, also part of the cycle; the older generation tries to pass on wisdom to the new generation, rinse, and repeat. It’s a neverending cycle that I’m not sure can be broken.

And that isn’t to say that all cycles, or even any cycles, are bad; they just are what they are; that’s life. Seasons come and go, fashion, music, and art all go through a cycle every 10-30 years, but pop back up and trend as if they’re new and unique ideas.

It all makes me wonder if there really is any such thing as a revolution at all, or if it’s just a hopeful, romantic word for reset.

Hundreds of millions of Americans are no longer allowed to make their own schedule, take care of their families, or take a 3 week vacation whenever they want. The current economic system has failed to maintain the American dream.

Did you know that previous to World War Two the majority of American’s worked for themselves?

Most people either worked in a specific trade or industry, or owned their own business. In fact, this was a founding principle of American culture even during the industrial revolution. Being an entrepreneur is as American as you can get.

During the war more and more Americans went into manufacturing, producing weapons, and goods. It was a major shift in the way the country functioned which was necessary to facilitate the war, and rebuild after the Great Depression. After the war millions of soldiers returned home without an education or trade which is when the country began this experiment in corporate capitalism forcing everyone to become dependent on working for large companies to put food on the table. While this kind of worked in the 50’s, 60’s, and to some extent in the 70’s, it was eventually corrupted by greed, monopolies, and crony capitalism in the 80’s, and 90’s. Meanwhile the economic system we have today has more in common with a Casino then it does democractic capitalism.

After I was laid off twice in 2008 all I could do was watch as my Mother lost her home, all my middle class friends were forced into poverty, and my wealthy friends somehow became wealthier due to wealth inequality. Seven years later most of us never recovered from the Great Recession of 2008, only the 1% did. While the news might report low unemployment numbers, and that the economy is great, those figures are being manipulated to sound favorable but they are not an accurate representation of what has happened to the average American family. The truth is under employment is at high, and 73.4% of American’s make less than $50,000 per year. A 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco is now averaging $48,000 per year, which means rent in my home city is now unobtainable by upwards of 92.6% of Americans. This is simply not right.

The sad truth is wealth inequality since 2008 has completely destroyed the middle class. If you are one of the lucky ones who makes over $50k a year, odds are you still work for a mega-corporation. Even those in the top 6.7% of America earn less then $250k a year, and are still wage slaves just like everyone else. We live in a world where even the “rich” have to work now. There just isn’t any real incentive to working your way up in a corporate job anymore as you can easily be laid off at any moment, and even if you work your way into the top 10% you’re still not free to control your own life.

Now you’re probably wondering what you can do about any of this?

The answer is fairly simple, we need to go back to principles this country was founded on and stop working hours for dollars. To do that, we all have to start our own businesses or team up with others to start a business together.

We all need to stop depending on a corporate system that doesn’t have our best interests at heart, and the only way I know how to do that is to start your own business. While there are risks in starting your own business, we are here to help teach people how to run their businesses online and avoid the mistakes we’ve already learned from.

Running your own business is an incredibly rewarding experience, and even if you fail, you can always try again. Technology has leveled the playing field so small teams or even individuals can now run their own businesses online with very little overhead.

Now I’m not going to tell you I have all the answers, I don’t. I’m still learning, hustling, and working just like everyone else. However, I do have some experience that I’m really looking forward to sharing with as many people as possible.

It is time for all of us to support each other and put the future in our own hands instead of our corporate overlords.