While I agree with more efforts to thwart tech industry anti-competitive behavior, and I hardly think the prominent tech giants are innocent in this, I also think it’s disingenuous to act like modern start-ups are stereotypically “the small business owner” or that their own behavior isn’t at least partly to blame.
My interactions with start-ups have rarely been pleasant. As an employee, I was underpaid (and wildly so on a risk-adjusted, expected value basis when comparing the lowered salary with what could be earned elsewhere), overworked, and felt the management was not informed either on the business side or the tech side, but instead came off as people with wealthy parents who viewed starting a company as the modern day status equivalent to what socialite children used to think about non-profit work or humanities graduate school.
If we’re being honest, there’s a lot of dysfunction with the way start-ups are operated, and plenty of misaligned incentives that lead to running a business more to drive hype than to actually find a product-market fit or empower employees to be productive.
Before I would start thinking, “won’t somebody think of the start-ups!” — I’d expect them to be a lot better behaved, a lot more concerned with ergonomics & healthy work places, more sincerely interested in productivity, and more eager to pay competitively. If they’re doing all this right, then I might have more sympathy when a bad actor displaces then for real anti-competitive reasons.
My interactions with start-ups have rarely been pleasant. As an employee, I was underpaid (and wildly so on a risk-adjusted, expected value basis when comparing the lowered salary with what could be earned elsewhere), overworked, and felt the management was not informed either on the business side or the tech side, but instead came off as people with wealthy parents who viewed starting a company as the modern day status equivalent to what socialite children used to think about non-profit work or humanities graduate school.
If we’re being honest, there’s a lot of dysfunction with the way start-ups are operated, and plenty of misaligned incentives that lead to running a business more to drive hype than to actually find a product-market fit or empower employees to be productive.
Before I would start thinking, “won’t somebody think of the start-ups!” — I’d expect them to be a lot better behaved, a lot more concerned with ergonomics & healthy work places, more sincerely interested in productivity, and more eager to pay competitively. If they’re doing all this right, then I might have more sympathy when a bad actor displaces then for real anti-competitive reasons.