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animuchan 2 days ago

What you're describing was precisely our culture at the last startup.

One group plans ahead and overall do a solid job, so they're rarely swamped, never pull all-nighters. People are never promoted, they're thought of as slacking and un-startup-like. Top performers leave regularly because of that.

The other group is behind on even the "blocker"-level issues, people are stressed and overworked, weekends are barely a thing. But — they get praised for hard work. The heroes. (And then leave after burning out completely.)

(The company was eventually acquired, but employees got pennies. So it worked out well for the founders, while summarily ratfucking everyone else involved. I'm afraid this is very common.)

grg0 20 hours ago | parent [-]

The classic one too is that as somebody who puts out the fires, you get all the praise; whereas if you just do the damn job right from the beginning, nobody notices. Corollary: create as many fires as you can, just don't completely burn the whole thing to the ground.