> one of the people who legit joins a startup, is passionate, working long hours, earning your vest, to have your coworker pretending to be working.

Why.

I have worked in VC-backed startups for over a decade. The individual employee isn't going to change the direction of the company regardless of how hard they work.

The people who make or break the startup are the founders. Even the middle managers do not matter. If the founders / top level leaders have no idea what they are doing and do not want to make money, nothing a single engineer does even matters.

The best thing an engineer can do in that scenario is give advice and do work as prescribed. Trying to save the founders from themselves is a recipe for going crazy and burning out.