Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

by Dan Lyons

Is this really it? Is this my job? Will I really go to work every day and sit at this shitty little desk in this shitty little room? Are these people now my colleagues? Will I have to sit in meetings with them and listen to them talk? What exactly is my actual job?

In every aspect of life, we’re told, there is a HubSpotty way of doing things. Nobody can really explain what HubSpotty means, but it is a real word that people use, all the time. Some people are more HubSpotty than others. Some are 100 percent HubSpotty, possessed of a HubSpottiness that is so complete as to be beyond reproach.

I have no idea what all of these people are afraid of, but to marketers, the world is filled with fears that must be conquered. Maybe they like this rhetoric because it makes online sales and marketing seem like some kind of epic adventure rather than the drab, soul-destroying job that it actually is.

Wingman isn’t a bad guy. He’s just a guy who has a number to hit.

The only improvement Wingman cares about is our lead-generation number. That’s what Wingman gets paid to do. That’s how he gets measured and how he gets rewarded. He has zero incentive to change anything.

On top of the fun stuff you create a mythology that attempts to make the work seem meaningful.

But Silicon Valley has a dark side. To be sure, there are plenty of shiny, happy people working in tech. But this is also a world where wealth is distributed unevenly and benefits accrue mostly to investors and founders, who have rigged the game in their favor. It’s a world where older workers are not wanted, where people get tossed aside when they turn forty. It’s a world where employers discriminate on the basis of race and gender, where founders sometimes turn out to be sociopathic monsters, where poorly trained (or completely untrained) managers abuse employees and fire people with impunity, and where workers have little recourse and no job security.

This is the New Work, but really it is just a new twist on an old story, the one about labor being exploited by capital. The difference is that this time the exploitation is done with a big smiley face. Everything about this new workplace, from the crazy décor to the change-the-world rhetoric to the hero’s journey mythology and the perks that are not really perks—all of these things exist for one reason, which is to drive down the cost of labor so that investors can maximize their return.

Based on what I’m seeing, we’re in trouble. Sure, Benioff is full of shit, but so are we, and Benioff is way better at being full of shit than we are.

All of the stuff about hospitals and Haitians and Huey Lewis is meant to distract us from noticing that Benioff doesn’t really have much to talk about other than warmed-over versions of old products. The misdirection works. People whoop and clap. They nod their heads as if they totally understand phrases like the Internet of customers, where people make decisions at superhuman speeds, and companies operate at the speed of now, as well as at the speed of sales.

“Powerful women” is a theme of the conference—yet oddly enough only four members of Benioff’s twenty-two member management team and only one member of his board of directors are female. Salesforce.com is run almost entirely by white men. But look—over there! It’s the prime minister of Haiti! And wait, hold on—is that thunder and lightning? Indoors? Is that a Tesla? From the future? On stage?

One of the maddening things about discrimination of any kind is that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to prove that it’s taking place. The bias is often subtle, or even subconscious.

The prospectus contains a warning: “We have a history of losses and may not achieve profitability in the future.” Note this does not say it will take a while to achieve profitability, or that profits will one day arrive but the company cannot predict when this will happen. Rather, the prospectus says the company might never become profitable.

This man who has just reaped a $70 million windfall, whose stock will soon be worth more than $100 million when HubSpot shares keep climbing, looks into the camera and says something amazing: “Get back to work.” I will never forget it.