Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

by Dan Lyons

I cannot return to work among those earnest, upbeat kids who spend their days sending Cheers for Peers on TINYpulse—Ashley for president!!!!!—and who would never, ever sit in a meeting and pitch jokes about someone’s enormous horse cock.

“A lot of it is luck” is how blogger-turned-investor Michael Arrington once described the art of investing in tech start-ups.

“You could go to HR and report him,” she says. “Show them the emails he’s sending you.” “I know,” I say, “but I don’t know if I trust HR. My guess is they won’t do anything to Trotsky, but they’ll tell him that I complained, and that will only piss him off even more. He’ll ramp up the harassment.”

Most of these people will get next to nothing from this IPO, but their hard work had just made Dharmesh an immensely wealthy man.

Signing the release form prohibits me from ever bringing any kind of legal claim against the company. It also includes a nondisparagement clause.

I found I wasn’t prepared for things like Fearless Friday and teddy bears being given a place of honor at the table during management meetings.

Where others saw a fun place to work, I saw a place where “old people”—those over forty, and certainly people over fifty—were largely unwanted, and the company made no secret of it. I saw astonishing uniformity and groupthink, and an incredible lack of diversity, based not just on age but also on race, euphemized as “culture fit.” I saw poorly trained managers, haphazard oversight, and an organization that was out of control.