had believed that I could escape. I set out for this startup in the hopes that it would be a chance to be my own boss: to work on my schedule and on my own terms, rather than being shackled to a 9-5 with OKRs and a manager. And yet whatever freedom I thought I would have turned out to be illusory — my startup was still governed by the same market forces, and it was starting to look like there was no real freedom to be found within this system. The lights were blinking back on, and for the first time I noticed that the doors around us all had padlocks on them.
