This article has such a strong mental bias towards the Bay Area worldview. It assumes so deeply that the two types of people in the world are VC-backed startup founders and engineers at top tier tech companies. This is so completely off. Many people (including me) decided to start bootstrapped companies that are profitable on day 1 (or soon thereafter), with richly rewarding work. Many folks literally can’t get a job because they have no marketable skills and their only solution is to create something brand new. Other folks just want to have a good story to tell about trying to change the world. It’s really in this small bubble that you can create an equivalence between tech founder and tech employee.
Hm okay, thanks for acknowledging! I guess the reason I had strong words for this was that the mental bias I observed is actually extremely pervasive among people here in the bay. In fact the first question I get about my firm is whether/how much I raised.
I'm afraid of Bay-Area-view-of-the-world-being-inaccurate sorta things, was kind of sad to see it in myself (though my scope was narrowed partially because my only experience was choosing between industry vs startup)
If you're interested in the wider world of startups you might like the "Startups for the Rest of Us" podcast (https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/) and the community around it. Some examples:
They are probably closest to the Silicon Valley startup world in the kinds of businesses being built.
Getting further away you have things like affiliate marketers and drop shippers. The "Tropical MBA" podcast (https://www.tropicalmba.com/) is more in that space.
"Startup" is not really synonymous with "small business". It may not be a universal view but it does seem really common nowadays for the word "startup" to imply attempts at fast-growing, VC-funded new companies.
Also while most people don't work at the big-name sexy tech companies, I think the author's point was about what people should aspire to as the pinnacle of a career. Not what people commonly settle for.
