Paul Graham wrote an essay last week where he compared employees of big companies to lions in a cage at the zoo. Sort of.
I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I’d only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They’re like different animals. And seeing those guys on their scavenger hunt was like seeing lions in a zoo after spending several years watching them in the wild.
Technically, Paul is comparing the startling impact of seeing lions in a cage after seeing them in the wild to his experience seeing these employees (’those guys on their scavenger hunt”) after spending the last three years watching founders at Y Combinator. Nevertheless, the article (and this quote in particular) caused quite the controversy around the Internet (or at least around the tiny subset of the Internet that reads Paul’s essays, myself included).
It’s not hard to read that last sentence and interpret it as a claim that working for a big company is like being an animal in a cage. I don’t think it was Paul’s intention to say exactly that, but even if it were, I think the point is immaterial to the essay as a whole. It is, at its worst, an exaggeration to prove a point, something I think we can all admit to doing from time to time (indeed it’s something that great writers have always done).
The central thesis of the essay is that being an employee is harmful to individual programmers, and that being a startup founder is a better way to live. In fact, he states this explicitly:
Watching employees get transformed into founders makes it clear that the difference between the two is due mostly to environment—and in particular that the environment in big companies is toxic to programmers.
It seems to me that Jeff Atwood’s (and others) primary argument is that some employees have actually enjoyed working for big companies, himself included, and Paul is thus making a generalization that is not true. But Paul makes no claim about employees being unhappy. Though he doesn’t address the topic directly, he sets up the entire essay by saying that he isn’t talking about some special property of founders, he believes there is something missing from the life of an employee. The absence of something you don’t even know you’re missing is hardly likely to make you unhappy on its own.
When I left Apple, it was not because I was unhappy. I was working with phenomenal individuals on an interesting set of problems. I left because I was excited about the potential of our company. And despite having worked in a great environment, at an amazing company (Apple was my dream job), I feel that all the things Paul said about founders at Y Combinator ring true. I am definitely “more worried and happier at the same time.” So is John Gruber. When I had lunch with my old team on Friday, at least one person mentioned noticing the change as well.
I think Paul’s food analogy was a much better one to illustrate the point. There is plenty of science to back up the claim that most of the food we eat is unhealthy (and I’m just as guilty as anyone else), however the position is still controversial. People who avoid highly processed foods, high fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, white flour, and lots of red meat are generally healthier. These people will tell you that they are happier, and more active, and that it’s directly related to what they eat. Yet these people are also ridiculed by the majority as fringe environmentalists, lunatics, or hippies. Most people will live their entire life eating what everyone else does and will be perfectly happy doing so, but until you’ve actually gone out and changed your lifestyle and started eating “like a hippy,” you can’t possibly know whether or not you would feel better than you already do.
Eating like a hippy isn’t for everyone and neither is starting a startup, but a lot more people would thrive in a startup environment than you think, just as a lot more people really would feel better eating like a hippy. Not everyone will be convinced by Paul’s essay, and that’s okay. There are parts I disagree with as well, in particular with respect to getting some experience at a company before starting your own. As a whole, though, the essay is consistent with what I’ve experienced at Y Combinator, and other founders I’ve talked to agree.
