Isn't startup culture a bit like bumfights?

Rich people using their financial prowess to subjugate others who are in a much weaker position in order to let them engage in unhinged behavior for their amusement and benefit.

All in favor of skipping the "rise" for this one

Tattooing company logos has already been done https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billy-gibby-aka-hostgator_n_2...

So really, they are just boring and derivative. Probably an analog to be drawn here for modern SV.

There seems to be a line of thinking that past unicorn startups had bad risk-reward profiles, and therefore a good founder should be taking lots of bad risks. If they take good risks, they will never succeed and become a unicorn. Very "tres commas".

So, demonstrating there's no risk too outlandish for you becomes a form of social signaling to investors.

This whole affair has the dirty shadow of a society like the one depicted in Jennifer Government.

It's the kind of action founders imagine who would be willing to give optional tattoos to any of their their proud employees after all their unusually generous equity packages have skyrocketed, matured, and been cashed in.

But they know they don't have what it takes for that.

In Stargate SG-1, the Jaffa slaves had their forehead tattooed by pouring liquid metal. We're getting there.

Not quite weimar conditions yet

Maybe "indirect" modern slavery? First we teach a man how to cult, then we show him how to enslave himself?

You are then dangerously obsolete. New branding means old flesh thrown to bio-degradable trash can and new flesh for the nexgen corpo needles.

Even worse is when the branding (sic) remains, but the image changes.

I'm wonder if there are lefty geek Tesla lovers that branded themselves and then regretting the image shift.

Certainly I've seen plenty of tattoos that have become sadly dated (by me).

What purpose is that? Are you claiming they aren't looking to hire people, and just want their company name out there for other purposes? Or that having this story somehow helps their actual hiring goals (e.g. by dissuading people who think that this is awful from applying, or that it will actually make people want to apply)?

I can think of several purposes someone might claim that this has. All of them seem pretty dubious to me though, so if you think it's obvious, I would be interested in hearing what you think it is.

> I could imagine how a potential interviewee might say something like “I’d tattoo myself with your logo for a chance at a job” and a CEO might respond “Hell, yeah! That’s the kind of energy I’m looking for.”

If I were that CEO I'd avoid that person because of their very poor judgement, lack of boundaries, and questionable self respect.

That you think it's even on the edge of normal describes the current balance of power in the tech job market in a nutshell, though.

They didn't think it was a bad idea because they don't have a sense of right and wrong. If something is potentially profitable and technically legal they will do it. This is what YC screens for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

Or maybe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux

Group think. Monkey see, monkey do. It's actually remarkably difficult to be the only one to dissent unless you grew up in a culture where dissent is encouraged.

The people who work at a company all were filtered from the hiring process of the founder. If his filter included sycophants and suck-ups, he filtered out any dissent or critical thinking that could challenge his decisions. It's easy to get an exec team who doesn't diverge from decisions of the guy at the top, but obviously that much homogeneity / thought alignment comes with a cost.

Anyway, I'm glad this was publicized. Some rumored or one bad GlassDoor review can be easily overlooked; this will be a stain on the CEO's reputation for a while.

You seem to think people in tech/leadership are actually smart. Your mistake

Lizard people.

They're trying to make software development sound like polar exploration or something?

What company?

cringed ngl.

how about build for the customer / end user?

it’s not that big of a deal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48538229

Was that image of the plucky hacker shooting their shot actually something based in reality or something cooked up to get people interested in founding a company? Look at the inaugural YC class. Do those people today resemble what you're describing? It is important to have critical literacy about things like this. Describing a narrative that isn't consistent with reality in order to convince people to do something is not unique to Silicon Valley. I'm not encouraging wholesale cynicism but just a healthy level of skepticism.

Come and gone. Gatekeeping has some merits

Don’t judge a whole community by one freak.

No, bad logic.

This was a local professional tattoo artist from San Francisco doing a pop up shop at their company party, not some prisoner with a sewing needle. Professional Tattoo artists know how to minimize risks. They aren't taking pointers about how to do their job from some stablecoin microfinance startup tween.