The False Promises of the Startup & Scale-Up Society

Introduction: the dream that sold itself

Startups and scale-ups often present themselves as much more than just companies. They also sell a vision — not only of transforming their industry (to “disrupt” it), but also of reinventing how we work, collaborate, and live together within them.

The narrative is appealing: if we can rethink products, markets, and even society, then surely we can reinvent work itself. Hierarchies will flatten. Bureaucracy will disappear. Work will become more human, more meaningful. The old dream of work as a path to growth and emancipation. Capitalism, reinvented.

But these promises quickly dissolve, and the reality check is brutal.

The façade

The corporate theater

Many companies proudly display a set of “values”: collaboration, kindness, ownership, transparency. They are printed on walls, repeated during onboarding, and embedded in performance reviews.

Common examples include:

• “Ownership” — everyone is accountable
• “Agility” — fast execution and adaptability
• “Radical candor” — we are truly empathetic
• “Fail fast, learn faster” — we are not afraid to fail and learn from mistakes
• “Work hard, play hard” — we work, but we also have fun

These ideas are not bad in themselves. They are often based on relevant and appealing principles. But in practice, they often become performative language — repeated, displayed, but rarely applied, and often distorted.

Beyond these values, many practices fall under what could be called corporate marketing:

• Office perks (games, foosball tables, gyms, free drinks and snacks, “fun culture”)
• Superficial environmental initiatives (planting trees or gardening for a day)
• Psychological support (often outsourced) rather than a true internal culture of listening
• “Culture fit” interviews that favor conformity over diversity of thought

These elements create an illusion of kindness, innovation, and modernity — without actually changing how people are treated or how decisions are made.

When values become slogans, they lose their meaning. They turn into moral marketing — a way for companies to appear virtuous while decisions remain driven by risk management, quarterly metrics, or internal politics.

The real test of a value is simple:

Is it upheld when it becomes uncomfortable?

If not, it’s not a value — it’s marketing.

👉 Real values don’t need posters. They must be embodied — starting from the top of the hierarchy.

They should show up in decisions, conflict management, and how people are treated when things get difficult.

In practice, this is rarely the case.

• If a company claims kindness but punishes mistakes, the value is false.
• If it claims transparency but hides strategic decisions, the value is false.

If we wanted to be honest, we should strip away all this packaging and return to the basics.

What we need is simply honesty between human beings.

About “Management 2.0”

If startups believe they can revolutionize industries, it’s only logical they think they can transform how we work — and therefore management.

In reality, they often recycle outdated methods under a veneer of modernity, revealing a certain hypocrisy. The benefit for employees remains unproven and may even be negative, as the gap between promises and reality creates deeper disappointment.

The problem with “management frameworks”

Modern companies rely heavily on structured processes (frameworks):

• annual goals
• quarterly planning
• structured feedback cycles
• management frameworks
• evaluation and career path matrices

These tools promise fairness, predictability, scalability, and transparency.

But more often than not, they replace real conversations with procedures.
Instead of discussing problems openly, people fill out forms.
Instead of supporting individuals, managers evaluate them through grids.

👉Human relationships disappear behind processes.

Yet real progress rarely comes from processes.

It comes from:

• honest conversations
• mutual trust
• intellectual disagreements
• shared curiosity

In other words: human interactions, with all that entails.

The strange split between managers and builders

In many tech organizations, career paths split into two tracks:

• technical experts
• managers

This separation is problematic. It implies that technical experts cannot be good managers (due to lack of time?) and vice versa. It also suggests that management is something that can simply be learned by absorbing and applying frameworks.

When someone becomes a manager, they gradually stop building, designing systems, and eventually lose touch with the real problems engineers face.

This creates a dangerous gap: managers become administrators of work rather than leaders. They coordinate, report, evaluate, and plan — but are no longer connected to technical reality.

The result is predictable:

• unrealistic planning
• superficial decisions
• growing distrust between engineers and leadership

Managers should be technical leaders

A better model is leading by example.

Leaders must continue to deeply understand the technical domain.
Not necessarily contribute daily, but be able to:

• understand architecture
• challenge technical decisions
• participate in design discussions
• recognize good technical work

When leaders remain technically credible:

• engineers trust them
• decisions improve and become grounded in reality
• discussions become honest rather than political

👉Leadership becomes guidance, not administration.

The obsession with metrics

Modern companies want to rely on data and numbers. After all, what better way to make decisions than with data? This is a trap.

The new dogmas have names:

• OKRs (measurable objectives)
• KPIs (we measure everything)
• continuous feedback systems
• engagement scores (NPS, for customers and employees)
• SMART goals

Metrics are useful when they inform decisions. They can guide, but they can never replace human vision and intuition.

Ironically, the figures who inspire these companies (Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates) did not rely on metrics for their greatest successes. They trusted intuition, human judgment, and vision. One could even argue their biggest failures came when they followed metrics too closely.

Metrics become dangerous when they replace judgment.

Everything that matters cannot be measured:

• creativity
• team cohesion
• architectural quality
• real product quality
• innovation
• intellectual curiosity

When numbers dominate, organizations optimize what is measurable, not what is important.

This is where Goodhart’s Law applies: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

👉Teams optimize metrics instead of meaning.

The need to refocus on humans

True leadership is not built on dashboards. It is built on:

• deep conversations
• listening
• contextual judgment
• trust

Management is not a system to optimize — it is a human relationship to cultivate.

The Agile dogma

In most startups, work is organized using so-called “Agile” methods. The original manifesto was a sharp critique of traditional project management.

Agile methodologies were created to reduce bureaucracy and empower teams.

Ironically, in many companies, they have become a new rigid framework.

Instead of flexibility, we now have ceremonies and metrics:

• sprint ceremonies, grooming, retrospectives
• velocity metrics
• bureaucracy (Jira tickets)
• constant pressure for incremental delivery

Engineers, forced to use these tools and evaluated on them, end up optimizing process compliance, not innovation or real product value.

How often do we hear:

• “It’s not in the sprint”
• Or: “We must finish this ticket” (even if nothing is ready)

What does that even mean?

The innovation paradox

Agile’s focus on small deliveries inherently limits creativity.

When work is broken into micro-tasks, teams stop thinking big or outside the box (especially when punished for deviating from the plan).

Real innovation requires:

• challenging frameworks
• taking risks
• questioning assumptions
• acting without perfect alignment

👉True builders and leaders don’t wait for permission. They act, test, and adjust.

Incremental roadmaps discourage this. Too often, great engineers abandon improvements outside the sprint because changing the framework is too costly.

Instead of asking “What should we build?”, teams ask “What can we deliver this sprint?”

The result: a constant flow of features feeding product teams — without real transformation.

When engineering becomes mere incremental execution, something disappears: the sense of building something meaningful.

Engineers are motivated by:

• solving complex problems
• building elegant systems
• creating something new

Continuous backlog execution turns their work into task execution.

This gradually destroys technical motivation.

It also affects the overall product vision. By delivering micro-features continuously, major innovation depends on top-down decisions — often slow — which contradicts Agile’s original promise.

From flexibility to ritual

Agile, meant to be flexible, often becomes:

• endless ceremonies
• incremental delivery disconnected from value
• obsession with velocity

This leads to environments focused on:

• process compliance
• metric optimization
• risk avoidance

There is a fundamental tension between:

• planning vs acting
• process vs action

Many organizations fall into:

• endless alignment
• framework overload
• decision paralysis

A simple principle is forgotten:

👉Action creates more learning than planning.

“Done is better than perfect” does not promote recklessness — it recognizes that progress requires movement.

The risk of dehumanized organizations at the AI era

When organizations replace human judgment with frameworks, metrics, and processes, they become mechanical.

A question arises:

If everything is automated, why keep humans? (especially in the age of AI)

Machines execute processes very well.

What they do not (yet) have:

• intuition
• creative conflict
• ethical judgment
• intellectual exploration

By removing these human elements, companies themselves become replaceable.

👉Organizations must remain human.

Human decisions, human conflict, human responsibility

Healthy organizations are not frictionless.

They include:

• debates
• disagreements
• strong opinions
• difficult conversations

This is not dysfunction.

It is intellectual vitality.

Innovation rarely comes from harmony or balance.
It comes from people who care enough to debate ideas.

It comes from structural problems that need solving.

Conclusion

Organizations must trust people, not frameworks.

• Leadership must come from technical credibility
• Decisions must come from discussion, not metrics
• Innovation requires freedom beyond rigid processes
• Teams must preserve human judgment, curiosity, and conflict

Otherwise, companies slowly become bureaucratic machines that produce activity rather than value.

Eventually, machines will do this work better than we do — and we will become useless. Everything will stagnate into soft consensus.

We can do better.
We can be human.