I'd argue it's not about "in tech" though, as another commenter pointed out, this is a completely different world of private jets and deciding where to spend the hundreds of millions these people have on, betting on their 10 million investment becoming a billion. This is the "snorting coke off a model's ass for lunch" world, not tech.
Not directly, but YC and others constantly emphasize how (1) founders define the whole company culture, at least for the years of the growth phase, and how (2) important VCs are as advisers to founders, who are often fairly inexperienced in managing a company.
In the light of those assertions, it sounds fairly hard to believe that the culture of the world described by Pao doesn't have a strong influence in the VC-funded tech startup (and post-startup) world.
Does the distinction matter? Are you saying this sort of behavior does not reach the level of concern inside of the world of tech, regardless of how that is defined?
I don't think it matters in the sense that people with that kind of money can never be reined in--they just spend more money to route around anyone who wants to regulate their behavior.
> I don't think it matters in the sense that people with that kind of money can never be reined in
They can be reined-in using the same money the value so much. If retirement funds stop putting money into their funds (because of bad PR or any other leverage), then they'll start to behave.
Do these people act like this because the money has completely unhinged them? Or do unhinged people enter careers like this and escalate to these levels because, well, they're unhinged and it's easier to act that way if you've got teh cash?
It's definitely a concern in tech and there are definitely problems to fix. However it's just that tech's problems with this type of behavior pales in comparison to finance's problems with it (as well as others such as Hollywood and the music industry). This whole article is about finance; about a financial firm that happens to specialize in investing in the tech sector. It's unfair to pin this one entirely on us when it's not even really our industry but the people financing us.
