Startups typically don’t exploit naive altruistic people. They pay their employees with money, or at least with a promise of money (i.e. shares). If they tried to recruit in the rationalist community, most people would know what to expect (expert for the part where the shares predictably turn out to be worthless because of some clever legal trick).
FTX is the only potentially relevant example I know, and I think even they paid their employees nicely, i.e. the abuse was proportional to the salary.
Startups quite often pay less than the person might make working elsewhere and justify that with the promise of equity. The founder then tells the employees a story about the likely value of that oversells the chance that the equity is worth a lot.
Would you consider nearly every startup that makes people work 80 hour days to consider to belong to the category?
Startups typically don’t exploit naive altruistic people. They pay their employees with money, or at least with a promise of money (i.e. shares). If they tried to recruit in the rationalist community, most people would know what to expect (expert for the part where the shares predictably turn out to be worthless because of some clever legal trick).
FTX is the only potentially relevant example I know, and I think even they paid their employees nicely, i.e. the abuse was proportional to the salary.
Startups quite often pay less than the person might make working elsewhere and justify that with the promise of equity. The founder then tells the employees a story about the likely value of that oversells the chance that the equity is worth a lot.