Silicon Valley Startup or Plague-Ridden Feudal Business?

1. The culture is very youth-oriented; the business is populated entirely by men in their early thirties and one appallingly over-qualified unpaid female intern named Sharon.

2. The culture is very elder-oriented; the business is populated entirely by men in their early thirties. Everyone else is dead.

3. High rates of employee turnover and a steady flow of whiz-kid college dropouts create a domino effect. Employees routinely become smitten with the prospect of pioneering cutting-edge technology and working for companies that market themselves as “The Uber of Netflix’s Seamless” via a series of well-drawn but weirdly Oedipal subway ads.

4. None of the employees progressed beyond grammar school lest their worldliness and arithmetic incite His wrath. Once Thaddeus overhead a foreigner use the word “abacus” and was promptly smote. There is a high amount of turnover as employees are stacked like literal dominos in wheelbarrows and thrown unceremoniously into The Penance Pits like so much meat into a split pea soup of human indignity and suffering and also corpses.

5. Higher-ups have demonstrated a commitment to a lean business model. Employees are encouraged to reduce waste by avoiding unnecessary expenditure on business lunches, overtime hours, and setting up, like, twenty lines of coke on the break room table and yelling “Choo choo, bitches, all aboard the Polar Express!”

6. The ultimate goal is to eliminate waste. Is the waste from whence the pestilence originates? Or is it from when Sharon, the town hussy, cast a wanton glance our way? Best to drown Sharon in the town drinking well, just to be safe, lest she brandishes her ankle at us like some kind of absolute harlot and damn us all to an eternity of hellfire, piteous wailing, and erotic, shinbone-based dreams.

7. The workplace has an emotional support dog named “Mr. Flufferton” whose primary responsibility is to retrieve Settlers of Catan resource pieces that fall behind the conference room table. Most of Mr. Flufferton’s emotional support goes to Kevin who keeps buying up all the development cards and then getting all pissy when no one wants to trade him for sheep to build a settlement.

8. The workplace has a dog named “Dog” whose primary responsibility is to systematically hunt and kill the seething hordes of plague-ridden rats that live in the walls.

9. There is no clear hierarchy. Employees are free to make decisions without consulting the higher-ups. Meetings are collegial and often conducted over pints of the office’s on-tap beers “curated” by Ted from the UX research team who is purportedly “on the market for” an English-Style IPA with a strong finish and “an ABV higher than the tits on Sharon in Reception.” All voices are heard equally. Except Ted’s, because he’s being kind of a dick right now.

10. There is no clear hierarchy. All the higher-ups have succumbed to the scourge visited upon us for our sins against Him. Flagons of ale replace water as primary sustenance due to speculation that “our Lord, God, hast forsaken us,” “the water hast gotten too chewy as of late,” and “putting the community sewer next to the drinking wast not thine best call, Reginald.” All voices are heard equally, which is to say, not well over the manifold screams of the dying.

11. Sharon, in hopes of protecting her life and livelihood, braves the filth to take the whole matter up with HR. She is instead led into the boss’ office and told she must either begin sleeping with him or never work in this town again. Everyone agrees Sharon is a witch and we shouldn’t give women another chance at leadership for seven hundred years.

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Silicon Valley Startup: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9

Legitimate business in the 1300s: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10

Both: 11