I don't think it's do-or-die, so much as, a lot of startups these days are founded by people without as brutally strong technical skills as in the past, as the businesses are a lot less technical, so a typical hiring strategy of "hire people who we communicate well with and aren't that expensive and work really hard" causes the yolo nodejs rockstar culture. You can't work smarter than the CTO - A hires A and B hires C, etc. None of this matters anyway though because the best talent knows how to find people like them, and the people who want yolo nodejs rockstars know how to find them too and everybody is happy. It follows that the middle ground companies will be those working on more technical problems with more technical founders/leadership, but it also follows that the hiring bar will be higher at those companies.

Look for companies that aren't startups, but not mega corps either.

I work for a software company with around 1000 employees and it's still a very relaxed environment:

- No dress code

- Free snacks, soda, coffee, tea

- 3 weeks vacation starting out

- Top of the line Xeon Workstation or comparable laptop with multiple monitors

- Flex work hours. I come in around 10am after exercising in the morning.

- No crazy work weeks (averaged around 40 hours a week the past year)

- Work from home when needed (bad weather, etc)

I've worked for one startup and a handful of large publicly traded companies (Fortune 1K, Fortune 500, etc). My current employer is a ~5k-person software development shop that does a lot of government work, so it's largely like what you describe. It really does seem to be the sweet spot.

- Lax dress code (collared shirt, jeans on Friday only)

- Free soda in the home office

- 120 hours PTO + sick time

- Start any time between 6 and 9

- 8 hour day includes 1 hour lunch break, so really 35 hr/wk of work

- Overtime is explicitly banned, you actually need approval (since most time is billed to a client)

- WFH is available depending on your client, some have access restrictions that make it impossible but barring that you can WFH when needed/approved

Try a more traditional (non-software) engineering company. I get to work on hard problems with smart people (from several different technical backgrounds), work closely with academia and researchers, get a lot of autonomy as to how I approach projects, get a reasonable amount of money and get to go home after 7-8 hours every day.

You might want to try dev shops rather than startups. Some of them work with startups and small companies to build interesting things, but since they get paid on hourly or project rates, the environment tends to be more life-friendly and less bro-oriented.

There are plenty of companies in a great middle-ground. You just have to look beyond the typical "startups" of SV and focus on those that have a good business and sound interesting to you.

Full disclosure: work for PlanGrid

If you are in the bay area, you might want to take a look at PlanGrid. We have a diverse culture which we're proud of, value work-life balance, and still build cool things that make a difference.

Funny you mention PlanGrid because I grew up doing contruction and considered the company. I remember being much more satisfied with my work back then... A fundemental difference I see is that a project is started and then finished, not started and then kept on life support until V2 can be started.

Alas your company is in the city and I prefer the valley.

From your jobs page:

> Unlimited vacation days

If a candidate requested a firm six weeks of accrued PTO, would that be granted?

My CO also offers unlimited vacation (though they are careful to say it's actually "untracked vacation"). In my experience you can always try but there's a certain amount of unspoken personal capital that's involved that makes the whole process unnecessarily ambiguous.

Yes. If you really care about work/life balance, just offer six or more weeks of real PTO.

I internally translate "unlimited vacation" to "as little vacation as possible".

It's something that could be negotiated, I'm sure.

Personally, I'm interested in minimum vacation policies instead. The founders do reiterate frequently that 5 weeks is expected.