> the company culture was never a good fit for him and he shouldn't harm others because of his mistake
How about the company shouldn't try to harm its workers? Because they do. Most startups do (it's practically part of the business plan, underpay your workers and dilute their equity 'til, if you are a mega-success, selling out might make up the delta between your underpaying salary and the one they could have gotten at a normal company), most tech companies do (though in other ways, hello collusion and managerial gaslighting). And shining a light on that is, if not noble, at least necessary.
The jump to Lyons entered employment under false pretenses / with this book in mind doesn't seem justified by anything I've read.
It seems more like he found himself in a somewhat ludicrous situation and wrote a book about it.
That was my read too after listening to the fresh air interview. He said he thought it could be fun working with a bunch of out of college kids doing something exciting in a growing company. He had that experience before, afterall.
>when I first sold the book and start to write it, it was meant to be sort of a modern-day "Office Space ... I wanted to write just a funny story about being in a kooky company. It was just a comedy.
On one hand I think it's sort of disingenuous - the company culture was never a good fit for him and he shouldn't harm others because of his mistake (I know people who have had negative non-fiction stories written about them, and it can take a personal toll - I hope he left names and specifics out). It doesn't seem like HubSpot ever tries to hide their culture like Amazon has been known to do.
On the other hand, it really is an interesting story. I'm old enough that I'd never work at a place like HubSpot, so to me it's an interesting perspective on an interesting work environment that is common in the new millennial world. In other words, real journalism :)