Don’t get me wrong, I’d never work with the manchildren at comma.ai. I’ve interacted extensively with George Hotz in the past and he’s certainly not a person I’d want to spend any time in the same room with.
I just don’t see any issue with their choice of office space, it just seems like a perfect fit for their business.
> To me a mansion as a startup HQ screams tech-bro 24-7 party culture with some major WLB issues
Where else would you put your car tech startup in SF? Software engineers aren’t going to work out of a garage, and good luck finding a traditional office space with decent facilities for working on cars.
FWIW this is hardly a mansion https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/41-Santa-Monica-Way-...
Comma.ai has a “proper” facility now, but they had to move off to San Diego for that.
At the same time as the $10m mansion place I interviewed for a self driving truck company and they had their office located in an industrial park in a shop that looks like it used to be an auto mechanic with upstairs offices. That place was fine but I didn’t feel like working for a 22 year old CEO who had just left college. Back in 2016 investors were dumping money on self driving car startups but I wanted something stable.
In…a garage. I’m serious - there are spaces big enough in SOMA and other places that can fit a garage space plus open office space plus some conference rooms (I’ve worked in several of them).
I see you have something like a half dozen comments now trying to rationalize this all cross the comment section, but like yeah renting out a mansion for your startup does send out a "vibe".
If you don't realize that a) you're probably who they're looking for, and b) you probably have some room to grow when it comes to picking up on subtext.
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Not everything in life can be quantified in a neat little bullet pointed list. But part of being an experienced person is being able to pick out the more subtle aspects of situations.
To me a mansion as a startup HQ screams tech-bro 24-7 party culture with some major WLB issues.
And again, it's not like using a mansion magically causes that means that, but it strongly implies it.
It's like walking into an office and seeing everyone in suits and ties vs seeing everyone in sweatpants and baggy tees.
Technically the choice of clothes does not directly force you to behave a certain way, but your intuition should tell you that those are two very different cultures, and it should tell you a little bit about each.
tl;dr Ignoring intuition because it's not backed by unequivocal fact is not a super-power, and it's not really productive.