I worked at a startup that locked all the architects cronies in a room for a number of months to build every white paper he was interested in. Told rest of company to adopt this new world order… within a year of the rewrite they laid off 2/3 of engineering and sold the company off shortly thereafter. Architect accepted a role at FAANG for experience gathered. I remember a lunch with him where he joked “I usually leave companies worse off than when they started.” Self-indulgent psychopath.

Screw that company mate. I was in a company with startup-y mindset. It was just like that and I quit after 3 days, without taking any money