2. Be careful about perks that have social implications and/or require employees to spend non-work time at work or with co-workers. A lot of the perks startups offer today, such as catered lunches/dinners and frequent group outings, send the message that you're trying to build a family, not a company. Many people have a life outside of work and these "perks" ask/require employees to give up what should be their free time.

3. Don't ignore management. A lot of startups eschew basic management practices, mistaking management for bureaucracy. The reality, however, is that a healthy dose of competent management is one of the best ways to promote productivity and avoid time-wasting dysfunction.

It usually degenerates into a bunch of hip young guys with lots of hair product and eclectic playlists.

Build for diversity and you'll get surprisingly awesome skillsets on your team.

Smart companies look for professionalism, not "culture fit." True professionals can work very effectively with different kinds of people, including people who they're not likely to become friends with. Professionalism works in small teams, and it scales.

If you're finding that more than a few well-qualified candidates "can't work with your current team" it's worth considering that the problem is with your existing team, not the people you're adding to it.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that 'Culture fit' = hiring people who look alike. Having an maintaining a good work culture where individuals on a team gel together, much like an orchestra, is extremely important and not to be cast aside. Sure, a candidate might have a PhD from MIT and is smart, but if that individual is quiet, has difficulty working in a pair (assuming pairing is part of the culture), and is adamant about working in a silo and going hero mode, having that candidate on your team might just be disruptive.

Having said that, I do think culture fit shouldn't be the only or the veto decision when it comes to hiring. It should however be a part of the overall decision. And yes, if you're not hiring someone because they don't like Fight Club but your team does, then calling that a 'culture fit' problem is dumb. It's not about hiring people who only think alike, but hiring people who have the same / similar philosophies when it comes to doing their job.

Re-read the part about being a professional. Then you will see why this is a straw-man construction.

-- This is an excellent comment

If you cater meals, some employees will want to skip out and take the salary bump instead, others don't mind losing out on pay for free weekly massages.

Free beer? Non-drinkers feel left out. Game room? non-gamers hate it. Ping-pong, foosball, pool tables, free gym? You'll find somebody who it alienates.

You have to pick what you want your company to be and commit to it. Where would you want to work? Build that. You'll find the right people to populate it, but try to keep it open to diversity of styles and ideas.

Your best employee will probably be somebody completely different than you.

This is a false dichotomy. If a company is so broke that offering a few free meals will impact their salary pool, they aren't going to offer the free meals at all. Anecdotally, every company I've worked at that offered free lunch paid more than any of the companies that didn't offer free meals.

They are perks designed to make working there more pleasant and efficient (if you eat there your lunch commute is gone and you are likely to converse with coworkers). They have nothing to do with your compensation.

No you can't. You can't make the argument because one set of things is strictly needed for you to do your job, the other is not.

I have no experience with these things. Why would this be the case? Is it because "a dynamic work environment with a constant influx of interesting problems to deal with" implies longer work hours?

If you think of an orchestra, it's like all the nameless people in the violin section vs. soloist. Optimizing for rockstars is like optimizing for soloists and that rarely works well.

They're your steady soldiers, getting the job done at the pace you set. They can be used to set organizational tempo, long-term goals, etc. They're the ones who will work for your company for 10 years and not complain too much.

But they also recognize that they're working to live, not living to work. Lots of startups want their employees to be obsesses with their work, they want all the employees to do things together, live together, marry each other, they want them to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together.

Lots of employees find that a huge turnoff, because frankly, they have better lives than what any startup can offer.

A culture where everyone worked to the maximum of their ability and where the sum was greater than the parts, those places tended to do pretty well.

Curb your hubris and start treating people like human beings. I've worked for a number of "world changing" startups managed by 20-something year olds like you and the fact that it always devolved into a high school popularity contest made me sick to my stomach.

Nobody works themselves to death, but we all push ourselves to get as much done as possible. If you want to be a founder, or early stage employee, you're going to have to work harder than the average 9-5er.