Is the startup way of dealing with culture collapsing?

Hello savages!

I would like to bring this subject to the table. I'm into some Brazilian sales groups over here, and we had this debate some days ago.

We already know that the way of dealing with employees in the old companies is messed up. They don't give a s**t about your life, they just expect you to hit quota no matter what (even if the project you were assigned, has an impossible deadline). Well, you know what I'm talking about.

In the startup companies generation, we started to see a whole new way of dealing with employees, a very horizontal way of leadership. Where everyone listens to everyone, leaders understand your personal problems and have empathy, this kind of thing.

I always thought that both ways of culture are very extreme because on one side you have always a top-bottom decision, where "Who can, orders, who have bills to pay, obeys." And on the other side, no one has fucking ownership of anything, you always need to step on eggs to say something, and the companies stop being driven by numbers, everything is good and everything is going to be alright...

After some layoffs here in Brazil, I started to feel that this "good culture" is collapsing, those companies that sold the idea that they care about people on their LinkedIn profiles and job description have shown that is just bullshit to appear to be a good company to work and at the end of the day, board members don't give a shit if you need to layoff a massive amount of people because you hired them without actually thinking if you should or should not do that.

Do you guys think that the startup way of dealing with culture collapsing?