WASHINGTON — Dan Lyons was a tech reporter when he got laid off at Newsweek. The magazine was discontinuing its print product and consolidating operations.
So Lyons, an experienced journalist in his 50s, thought he’d change things up a bit. Instead of holding out for another job in journalism, he tried working for a tech company instead of simply writing about them.
“I looked around and realized there weren’t many other jobs in magazines and newspapers anymore for someone like me,” Lyons told WTOP. “And I thought, ‘Well, I cover the tech industry and I know a lot about the tech industry; maybe I can go work in one of these companies.”
Lyons found a nearby startup company — HubSpot, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was hired to work in marketing, and “it was just the craziest experience I’ve ever had,” he said.
So crazy, Lyons said, that he left the gig less than two years later. He decided to write a book about the experience.
Out now, Lyons’ book, “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble,” details his time at the company, how tech companies operate and the “whole new way of treating employees and thinking about what work is” that he encountered there. The book is critically acclaimed, mostly due to Lyons’ sardonic writing style and no-frills approach.
“Things did not go well,” Lyons told WTOP. “I thought I could adapt and use my journalism skills to become a marketing guy, but it really wasn’t about the skill set; it was more about the personality.
”You really had to become … kind of a cult member, and dedicate your whole life to believing in the company mission, and dress in the company colors, and sort of buy in and think everything’s awesome.”
Lyons admitted he’s a curmudgeon and a cynic. He didn’t quite buy into the company mission, and didn’t feel comfortable blindly accepting everything the company pitched.
“I didn’t wanna stay there and party, and hang out and go to the beer blasts,” he recalled. “It was very hard to fit in.”
Most of all, Lyons said, he sees a huge hole in the tech industry. It’s a wealthy industry of mostly white men, he said, that doesn’t want women in leadership positions or minorities on its payroll.
And millennials are pretty much working for nothing, he said. Sure, they have fun perks such as free candy and drinks, but the pay is low and they’re expected to work long hours.
“I think that really has to change,” Lyons said. “I think that’s really, really shortsighted and it’s a big problem that needs to be called out.”
