There is a pervasive brain-washing in valley startups that hits employees the hardest sadly. In my experience, the more successful ventures tend to propagate fear, anxiety and aggression in their culture almost as an unspoken point of pride. I've seen organizations led by all sorts of alleged valley legends fall into this category, regardless of how enlightened HR is.

Some of this may come from people overly identifying with their work roles - and when those work roles come with a mild hero complex due to rising success and the promise of riches/prestige - egos thrash around at high speeds. Part of this phenomenon is the almost manic behavior you see in some entrepreneurs/investors/leaders as they buzz around like bees to the honey.

People need to take a step back from this capitalistic bubble and remember that we are here to do jobs and that employers must respect not just time boundaries but psychological boundaries as well. We can do great work and produce tools that have real impact on the social and economic welfare in the world, but never, never, never at the cost of our wellbeing.

Very sad what happened to this fellow.

Startups seem heavily incentivized to grind their employee's lives into dust while maintaining plausible deniability, though. (Plausible deniability in the form of free lunches, foosball, etc.)