Nah sorry, the leaders of organizations set the values and expectations, and if they make it a cultural priority, others will follow.

He is just profiting from pushing worse working conditions onto the end employee - conditions he has himself criticized but nonetheless does not actually put his money where his mouth is to engage in much more direct advocacy or culture building within YC & its companies - most likely because his views actually are hypocritical.

When it was himself and a few people dealing with a small family of startups, then he cared. He did not want those people treated in a commodity way. When his stake is in a nameless batch of companies each trying to grow huge staffs while offering very poor total comp (even accounting for equity) on false promises that YC startup workplaces would let you avoid the bureaucratic blockers of established companies that pay better, his view has shifted to see those workers as commodities, not to be invested in to do good work, but to be given the most threadbare open office working environments with the least investment and high built in expectations of turnover due to employees gradually realizing how poor the total comp is (even accounting for equity). YC is a sort of nicely branded start-up mill. Not an incubator, but a mill.

This is obviously much lower status than what Graham wants to be known for, so he talks a big game like it’s a very productivity-centric incubator environment, while tacitly endorsing practices that make it more like a mill, with poor commodity treatment of workers in terms of total comp and workplace conditions.

“Diluted ownership” is a poor attempt at an excuse for that.