This article is pretty clearly clickbait.

If you have a team of burners, jokingly burning an effigy of the thing you are committed to combatting isn’t a “spiritual” action as much a nod to Burning Man.

At one point I worked in an open office where the sales team would cheer and throw a Nerf football to each other when they’d make a sale.

It’d be weird as shit to write an article on that behavior claiming that the sales team at that company was suddenly adopting professional sports practices.

If you want to know what’s actually going on behind closed doors there, this The Atlantic piece is excellent and in part comes from an upcoming book by one of the authors whose been researching that very topic.

The TLDR is that rapidly growing a product that’s become an unexpected success while trying to stay committed to long term research goals is a giant mess.