Google cloud compute VM startup script got interrupted and does not finish - google-cloud-platform

Question

I followed this guide in order to create self deleting virtual machine after 60 seconds with the following script calling it from a python script. Bellow you can find the startup script:
#!/bin/bash
echo Start the startup script
sleep 60s
echo BEFORE Deleting the VMs after max running time
export NAME="$(curl -X GET http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/name -H 'Metadata-Flavor: Google')"
export ZONE="$(curl -X GET http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/zone -H 'Metadata-Flavor: Google')"
echo AFTER Deleting the VMs after max running time
gcloud --quiet compute instances delete $NAME --zone=$ZONE
Here is how it was triggered from the python code:
cmd = """gcloud compute instances create-with-container \
{0} \
--project={1} \
--zone=us-central1-c \
--container-image=gcr.io/project/image \
--machine-type={2} \
--scopes "bigquery","gke-default","storage-full","compute-rw" \
--boot-disk-size {3} \
--boot-disk-type "pd-ssd" \
--container-env YAML={4},DATE={5},BUCKET={6} \
--service-account "{7}" \
--metadata-from-file=startup-script=startup.sh \
--description="{8}"
""".format(vm,
gcp,
machine,
disk_size,
yamlup,
self.partition,
bucket_name,
serviceaccount,
description
)
On the google cloud compute engine, I can see the first echo appear in the logs: "Start the startup script" but after the sleep nothing happens. I am also not even sure if the sleep command works. Is there anything missing?