11

I've been working like a mad woman in a startup for 3+ years now. They feel like 10. Or at least the tech stacks we went through.
Never, ever join a startup, regardless of compensation, unless you know you can emotionally and mentally recover from that startup failing as if it is yours, not your bosses. Otherwise, it's just a shitty short experience.

My long experience is shitty, but man. I don't know.Those who built google, wanted to make a search engine. Did they know they're gonna be good? NO. This is the result of them being good. They now have that great product that succeeds and is able to become a self-referential piggy bank. You cannot be a self-referential piggy bank based on a fucking belief and idea, and a bunch of VCs who already put money in you. You know why? BECAUSE GUESS WHO IS THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR SUSTAINING YOUR START UP NOW?

The bloods and passions of youth, that join your startup, thinking they can make a difference, and you just undermine them constantly thinking that no engineer can make a difference if they can't ensure compliance with your dumb funding strategy.

Don't even get me started on the fact that most people who work for startups, rely on either laziness or passion. It's like a bunch of kids in art school, whose professor doesn't like anything they make, but they still kinda like it hoping one day they leave and become artists themselves. Then they discover that this shit professor actually taught them nothing about creativity in the real world, and what it takes to push something out.

And, it finally fucking hit me.

The reason startups will never work in this year, and beyond, AND TILL I SEE A CHANGE IN ATTITUDE IN 10 YEARS.....

The market won't fucking allow it with the current strategy tech companies are a fan of: hire a bunch of passionate devs who wanna learn a tool through doing our unique work. Doesn't matter. DIVERSITY. THE UNION IS THE PASSION. That's dumb as fuck.
Why?
Here:

- Passionate people do not have to use passion as an incentive, the passion was there, and them getting their idea made or money is the incentive
- If you hire a passionate person - even if they are the fucking best - you just made their passion a tool, in getting your PRs done and shit epics scoped AT BEST, and so the tools you're teaching them to use are getting away with doing less impactful, productive, creative work.

I AM SO DEPRESSED.

Comments
  • 3
    Startups are hit or miss. I am working in one now and it's been a great experience. Has its bad parts like every job but in general, I'd like to continue indefinitely. After it starts taking off the compensation gets real good, I get to build things from scratch and have a ton of impact in people for things I consider important. I also get to play with a lot of different tech, whereas in most other companies you'll be stuck with 1 thing or 2.

    Startups are good IF: You like the coworkers and work on something you feel is worth doing. You could argue this applies to all jobs, but I think these effects are much more pronounced in startups. If you work for douchebags, of course you'll be miserable.
  • 1
    @ars1 You need to have high distress tolerance, and team resilience, for a lot of fields. I feel like if I had the same coworkers I had, and we kept our ecosystem free from distress-causing agents, I would have had said the same thing.

    I had good times.

    But mostly, the bitterness overwhelms.
  • 1
    It's all about learning to manage the distress. If the people causing them are unwilling to help you improve the situation then it's time to search for something else.

    I would be stressed out in this company if the non tech people had been unwilling to learn and compromise, and work with the devs as a team.
Add Comment