Top things that startup colleagues have said or done:
1. "Move fast break things"
2. "I wake up at 4am and read a book"
3. Writing down a list of things to do that day... "It's called habit building bro, Jeff Bezos does it"
4. "Go on r/startups dude, everything you need to know is on there."
5. "<critical feature> is missing, we can add it on later!!"
6. "Elon musk is my saviour"
7. "Guys we need another focus group"
8. "Once we get VC money then we'll do X"
9. "Ha fuck those corporate drones. Haha we'll make more money than them" - from a guy who is just another employee with no percentage shareholding.
10. Ceo handing us another one of his shitty 90's era design change.
11. "We're in stealth mode we can't discuss this with anyone". We're building yet another retail app.
12. "Uh yeah sorry but we can't offer you equity at this stage as we're too busy". *Continues to design another shitty logo for the whole day*
13. "I'm a rockstar coder, coding is easy" - from a person who has never had a job as a professional programmer nor wanted to become a coder. His code is utter shit too.
14. *Has meetings about meetings*
15. *New investor comes on board*. Instant finance director status. *New tech wizard employee from Google comes on board*.. "Yeah sorry but just work on this app pls thanks, then you might get 0.005%"
16. "Move fast break things"
Fucking startups man. I'm off to BigCo, fed up of this shit.
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Plenty of tough trades moving to a startup, but the motivation level is so much higher than larger companies. At least among startups building real products.
Indoctrination of "the startup way" will make you become like that, so watch out folks!
I might be wrong, but my best guess is good start ups wouldn't just hire openly like big companies. They would just hire people they know very well and trust their next million dollars with them. It'd be pretty hard to join them, not to mention evaluate their competence.
Hiring openly is bad because start ups can't pay top dollars, and the only people that would go there are people that can't get top dollars offer at the moment. The kind of people that says "we aren't doing rocket science here. We don't need the hiring bar to be so selective". You don't want to be around those people.
Depending on luck, timing and the good to bad people ratio the startup might be successful. This results in the common Silicon Valley phenomenon of completely useless people, becoming millionaires by accident. Everyone who has worked in the Bay Area long enough knows at least a couple of “Bigheads”.
No idiots I know have become millionaires by accident yet tho.
"we are open to critical feedback"
Year 2:
"anyone who doesn't agree with our new platform this year, you should leave!!"
Signed,
The CEO
"Cuz he's not a dumbass like you and me that's why"
It's insane when non founder / exec employees at startups assume everyone out there will also drink the koolaid.
Underperformers were usually able to stick around as long as they knew the right people, sounded sophisticated, and pretended to know what they were doing. It worked because no one in their chain of command knew how good engineering looks like. The more incompetent the people were, the more office politics I saw. People needed politics to cover their stupidity.
I'd only ever work for a start up a again if I know the people very well, they have a very solid profitable business plan, and they are willing to fire underperformers ruthlessly.
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Demographics skew towards females, sure. But there are also lots of opportunities for males that have the desired skills and motivation.
At least at a startup you can have a disproportionate impact.