I want to find out Areas where I might be wrong and can improve. Looking to rant a bit as well. So, I joined a startup 2 months back. Saw a few red flags in the call: 1. they told me they couldn't get back to me for a whole month because they were "busy". 2. They fired another dev in the exact role which I was hired for days before me joining. This dev has 15+YOE 3. After I joined, they fired another 10+YOE dev and claimed he left of his own accord. The team size mind you is full 5 people including founders. So, I joined and they immediately asked me to do some priority tasks. I worked 14-16 hours days for the first week to set up everything. I was working on Frontend, Backend, Testing, Deployment...basically everything since we were only 3-4 engineers in the team. The worst part of the jobs were demos where the founder basically says to the customers that we have a feature. Then, the rest of us spent the next 30-40 hours crunching out shitty code. To give examples: 1. On saturday, the founder came and said to replicate all functionalities of an existing product since we have a "demo" on Monday. The company we copied took 3 months with 3-4 engineers to do the stuff. 2. Friday, the founder told me to spin a complete new project in Salesforce with XYZ functionalities till evening. I've never used salesforce and each of the functionalities could be worked upon weeks. The nail in the coffin was 6 days per week because we are a "startup". I was working 70 hours per week consistently each of the 8 weeks. Back to me: 1. I took ownership and delivered critical features which helped in moving the company forward. 2. wrote documentation in my free time so others won't have to struggle. 3. friendly with coworkers and always helped them with their issues. Is there anything I could improve? I'm still out of job anyways so I can work on it while prepping. YOE: 3 Old TC: 42k usd India btw
It's not you. It's them. A 5 member company is a red flag.
I mean every company had 5 people at some point?
Yes, but you probably don't want to work for a 5 member company, all other things being equal.
On blind, it's okay to take the name so that other people don't fall in the same trap.
Given the amount of details given it would be easy af to trace back to him
and? they already fired him
Your first hint for exit was when you found out you have to make a feature from scratch because the founder promised a demo to some client. If the foundation is built on lies, it will never see stability. Good that you got out tho. Erase this experience from your record if possible. Go touch grass, relax with your family. Find a better opportunity.
In my last startup role, that was standard operating procedure to leadership. Lie about features and force eng to build some shitty vaporware to demo. I left after 4 years of this where it always seemed like we were about to turn over a new leaf but never did. Didn't exercise my options because I had zero faith in the company. Then ilearned they got acquired shortly afterwards, and I missed out on a big pay day lol.
Usually when startups are acquired everyone except the founders, investors, and leadership get screwed due to dilution and acquisition terms. So you might not have lost out as much as you think.
Yeah, there is something you can improve: work max 40h/week, and find a place where you are given a reasonable workload.
Always name n shame
If you had time to document, then you had free time. And it wasn't as stressful as your suggesting Nonetheless wont stick around in a startup, if I were the only team member. Clearly they're are in a funding crunch, and the idea wasn't so great to begin with that there are no other investors.
Documentation is a part of doing any quality work, and delivering on it pays dividends to the company and team. Making it sound like an after-thought is how you build massive tech debt and slow velocity.
Did not mean documentation is not important. Just that if you are so busy, you will obviously give it lower priority.
Maybe they never wanted to hire you for the long run, they may not even have the money for that. So they just hire full time, work them to death and fire them once something is delivered, this is a lot cheaper and easier than hiring contractors and pay hourly.
Name and shame. Also are the founders from IITs ? IIT startup founders these days are straight up assholses where they secure some funding via other IIT seniors in VC firms and straight up start bullying non iit employees. extremly toxic places to work at.
IIT B.Techs would bully M.Techs too. It's in their DNA. F'ing tyrants
What you can improve next is learning how to identify a shitty company, a shitty manager, a shitty team during your interviews. Questions you could ask during the interviews are: - is this position a replacement hire? If so, you gotta be careful and ask more questions. - the overall team, projects that they do, challenges that they face, their near future (1-2 years) plans. - in any circumstances if you feel they are hiding something, just send them an email after the interview that you don’t think you fit the job and move on.
Good point replacement hire never works well first prev employee must have created mess that's why he got fired in the first place then mgmt will have high expectations from new one If prev employee was good still got fired that means cost cutting it's even worst to be in that position cause you'll get replace by some cheaper jr Dev. At this moment if you want to keep your job on growth will keep you alive else you'll just get redundant
How do u ask if it’s a replacement hire? They most definitely will lie
please name and shame the startup, so that others can avoid
Yeah as long as op Didn’t sign non disparagement in their separation agreement
What's the point of this post?