I'll take your assessment at face value. What you said needed to be said, though I assure you that I harbor no illusions of startup-land being a worker's paradise.
That said, I'm not sure I understand -- what level of "maturity" do you expect from prospective startup employees, and how do you determine that?
I'm not saying that I can't handle pressure, but I firmly believe that just calling yourself a startup does not give you latitude to overwork your employees.
It is now 6:45 pm and there are only 12 people in our office.
We have 65 people that work here in Seattle. This is totally
unacceptable.
This company has far too much very important work to do to
have virtually empty offices at 6:45 pm. If anyone thinks that everything we need to do as a company can be accomplished within an 8 hour day, then I think they fail to understand the scope and complexity of our venture. Anyone harboring such illusions should seriously consider a career change. I am sure that I could point to tasks for every single person in this company that would merit working past 7 pm every single night.
...
This is not a bank; this is not Boeing. This is a start-up and we are all expecting to be rewarded for taking the risk of
a start-up. But, there will be no rewards without
exceptional effort.
Given the severity of the situation, I am putting strict
office hours into effect immediately. Until further notice,
all employees are required to be at their desk from 8am until 7pm, with 30 minutes for lunch. There are no exceptions.
Perhaps that's the case at some startups, but my own and several others I know of are very flexible. Work the hours you want, from where you want. It's more about what you get done rather than how many hours you work. Someone smart can probably get twice as much done in the same time.
However, sometimes critical situations arise whereby you may need to work a few more hours or on a saturday. If you flat out refuse to do this, then it would come across that you don't care about the startup's success.
These critical situations are rare and often members of a startup will be more than happy to pitch in to solve something quickly when it goes wrong.
When you have a consumer facing product used by hundreds of thousands of people, you can't really wait till Monday when things break on a Friday night. Every hour counts.
My friends at investment banks often work 18 hour days and have a terrible lifestyle/hate their job compared to people I know working at startups.
I'm sure there are great BigCos and startups to work for, like everything in life, there is a good and a bad side.
For the record, I think I wrote enough in the original post to show that I'm highly skeptical of startups that claim to have awesome work environments. That said, the community response has definitely been helpful for me to figure out some realistic expectations.
Let me reframe what you just said. Yes, your post does show that. But do you plan on showing that post to any potential employers? It's just as important for you to demonstrate that to potential employers as it was for you to demonstrate it to us. You have to skirt a very fine line between demonstrating that you want to work for them and demonstrating that this want is reasonable and not based in fantasy.
> But do you plan on showing that post to any potential employers?
I probably won't say it in the way I wrote the post, since I think it will be open to misinterpretation that might close some doors unnecessarily. But I will definitely bring up my expectations as a matter of concern.
Well, I was really just trying to point out that the fact there are companies whose "mission" he doesn't personally value doesn't mean that their founders have an "inflated sense of self-worth." It's the nature of startups that there are going to be a lot of long-shot and far-fetched ideas involved... if he happens to not disagree with the mission of a particular startup (or its valuation), he shouldn't then jump to the assumption that the founders are arrogant or self-important. He'd only be hurting himself to do that -- they could be perfectly nice people who happen to have stumbled onto a bit of a bubble in the market, and may be willing to help him out even if he's not going to directly get involved in their particular business.
It's just the nature of the Internet, and anything related to consumer entertainment, that there are going to be some really fluffy / inane things that become ridiculously popular / valuable. As long as the folks behind them realize they're not the new Shakespeare, there's no reason to assume they're any different from people working on more mundane or serious problems.
I'm not painting with a wide brush here, I'm just acknowledging that blind faith in PG's stamp of approval is insufficient to make any determination of whether a particular company is worthwhile or not. I'm sure there's quite a few well-run YC-funded startups; I just have to make that call myself.
Totally reasonable. YC chooses companies based on a 1 page app and a 10 minute interview. Their hit rate (in terms of good companies and good human beings) is astonishingly good, but there are bound to be some misses.
I appreciate your perspective and reassurance, and I agree with nearly everything you said, but wow, that's a pretty damning view of things. You made it sound like I've missed the boat that left in 2006! I do feel a bit antsy that once we have a high-profile collapse of a company like Groupon or Zynga that the rest of the startup ecosystem will be dragged down with it.
After reading your comment, I ought to clarify a few things:
(1) I have in fact been unemployed for several months, mostly because I needed the break and have decided that I should be more careful about where I choose to work next to avoid going through the same nightmare again. Even so, I'm not in a hurry to get a paycheck and am willing to take the time for finding a good match. But I'm aware that many employers look upon this rather negatively and will be rather "curious" about what happened.
(2) The "bureaucracy" aspect I was whining about was not so much dysfunctional relationships as it was pure cluelessness and red tape. Think 6-month wait times for a 15-minute procurement job, or crappy tools that were "standardized" in the company based on some sales pitch delivered at the VP level. I'd imagine it's this type of situation that is more easily avoidable at a startup.
I have a vague hunch of what you mean by "VC darling" and am taking all mentions of high-profile backers with a grain of salt, but I'm curious about what you consider "Real Technology" -- in what ways are the technical challenges, from usability to scalability, of a social media "joke" startup substantially different from those of a business that you'd take seriously?
Cluelessness and red tape are the symptoms of the dysfunctional relationships he's talking about. If the relationships were working properly, it'd be easier to get your 15-minute procurement job done, and nobody would be trying to standardize you on a crappy tool.
Don't worry about missing any boats. If you like a job take it, if not, don't. If you want to start a business, start it, and focus on making money rather than chasing techcrunch headlines and VCs.
If you're evaluating work at a startup, look at it like you're your agent:
1) What's the comp package? Equity, unless very significant, is basically a deferred bonus that you can't count on. Don't overrate it.
2) What skills will you get to develop? It's usually not worth taking a lower salary for X,000 shares of "i don't know". But it can absolutely be worth taking a lower salary now in exchange for higher skills later.
> Lastly one of the biggest lessons someone pointed out to me is we teach other people how to treat us. If someone calls you at 10pm at night and asks you to do something and you do it. You have just confirmed to that person this is ok.
So true! I still did it after vehemently expressing my displeasure and taking my manager's word that it was "just this time only" -- then he did the same thing the next week!
After that experience, I'd much rather risk getting fired than subject myself to that sort of abuse repeatedly.
> if you have the financial risk tolerance to work at a startup, why not start your own company instead?
I don't think I'm ready for that yet, and I'd like to think that working at a startup will better prepare me for starting my own.
What really sent me down this path was PG's comment suggesting that "you can titrate the amount of startupness you get in your job by the size of the company you join." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346224) It's not a binary decision, but a sliding scale.
> By the way, my friend had an offer at a VC darling, for 60% of the salary he was making but about 0.25% of the company. When he asked if there were preferences against that equity, the offer was rescinded. I don't know if this is normal, but it is telling.
This is disturbing, but it does seem like he dodged a bullet there.
I'll corroborate that I had an offer rescinded when I tried to negotiate salary and benefits... but this was not a startup. Do companies that behave like this think that everyone is desperate to work for them?
I will argue that it's not just a 70% chance that I'm a cynic -- I'll admit that I am a cynic. It's something that I'll have to work on.