
Ask HN: Our founders are just assholes. What are the chances we won't fail? - redbunker16
Hi hn, I need a reality check. I&#x27;m at a job where the founders really don&#x27;t care about people, and treat employees like crap. We seem to have a good market, with customers who pay a lot of money for our product. What are the chances we will succeed if the founders are assholes?<p>The team I work with writing code is great. We&#x27;re strong programmers. People have good ideas and understand the tech. We&#x27;re able to iterate and ship quickly. But interacting with the founders (one technical, one not) is a constant blame game of poor communication. They will get angry with people for not doing something that wasn&#x27;t communicated. Any difference in understanding is blamed on the person writing code. This happens almost daily.<p>My job feels like getting paid to put up with abuse. People literally get yelled at. Get called out in front of the team for &quot;not delivering&quot;, when most of the time the work was done. People get fired for dumb reasons. We&#x27;ve had 20+ people get fired or quit in frustration in the past two years (the whole team turning over several times). Is that normal?<p>I would never refer anyone. I&#x27;m stressed all of the time. I don&#x27;t see my family. I put in so much overtime. I get sometimes you need to work hard, but it feels no amount of work would fix the root problem: our founders treat people like crap. They have fired people and made it very clear they intend to buy their way through any problems by just hiring new people.<p>I do have some stock and I&#x27;m trying to decide if I should keep putting up with the abuse for the chance of a payoff. Our customers like us and have lots of money. It seems like we have a good product that might be an underdiscovered niche. The founders keep talking about how a buyout would be amazing and we would all get rich. But, that&#x27;s kind of their job to say that.<p>How do I determine our chance of success to know whether I should stay? Does having asshole founders make us much more likely to succeed or to fail?
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commun
Stop working overtime, do the minimum amount of work necessary, and start
looking for a new job. They've already stolen enough time from you in overtime
work, so make sure you use your normal work hours to search for your next
opportunity.

Also don't worry about the stock you own, it's a scam to get you to work
harder for relatively small rewards (or more likely, none at all) at some
future time, and it shouldn't be an incentive to put up with abuse.

Time with your family and your own mental health are the most important things
here, not appeasing these petty tyrants.

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nabla9
Bill Gates was yelling and bullying people (he has admitted this himself).
Steve Jobs was asshole. Elon Musk don't seem to treat people well either.

If they do other things great, I don't see any reason why asdholes can't
succeed.

~~~
throwaway3627
Assholes are bad for morale, drive good people away and generally suck the
life out of people like vampires. Those you mentioned are the survivor bias
anecdotal exceptions who only managed to succeed _in spite_ of being assholes,
not _because_ of it. Everyone's replaceable, including the assholes.

See also: Robert Sutton's book, _The No Asshole Rule_ (Stanford prof)

PS: I really do think corp culture falls in one of two main camps: those that
defend civility/fairness like a family and those where employees have already
mentally/emotionally disembarked, pining for warmer shores elsewhere.

~~~
nabla9
Data is just plural for anecdote. Assholeness seems to be orhogonal to success
to large extent.

Successful leaders always put performance above nice. Sugarcoating
ruthlessness with lithurgy of respect and caring is the current trend and I
think younger generations reguire it.

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CyberFonic
The value of whatever stock you hold is likely to become severely diluted upon
an acquisition. So unless you are holding like 20%+ of stock it might not be
worth that much down the track. If I were in your situation I would get an
expert assessment of how much your stock might be worth down the track, i.e.
like best case and worst case. Then you will know whether that is enough money
for you to grit your teeth and hang in there.

I presume from details that the company is profitable and will continue to be
so.

BTW are the founders assholes to the customers as well? If so, then there
could be cancellations coming along. If customers are by subscription or some
annual renewable basis then you will need to monitor the new customers vs the
lost customers ratio. It is not unusual for companies to do well initially and
then start bleeding customers when poor support and aggressive tactics come
into play.

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hedora
What you describe doesn’t sound normal. It sounds like your management is
incompetent. (100% turnover in two years? Who is making hiring decisions?
Maybe the stock offer is intentionally uncontainable, and they’ll eventually
screw you out of equity too?)

Which VC? (If any.) Mention it to them. Worst case, the VC is an asshole too,
and you burn that bridge. Darn.

Slightly better case, the VC isn’t an asshole and remembers you.

Probably unrealistically good case: the situation improves.

~~~
hedora
One more thing: It is common practice to let employees sell off vested stock
during fundraising rounds.

If you stick around, but are still uncomfortable with how things are trending,
job stability, etc, devise a reason to cash out some of your vested equity,
and see if they will set up a program for this.

The normal scenario is that they need to raise $X dollars in some round, but
find investors with 1.1 * $X to invest. The employees end up selling 0.1 * $X
of stock at whatever valuation the fund raising round comes up with. This can
be a good way for employees to get liquidity at the expense of potential
future gains, and it avoids dilution for everyone else (unlike raising money,
and then using it to give out bonuses).

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tomhoward
[http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/safe.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/safe.html)

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throwaway3627
The key problem with unfair, inequitable ownership is that a few jerks get
rich while everyone else suffers. First employees should balk at anything less
than having a say and having significant ownership. Co-op or bust.

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stuqqq
I would quit right away and launch a similar product.

~~~
chrisked
Depending on your jurisdiction this might be dangerous. I’ve seen quite few
people get bitten by a move like this. Quitting could make sense. If you do
take a bit of time to find the next thing you truly believe in. In regards to
vesting / stock make sure to work out the exact numbers and make a decision.

