
Ask HN: How did you adapt to a rapidly-growing startup? - RandomEngineer
Hello HN,<p>I&#x27;m an engineer working for a startup entering a period of high-growth. One year ago, I was the first (non-executive) full-time engineer. Currently I&#x27;m one of six, and in a year&#x27;s time I&#x27;ll likely be one of 20. As we continue to add engineers and engineering managers, I&#x27;m not quite sure how to find my new place within the organization. How have you adapted to your team growing around and above you without feeling like you&#x27;re being replaced?
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deanmoriarty
I went through what you are describing.

What happened to me is that I went from being _the_ key employee who built and
architected major parts of everything, to slowly but steadily being stripped
of every single task, meeting, project, in favor of new people who were
brought in to cover those areas they had experience with on their resume (but
not necessarily performed at a higher level even after their ramp-up period,
in my obviously biased opinion).

In the end (after about a couple years from my productivity peak) I ended up
as a completely disposable resource, with literally nobody paying attention to
anything I had to say. It surely was a very tough mental exercise for me, I
had to brain dump all I knew about the technology to all these new hires
dozens of times, knowing that they would completely replace me in months and
leave me task-less, which they did. I had crazy impostor syndrome constantly
thinking "do I suck this much that they are replacing me for everything?" (the
answer was no: I was able to obtain job offers from 4 FAANG companies, and I
joined one).

The worst part of all is that nobody will tell you what's going to happen,
your manager (manager that you didn't have when you joined since you built the
damn thing when nobody was even around!) and everyone around you will keep
praising you. But each and every single day, one little piece of the puzzle
will be taken away from you and given to the new hire with the shiny
experience on the resume.

What "saved" my mental sanity is that I am a good negotiator and so I was able
to negotiate a decent equity package at the beginning and put it in writing in
my contract (2%+). Unless the company is doing particularly bad business-wise,
screwing up common shareholders, especially if you early exercise, it's not
that easy, so throughout all this period I took comfort in the fact that I was
still likely vesting more shares than anyone else non-exec who was brought in
to replace me.

I have left that company now, but so far it paid off, since I've already been
able to obtain some liquidity for those shares by selling some of them to
private parties. In the vast majority of cases, it would have been worthless
as startup equity ends up underwater.

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aboutruby
Have you talked with your manager and/or the CEO? Usually the hierarchy is
quite informal. I would schedule a 1-on-1 over coffee in a different place
than the office.

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shoo
A growing company needs different roles at different times:

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-
police/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/)

It might be the case that you excel at the "first wave", but are not
interested or not talented at the kind of work that needs to be done at a
later stage of the company lifecycle. If so, that's nothing to be ashamed of.

edit: i guess what i am arguing is that it isn't a failure if your skills are
better suited to one early phase of a business lifecycle. these skills are
highly valuable in the right context. if that's the case, it could be win-win-
win outcome (for you, your current employer, and your next employer) for you
to switch to a different company that is in the phase you are most effective
at, if your current employer has sucessfully grown out of that phase.

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InafuSabi
Getting more colleagues means getting direct accessable peers within your
field. THat can only be a __boon __.

If you were not needed, you would have been let go already. Just do your work
as you are used to from the beginning, keep learning new things and be as
flexible as a gymnast when it comes to _learning_. THat will make you more
valuable.

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qhoang09
The thing you need to realize about startups is that everyone else is figuring
it out too. If you feel left out or like you're being replaced, it's not on
purpose.

Unlike a big company where there's a very strict hierarchy and structure, and
all you have to do to rise up in the ranks is put in the time, in a startup
it's a free-for-all.

That means you have the power to change your situation. As more engineers join
and take on pieces of work you've been involved in, you can start to scale
yourself. Be a leader, start new initiatives, think about the bigger picture
instead of just your job, and inspire others to see your vision.

You don't need a fancy exec title to be a leader. You don't need permission.
You just need to start behaving like one.

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brudgers
Perhaps as informed an opinion as you're likely to come across:
[https://steveblank.com/2019/03/08/dont-get-abandoned-as-
your...](https://steveblank.com/2019/03/08/dont-get-abandoned-as-your-company-
grows/)

~~~
chris_mc
Maybe the high-growth companies should try not to abandon their employees
rather than putting the onus on employees to not be abandoned. This could be
done with some careful planning as they grow, but most of the high-growth
companies I've experienced have their employees as priority number N (for some
high value of N) and the actual growth, profits, etc. as priorities 1 to N-1.

~~~
brudgers
I don't have a dog in the fight, so I have no reason to disagree. To me the
video seemed relevant to the question. What I found useful in Blank's
presentation are the ideas that we now have some language to talk about these
events and that these events are ordinary results of the way _some_ companies
are structured.

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cimmanom
What about your company and teams growth makes you feel like you’re being
replaced?

~~~
RandomEngineer
I appreciate the introspective question. I think at a foundational level, it's
a matter of being left out of meetings and conversations pertaining to
tasks/features that I was previously responsible for. While I do miss having
my input heard, I imagine that being "another cog in the machine" is just
something that I'll need to get used to for the remainder of my time here.

~~~
crazypyro
Maybe you should have more candid discussions about where you _want_ to be
with whoever it is you report to...

I think the first step would be making sure you know what you want, they know
what you want, and everyone is on the same page to get there.

I mean, are you okay just being another engineer or do you want to a key
technical leader as the organization grows? Those can be two very different
roles.

