Ask HN: What is the dark side of working at a successful startup? - the_xenu_story
======
holman
People.

Success breeds some weird shit, especially if you were close to people, which
happens a lot in startups with a high work ethic. Friends turn into strangers,
friends turn into enemies. Some make more money than you — a lot more — and
some make less than you — a lot less. Brews some weird undercurrent sometimes.
Money changes things. Even if you don't make real money... the perception of
success changes things, too.

The road to a "successful startup" can be paved with a lot of bullshit.
Burnout, depression, stress, mistakes. Regret. Employees locked in their
handcuffs, even though they hate their work and their lives. Taxes. Paying
people to advise you on all of these things. Trying to do something bigger the
next time. Trying to move up and forward, bigger and better. Recapturing the
lightning in a bottle. Dealing with yourself, and your reactions to all of
this. Feeling uncomfortable about those feelings.

~~~
mikekchar
Successful companies also attract gold diggers. When the company is small,
unless everybody is going above and beyond the call of duty, it's likely going
to fail. As the company gets bigger, there is more and more latitude for
failure. At some point it is successful enough that it can survive having
people whose only goal is to direct a large amount of money into their
pockets. This can lead to really weird decisions being made as people try to
kill off "competing" projects, or to sabotage other people who are interfering
with the flow of money into pockets. If you happen to be the hapless person
who is innocently trying to make the company successful and who is not paying
attention to where the money "should" flow, it can be quite painful for you.
Of course, you will always be comforted by they near-apology, "It's nothing
personal. It's just business" as they drive you ruthlessly into the ground.

~~~
coffeemug
_> If you happen to be the hapless person who is innocently trying to make the
company successful and who is not paying attention to where the money "should"
flow, it can be quite painful for you._

It can be a painful, frustrating, degrading, and ultimately extremely valuable
lesson.

It's especially difficult if you're naive because everyone around you is
talking about metrics and OKRs, you agree on OKRs with people, and everyone
seems to be working toward their OKRs. Everything seems so objective! It takes
quite a bit of experience to internalize that (a) metrics have a lot of
momentum and lag, (b) shit changes too fast anyway, (c) managers will move
teams/groups way before the goals materialize, and (d) by the time they've
moved nobody will remember what happened two quarters ago.

So while everyone is _talking_ about the OKRs, nobody who isn't hopelessly
naive actually cares about them (beyond the top line stuff executives see).
Your manager doesn't care at all if you meet your objectives. They just want
to look good until they can move to bigger responsibilities. Sometimes that
happens to align with meeting explicit objectives, but quite often there is no
alignment at all.

The people who understand the covert goals will do well very well for
themselves (at least until the future eventually catches up to them). The
people who naively work on their OKRs usually will not.

~~~
itronitron
please write a book on this, or post a link to the book that you have written
:)

~~~
coffeemug
I'm unlikely to write a book, but here are a few more tidbits that come to
mind.

Re the above -- I don't mean to imply that any of this is malicious or even
conscious on anyone's behalf. I suspect it is for a few people, but I bet most
people could pass a lie detector test that they care about their OKRs and the
OKRs of their reports. They really, really believe it. But they don't act it.
Our brains are _really_ good at fooling us! I used to think that corporate
politics is a consequence of malevolent actors. That might be true to some
degree, but mostly politics just arises. People overtly profess whatever they
need to overtly profess, and then go on to covertly follow emergent
incentives. Lots of misunderstandings happen that way -- if you confront them
about a violation of an agreement (say, during performance reviews), they'll
be genuinely surprised and will invent really good reasons for everything
(other than the obvious one, of course). It's basically watching Elephant In
The Brain[1] play out right in front of your eyes.

Every manager wants to grow their team so they can split it into multiple
teams so they can say they ran a group.

When there is a lot of money involved, people self-select into your company
who view their jobs as basically to extract as much money as possible. This is
especially true at the higher rungs. VP of marketing? Nope, professional money
extractor. VP of engineering? Nope, professional money extractor too. You
might think -- don't hire them. You can't! It doesn't matter how good the
founders are, these people have spent their entire lifetimes perfecting their
veneer. At that level they're _the best in the world_ at it. Doesn't matter
how good the founders are, they'll self select some of these people who will
slip past their psychology. You might think -- fire them. Not so easy! They're
good at embedding themselves into the org, they're good at slipping past the
founders's radars, and they're high up so half their job is recruiting.
They'll have dozens of cronies running around your company within a month or
two.

From the founders's perspective the org is basically an overactive genie. It
will do what you say, but not what you mean. Want to increase sales in two
quarters? No problem, sales increased. Oh, and we also subtly destroyed our
customers's trust. Once the steaks are high, founders basically have to treat
their org as an adversarial agent. You might think -- but a good founder will
notice! Doesn't matter how good you are -- you've selected world class
politicians that are good at getting past your exact psychological makeup.
Anthropic principle!

There's lots of stuff like this that you'd never think of in a million years,
but is super-obvious once you've experienced it. And amazingly, in spite of
all of this (or maybe because of it?) everything still works!

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-
Everyda...](https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-
Everyday/dp/0190495995)

~~~
nodesocket
Thanks for the great insight, but I also have to admit it is incredibly
disheartening and bleak. I truly think silicon valley is not a good place for
the human psyche as a whole. Quite honestly it breeds negativity, envy,
imposter syndrome, which all turn into depression.

It's cliche, but some of the happiest people are farmers, construction
workers, or people who physically work on tangible things. Also, I feel people
in the bay area compared to the south where I now live are perpetually unhappy
and outraged. There is more to life than work. Simple and a slower life is not
such a terrible thing.

~~~
rdco
> _some of the happiest people are farmers_

Farmers and soldiers have notoriously high suicide rates. One explanation is
that it's caused by a lack of control. From that perspective, it's certainly
frustrating to watch your company succumb to inefficiencies (e.g. politics),
but as a white collar worker, it's much easier to solve than for farmers.
White collar worker can move laterally to a new job or upward, but farmers are
looking at selling the family farm (social/career implosion) or controling the
weather (impossible).

> _Simple and a slower life is not such a terrible thing._

Agreed.

~~~
JBlue42
For some reason, your post reminded me of this bookmark I go back to:

[https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/09/daniel-pink-
drive-r...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/09/daniel-pink-drive-rsa-
motivation/)

"In Drive, Pink goes on to illustrate why the traditional carrots-and-sticks
paradigm of extrinsic reward and punishment doesn’t work, pointing instead to
his trifecta of intrinsic motivators: Autonomy, or the desire to be self-
directed; Mastery, or the itch to keep improving at something that’s important
to us; and Purpose, the sense that what we do produces something transcendent
or serves something meaningful beyond than ourselves."

------
tlb
Success can hide a lot of problems. Companies with wildly successful products
have a strong bias toward "we must be doing everything right," when in fact
the truth is only "we did some things right at some point".

That bias can make it hard to change things, even clearly broken things. It
can make it hard to introduce new products, since anything new will be tiny
compared to the old successful product. It can make it hard to get rid of bad
managers, since their bottom line looks great.

For a view from inside this phenomenon, read
[http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)

~~~
throwaway515
This exactly, and sometimes it can be more than just a broken process or two.
It could be that the rumors you hear are true, that there's some dirty secret
that will eventually surface and endanger the entire business, and that
there’s no bond of trust with executive leadership to confront it before it’s
too late.

I worked at a unicorn that seemed unstoppable until allegations of fraud
surfaced in a major publication, its customers started pulling out, and
investors filed a lawsuit. The company shrank dramatically over a period of
months, pulled out of a flagship office move, and today is a fraction of its
size before the turmoil.

~~~
NsvAsd9i8uOQo
Is this Outcome Health? [http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-
biz-out...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-biz-outcome-
health-headquarters-20171221-story.html) seems to line up with some of the
details provided.

------
iamleppert
The dark side is probably joining a cool small tech company with interesting
problems and work and cool people. As a result of your (& others work) it
becomes successful and one day you look around and realize you no longer fit
in -- it's become the big tech company you left and vowed to never work at
again. Your peers don't care about tech in the same way and don't have the
same passion as you, but are still there regardless and viewed as your equal.
You feel as if they don't deserve their place, and many actually discredit
your work with the benefit of hindsight and all of their 6 months of
experience. Increasingly, your tenure is seen as a liability rather than an
asset and you feel the distinct sense of an "old crew" vs. "new crew" forming
as the people you know and loved are slowly replaced with new comers who are
attracted to the success of the company, like a moth to a flame, but who you
know would never have joined in the early days. You watch as design by
committee takes firmly hold, insignificant straw man wins are the subject of
great excitement, and processes replace unstructured trust.

Finally, after the company hires a "Director of UX" you realize it's simply
not your thing anymore. You must make the hard decision to leave and never
look back.

~~~
jacknews
Now imagine that you didn't get any equity also.

~~~
iamleppert
Haha I didn't get any equity in the end.

------
cdoxsey
Getting acquired and watching everything you built get rendered obsolete
overnight.

It's a good reminder that almost everything you build is fleeting. Especially
in a startup where you often pour your heart and soul into a product.
Ecclesiastes:

> For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must
> leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is
> meaningless and a great misfortune. What do people get for all the toil and
> anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their
> work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is
> meaningless.

~~~
mempko
Make that shit Free Software as fast as possible.

~~~
eropple
That becomes the decision of the acquiring company. Why would they do that?

~~~
adaml_623
You could say because the acquiring company might be motivated by a desire for
staff OR customers. If that's the case then sometimes the software developed
might still be of use in the public domain. It's very dependant on what is
being created. Is it a tool, a product, or a community?

------
bengotow
I'd say there are a couple problems you're likely to have at a successful
startup:

1) You (the early engineer) get promoted and are leading the charge, but have
no mentors or role models to help you develop your career.

2) You raise a huge Series A / B, and everyone says "spend it in 18 months" so
you hire a ton of people quickly, which significantly changes the company
culture. Your first attempts at introducing structure / management to the team
are rough, and early engineers get frustrated the growth and seek out smaller
teams.

3) You (and everyone else) think the startup is "successful" as valuations
increase and build your internal narrative around this success. Later reality
sets in - you need a bridge round! Since you and your co-workers placed so
much of your self worth in the company's success it totally destroys morale.

~~~
goatherders
I advise a startup in the bay area and sat in on a meeting with an early
investor last week. A plan for raising a series A was laid out and he said
"why do you want to raise money outside of being in SV? Nothing you have told
me indicates you need funding."

~~~
throwaway09871
Startup promised options in employment contracts. Three years later, employees
find out they were never granted. Very stressful and depressing. What to do?
Can you recommend a good attorney in the Bay Area?

------
_m96l
I don't think there's one universal "dark side" to working at any successful
startup, not anymore than there's one "dark side" to working at any other very
broad category of projects.

At best, you're going to get a laundry list of various issues people
encountered at (what they consider to be) successful startups.

I'd answer the question a bit differently: the downside of working at a
successful startup versus a successful mature company.

At a mature company, success is more of a uniformly good thing. There will
typically be growth, people will be promoted, there will be a strong
inclination to keep the current team ("don't change a winning horse") so often
anyone in influential position will see increased bonuses and other benefits.
Very often you can expect promotion, especially if it's a mid-sized growing
outfit rather than a huge one.

In startups, "success" often means your shares are worth more on paper, but
not necessarily more profit. For example, "success" at a startup may mean your
userbase is exploding, but you're not making profit on each user, and perhaps
even losing a bit. Like every other process, success can lead to less stable
and predictable results in startups versus mature companies.

Often it will increase stress, as more successful startups are under even more
pressure to keep performing, since you are now a potential unicorn. There will
be a lot more investor interest, but that comes with increased scrutiny and
pressure to succeed.

It's quite likely there will be changes, including personnel changes. Many
startups are a wild bet at first, so they start with a "B team", a group of
people whose opportunity cost is typically low, which means they're not at the
top of their field and often don't have a solid track record, so they're
willing to take the risk on an unproven business model. As the startup shows
signs of success, investors will be willing to pay more, and the bet starts to
look more promising, so "A players" will start showing more interest. Very
often there will be pressure to bring such A players in to replace anyone
important all the way up to the executives. This is especially true when VCs
are involved, and they will often have an "A team" in mind to replace the old
"B team".

So I'd summarize that success at a startup will tend to bring more pressure
and a lot more risk of bad outcomes for you as an employee. For many
employees, that may be a net negative. There's also a positive though: if
you're considered an essential, well-performing employee, and willing to work
very hard and withstand the increasing pressures, you may end up as part of
the new "A team", which may get you a fat package of shares that are now more
likely to be worth something. But I've also seen startups where any one who
worked there so far was looked down upon as a stereotypical "B player", with
even great performance disregarded and ignored. So there's potential reward,
but a lot more risk.

There are also many horror stories about how getting dismissed as a "B player"
at this stage also involves the owners trying to suck back every piece of
equity you may have hoped to retain. Now that the equity is worth something,
you'll find the majority owners typically a lot less willing to share it.
You'll obviously lose any options that haven't vested. Sometimes "B players"
with a lot of yet-unvested options will be dismissed for that reason alone...

------
throwaway292901
"Successful" has a different meaning depending on your title. I work for a
successful startup and all the c-levels are happy, but as developer #1 I am
very unhappy. The goal was acquisition. We developers did our job: we iterated
on several products until one of them struck gold and is minting money. We are
ready to move on. The founders are enjoying the success and have put less
priority on acquisition. As a "stay-up" we are now in the growth phase: more
middle-tier, more process, more meetings, more politics, more hiring, more
distractions, etc. Due to our success, I can no longer afford the taxes on
exercising my options. I'm completely locked up with golden handcuffs. I want
to leave, but if I do and they sell in the next couple of years I don't think
I could handle it. I feel stuck and it's starting to affect my mental health.

~~~
drfuchs
Anyone considering a “developer #1” position at a (presumably pre-money, low
valuation) company is well-advised to insist on pre-exercising their options
to avoid exactly this conundrum. You should even be able to get the cost
covered with a signing bonus, since the company will get the cash right back.
Then you can quit any time and keep all your vested shares, with no tax
consequences. Worked out swell for me. Consult a real tax attorney, of course.

------
cbanek
I'll take a wager and say it's overwork. If you're a startup, and a successful
one, you're probably very busy. Busy doing a lot of things, wearing a lot of
different hats. Many startups can be victims of their own success, and don't
necessarily scale up well, or at least well at first. There can be some real
ups and downs. If you get traction but then are in a hiring frenzy, that can
be hard, since you have your normal workload, plus the additional workload of
interviewing.

------
crunchlibrarian
I have had two startups promise me the moon and the stars only to fire me
shortly after the product was developed and viable.

One found a way to screw me out of all the equity as well, which would have
made me a ten something millionaire.

Once people start smelling money things shift quickly.

~~~
sixdimensional
I actually have almost the same story. Spent long nights and weekends building
a company for a number of years, from the ground up, and I was naive enough to
go off a handshake and a verbal promise that my boat would float when all the
rest of them did.

When it started to look like the company would be sold, I politely asked if we
could finalize an agreement in advance of knowing the sale amount, so that all
would be clear. And I wasn’t expecting the moon, just fair compensation if the
company was sold. We never even got that far.

2 weeks before the owners sold the company, and I was left out of the org
chart handed to potential investors, I was “asked to leave”. I could have sued
but I was young and didn’t have the money or energy to do it, so ultimately I
left and moved on with my life. Not before going through a period of burnout
and depression.

It still stings sometimes. The owners got off with all the money, and I never
saw a dime.

A very expensive lesson learned.

That said, I have come to learn, I don’t think I would have been where I am if
it had gone any differently - a place where I can sleep at night.

~~~
glangdale
This is pretty typical behavior for a lot of startups. I once witnessed a
situation where management (knowing that most people's options were way
underwater) got a 'top slice' agreement where X% of an acquisition would go
straight to key personnel.

Amusingly, this identical vague mechanism was given 2 different names:
"Management top slice" when talking to investors/managers, and "Engineering
top slice" when talking to the engineering staff.

This ridiculous mechanism was never defined (and ultimately no acquisition
occurred in that time-frame), arguments over it ultimately may have helped a
few engineers get out so that was about all the impact it had.

The lesson is not to count on verbal agreements. If they don't put anything on
paper it's because they don't want to and don't value you enough to care, not
because "the time isn't right" or similar nonsense.

~~~
sixdimensional
Seconded, don’t count on verbal agreements, and vet ANY agreement very
carefully and with legal and/or tax advice wherever possible.

If they intend for you to reap the reward, they won’t care if you do
everything above board and legally. They might even respect you for it.

------
awahhh
For me there was a lot... Being pushed around by members of the founder's
entourage who are untouchable, especially incompetent people who would never
be hired at the same level elsewhere. As a new grad coming in fresh out of
school, realizing your equity is probably worth 1/10 what you thought when all
is said and done. Dealing with the middle management takeover and dodging
accompanying political bullets as the new VPs and Directors try to clean house
and eliminate threats to their authority / careers. Dealing with
underdeveloped HR that mishandles issues like sexual assault and harassment.
Seeing some early coworkers who play their cards right get fast tracked in
their career and go into management shortly after graduation, and feeling like
a loser for remaining an IC / little person. The worst one is realizing you
worked somewhere for the equity, only to discover that you are X years behind
in your professional development because you spent most of your time hustling
and rushing your work.

~~~
romanovcode
> Seeing some early coworkers who play their cards right get fast tracked in
> their career and go into management shortly after graduation, and feeling
> like a loser for remaining an IC / little person. The worst one is realizing
> you worked somewhere for the equity, only to discover that you are X years
> behind in your professional development because you spent most of your time
> hustling and rushing your work.

You must take it as a lesson and don't do same mistakes twice.

------
danesparza
Having worked at a company that went from < $50 million to > $1 billion in
less than 10 years I think the biggest dark side is when it's all over.

Either the company will get bought, leadership will leave and company
priorities will change -- or you'll just end up leaving.

When you decide to move on, you'll notice that all other companies seem less
smart and a LOT less intense.

You might find yourself attempting to unsuccessfully chase that high that you
had before when working for a successful startup or attempting to 'go back to
the way it was' ... but the odds are stacked against you. There's no going
back. And there's no recreating what you had. Just treasure it.

Very few devs get the opportunity to work for a startup. Even fewer get the
opportunity to work for a successful startup.

------
newscracker
The nature of a startup is long hours and a lot of work, chaos,
unpredictability and some reward (a lot more of all these than in other
places). A successful startup is not immune to these.

So one dark side is looking back years later and realizing that all those long
hours and reward (money) were probably not worth as much as lost relationships
and time outside of work.

I don’t like the term “work life balance”, but the lack of it can immensely
cause long term issues...many irreversible because there’s no time machine.

Basically, if your work is taking your attention or keeping you away for more
than 8 hours a day and also adding continuous stress for a long enough time,
then some other things in life have to give...those things usually cannot be
replaced effectively at a later time.

~~~
rimliu
I increasingly see "long hours and a lot of work" as a cargo-cult of startups.
Almost everyone talks how this should be this way if you want to be
successful, but where is the data? Alas, the only counterexample I know is
Basecamp built with DHH spending 10hr/week on it.

~~~
growthexecutive
Agreed. Most startup founders I've seen "complain" about having to work 12
hour days, 6 days a week but in reality they are wasting a lot of time doing
nothing and could get the same amount of work done in a 40 hour week. They
then go on to complain about it but in reality they think it shows how tough
they are for being able to do this.

------
fouc
The dark side is probably the equity - how to actually cash out on that. For
example, employees at Gilt were expecting an IPO and then eventually it got
acquired by another company and devalued their stock, yet they paid taxes on
the earlier value of it, and ended up losing money.

~~~
jimmaswell
Why wasn't that a capital loss?

~~~
closeparen
Capital losses offset capital gains, not earned income (except very slowly).
They protect investors, not equity-compensated employees.

~~~
jimmaswell
So if you get a million dollars of equity, and it devalues to $10 before you
cash it out, you have to pay taxes on the million? That's insane.

------
goatherders
I've worked at a few startups in the relatively early days. My impression is
that aside from money, early employees want to be appreciated for the success
they helped build. People who were there when under 100 employees are less
accepting of employee 500. Not always, but often enough. And those same
employees can get preferential treatment from management. Again, not always
but often enough.

Additionally it is important to remember that a successful startup isnt really
a startup anymore. It's a business. When I was at WP Engine in the earlyish
days I remember telling my boss "if we are successful then we are going to
build a company we dont really want to work for anymore."

------
rabidrat
Managing hypergrowth. Especially if it is investment-driven rather than
customer-driven. But either way, it's hard to watch your fun and quirky little
company become just another profit-motivated machine.

------
Tharkun
The unfairness of it all. Years ago I was employee #1 at a small company,
which grew quite large in terms of user base and profit. VC was attracted.
More profit was made. New C-level executives were attracted. The founders and
C-levels made very profitable deals for themselves. The engineers got nothing.
No bonus, no stock options, nada. I left the company a lot more cynical than I
joined it.

~~~
whamlastxmas
Did you have any equity in the company? If you didn't, why do you feel
entitled to share in profits and success?

~~~
Tharkun
I didn't have any equity. The only thing I invested was several years of my
life and a fair amount of blood,sweat&tears. The other early days engineers
and myself worked our asses of, going beyond the call of duty as they say. I
don't think I (or my former coworkers) felt _entitled_ as such. We certainly
did feel like we were underappreciated when piles of cash were being handed
out to everyone but us.

~~~
whamlastxmas
The harsh truth is that your expectations were wrong. I could be a lot nicer
about this but it's the simple fact. You thought you deserved more because you
busted your ass and took a risk, but the reality is that it's just sort of
silly to work at startups and bust your ass without some legally binding
agreement to potentially get a reward for your above-and-beyond work.

------
jmspring
Early employees get fucked over by later hires in terms of both salary and
equity.

------
exogeny
It depends on how you define "successful". There are an awful lot of startups
that are successful solely and completely on their ability to raise money.

Every year there are double-digit startups who sell and the employees get
nothing, because they raised too much money and couldn't sell the company for
a number higher than the preference stack.

------
relaunched
There have been a lot of great comments hear. I call the problem, "The True
Believer Problem". True believers are those who are bought in to the product
and vision, and ultimately are personally invested in the company's success,
regardless of compensation. However, they are hard to distinguish from the
opportunist, who can spot true believers, and their success, and then latch
on. They often reflect back to key executive / founders, the values / language
/ signs of being a true believer, but their investment in the company's
success is directly tied to their financial upside. Oftentimes these folks
work very hard to market themselves, and their company, but mostly themselves.
It can also cause cultural rifts because non-executive true believers spot
this behavior and have very little recourse. The culture starts to suffer,
little by little.

Startup boards can be highly problematic. Some board members are great, but
many can't differentiate the best interest of the company from their own best
interest. They can be highly-biased and interested in a getting a good return
/ new investments opportunities / using the company to leverage their
professional network. This often comes into play when your board is only a
combination of founders & investors. Who's bringing the industry experience
w/o pressures of an exit? Who's sitting on the board because they care?

Many very important things don't matter early. There's a mindset that
Compliance / Security / Legal / HR are things that big companies worry about.
That they just slow down agile startups. The reality is that the reason that
the perception is that those things will slow companies down is two-fold. One,
most founders that never worked in leadership roles at legacy or non-startups
don't know anything about them. Secondly, boards don't really care about this
stuff until they need to be in place for an IPO. They don't even really matter
if your plan is to be acquired. This leads to some very toxic environments.

------
_thedarkside
The cost on myself, my life and my family.

Nothing is free. Ever. You can implement one thing and there are a number of
other things you did not implement. In my case that meant always always
focusing on product and finishing above all else.

Shitty engineering and bad choices litter the code. Even worse bad design is
everywhere. All in the name of "getting shit done."

As that stacks up it costs more and more. More late night calls. More time
spent trying to fix things that should not be broken to begin with.

Just one more day in the week to do something operational for once. Another
night spent trying to keep things running.

Those all add up over time. And they cost.

------
streblo
If you're acquired, there's a significant risk of a cultural clash between the
people from your company and the current employees. "I didn't want this job"
syndrome is real.

------
syntaxing
Doesn't happen at all startups but work vs reward. I feel like in startups
especially at successful ones, the founders gain so much at the expense of the
workers (usually in the form of time).

------
coltonv
I think it's important to recognize every startup is different, some may have
dark sides others will be wonderful place to work. Furthermore, people are
different, and what might be a dark side to some would be attractive to
others.

If you're asking HN, does that mean you feel something bad in your gut? If so,
just talk to people who hired you or reach out to existing employees and try
to get your questions answered. They'll help a lot more than people on HN who
aren't familiar with your exact situation.

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danschumann
I would guess that some people achieve financial success and suddenly think
their opinion in every realm is the correct one, and think every choice they
make is most moral.

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imshubham
You will enjoy journey for sure if you are aware about running progress of
company and where else you can contribute to make it a successful company. I
have been part of two start-up for 6year. Spent 4.8+ year in first one, we
start with 7 and reached to 70. I have to take a break of 15 days because of
some reason and this is where company took steps to start with new in-house
project. Everything was so speedy that I could not be able to understand core
and just started to work wherever I can add some value but that was the worst
decision I made. By the time I could not be able to summarise my folio and
ended with some low value communication with founder.

But nevertheless it helped me to improve lot as professional. You must be
aware about work you are doing, it just should not be labour work for long
time. If you thinking to have 9-6pm job then that's the only Dark-side I would
say; else everything is fine.

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seibelj
The best reason to work at a startup is if you are a founder and have
significant equity. The other reasons to join are if you are enamored with a
technology that they specifically use or want to get experience quickly
wearing a lot of hats.

There are no other reasons to work at a startup. You will work much harder,
for less money, and poor benefits relative to larger companies. You work in
uncertainty. Unless you are a founder, you will not make a lot of money in an
exit unless the company hits the lottery and becomes google.

~~~
austenallred
This is the kind of advice that is probably right, but when wrong is very
wrong.

For example, I’d guess the risk-adjusted return is better at a Series B
company with product market fit, however you still have to be able to pick
well.

But knowing a dozen people who made enough money to retire from joining early-
ish at a company that had done a lot of the hard stuff I’ve gotta say it’s
certainly not _always_ true.

~~~
seibelj
A large, 200+ employee private company is what 20 years ago would have been a
public company before all the internet bubble shenanigans stopped that. If it
has revenues and a proven business model, it’s definitely less risky than a
small startup.

I’m specifically talking about seed stage startups, where the risk vs. reward
for normal employees is not favorable. Best to join these companies for
experience over dreams of money.

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kitcar
At times redefining moral and ethics to better fit a business plan

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lbriner
Suddenly realising that you have to do things in a way you don't want to
because of investors demanding growth! Restructuring, moving the office,
laying certain people off, bringing certain new people on, making profit
everything and only pretending that everything else is still important.

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Taylor_OD
A lot of people equate success with happiness. Especially if you're company is
making headlines. One does not always accompany the other and it will be
difficult for many people in your life to accept that.

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throwacc2
hard to leave when bonus + $$ is so high. So you can get yelled at, things can
be unfair, and in any normal circumstances you'd leave. But what if you can
make millions.. would you stay another year..?

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loadfocus
1\. work life balance (especially in the early days) 2\. defining new features
and backing decisions with data 3\. selling your stocks too early and moving
on

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codesternews
Work life balance sucks.

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PeOe
The fear of failing and long working hours.

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felyciatan
maybe analyzing the character of your boss and coworkers and then being a
pleasant figure are the key. Sometimes you have to really change your
character when you enter the office and really become someone else

source : [http://www.aseangol.online](http://www.aseangol.online)

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RHSman2
Values.

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gammateam
no clear personal growth and career growth path

company wide meetings about arbitrary things that don't matter (ie. 2 people
reply to the company account on twitter and suddenly EVERYONE has to get
involved)

pretending someone's use (or lack thereof) of their unlimited vacation
matters, because it won't after the exit or buyout or shutdown

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Renee-Helten
Its always risky to switch to your job with a startup. There isn't any
security for your job as well as for salary.

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dothedishes
This is a great question. Thank you!

