
What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job? - shawndumas
http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-red-flags-that-signal-you-should-walk-away-from-a-start-up-job?share=1
======
dmvaldman
I think one red flag that people often miss, or make excuses for, is this:
management not treating a coworker fairly.

When you're not treated fairly, that's clearly a red flag. But many people see
coworkers treated poorly while they themselves aren't, grab a beer after work
and talk about it, commiserate etc. but don't consider the possibility that
maybe they themselves are next.

~~~
asynchronous13
This is one of the reasons I left a startup. As an example, bonuses were
promised to the hourly employees if a specific deadline was met. Deadline was
met, backpedaling ensued and no bonus awarded after the fact. (I was full-
time, so not eligible in any case, but I didn't want to work for someone I
couldn't trust)

~~~
CyberDildonics
Good move, that is essentially a default.

------
jedanbik
Also worth reading:

Sick Systems: How to Keep Someone With You Forever:
[http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html](http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html)

~~~
tsuraan
Holy crap, I think my last boss made that article his guiding philosophy.
Haven't talked to the guy for years, and still recovering from that job. I'd
guess that there's some personality defect that makes a person especially
vulnerable to those tactics, but I can definitely say that they worked on me.

------
bane
I've been through a few startups, but one experience really has stuck with me.
I was an early employee in a turnkey software startup built on ideas from a
moderately noted researcher in the field the software was designed to sell to.
I had known the researcher off and on over the years and he had been brought
on as the CTO with the investors bringing in an outside person they knew as
the CEO.

They were still in "stealth mode" at this time, taking some earlier work the
researcher had spent time on and hardening it for general commercial sale.
This was the first red flag I should have seen, instead of taking the time to
reboot the product and start it over for a modern market, the development team
was spending a year doing bug fixes and cleaning up broken research code.

Not long after starting I went with the CTO to a trade show for market
research and meet and greets with some industry partners. He booked us a
lavish 4-star hotel and during a week-long trip maybe spent 2 hours at the
show. He couldn't get out of there fast enough and instead wanted to rent a
conference room outside the city and spend the week brainstorming product
ideas. Remember, he had directed the dev team to not develop a new product but
to merely fix and update his old code. He then described some new ideas that I
recognized as being more or less exactly like a competing product. I asked him
to describe how we would differentiate it from that product. Instead he
claimed it was a totally different idea. Red flags #2, #3 and 4

And it went on a for a while, intense conflicts between the CTO and the dev
manager put development work into a holding pattern, lack of a good sales
strategy, and so on.

Eventually there was complete turnover at the C-level and the investors
brought in a new team, they asked me to stay on while they rebooted the
company so I did, and we did better, almost turned it around. But by that time
we were stuck with a huge legacy codebase dwindling investment dollars and a
host of other problems that we could never seem to shake.

Despite being a bad experience, I learned more from that failed company than
I've learned in the other 15 years of work. Observing so many failure modes
happening all at once, and seeing how a pro-team might go about a turn-around
has taught me an entire business school's worth of street smarts.

I'd almost recommend riding a company down like that to people serious about
startups so they can learn the same things, but to be honest, I wouldn't wish
it on my worst enemy.

~~~
kirk21
This should be a longer blog post; especially the turnaround is interesting.

~~~
bane
I've been planning on writing something for a while, but there's still some
things going on with some of the IP (now years later) and I've found it hard
to write about it in an "internet safe" abstract way.

------
morgo
One thing that really turns me off is when people talk really negatively about
former employees.

I met a CTO of a company in Toronto who told me how his predecessor had set up
MySQL all wrong. I pressed him for details, and it was not setup any
differently to how I would have. This was not in the context of an interview,
but it left a very lasting negative impression.

~~~
saalweachter
One of the things I eventually realized was that -- maybe not for everyone,
for all programs, but certainly for a lot of people -- the programs we write
are very incomplete. There's a portion that we write down, that the machine
runs, and then there's a portion that's only in our head.

When you've got both portions, everything is awesome. I'd worth with a guy for
years, and never had a problem with them. If I was working with some code they
wrote and didn't get what was going on, I'd ask them, they'd explain, it'd
make sense, and everything would be fine.

Then they'd leave, and I'd no longer have access to the portion of the program
in their head, and the code they'd left behind would become worthless crap.
The structuring was all wrong, the choice of variable names idiotic, the
corner cases they handled seemed trivial and the ones left unhandled, crucial.

Maybe there's something wrong with everyone I used to work with (as I tended
to think the first time or two this happened), maybe if we were better and
writing documentation this wouldn't happen. But it is very, very easy to be
given a codebase from a former employee -- a perfectly fine codebase written
by a perfectly competent employee -- and conclude they are an idiot, because
you're missing the portion that's in their head.

~~~
shoo
See Peter Naur's essay "programming as theory building".

link:[http://www.dc.uba.ar/materias/plp/cursos/material/programmin...](http://www.dc.uba.ar/materias/plp/cursos/material/programmingAsTheoryBuilding)

------
krylon
"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something."

Having learnt that lesson the hard way, I whole-heartedly agree. Our "gut" is
the equivalent of a supercomputer against the hand-held, battery-powered
rational part of our minds. And it is there for a reason. If your "gut"
screams at you to _just run_ , you should at least seriously consider walking
away. Every time I failed to do so, I came to regret it.

~~~
IanCal
I'm really not happy with this assumption that you've got this incredible
intuitive part of your mind that can predict things with uncanny accuracy when
we can't reason through it. Snap judgements of situations are also well known
to be extremely wrong. Ever judged a book by its cover and been wrong?

Could your experience here be confirmation bias? You remember the cases where
you felt you should run but didn't and it went wrong, and forget those where
you felt you should run but didn't and everything was just fine?

The other side is that if you leave, it's very hard to say what would have
happened otherwise. You may feel you've dodged a bullet when there was in
reality no gun.

~~~
collyw
Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink talks about this.

"Gut feeling" is often boils down to a "compressed" rapid response, based on
all of our previous experience, without having to go through all the reasoning
and debating that we usually do.

~~~
IanCal
And the quality of that response can be heavily dependent on how much we've
been in a similar situation. Daniel Kahneman talks about this in "Thinking,
Fast and Slow".

It makes sense that quick reactions can be good if they're responding to
things we have done many, many times before. It also makes sense that quick
reactions can be very poor if they're responding to things that we've not done
much.

------
pdkl95
[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom)

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Your execs with spook connections arrange for your crooked embezzling CEO
> to meet with someone in the WTC on 2001 September 11 (true story - but he
> escaped...)_

What.

------
larrys
"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something. If your gut tells you to
not work at a particular company (or to stop dating someone), trust it
implicitly as your gut is much better at saving your life than it is at
figuring up upside opportunities."

The problem with this is that we have no data on people who had a gut feeling
that something was not right but were wrong about that gut feeling. People
would tend to talk about times when "I should have listened to my gut about
this" but rarely would tend to talk about when their gut was wrong and they
were worried for nothing. (And I can think of several personal examples of
this type of thing.).

~~~
tmn
That doesn't really contradict his point. It's all about probabilistic
expectation. Presumably you have a myriad of options to choose from. If you
have a bad gut feeling about one, move on. Obviously there will be counter
examples to where this was not the optimal choice, but it is a valid
heuristic. Generally in most peoples lives, there is more to lose than there
is to gain. You want to skew decision making to minimize potential loss.

Once again, there will be exceptions and people where such an approach isn't
ideal.

~~~
larrys
Ok that is fine but where is the correlation between what someone feels in
their gut and what ends up being true in the end?

Plus, what is the downside risk of being overly cautious since that has to be
factored in.

If the gut is based on things that you have observed in the past, or your
personal experiences, then it is also possible that you will jump the gun by
being overly sensitive and matching a pattern incorrectly. [1] In that case
you could be wrong. I guess what I am saying is "it's not that simple" as
trite advice typically makes it sound.

"minimize potential loss" also means "avoid potential gain".

[1] This actually happened to me and although this is just a single example
which I highlight and where I choose to ignore the gut and plug on, in my
particular case I am glad that I had done so. (Was with a relationship..).

~~~
fsk
Actually, your brain/gut is a parallel supercomputer. If your "gut" tells you
that this is a bad situation, it probably is correct, even though you may not
consciously know the reason. Your gut is processing a lot of information based
on your experience, some of which you may not know consciously.

I don't have that problem so much anymore. When my gut tells me something is
wrong, I usually also have a conscious logical reason. It takes a lot of self-
awareness, though.

------
lkesteloot
Counterintuitive rule: When the founder has had a successful startup in the
past. They tend to be both overconfident and under-motivated.

------
jenkstom
Not a red flag, but you should always know what your next-best alternative is.
The best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), prevents you from
agreeing to something that is actually worse than just walking out when you
are negotiating something - like a job.

------
Gibbie
The biggest red flag of all is that it is a startup!

------
PaulHoule
If the recruiter tells you that they need to fill the position quick because
the last guy burned out...

~~~
artmageddon
Had that happen with me. Someone I grew up with up held a high position at a
consulting firm, and was recruiting developers. He told me that they kept
having problems of people who simply wouldn't show up to work. My guess was
they got burned out due to the work. Kept on with the interview process and
got a ridiculously good, but unofficial offer via email. However, in order to
fully get the offer, I'd have to quit my current job first, let the new
company know that I have, and then let the new company contact my now former
boss for a reference. I vehemently protested against this and they backed down
on it. The final nail in the coffin came when I pressed to know what city my
first assignment would be in, and they wouldn't tell me. Very shady, and I
can't believe some companies could operate like this. For what it's worth, my
friend just recently quit from the company as well.

------
lukasm
CTO is not technical.

~~~
rcurry
Or worse, the CEO says he still likes to get involved in writing the code.

------
sogen
A Ping pong table and a Xbox

Never used.

------
bitwize
When they can't pay you

That happened to me once

------
sugarbyo
A company using the label "startup" is a fascinating red flag in and of
itself. It means bad pay and worthless options. It's amazing how well startup
recruiters and VCs have hyped the startup experience.

------
wyc
A caveat of the popular "would you invest in this company?" question: it's not
a good litmus test for "should I work at this company?" because you're not a
VC. If you're considering employment, it strongly suggests you don't have as
much money as an angel or VC, which puts you in a different position. Losing
$100,000 might not make a VC with $100MM of other peoples' money bat an eye,
but what about you?

------
lordnacho
What about when you notice the politics that creeps in when the firm grows?
The culture can easily change from a single team on a mission to competing
teams, which often isn't comfortable for people.

------
backtoyoujim
Was I employed there?

------
briholt
I'd like to offer a simple red flag that I haven't seen mentioned enough:
deception. If management is hiding information or providing misleading
information to employees - even on small issues - it's a huge red flag. First,
it says they're not confident in the reality of the situation. Second, people
who are deceptive about small issues will also be deceptive about big issues
that really matter to you. Deceptive people usually start their deceptions
small and then increase them as they lead you down a long, annoying path to
failure.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of deceptive people in business, so avoiding
them entirely is not always possible. If you're forced to deal with them, my
best advice is to be on guard. Be aware of what you have at steak if they turn
on you and only work with them as much as required.

------
XJOKOLAT
1) Communication during the hiring process. There's not much else that should
be more important to the startup at that moment than you. If they are not
fighting to hold your interest you should walk (unless they have a damned good
explanation).

2) If you ask the MD what their turnover is and they cannot answer the
question coherently.

(true story).

~~~
raverbashing
MD?

~~~
XJOKOLAT
Sorry, Managing Director. Hailing from the UK.

------
MichaelCrawford
When your manager is mostly concerned about scheduling you for meetings.

------
walshemj
no 1 should be "when it stops being fun" and this applies to all jobs

~~~
carbocation
How would you apply this to lawyers, doctors, and the working poor?

~~~
tritium
Lawyers are often known assholes, and in most cases have fun pretty much
exclusively at other's expense. I hope their jobs aren't fun, because when it
is, it can be deeply disturbing.

Doctors can assuredly have fun in responsible ways, and you know what? I want
my doctor to be a happy person who enjoys their livelihood, because if they
aren't happy... well...

The working poor are an explicit example of what becomes of you, should you
find yourself lashed to unsavory tasks as a life sentence. Very obviously no
fun. What little fun there may be, is incidental. Asking that question is sort
of tone deaf. Like asking:

    
    
      Well what about the cow in the barn? Is she on board 
      with becoming a hamburger after she's done giving us 
      all that milk? We'd better ask.
    

One has to assume that no one aspires to a life of working poverty. It just
sort of happens to you, like a cruel prank. Possibly as a direct result of
lawyers having fun.

~~~
carbocation
Medicine stops being fun about 2 weeks into internship. It gets much more fun
after that... but there are times when it's not fun. Same with research. Same
with business. There are times when things aren't fun.

Sometimes it takes _discipline_ to continue when things aren't fun in pursuit
of a goal that is noble (or fun).

~~~
walshemj
Oh I agree but at some point you have to take stock and say is this best for
me and my loved ones

