

Really Bad Startup Culture - noman109

Blame everything on the developer who's creating the value for your company.<p>We developers all know Startups are hard, but do Business and Finance guys understand just how hard it is to create a ground breaking and sustainable technology?  I don't think many do<p>I'm pouring countless hours of my time into trying to develop a concrete product and the thanks I get is blame for any and everything that can and will go wrong (after all you're developing a NEW technology that's NEVER been done before, all with NO HELP).<p>If the job description read "We give generous 3% equity and fair pay, however, anything that can and will go wrong will be blamed on you personally" I would not have taken it.<p>I would much rather receive more equity, less pay and be treated like a valued contributor, and not a scrape-goat.<p>I'm not sure how others Startups are run, but when Startups are run by Business and Finance guys it seems like Beurocracy starts off in full-swing right from the gate<p>Here's how you (or I) know the Startup culture is not likely to be good:
1) The startup hired a previous developer but "it just didn't work out"
2) The startup hired the first graphic designer (who after only several months) is likely to be leaving shortly
3) The startup has a hard time attracting developers
4) The startup has more business/finance people than any other type of personel
5) The startup is more focused on minutia like absolute placement of elements and font sizes/styles, rather than perfecting hardcore functionality
6) The person "in charge" doesn't accept suggestions of others and believes his/her ideas are always right
7) The person in charge likes Job titles and creating Org charts (can you say ego-maniac?)
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devs1010
I completely feel for you, I was in a somewhat similar situation although was
working purely as a contractor for a startup. I was the sole web developer and
basically took idea from conception to launch, for a rather budget rate as I
was light on experience at the time, yet would still get all kinds of flack at
times, basically I've come to realize that 'business' people often simply
don't and won't ever have respect for what developers do. Having worked for a
company also that is 'mature', 10 years old, or so, that is run by sales and
business people, I can say its the same thing, there is a lack of trust and
respect on their part for the engineering team, even though software is their
core product and without the developers the company couldn't even exist.
Really the only way to get away from this, IMO, is to work for companies that
have someone with a dev background at the top, its the only way a company can
ever truly "get it"

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Radzell
thats why its better to have a tech founder business people should always have
at least on tech founder to tell them when there ideas a crappy or impossible.

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noman109
I would have wanted to be a Technical co-founder but I think the Business guy
is somewhat of a control freak and would not want to give any away to some
unknown developer. I spent literally 3 hours on the phone the other day moving
text and changing fonts/sizes for a SINGLE consumer facing page, because the
"font looks blurry" or "like crap" and it's "not how [insert any popular
website with over 2000 employees and millions of users here] looks"

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SuperChihuahua
sounds like Steve Jobs Jr. Don't know if that's a good or bad thing...

