
Ask a Female Engineer: Joining a Startup - cbcowans
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/09/ask-a-female-engineer-2/
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vcarl
I absolutely relate to Klara's response. I joined as a "founding employee" of
a startup, and over the next 3 years the team's biggest problem was being
meddled with by the founder (just one, the second founder ducked out after
about 8 months—with a sizable percentage of the company).

Eventually I was spending a solid quarter of my time running interference
between the founder and pretty much every other team member, and when he
eventually fired me over our disagreements (there was nobody to run
interference between him and I, when it came to that) the rest of the team
quit within a month. Solo, first time founders are a big red flag to me now.

~~~
tenkabuto
Have any tips for us solo, first time founders, besides "no needless
meddling"?

~~~
vcarl
In our case, the goalposts for what the product should be kept moving every 3
months, which was probably the largest single problem, it caused most of the
friction imo. It didn't help that we were a hardware startup, so changes
couldn't be made as easily. A solution to that would be to agree upon (and
document) what the MVP is, and not change course until you've validated that
the idea doesn't meet the market's needs. We had a single client/partner,
their desires ended up driving a lot of changes late in development that ended
up being incompatible with earlier engineering decisions, but the founder
pushed them through. We ended up not being able to do environmental testing
because of the time those changes took, and the first time it rained the cases
for our electronics filled with water.

I'm also now a solo-ish founder and I only have technical/team management
experience, so I'm learning too :)

~~~
jrpt
This happens in non-solo founder companies too. In fact, I would expect it to
happen slightly more often in companies with multiple founders, because they
jockey over what the roadmap should be. When there's a lack of leadership at
the company it's a big problem, but it happens at all types of companies, not
just small solo founder startups. I think you are conflating the problem with
the fact that there is only one founder.

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klara_engineer
Hello, Klara here. I should have probably put in my answer that I would not
join a startup without healthcare. I was recently offered a job that I was
seriously considering. The caveat was that I'd be paid as a contractor and
they would pay me the extra money for me to buy my own healthcare.

Healthcare for my husband and I would be $700-1000 a month. If we had a child,
it would be closer to $1500 a month. Husband works at an early startup and
doesn't have healthcare. ($1500 * 12) / (1 - 0.4) = $30k of extra income I
would need to break even.

I cannot just buy Aetna insurance (in NY) because they don't sell individual
plans. I'm not convinced that my other choices are good coverage (Oscar, NYS
MetroPlus, etc).

Someday, we'll start a family and I want the best coverage possible.

~~~
chris_7
Definitely feeling that, I had to switch to a much-less-effective asthma med
because my bad startup company insurance doesn't cover the one I've used for
almost my entire post-childhood life. Then, couple that with the typical
startup office dogs, and... _wheeze_.

~~~
pjc50
Having office dogs at the cost of employee heath should be as unacceptable as
builders without hard hats.

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cbcowans
Hi everyone, this is the second installment of our series. The first one was
here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12455274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12455274).
You'll notice a lot of the considerations discussed in this post apply to
everyone, not just women, so there’s no need for the discussion to
specifically focus on the “female engineer” part, though talking about that is
fine too

~~~
fapjacks
I'm just wondering, then... Is the point to get a female perspective without
specifically asking questions about being a female in engineering? Sort of
like "Here's a different perspective without actually focusing on the elephant
in the room"? Because I do have questions that I'd love to ask specifically
about being a female engineer. Or if it's not that, then what is it? And why
the specificity of senior female engineers instead of just a panel of senior
engineers? Thanks.

~~~
cbcowans
The idea is just to ask women engineers questions readers send in and see what
they say. If they say things specific to being female, that’s cool; if they
say things that are more universal, that’s cool too. Please send your
questions to ask@ycombinator.com or post them here.

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gjolund
I recently left a startup that had 3 female first time founders.

They forced me on several occasions to pass by qualified candidates for
unqualified ones in the name of "diversity".

They were constantly complaining about how they weren't taken seriously by
other founders, but then proceeded to schedule interviews with forbes about
"Mom's in tech" and "running a startup from their kitchen".

They unilaterally decided to remove all males from the platform (a child care
service), because some customers had the impression that a male child care
provider was more likely to molest their child.

At the end of the day I ended up leaving, and the rest of the tech team within
about a month. They replaced us with the tech team from a recently folded
competitor, which was led by another "mom". Last I heard they were floundering
and are somewhat of a laughing stock in the LA startup community, and have a
reputation with recruiters as a dead end.

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ExcelsiorDevice
Are the aliases in this post used for the same people that were in the prior
post, i.e., are the names globally unique?

~~~
cbcowans
Correct. Ada in the first post is also Ada in the second post.

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cloudjacker
Do more like these! I like how the questions and responses weren't about being
women in tech while raising unique experiences

We would all love to get to the point where it isn't a noteworthy discussion,
but for now allot of people need the SEO of women in tech so they can find
something relatable

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neom
I just wanted to say I really enjoy these and thank you for doing them, it's
very enlightened.

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DelaneyM
It's curious/disappointing that none of the respondents suggested that a good
criteria for joining a startup is being on the founding team.

That may not be in the spirit of the question, but I've found that the best
way of finding a culture & mission which really matches what I want/need from
a job is to create it.

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ujalashanker
I like Ada'a response. It's very important to make sure that the startup team
members get along and care for each other. Also if you detect BS in the vision
or idea, its better to stay away.

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baybal2
>leaving me looking for a new job while on a work permit as a single mother of
three

Uh...

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chris_7
> When my kids were small, I used to do 4 to 6 hours a day of very focused
> work and would produce the same amount of work as others during an 8-hour
> shift.

I'd be amazed to find this at a startup - I find that it's usually the
opposite. It's impossible to focus in an open-plan with dogs running around,
music blaring, and people swilling beer, so everyone has to work 10-12 hours
to get 4-6 hours of work done.

I'm also surprised there's no mention of rape/abuse culture as it relates to
the startup culture of "drinks, bro!":
[https://annelibby.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/beer/](https://annelibby.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/beer/)

~~~
linkregister
Is that representative of most startups? The only common elements I've seen in
the startups I've been acquainted with is long working hours and below-market
pay.

