

Y Combinator here I come - thatusertwo
http://new.novelog.com/?p=26

======
GuiA
I think it's always good to be traumatized by an experience in a crappy
company at the start of your career. It gets it ouf the way, it makes you
understand how terrible management can ruin pretty much anything, and it's
better to have those realizations at 22 than at 45 :)

Good luck, and keep us posted about your startup adventures!

~~~
evck
Yeah, I'd chalk this up to poor management. Any manager who doesn't listen to
"hey, you have a serious problem here" isn't doing their job.

~~~
DanLivesHere
Good managers realize that it's their job to make those people reporting to
them happy.

Bad managers believe that it's their job to make the people they report to
happy.

There are many more bad managers than good ones.

~~~
flavio87
great analysis. if you can keep them challenged and provide them best possible
environment to tackle the challenges, they will be happy. They will excel and
so you have excelled - automatically making the people you report to happy...

------
justjimmy
"At about that time I decided to keep my mouth shut, after all that is what
they wanted, someone who would keep quiet."

Just came to this realization myself last week. Doesn't matter if they're
forcing iOS UX on to Android UX, sometimes they just don't to hear it.
Promises of 'We welcome fresh and new perspectives.' or 'We want someone who
isn't afraid to make comments and suggestions.' are usually warning signs
during the interview. I even ask fellow team members how did some of the less
than optimal choices manage to get passed through, they'd just smile and
whisper that how things are done – management doesn't want expertise, they
just want soldiers.

Poor management team can really kill team morale, but try your best to make
the best of it while you're still there. Chat up and learn from people from
different departments, especially if you are interest in doing your own
startup. There's so much to learn other than just design and coding. So so
much!

~~~
ValG
I wouldn't necessarily say that promises of "We welcome fresh and new
perspectives...isn't afraid to make comments..." is a warning sign. As a
founder I truly try to listen to our employee's thought and ideas and if they
make sense, we implement them. In fact we just started an internship program
where the interns pitch us a feature/idea for our site and if we approve they
implement that live on our site. In the end it's just like anything in this
world, there are alot of talkers, that say the right things but don't mean
them, and then there are doers, people that follow through on their words with
actions. The difficulty is differentiating between the 2...

------
sbisker
I'm guessing you've been thinking about applying to Y Combinator for a while,
if it was the first thing you did after you were laid off.

That said, I have to ask....are you _sure_ you want to apply to Y Combinator?

There are startup jobs out there where this sort of mismanagement is not the
norm. I was in your exact shoes at one point (although I left due to repeated
missed paychecks, not due to layoff) - and I began to doubt if _any_ company
would be competent, except one I started myself. (This was compounded with my
own minor successes in the startup game, having gotten personal momentum with
an idea on the side.) It pains me to admit this so publicly...but it took me a
year to realize, that my experience there ate away at my trust in _anyone_ as
a potential employer.

I guess all I mean to say is, YC is great - but if part of you still wants to
join an early startup and learn while you're young, there _are_ good employers
out there. They're few and far between...but please don't give up. They're
absolutely worth the search.

~~~
thatusertwo
I've always wanted to start my own company, and this will be my second time
applying to Y-Combinator.

But I am certainly more receptive to the benefits of working at a good company
where I can learn a lot.

~~~
sbisker
Sounds good - just wanted to make sure _someone_ asked. Now go out there and
kick some ass. :)

------
paul
Looking forward to meeting you :)

~~~
camz
Why was this voted down? This doesn't make sense because the kid wrote the
blog post to get noticed by YC and he succeeded. If Paul Buchheit of the YC
team says "looking forward to meeting you :)"

Then the crafty bugger succeeded in his goal of raising awareness.

Figured I'd point this out incase the guy doesn't realize he succeeded lol.
People on HN have been much more aggressive with the downvote button lately :(

~~~
evincarofautumn
My guess is that some folks are just here for the links, and don’t know who’s
on the team. See a comment that doesn’t look like it contributes to the
discussion? Downvote away, heedless of the author. And maybe that’s fair. But
once a post has been downvoted once, it seems much more likely to be downvoted
further, even if the original vote was unwarranted.

~~~
vaksel
wouldn't they think that Paul = Paul Graham

~~~
camz
I can understand the confusion and your point. Paul graham is PG and his posts
are always rocketed to the top. But, you can always check the profile (which I
do often to get a better perspective on people).

Checking someone's profile is great because you can see their post discussions
and comments to see if they're genuinely an ass or if they're geniuses you can
learn from all of their other comments.

There's nuggets of gold in comments. It took me a year after I started reading
HN before I really learned to value the profile and comments function.

------
johnrob
You're not the first young person to smell a rat and assume that everything is
ok because some senior people say so.

Your lessons here: 1) gut feelings are usually correct, and 2) many startups
are run by delusional idiots with impressive backgrounds.

~~~
EREFUNDO
I think "delusion" is somehow needed for anyone to have the balls to start a
company. The odds are so much against you. Everyone around you who never
became entrepreneurs themselves will never understand what drives you.....you
are just simply a different kind of animal.

~~~
ryen
That may be your definition, but I don't think that's what he meant :)

~~~
EREFUNDO
I agree, I'm just playing with his words to make my point. The fact is it
takes a little bit of insanity to leave your secure workplace and spend most
of your savings for a less than 10% chance of success.

------
kylebrown
I'm not clear on what you were hired to do and it sounds like you weren't
either. Sure, they said they want someone who isn't afraid to give feedback
and improve the product. But it seems you took that one statement as an
encouragement to run circles around the org-chart.

Were you hired as a programmer or a designer? If the marketing copy or the
UI/UX is already clearly specified, as a developer you should be thankful. It
makes your job easier when you aren't expected to 'improve' loosely specified
things that aren't your specialty.

I'm a programmer in a three-person startup (along with the founder and a
designer) and role overlap must be our biggest problem. The founder is the
domain expert and the designer is an excellent graphic designer, and none of
us can resist offering his/her two cents on the UI/UX - the back and forth is
endless. As a programmer I'm lucky to not worry about the rest of the team
reading my code and offering constructive criticism or insisting on a
refactor.

~~~
coopdog
Still, surely everyone in the company should understand the overall company
strategy and business model. If he points out there's a flaw in the business
model, someone should be able to tell him why he's wrong or elevate it to the
next level all the way to the CEO, who puts it straight once and for all or
says holy shiza you're right it's time to pivot.

------
mirsadm
I had a similar experience at my first job (while I was still going to uni).
The funny thing is the CEO would often take me to his office and show me how
much money they were making with the work I was doing. He would brag that the
last change request made them xyz amounts of money. I was being paid very
little for my work. It was a great learning experience for me and pushed me to
try my own things.

------
kunle
"At about that time I decided to keep my mouth shut, after all that is what
they wanted, someone who would keep quiet."

This is when you KNOW you're in the wrong place. Definitely not the bitterness
of someone whose been laid off. Any founders or managers who don't want their
team mates to be self driven, are hiring B-players.

Good luck in your YC app!!

------
kvirani
You helped them rewrite their mail/newsletter but there are typos all over
your blog post. It's worse than a TechCrunch article. This makes me question
certain things about your side of the story, the only side available to us.

~~~
suhastech
I personally didn't see any typos. I have this auto correct mechanism in my
brain that ignores all the typos (which does have a bad side because I do a
lot of them).

I'm not sure what grammar nazis look for in an article. The point the author
trying to convey or pointless study of grammar?

------
daemon13
You are extremely lucky.

You had excellent opportunity to learn some important lessons when young and
after investing only 7 mths of your life. I think this is small price to pay.

I've had similar situation, but I invested 5 years... My friend was cut loose
after ~15+ years.

Celebrate and move on!

------
vaksel
that seems what most people miss out on

not all startups are created equal...not all of them will have an early Google
atmosphere...plenty of them are started by corporate drones

so you get a bad work environment, paired up with a company that still hasn't
figured out how to become profitable

------
magnusgraviti
Strange startup to hire creative people to do "just what we say" without
interest to hear fresh ideas, point of view...

One my friend who launched startups said how important it is to encourage
people to express new ideas and support making a great product.

~~~
outside1234
there are a lot more of these than you'd think. especially at startup founded
by big-co people from Apple, Amazon, or Microsoft. watch out for that profile.

~~~
magnusgraviti
Thanks for comment. I think this is really not so rare nowadays.

------
zinssmeister
this job sounds like the worst of both worlds. A corporate job (you do what
exactly you got hired to do) without the secure business model.

------
chris123
I can relate to a bad-mgmt experience. But 8:30 to 6:00 is nothing to complain
about in startupland (or medical, legal, finance, consulting, etc.). In fact,
I'd call 8:30 - 6:00 light (even very light).

~~~
outside1234
if you are working more than that and don't have >= 1% of the company, you are
getting used. its really as simple as that. startups are a pyramid scheme -
seed round employees get Nx series A employees gets Nx as much as series B
employees.

that's not necessarily unjustified but a series B employee should not be
working the hours of a seed round employee.

------
psycho
Great one. Hope, you'll be in. :) In fact starting to work on startup having a
hope to have some valueable stock in the future is like starting to work on
your own project with some differences. While you work on your own project,
you'll always have a chance to make a pivot and to change something you don't
like. If you work for someone, you have to be sure that they're reasonable to
pivot when it's necessary and that they will listen to your ideas and
appreciate your help etc.

------
dustingetz
the big lesson here is that the problems with their business were forseeable,
this is the type of thing i would want to get sorted before and during the
interview process.

~~~
thatusertwo
The company was pretty small and there wasn't much information about them
outside of their website. What sorts of questions could be asked at an
interview to sort something like this out?

------
kirinan
Ive been having a similar experience to you. I work for a big corporation with
over 20k employees and the process is suffocating. Its hard to do my job
sometimes because there is so much process. The people as well are super
secretive with things they are working on to protect their status at the
company. Its a completely toxic environment and I also applied to Ycombinator.
I hope to see you there!

------
itsmequinn
Too != To

~~~
sachingulaya
Not sure why this is being downvoted. It's a helpful comment. I know I'd
rather be corrected once than continue spelling it incorrectly.

Reading the blog I cringed every time I read 'to' and I'm sure I'm not the
only one. It was distracting and hurt the author's credibility when he was
telling the story about his attempts to 'improve the company emails'.

To me it's a big red flag when someone hasn't been able to pick up the correct
usage of to/too in 20+ years(assuming they were educated in an english
speaking country).

~~~
lbo
And then != than in his post as well. I think it struck me particularly
because it was in the same paragraph that he was discussing his unaccepted
correction of the corporate copy :/. Proper spelling and grammar are important
even in casual writing.

------
wjessup
Too bad you stuck around for 7 months. You sound like a person who knows you
should have left after month 2-3.

Best of luck.

------
ibejoeb
> "We have to terminate your employment contract."

Curious if you actually had a contract and were bona fide employee. I hope you
got favorable terms upon departure. The whole thing sounds pretty shady. The
company did not even provide equipment, right?

------
dmvaldman
want to work with me? :-)

------
mcdowall
Best of luck to you, if you don't succeed and fancy coming over the pond to
the UK give me a shout. I hope I don't hear from you but read about you
though.

------
xarien
"It started out intense, they had so many things they wanted me to do, I
showed up at 8:30 and didn’t leave till 6, they’d captured my heart and mind…
or at least convinced me it was worth my time."

Here's some advice, if you think that schedule is intense, you're not ready
for a startup...

~~~
outside1234
Ah right, you have to be at the startup for 18 hours a day to be "intense" or
"dedicated."

Its ok if you roll in at 10am, spend an hour horsing around on Hacker News,
another hour drinking company beer at 7:30pm, and another hour at lunch
running with folks, you are "dedicated" and "intense".

Nevermind that you spent less time working that the OP - you have to have no
life outside of the startup to be "intense" and "startup worthy."

For me, I'd rather have the poster - he sounds like a great employee - works
hard, contributes outside his area, and seemingly has a life outside of work
that probably rests his brain such that he isn't constantly exhausted like
you.

If you don't get into Y-Combinator, contact me.

~~~
jmspring
Couldn't agree more. Intense can be due to working on really hard problems (or
even the extra time/energy to learn something new). Just as easily, it can be
due to poor planning or improper communication within the company.
Unfortunately, if one is passionate about doing a good job and enjoying what
you are doing, you might not be able to realize when your extra efforts are
really the expectation than what should be the norm.

The fact that the OP was able to grasp this particular issue so early on shows
a maturity and insight that even senior engineers who go to work at startups
might miss.

I know I've had my moments.

------
larrys
Why in the comments here are most assuming that

a) his story, one sided, is correct

b) he was fired because they were running out of money (even his "quote" of
what was told to him doesn't say that)

c) his advice was really helpful.

And with respect to this:

"Next, I found a letter that was being sent out to customers, it was a huge
pile of text that needed paragraph structure. I figured if I got it, I
wouldn’t have read it, there were to many words and to much ‘blah’. There
wasn’t a clear or simple explanation of what the users needed to do and there
were no action words. So I worked on it, cleaning it up, cut the text in half
and made it more clear. I submitted it through the appropriate channels as
defined earlier."

There is no safe way to navigate that without stepping on toes unless you help
the person who is working on this without regard to getting any credit
yourself.

~~~
thatusertwo
My story certainly is one-side and there would have been lots of opportunities
for my own improvements in the work I did.

