I just came across this YCombinator-backed company careers page (https://www.bottomless.com/jobs) and saw this:
"Be part of our founding team. Note, this is not a "lifestyle job". Our goal is to build something great for a lot of people, not to maximize work/life balance."
I am genuinely curious what type of people actually decide to take these jobs? I understand that working at a startup will be different than working at BIGCORP, but what kind of people decide to go for a company that clearly announces long works hours (and probably below average pay) like that?
It's difficult for me to understand whether the founders of these companies are genuinely deluded, or whether they just hope to find someone dumb enough to buy into their "mission"? As long as you're an employee, then being a part of the "founding team" doesn't mean anything. Am I missing something?
I then made the mistake of thinking that I would also have the same kind of fun as an employee. I became the tech lead at a startup, thinking I would have the kind of freedom that I previously had. This was a mistake. I was very excited about the technology that this startup was working on, but in the end I found, these jobs are much less fun, if you are not the founder, because there is a lot of pressure that comes from up above you, and when you come up with what you think is a great idea, you don't get to implement it. And there are additional frustrations: for instance, on this project I came to believe that it was crucial that we fire our initial data scientist, but the top leadership refused to fire him. This was a major roadblock that I would not have faced if I was the founder, as I would have had the authority to fire someone if I was the founder.
For anyone interested, I wrote in great detail about the experience here:
https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...