honesty is the best policy

Suppose I have worked with reactjs and other frontend stacks. But the recruiter asks for nextjs experience, which I have never worked upon. Should we lie at this point given you can learn and prepare for the techstack if it is to be asked in interview or state clearly you dont have any experience with the techstack?

I work at a small startup that was acquired by a large corporate, primarily via high level contacts of the founders rather than technical due diligence. Founders and employees cash out big FAANG-level payslips without bothering about any actual work or revenue. Being in my late 20s, I believe that our energetic youth should be spent on doing something that we are proud of, when we look back on our younger days. Imagine yourself in your 60s, and your grandchildren look up to and ask you about your life. I would definitely get depressed if I had to tell them that I did nothing of significance, just collected my salary. In this context, I have been telling a few of my close colleagues how we can learn specific tech stacks which are in demand, in interesting domains that we can shift to, if applying to other companies. However, recently I came to know that some of these colleagues have shared screenshots of my conversations with management and claimed that I am violating company policy by apparently encouraging people to apply elsewhere. Didn't see it playing out like this, so it's a shocker for me. Going forward, what would you suggest? Keep my mouth shut and be company policy-wise correct with people to avoid such backstabbers? Or should I continue to be honest and just change company myself?

Got a job but now got another offer at 80% hike. What’s the best excuse to leave the job?

Can you grow your career by displaying honesty at work? Do you think manipulative people are most successful at work? What category do you think you come under? Honest or Manipulative? If people at work, force you to be manipulative, would you accept it for the sake of your own career growth?

Forgive me my Sins In 2017, after graduating, I joined a big IT corporate as an Associate Consultant (Engineer). My start date was delayed by six months, and four months in, I was benched with half my already very low pay. Money was tight with rent and other expenses. My family expected me to start investing in jewellery and buying land. I was new to Bangalore and wanted more money to visit bars and expensive restaurants every weekend. Wanted to buy a bike with good gear. Along the dream to have a girl riding behind me. Sab Aukat ke bahar. As one does, I started looking out into startups. The problem - 0 relevant work ex. So here it goes, I had interned at a startup in college and knew what their documents looked like. Filled the 6 empty months in my CV with a job as a “SDE-I Android” working with the founder directly. I spiced up my CV with claims of 2x load time, reducing costs, international team collaboration, and an award. Some college awards to boot too! I made a detailed fake job story, read interview books, solved questions and watched salary negotiation videos. Eventually, I got into a Series A startup with only having to make 1 fake certificate. They never checked with my previous employers, and now I earn eight times what I would have. The guilt and imposter syndrome haunted me until I started performing well. I still feel guilty, like last Holi when my family praised my achievements. Just excused myself and went for a smoke and a ride out. The bike is here and it is a custom painted beauty. Guilty thoughts still go by occasionally but I am becoming more and more comfortably numb to it every passing year. I have since stopped outright lying and just partake in the standard resume inflation. Had to let this out.

Hey! I have been working with a startup for the last two years & this is my first job. When I joined, I was of course this naïve, wide-eyed college graduate who believed in the goodness of people & the 'mission and vision' of the company. However, over the last 2 years I have realised that my company is definitely in a morally grey area in terms of business practices. We're not breaking any laws, but I can see that we're being unfair to our users on many levels. All for user acquisition, growth, revenue, profit. I can not reveal more information, but I can draw parallels! Just like how swiggy/zomato don't pay their fleet of deliverymen enough, or charge restaurants really high commission + reduce quantities for customers, or how Amazon affects small businesses & their profit margins, my company is also lowkey being unfair to our users. How do you deal with this feeling of guilt? Do you separate it from your personal life? Do you switch it off?

Hey guys, So I'm a senior BTech CSE engineering student from a Tier 2 college in Karnataka and I will be interning at a Top MNC in Bangalore over the summer for 2 months. Any advice for me? As I will be entering the infamous corporate world as a new chapter in my life, I wanna know how the dynamics in corporate works and what I should prepare for. Thank you lads.

Symptoms of being ‘too nice’ to people at work: - Overuse of gratitude words like Thank you, please, could you, kindly, etc on all forms of communication at work. - Registering your reactions like thumbs up & clap to literally every chat message in slack/teams/discord channels at work. - Praise excessively on meetings like retrospectives, etc. - Replying ‘thank you’ to every individual person who wished you or congratulated you for some occasion, especially in WhatsApp groups. Have you ever introspected why you are ‘too nice’ to people instead of just being ‘nice’ to people?

This is an after thought from what happened at Mojocare and Gomechanic. I too have been at a startup that was upto similar stuff. Was really large at one point, until everyone figured something was off. For me, the first year or so I never got a hint of things. But over time, as I became closer and more trusted by the founders, things became quite clear. Creation of invoices for the sake of it, recording transactions that were anyway happening in the offline world, as transactions on the platform. Basically buying invoices by giving back businesses some of the VC capital as incentives. It was all messed up. I always thought of doing something once I figured it out, but ended up not doing it. My only action was to find new roles, and leave as soon as I could. I remember discussing with friends - should I reach out to journalists? The answer we came to was that it's too risky, even if done anonymously. AND, that people we know would lose their jobs if the reality came out. Eventually, it did come out. More people lost their jobs, because in that 1 year they ended up growing more and hiring more. Maybe if I'd been a whistleblower earlier, a lot of money could have been saved, so many jobs would not be lost. A thank you to the people who have been braver than I was.