After 9 months of unpaid work for a startup, they kicked me out.

It's gonna be long thread. I have been working as lead engineer in a early stage startup since last one year. Founder (20 years exp in Product Management) raised some money from friends & family to start it and but company was running negative from February and he put his money to pay employees salary for March & April and We were hoping for some investment in April but that didn't happen. During May & June, he was looking for funding more aggressively and even after having a good background in academics & top tech work experience in product management, no investor got convinced to invest in it. Our salary for March & April was delayed from actual payroll date by 7 days and 21 days respectively and We were expecting our May salary to be delayed by same period and our company was about to complete one year in first week of July so we had some one year benefits associated as well. But Boom, he invited everyone on call and tells that company will shutting it's operation from next day itself. And he will help us find our new jobs and he doesn't any clarity on pending salary. Although we knew, our company is not in good shape so salary cut or something might be happening soon but didn't expect this. Now, we have to find other jobs and also be unemployed while searching for job and also get exploited by other companies because we will be desperate to find jobs to pay our bills. I think, he did this just before 5-6 days of our one year anniversary just because he doesn't get legally bound to pay our one year benefits. I for sure, not gonna join any early stage in future who doesn't have enough funding. Just wanted to put this story out of my mind. Open for any suggestions you have for me Thank you

Posted in r/developers

So I interviewed for a SaaS company serving US clients. I got selected after three rounds (basic email chat, built a project, technical coding round at last) and got selected. Finally, it was time to discuss salary and joining date with the CEO. He was impressed by the about section on my portfolio, where I mentioned that I like to go on treks, hikes, read books, lift weights, go on a run, etc. During our call he mentioned that everyone at the startup works 6-7days a week, 12hrs a day and asked if I'd be fine with it as I have a "happening life". I said that I'm not used to it but I'll manage and work in appropriate working hours. He seemed to agree on it. But he ghosted me after that, and when I pinged him in the email thread; he said he's not moving ahead with me because my other properties won't allow me to "work as much as other employees". How am I supposed to react to this lol

Alright folks, time for some real talk. I fucked up. Big time. And I'm here to share my story so you don't make the same mistakes I did. Back in 2021, I co-founded a web3 startup. Yeah, you know where this is going. I was caught up in the hype, the FOMO, the promise of changing the world through DAOs. Spoiler alert: We raised more than $5M in seed funding, burned through half of it, never hit product-market fit, and ended up shutting down and returning the remaining capital to our investors. Here's how it went down: It all started when I fell down the web3 rabbit hole. I read a few whitepapers, watched some YouTube videos, and suddenly thought I was the next Vitalik Buterin. I had this "revolutionary" idea for a DAO that would democratize venture capital. Sounds cool, right? I thought so too. Now, here's the thing - I'm a great pitcher. Give me a deck and 30 minutes, and I can make almost anything sound like the next unicorn. So, armed with buzzwords and a slick presentation, I hit the VC circuit. And holy shit, did it work. We were a great team, stellar credentials so were able to close the fundraise pretty quick. I still remember the day we closed the round. Popping champagne, dreaming of TechCrunch headlines once we did our Series A, all the jazz. But here's what I didn't realize at the time: I had zero conviction in what we were building. I was so caught up in the excitement of raising money and being part of the "next big thing" that I never stopped to ask myself if I truly believed in what we were doing. Reality hit hard and fast. As we started building, I realized I didn't really understand the problem we were solving. Our target users weren't as excited about the product as we were. We pivoted, then pivoted again. But nothing stuck. Eighteen months in, we had burned through $3M, had no clear path to revenue, and my co-founder and I were at each other's throats. That's when it hit me - we needed to shut this down before we wasted any more of our investors' money. Making that call was the hardest thing I've ever done. Telling our team, our investors, our families - it sucked. But it was the right thing to do. Here's what I learned from this expensive and humbling experience: 1.⁠ ⁠Hype is not a business model: Just because something is trending doesn't mean it's a good business opportunity. Do your own research, understand the market deeply. 2.⁠ ⁠Raising money ≠ Success: It's easy to get caught up in the vanity of a big round. But money just buys you runway, not success. 3.⁠ ⁠If you can't explain it to your grandma, you don't understand it well enough: I couldn't clearly explain our value proposition without resorting to buzzwords. Red flag. 4.⁠ ⁠Team alignment is everything: Make sure you and your co-founders are on the same page about the vision, not just the potential payout. 5.⁠ ⁠Listen to the market, not your ego: We ignored early signs that users weren't as excited about our product as we were. But the biggest lesson? You need 100% conviction to run a startup. Not 90%, not 99%. 100%. Building a company is hard. Really fucking hard. There will be days when everything seems to be falling apart. If you don't have absolute conviction in what you're building, you won't have the resilience to push through those times. Looking back, I realize I was more in love with the idea of being a founder than with the problem we were solving. I was chasing clout, not impact. To anyone out there thinking of starting a company: Please, please, please make sure you have unwavering conviction in your idea. Make sure you're solving a real problem that you deeply understand and care about. Don't do it for the hype, the money, or the status. Do it because you can't imagine doing anything else. As for me? I'm taking some time off to reflect. Next time (if there is a next time), I'll make damn sure I believe in what I'm building with every fiber of my being. I sort of see this happening now with AI, please take a pause. Let's learn from each other. Because trust me, learning this lesson the hard way? It ain't fun. Keep building!

TLDR; Did B.Tech in ECE from a tier 3 college. In college, explored different avenues and finally found deep learning and computer vision to be the most interesting. Did lots of projects, research paper etc. However, being from a tier 3 college, making a career in this domain wasn’t easy. Graduated in 2020, joined a startup as an intern with a stipend of 35k per month. 6 months later, the internship didn’t convert, although I worked really hard and my manager liked my work. Joined another startup with a salary of 6.5LPA. Although I had better offers, I decided to go with this one ad they were providing WFH (it was peak covid time). A few months into this startup, I realised the founder had no goal, no vision, was given random vague projects, founders would pick up any project that their client would somehow talk about, assign it to me without doing any market research, and few months later scratch that. I realised, there was no future here, and for no reason, one of the founder kept micromanaging me (although the colleagues and seniors were great). And by that time, I also realised I was severely underpaid, as one of my close friend, who was a year junior to me was paid higher. I decided to leave that place, during a time of mass resignations in 2022 (the founders did try to retain me, but I was adamant as I didn’t see any vision and founder was too rigid to listen to anyone). I worked there for 1.3 years, at the same salary. Later on in August 2022, I joined a series C funded startup, with a base pay of 14.5LPA, at nearly 2 YOE. While the hike was well above 120%, in some time I realised that this was the salary that they paid to IIT campus hires. Felt a little demotivated, Also, the culture here isn’t exactly good and sometimes gets quite toxic. However, I kept commited to my work, and come March 2023, I got a 10% appraisal, for which the VP personally had a conversation, I conveyed that I had higher expectations considering I joined at lower pay (1/n)

So, i'm on the job hunt again & i spend a good chunk of my day thinking about the decisions i have made. 1. Quit my first job at Digit insurance because the work was super monotonous. Wanted to try something different. 2. Discovered product management, started doing cases, eventually got an internship- Gap of 6 months 3. Did internships at a solar company & Shiprocket, then got a full time APM job at a logistics firm- salary bump of 4X 4. Learned that my mother had complications on her knee surgery, got severely sick & would require constant care. Quit my job to take care of her for 6 months. 5. Explored an idea of mentorship platform, validated with 100+ people but couldn't start due to feasibility problems. Got an offer from Cashkaro next as APM- Gap of 6 months Total gap so far- 18 months 6. Quit cashkaro on may due to very disrespectful culture(created specifically by founders), authority over influence, severe communication gap between tech & product(no standups, no meetings, no updates) 7. Looking for opportunities again- current gap of 3 months already What are your views on this? Anything i could've done better? I'm asking because no matter how hard I try to explain the gaps, the eyebrows are always raised. Getting rejected left & right, 70% of the jobs are secured for tier-1 folks & for the rest, it feels like you have to Ranbir Kapoor in Animal with Arjan vaily playing in the background(just slaughter everyone to go through) Would appreciate your views

Hi, I interned at a startup for frontend developer for 6 months, January was my last working month as I had my college exams and this startup still hasn't transferred my unpaid salary for January, I called the owner today and he was saying that he will not give salary because he did not like quality of work. He had fired 3-4 people citing the same reason in previous months and they still have not received their salary. I told him that I will proceed legally and he threatened me that I can call whosoever I want and in return he would mail my college to block me from placements and will not give experience letter What should I do?

It's getting dirtier by the day and sure some orgs are still up to their dirty tricks. The models: - Appraise and then Lay Off: Why bother putting bandaid on a stab wound? Anyways the folks are going to fight how to answer the ..why were you laid off war, and now you are adding another twist.. why were you appraised and then laid off? - Low appraisals to force quit: Undervalue them so they leave on their own. It’s a leeches way to cut costs. Kill morale 100%. Severance penny spent $0. - Trap them in PIP: Dress it up however you want - very very few escape this death sentence. - Silent treatment: No assignments, No meetings. Watch them spiral into anxiety and leave to save their sanity. - Workload overload: Drown them in work until they break. No need for layoffs list until they make it to your collapse list first. - Strategic reorg: Re-organize them out of existence. Offer a demotion or a proxy role in a random team that you know they dont want as an alternative. - Sudden policy changes: oh! I have seen so many I can't keep up with this one. New policies that make their life hell. People leave to escape your pettiness. - Mandatory relocation: Demand they move to an undesirable location. Then you treat remote employees like outsiders. Exclude them from key projects, conversations until they feel like foster care kids, second-class citizens. You know the outcome from there on. - Use the "Culture Fit" excuse: Call out how they’re not a culture fit. Vague, unchallengeable, and forces them out without severance. And don't sell me "the org has got to do what it has got to do to survive" line. I don't buy that If you have seen this being done, I understand your silence, but I don't value it. If this has been done to you or someone close to you, I am sorry. Orgs and the people failed you. We could be 1000x better than what we are operating as.

I know sometimes we refrain from saying too much about our company. But exes can usually be talked about, since there's not much holding back. Maybe it helps someone else avoid a mistake you did, or gain a new learning :p Shoot.

Currently as a software engineer, our company’s policy is to talk/share issues via threads on slack so that the entire team engineering can see it. I personally like to talk over a google meet if facing any doubts as it’s a very quick and effective way rather than making threads and tagging people to get answer which takes time. Manager gave a warning and said don’t talk in dm and only in public channel so others can see but I violated this law by mistake and she wants to take this to upper authority by tagging senior engineer. This can lead to my termination. I accept that I did wrong, is this an issue for escalation ?