Babe wake up new arrogant startup founder just dropped

Something as a founder I have decided over the years. Everywhere around you, you hear stories of founders who worked 16-18 hours a day, made their team work as hard, were assholes, shouted at people, made people cry. You start to think, that's an absolute must to succeed. I don't think it is. For every 2-3 founders that are toxic, there's the one good natured founder who succeeds. They're rare, but they do exist. 1) I've been in many toxic jobs. I've hated them, and had some form of anxiety. To become successful, if I subject people through the same, what was all of this for? 2) I'm not saying I'll keep it too chill at my startup. I actually expect people to work harder than typical corporates, but only if they have good ESOPs in the early days, a chance to actually learn and do well (and that should be pre-aligned) 3) But what about the mission? Don't you want to make sure your mission becomes true, whatever you're chasing actually reaches 1000s/millions of people? Sure. But it solves for many vacations for me, and maybe better lives for my kids, and perhaps some problem gets solved. But what if it doesn't. It cannot come at the cost of miserable lives for my team. I'll never be proud of my work if that happens. We all have a decision. Why just be a successful founder? Why not have a higher aim... be a successful non toxic founder? You'd be truly 1 in a million then. That's how I'll always see it, I hope.

The company did around 10-15% silent layoffs in the last cycle by putting people in PIP. My Manager told me that he has pressure on him to put at least 1 or 2 people in PIP, make them leave the company and reduce costs. Later, the company did as low an appraisal as 2%. Senior folks are leaving specifically Frontend Developers. Salaries of a lot of SDE-2 are below 30 LPA. They have started new positions called Product Developers which will do the same work as SDEs but with a lesser package. PD-1 salary is around 10-12 lakhs and of Lead PD is 20-22 lakhs. The company is putting itself in a position where it wants people to leave on their own. There are almost zero perks in the company. The team outing budget is a joke which is 2k INR per person per year. That is 500 rupees per person per quarter. Also making office mandatory from November.

1. Fancy talks from founders such as ownership, independence, building for next generation, speed etc 2. Learn new tech 3. Glofiying working at odd hours 4. Don't talk about stress and anxiety Start ups are not for weak heart and normal humans who have life after work. It's only for people who will give up their life to build somone else dream. Prove me wrong. An ex ola person cried infront of me for the workplace stress and unrealistic push

I'm seeing so many posts where startup employees are cribbing about things like layoffs, work culture etc etc. Doesn't seem like they have perspective on everything it takes to build a startup. I've built a failed startup myself and have immense respect for founders who are grinding it out there in such difficult recessionary circumstances. And then you have so many of the engineers and PMs cribbing about basics without talking about important things like learning growth, building for the future etc. Why such myopia? I work at a big tech and envy the speed at which startups move, the big responsibility everyone gets to handle, the fast career growth. All these things are being cribbed about. They crib about founders wanting more. Their job is to ensure success, not to give lifetime jobs to entitled people. They have more headaches you can imagine. In my small startup I had a million headaches. I can only imagine how hard it must be to run larger ships. Is everyone joining a startup these days looking for a get rich quick scheme?

What is the most alpha/dick move that your startup did to its competitors?

Link: https://substack.com/@aakashgupta/note/c-60925859?r=2br5rh&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

If using cuss words was not enough, hating on 9-5 makes you a wannabe.

It’s considered immature to speak negatively of your past employers. But i am going to share some anyway. Used to work at Oyo with Ritesh - directly. Havent seen a more deluded personality - high headed, pretentious and above all, bipolar. He used to speak so rudely at times that it makes you question if the money is worth it. I have often wanted to tell some people - if he invested all the softbank funding into Nifty, LPs would have had a decent return than the ever failing IPO attempts. I am so glad the valuation reality kicked in and humbled these founders down. At the end of the day though they amassed a lot of wealth. But at what cost. Eager to hear on Byju BKLora.

Come at me, I'm not scared. There is a reason why FAANG engineers are top-rated VS some random startup engineer. Here are the reasons why I think that Indian Startup culture is pure cringe: 1. The random use of the following emojis- 🚀💰📈📊💡 2. Fake enthusiasm for every little thing - "Wow! 25M people ordered condoms WOWOW!!!🚀" 3. Claim that you are a verb("company name"): "I am a (Zoman, Flipster, Swiggster or whatever)" but no one really knows about it outside of your company. 4. The HR is a proper softie in the name of Employee wellbeing but will end up being a sadist the moment layoffs happen. 5. Think hard if you really want to work in a place that is your LinkedIn feed on Steroids.