Welcome to the world this is not just flat orgs btw

I disagree tbh. I've had the chance to work in orgs with clear boundaries of responsibilities and things someone had to give a fuck about. They were not flat, and the highest level in the team could usually swing the decision in his or her favor. Kids weren't given command over engineering and product priorities, before they learned to pronounce the word no infront of leaders

Software Developer

Cant expect same from everyone you had to learn this someday

When they say we don't have hierarchies, it's time to run. What it means is that anyone in the entire org can blame you for anything and there is no one to mentor and shield you.

Program Manager

Product Manager

Basically everything you do becomes a popularity contest. Whoever has more buddies has the vote at all times, and people don't care non shiny engineering efforts and tech debts at all.

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

Currently working in a flat organization. Never again.

Currently working in a flat organization. Never again.- Grapevine

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

There are lot of startups and companies who say we dont have hierarchy or we follow open door policy, but internally you see things are way different as projected. What are your views on those things?

Views on companies who say “no hierarchy”

Data engineer

Never join startups where there is no organisational structure whatsoever if youre coming from a very structured experience. My mind is just fried being at the same level for a year now doing everything I can.

Just a rant!

Growth Manager

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Recently McKinsey employee committed suicide. Now, CAM partner berating three bright associates for doing a job right because the partners looked like idiots.

Fuck your seniority. GenZ believes in meritocracy.

Leaks: Shocking email sent by Partner berating Associates for doing right job.

email sounds right to me, looks like a senior calling out mediocrity 
  
 maybe talking to them in person and in a professional way would have been better, but still LGTM

Senior Software Engineer

Robotics Engineer

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

There is one guy on my team who handles feedback so poorly that they engage in narcissistic tendencies. I've seen them bootlick the right people due to their closer proximity and utilize crony wordplay to show that they are harmless. When in fact they try to advance their own agenda to further their own gain. Every company on their resume is a checklist and the megalomania in them is palpable. 

Unfortunately most people on the team are too naive and won't realize it until it's too late. Which means by the time he is done using everyone else, he will bounce and do it at their next company while completely f'ing over their current coworkers.

Anyone had a similar experience?

[Story] Is one of your coworkers a complete sociopath?

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?

Why are startup folks so entitled?

If you can’t run a business that lets people have a normal life then you’re the one who thinks they’re entitled to employees. 
 Businesses must take risk, employees don’t. Stop your whining that people won’t support shitty business plans

Software Engineer

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

What are the unique problems that you faced working as a PM in a startup at various stages vs the ones in corporate?

Problems faced by a PM in a startup

If absolutely all software engineers obsess over business metrics rather than technology it would be net-net great outcome for the ecosystem as well for the individual economically, socially.

I find it childish when a CTO/Architect/Principal engineer obsess over code & infra architecture, low level/high level design, scalability.

Outcome:
---
I want engineers at all seniority levels and all disciplines must only care about biz metrics. Product management should cease to exist. 

Everything tech will fall into place. 

If you were the product manager of the "bangalore", how would you approach this?

One approach i thought -
---
To get into Bangalore tech ecosystem you must need a certification from a institution (For ex: Tech School), absolutely mandatory from this school irrespective of your college background. 

This tech school will allow everyone to enter, online lectures, teach customer empathy, research, industry standard tech, product management, design. Aim is to set correct mindset for growth and first principle thinking. 

This will make college background irrelevant.

What can we do to make software engineers obsess over business metrics rather than tech

Founder

I'm a product manager myself and I've been noticing this mentality.

Founders of pre-PMF stage companies, having raised tons of money in the bull market in a last couple of years, have hired tons of resources with no clarity and vision whatsoever.

They continue to ignore they're building a product nobody wants. They barely talk to users. On top of it, they hire Product Managers thinking it's a silver bullet and will solve PMF issues.

It's founders responsibility to figure out PMF and not anybody's else. You need to get in the weeds and not throw money at problems.

It just doesn't end there. These companies with average talent pool and the kind of culture that sets it top-down because of these average founders, expect PMs to own everything and fix everything. Everybody from Tech to Marketing shrugs off from the responsibility expect PMs to tell what needs to be done. This chutiya mindset of 'sit and wait' until a PM tells let breeds more inefficiency as output becomes slower as nobody is incentivised to think and take decisions. Also, everybody enjoys doing what are being told because no consequences if things blow up.

Hire competent people across functions and get involved in product building. It's already too late to fix it if this resonates with you.

PM roles have made startups with average talent pool more inefficient

Unfortunately this is the reality in most companies in the world. It's not just pre-PMF startups.  
  
 That's just how things are in corporate. 
  
 I was lucky to be working in a pre-PMF startup where engineers took more responsibility. And they themselves planned out the tech debt and optimised APIs/queries, etc.  
  
 And I know I'm not gonna find such set of engineers ever again.  
  
 Best thing to do is to make peace with it and do whatever you can to make the best product 😀

Saw multiple people are leaving organisation, looking for change.

What's happening in Razorpay ?

Amazon dude joined as CTO and is f**king everyone up.

Background: I work in a D2C consumer product startup, we have an in-house website and a growing tech team of 7 people. The whole business team is 100+. I'm a '23 grad from a tier 1 engineering college.

I joined the company back in September when the job market was at the bottom and I had to take a 40% pay cut (21LPA to 12LPA) (while switching (the last company ran out of funding). I was at a higher than avg base in my previous role but the current role is 20% below the average. (15LPA) The company is in a growth stage and lots of processes are yet to be defined which leads to a lot of chaos but I get a lot of freedom as well.

My manager is aware of the whole situation and we had also negotiated a 6-month review for ESOP allotment. My monthly reviews have been going well and we have shipped some good improvements and features over the last few months.

Only PM in the startup, how much appraisal should I ask for at 6 months?

It can be either a strange workplace policy, an altercation with a manager or absolutely anything else.

What's the most toxic incident you've come across at your workplace?

Consultant

So, I am an analytics guy with almost 5.5 YoE under my belt. My latest transition was to Phonepe that I made this year (feeling shitty here already, given the kind of work creating almost no impact)
I saw a post on LinkedIn where the CEO of this startup recently raised some pre-seed funding (~1.5mn). Since I was following them for almost 6-7 months before this, I reached out to the founder on LinkedIn. 
We first had a virtual call where we got to know each other and after that discussion, he called me over to his place where we further talked about the idea, the scope and the future while also discussing what I could bring to the table. Post that, we met again, and this time with the other co-founder who deep-dived a slight bit into the tech stack that I had worked on.
It seems that all is going well, but the founder, in the first face to face meeting told me that for the time being (for almost the next 3-4 months), he'll be able to pay me a monthly amount which is less than half of my current in hand pay, post which it'll be reviewed and adjusted accordingly. How do I negotiate this now? Also, since the team size is super small (only 5 full time folks and one customer support part timer), how do I negotiate on what equity I take (looking for a benchmark number here)?

Joining an early stage startup - Need guidance

Analyst

A paradise for rest and vest people on the right team
- Do under 40 hours and get normal rating
- System is self healing, you can break something and don’t care
- Deadlines are a joke
- No responsibility
- Can ignore pings and care about anything

A nightmare for career growing mindset people
- Tech island
- Hard work are all abstracted away
- Promo is too fucking complicated
- Overhired and slow growth equals to slow promo
- Politics growing everyday. Basically hunger game to fight for impact and projects

Google is not the same anymore, things are changing rapidly & soon it will be worse.

Google is..

Xoogler here. I echo this so much, and it's what made me leave (was in a tech role as well) 

Google really was my dream company through life, but 2-3 months in, things really became clear (luckily I was in a startup before Google, and that was crucial to understand what was wrong there). 

- You can't really do something great, it's just mundane things on repeat 
- After the first 6-7 months on the role, you're usually not learning, because of point 1
- People are amazing, but they're not as driven as you'd expect 
- Growth is stunted 
- Promotion is the main thing on everyone's agenda (without realizing there may be better work out there) 

Ultimately, I feel it's an amazing culture and company but people have become too comfortable to realize the flaws :(

Engineering Manager

Most of my peer colleagues are working late at night and on weekends as well. But I don't want to do it, now my manager (program manager, product manager, personal manager) is questioning my productivity and trying to compare me with the same level folks. How long I'm going to survive and what is most likely to happen PIP or Layoff?

In this situation, what do you suggest I'm kind of fresher.

Need your suggestions 🙏

Associate IT Engineer

Hi I want to get job at offcampus Microsoft, I am cse-2024 passout unplaced.

Tell me from scratch what all skills are required to crack Microsoft,what should all i have to do? (CP,DSA...etc? )
I am ready to work really super hard 

Please spare  2min time and comment it will help me a lot

Microsoft, help me

Context: I am a software engineer with 4 years of experience.

Everytime I work with a bunch of engineers (Especially Indian Startups). Most of them are workaholics.

They are just working for some company full-time. They are interested in learning more about technology, making jokes about technology, following technology news, etc. 

That is it. 

No social life. (Especially after Covid). No skills in any other part of life.

Their comfort zone is so small that they have developed a lifestyle of working, sleeping & watching something on laptops and that's it.

They make an excellent salary but don't do anything else. 

Every time I meet a 35-40-year-old software engineer, it is just a physically unfit guy with an arranged marriage who is boring as a brick.

Are most Software Engineers boring outside work?

I am in my late 20s and I feel attacked. Thank you for striking the right chord 
  
 I've come to realize that, like many software engineers, I've found myself navigating the monotony of an 8-hour job, often feeling isolated from my office peers. It can be challenging when people hesitate to open up, but the reasons for this became clear. 
  
 There are two key aspects at play: a minimal social life and prioritizing work. These factors are interconnected. In late 20s, the circle of friends tends to shrink, and individuals are busy setting up their own lives, leading to growing distances. With limited time for each other, it's easy to become engrossed in work life. I didn't anticipate that making friends would become a challenge, and I acknowledge this as a personal objective (read OKR) for myself. Despite being an extrovert, reinitiating the trust and friendship path can be difficult. 
  
 To address this, I've proactively connected with people, stepped out of my comfort zone, and initiated new activities. It's a challenging process, and sometimes it feels like I'm overdoing it, but the effort is rewarding. Engaging in activities beyond my job role, such as joining a gym or participating in public discussions, has been beneficial. I've also reduced my time on social media, realizing that platforms like Instagram reels consume a significant portion of my time. 
  
 I'd like to urge understanding for people in their late thirties. Having once criticized the habits of those in their late twenties when I was in my early twenties, I now comprehend the challenges of their situation. Unexpectedly, I find joy in shopping for groceries and organizing them neatly. It's all about priorities, and embracing change has made a significant positive impact in my life.

Joined this organization as an SDE. Initially, had a great experience for the first few months, got to learn a lot. However, eventually, the management (co-founder) started showing his true colors where they would favor a few people who would say yes to everything the co-founder had to say, while others who asked for justification would suffer.

One such issue is the lack of concrete documentation for policies, and surprise, surprise, the policies change based on the mood of the founders. HR, oh, where can I begin? I honestly haven't seen them work, other than salary processing, where they have outsourced their work like LinkedIn management and basic tasks such as wishing employees on their birthdays. This is perfectly fine with the co-founder, as he considers this innovative.
Unnecessarily, we are forced to follow processes that hamper productivity, and we have to attend meetings for half the day. Still, they expect us to work for more than 10 hours when the salary is peanuts—hell, even peanuts are better; at least we can have them with alcohol.

My learning is saturated, and there’s no zeal to learn as the manager and others demotivate you. The most frustrating part is the quarterly rewards, which make no sense, as the rewards are given to people who can appease their managers (confirmed).

And now that we have increments incoming, they have all of a sudden started highlighting mistakes, finding mistakes even if they don’t exist. Like one such example was the co-founder asking us to write a script when the script was already shown, and asking for an update on a JIRA ticket when it was already given in the comments.

They lost my respect when they started canceling people’s PTOs and disturbing people on their much-needed PTOs where they spend time with their families and unwind. The co-founder asks the PO to call and disturb the developer on their much-needed vacations after working for long hours and weekends as he wants to satisfy his ego.

Rant post

Hello everyone, I wanted to step in and shed light on the volunteering culture at Productfolks. 
TLDR: It's the most toxic one. Don't join!!!

To begin with, they periodically post fellowship ads where completing an assignment is required for entry. Then, they mention that volunteering for one month is necessary before conversion. That makes sense. However, what they fail to mention is that you need to dedicate at least 8-9 hours daily(!!!) to be considered for conversion to a fellow. Currently, there are fewer than 10 fellows, while the number of volunteers is at least 4 times that because they want to continue EXPLOITING ppl. As a result, NO ONE gets converted. 

They claim to be a non-profit, but trust me, there's a lot of money flowing into the community, or perhaps just into the founders' pockets - especially looking at Suhas. 

When you volunteer, they treat you poorly, expect unrealistic time commitments, overload you with work, and hold you excessively accountable for things they need scapegoats for.

It's a culture where you regret ever getting involved because the work mainly involves operations that consume time, and the opportunities for learning are very limited. Not to mention the expectations that force you to sacrifice your days for menial tasks.

It might be okay for the tag, but I strongly suggest against volunteering. The community seems pleasant from the consumer end, and that's as much involvement as I would recommend

Volunteering experience-Productfolks

Anyone here working remotely as a data engineer?  How did you do it ? 
Is it good or bad ? Whats your opinion? 
Really want to know more about this .

Currently working in a flat organization. Never again.

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