What are few red flags to observe.  What red flags can be tolerated?  I have heard different views for micromanagement. Like it go away with time.   What to do if founder is too much involved in wh...

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

What are few red flags to observe.

What red flags can be tolerated?

I have heard different views for micromanagement. Like it go away with time. 

What to do if founder is too much involved in what ever you do. Looking at every detail,

How to know a startup that you ahve joined is nice or toxic?

How to know a startup that you ahve joined is nice or toxic?- Grapevine

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

As a software engineer considering joining a startup or company, what are the essential questions you recommend asking HR or the CEO to gain insights into the company culture, growth opportunities, and overall work environment? And whether to join there or not. 

Please share your experiences or any red flag you noticed, would be very helpful for our community.

Thanks in advance

Things to enquire before joining a startup/company

Product Manager

Software Engineer

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

Im currently working at McKinsey and want to understand if working at a startup in a strategy.growth role is better. What are the factors i should be thinking about before making the switch?

High growth startup or Consulting?

Growth Manager

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Glassdoor is usually tough to read, but negative reviews help
Not too many people leaving on LinkedIn is also a good thing

What are signs one can look for to identify a good startup when joining?

What are signs of a good work culture? Things you can notice before you join a startup?

Corporate Strategist

Compiling a couple of ways people can understand a toxic founder from a distance, before they start working with them actively 
I've now met with a lot of them over the last couple of years, here are the ones that stand out the most to me: 

1) Narcissism: They'll love to have fame through random things. Stuff like Forbes 30u30 or some random award. Even if it means nothing. They'll show how great business is doing on social media, even when it may be nosediving. You'll never know things are messed up on the inside. 

2) Masochism: They're super likely to enjoy pain: be it messed up working hours, or bad health, or just really hard times. This almost allows them to thrive during adversity. This is usually coupled with sadism, they'll typically love that they can take pain well, but you cannot. 

3) Overemphasize on the carrot: In your first couple of meetings with them, once they like you, they will over emphasize on the benefits you will have if you work with them. They'll keep repeating how your career could skyrocket, or how you could be a star in other ways. This is also a typical red flag.

These are just 3 of the ones that I feel summarize what I have seen in known toxic founders. Happy to debate/know more if somebody else has had the lovely experience too :D

Traits of toxic founders

I am going through my notice at an early stage Start-up.

The founder is extremely toxic and is trying to create issues despite me trying to work double hard.

She is not even seeing my face and acting all weird - I don't know how to deal with this.

How to deal with toxic founder during Notice period?

I am a 6 yrs experienced Software developer and part of a mid-stage startup. This is my third job; I have been working here for 3 years. I was involved here as one of the core engineers at the start in developing the overall platform, After that, my growth as an engineer stagnated for 2 years . 

Constant importance and priority are given to business requirements and hacky work getting pushed to production in the name of fast iterations and business impact every week. 

My engineering manager lacks proper engineering skills and doesn't respect engineers even after their impact on the company and constantly keeps saying the engineering team doesn't contribute to the revenue of the company despite us pushing work that improves business positively. 

Last year around November, around 80% of the engineering team was subtly suggested to start looking out for work (basically a soft layoff) because management was too scared of a social media backlash

Due to all this,2 years' worth of technical debt has accumulated on the overall codebase and apart from giving justification for every code improvement that we try to make there, we still have to work on business/product requirements. 

My growth as an engineer has stopped and I am worried about missing out on the latest developments in the tech industry, especially with AI in the picture, and want to make my skillset somewhat AI-proof. I have come back to hands-on coding this year , so that's a positive start. I am considering taking a 3-4 month break after resigning from my company to study, develop side projects, develop a portfolio etc

Has anyone else been in this boat ? How did you come out strong?

Side Effects of working at startups

There is so much negativity around startups right now due to the market cycle since 1.5 years and because of a few bad names but I think overall startups have created massive opportunities in terms of wealth creation, up skilling and giving major breaks to people to learn faster. I think this is largely a founder driven issue as they simply want to be cool and startup for the sake of it but I’ve also seen founders that are committed and passionate however is getting difficult to recognize them and find companies actually building a good product that is solving good problem statement AND not get toxic culture. Can people share some examples in the last 5 years of such founders/startups so we can discuss them more and get some positivity on this platform?

Any positive startup stories?

Can anyone share for the benefit of those who are keen to avoid making mistakes..

Start up with most Toxic Work Culture

How is the product team at Navi?

After going through so many posts on grapevine..I feel like all the startups in India are toxic only 😕😕

Really want to know which are the startups worthy of joining? Preferably in product roles

Non toxic startups in India?

Recently while working for an Indian startup I had a terrible experience, not because the entire team was bad but just the one person, the team lead treated me like shit.
Never left an opportunity to humiliate me publically, no appreciation, no feedback, no proactive help. Just pure toxicity. Is being a good person too much to ask from seniors? 
Fortunately for me, I never derived my self worth from him else I would've killed myself by now.

I am now planning to switch companies, and I want to know how to find and gauge good people beforehand? What can I do to make sure or atleast increase the probability of me being with good people? Is this even possible?

Anyone can share any anecdotes on their startup stints and their relationships with people there is also welcome.

How to gauge good people to work for in Indian startups?

For context: Weekends are off. So just fri WFH. This is a Series B startup. I am not even asking for a leave but WFH for just 1 day. I joined recently. The only thing I did wrong was possibly informing a little too late.

Want to get opinion if I am overthinking or this classifies as toxic culture in startups where you are expected to push limits above and beyond regularly and sometimes weekends.

---

Is this toxic work culture or I am overthinking

Not a great culture, also you don’t have to give the actual reason, instead say due to some unavoidable work or family health reason you will need to wfh. Its a good way of seeing what kind of employer one is, when they also treat urgencies like that. Indians feel they need to give a detailed explanation as to why they deserve wfh or leave, whereas in international companies, you just have to inform the manager.

Senior Designer

I am starting up soon. I care about working on meaningful problems, with good people and building the right culture. 

Have been hearing from a lot of folks about culture problems in startups. Seems more of a norm rather than an exception. 

Curious to know why do startup culture degrade? What pitfalls should I avoid to create a healthy culture?

Why do startup culture go bad?

Product Marketing Manager

- Remove people from Townhall meet because there camera is not switched on.

- Do an app revamp because he gets cognitive overload, and not users.

- Forces decisions without an objective measurement for outcome. 


Guess, who!

How to be a toxic founder?

Software Developer

What questions would you ask to evaluate if you should join an early stage startup in this market?

The objective is to ensure job longevity, avoid getting laid off and experience a reasonable amount of growth.

Is there anything else that we can do apart from asking questions to the company folks?

Evaluating early stage startups in this market

What are the most important factors to consider before joining a startup?

I used to work as an analyst with a VC fund prior to this startup stint. I chose this role because I would get exposure to how debt is treated in the startup ecosystem. When I was on boarded, it was clear that I needed to scout my deals, analyse the documents and see how things go through till the money is disbursed to the startup. Now, a new head has been hired who is a sales person. He expects us to not curate deals but make 150 calls a day and just play the game of quantity and not quality. It’s been not even 3 months here (I have performed better than the people who joined with me or maybe even a couple of months before). 

Q. How should I tackle this because I am not a sales person at all  

Q. How should I approach the founder, who is fairly egoistic and does not like it when people do not agree with his ideas?

How to know a startup that you ahve joined is nice or toxic?

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