I work as a Product manager at a series A well funded startup. This company is run by a solo founder/CEO.
This is a wannabe tech and product startup that does not care about their product at all. The internal review meetings get 5 minutes on product and 55 minutes on business and operations on a good day!
All they care about is how to run operations and tech just works on automation instead of building the product for the end user. Every OKR cycle runs for two months where OKRs are set for product but we end up building internal tools because things get "re-prioritised" and operations "can not miss targets".
The worst part is that the strategy changes every 2 months and every week, the CEO keeps adding new "wants". Almost like a baby seeing shiny new toys. At this stage, the product has become a mess with no identity at all!
This baby always says "But is that even do-able" acts critical and tries to seem smart in front of their employees while lying to the investors and board every other week that we are a tech and product company.
I don't know if this happens at other startups in India.
Would love to hear what y'all have experienced.
You sound like a tech bro, who thinks that only tech runs the world. Huge companies like Tata, reliance etc are built on solid operations and business insights.
Tech is enabler, if the founder is smart with business and operations, most likely he will make a good business, and unless you start valuing things beyond tech also, you will keep hopping jobs and cribbing why people don’t value you.
I don't think OP is frustrated because tech is getting ignored. They seem frustrated because things are way too chaotic for people to follow along. And also because the founder is not giving off the impression of knowing where to take the company.
Do you think that a company should not have a roadmap?
Welcome to startup. This is an immature rant. For a good many years survival is key since product market fit is not very easy to achieve.
Same story everywhere. Founders hire bunch of ji saab ji kind of people give them 5x of money they deserve and then burden them to build the product. These people have no life no self respect, they all become paaltu kutte of the founders. Founders just cook some story to be pitched to VCs, very few of them actually cares about the company. This is where the culture gets compromised.
My Takeaway: if you are working for there firms, keep emotions and attachment aside, ask for huge increments/bonuses since these firms run on VC money so they don’t mind giving huge salaries in initial years. Take it with a pinch of salt as you might have to resign any day bcz of the politics/ incompetent management. Enjoy the breeze till it last.
They are stingy with bonuses as well.
The culture is bad and they are, like every other company out there, taking advantage of the market situation at the moment
Is the company hitting it's metrics?
Maybe it's not a pure tech company and more of an heavy ops, semi-tech business? (Like many other companies are?)
Ex. Nobroker, D2C, Quick Commerce, etc...
A few people who are in advanced stages of the process and/or have offers from slice have been asking me whether it's a good idea to join.
My answer has always been consistent and I'm posting this so that people have more clarity.
...
Slice is a known red flag. Stay away at all costs.
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