Is narcissism and hallucinations a common trait among startup founders in India?

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

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

As a vanity Indian founder of a startup, you have overcome certain very complicated social issues to reach here. While this is important, founders also engage in mindless hedonistic activities while all throughout claiming the company in loss or market crash. 1. I engage in individual interests selflessly while the employee might have to go through a pay cut or salary hold up. For ex: Founders minting expensive tickets for horse polo or football finals abroad, the same month employees were laid off. 2. I engage Celebrity Warlords and build fancy academies to bring stardom while mercilessly laying off people and trampling over their familial relations. Throughout I ensure through PR that my company forecasts are always on top. 3. I maintain a fancy following in the office who sings Bhajans on me and my life and stories. For ex: They prefer passouts from small towns or Tier 2- 3 colleges so they accept without questions. 4. I need a hot female in the office who can help compensate for my emasculated and punctured ego. For ex: this lady will get hikes and unconditional promotion in a year or so. 5. I hire more than I can afford so this is my way of buffering and validating my own immature decisions. This way I don't lose out on supposed opportunities but I ensure that my company always looks buoyant and alive. 6. I don't believe in any political correctness but if the business needs it I will engage people to write for my company as promoting ideas and ideologies superfluously. 7. I want my organisation to be a vanity circus rather than for hiring quality folks. I market as hiring for diversity but this is just the PR stunt.

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?

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?

Most startup’s are not founded with great altruistic purpose to elevate human condition. Most startup’s are founded where founders know they can make money or earn status points through little schemes of leveraging their network of investors. Most of them know they can earn more income by just raising some money from friends or VCs. Build a small tech tool and burn through money trying to acquire and retain customers. All this while hiring 100s of employees selling false narratives. What bugs me the most isn’t the thousands of people getting laid off, salary corrections or bankruptcies, it is the mafiaesque organisation built to “create wealth for some by exploitation of countless others” Most startup founders use brute force of content and media coupled with ignorance of people to perpetuate this cycle. It’s the virtue signalling and holier than thou attitude of most founders and VCs justifying all their mindless brutality in the name of strategy and growth which destroys aspirations and outcomes for the many. It’s more relevant in India because of large scale ignorance about money and large scale trust on educated individuals with the right college tags! If you have seen sopranos, most founders are like Anthony soprano - summarily violent, manipulative and ruthless behaviour primarily driven by selfish greed but juxtaposed with moments of vulnerability and struggle justifying his action with a facade of providing for his family. *Replace Anthony soprano with your founder/ceo name* 1. VSS was playing fast and lose with rbi regulations resulting in stock crash and layoffs 2. Byju’s systematically destroyed his own company and wealth of his employees just to ensure he retains majority control 3. Ashneer G and his wife manipulated company books 4. Zerodha founders cheated in chess match or lied about their system failures which lost a lot of capital PS: I refer to most founders because there are few exceptions who don’t fit into this narrative.