I was recently part of one such org and I was exhausted finding the right person to escalate matters when required. They didn’t have a proper org chart, no active employee handbook, no written SOPs or policies. At the peak this org had 2000 employees and I wonder how this whole thing worked! No surprises that this org failed and laid off majority of employees.

Gosh this flat hierarchy drama is shit. No one takes responsibility.
The heads of departments throw the ball around at max

Consultant

Founder

It depends on your level of experience.  My rule of thumb is as your experience increases the size of tye org where you work shoukd decrease. So that you have more responsibility and power. Its better to be a head  role in a startup than a VP in a big org.

Program Manager

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 every...

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

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

Just a rant!- Grapevine

Hi All, what can help me join an early stage startup and grow up to the top close to the founders within a year? I want to be in the middle of the action 

Has anyone here done it before?

How do people climb up/become more important in startups as employees?

If they have the right culture then showing excellency in your role, helping out others in the team, having opinions on decisions taken (not just for the sake of it) should help you get closer to the decision makers. 
  
 Remember that at an early stage startup, everything revolves around the product, and you will be rewarded for aligning with that. 
  
 Speaking from experience, you will be involved in "the action" in a team of 30 people either way

Software Engineer

Business Development Manager

So I shifted companies from one where I was pretty much your Harvey Specter to my current organisation where idk what they’re doing with me. Pretty sure the intern there does more meaningful work than me. 

I only switched cause the previous organisation was sinking and it was advised all of us jump ships before it gets too late. Sacrificed a position change and still stuck in the same role I was slogging my ass off for the last 1.5 Years. 

The current organisation promised us a lot before we got in and after we joined we realised that a known devil was better than an unknown angel. 75% of the team quit in 2 months and what was now a team of 75 has prob shrunk to a 100 with a lot of people moving down a role. Me on the other hand they have just put me on failing program to the next without any clear idea or direction and they don’t take or implement any suggestion that I give. 

Don’t know what to do and feeling really frustrated as this was supposed to be the “next step” in my career but now it feels like the whole damn staircase has fallen apart. Planning to put down my papers tomorrow and just become another second gen trust fund baby looking after his family business as I don’t think I can waste more years in this corporate rat race.

Just A Dumb Rant

Assistant Manager

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Not sure how many anime fans are here, but I was recently watching this new anime called “Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead”, which basically shows how a corporate employee is so fed up with his messed up job, that the first thought he has, when zombie apocalypse hits is, “I don’t have to go to work anymore!”, and he’s out to do things that he always wanted to.

Anyways, in the new episode, its shown how a toxic leader/boss/senior behaves. And man, was that so accurate!! 

It shows how these leaders make you work like hell, belittle you, and misbehave with you. Even if you think of leaving the job, they make you believe how hard it is to survive without your current job, and how the work you’re doing is nothing, and that you can be easily replaced. 

And in the end, after fucking up your mental peace, they will come and show a little bit of sympathy, telling they how they just push you for your own sake. Acting like some wise old “mentor you never had”.

And you know, what the worst part is, since all your colleagues are living in the same environment, since everyday you go through the same toxicity over n over, it becomes normal for u. Your brain adjusts, and it seems to think that this is how the world is. 

Moreover, if you are a fresher, and you don’t have any prior experience of work culture, you seem to believe thats how work life is, and will always be. 

I’m ranting this out, since i wasted around 1-1.5 years of my life in such startup, and it wasn’t just the time that was wasted, it also took my passion, my energy, my motivation and my goal with it. 

To all the folks who might be in a similar situation, I just want to say, I know it’s hard and I know you probably can’t leave due to some financial situations or other issues. But BELIEVE ME when i say that nothing in this entire world comes above your mental health. Save that first folks. Be selfish, saving others can wait!

Traits of a toxic workplace

Welcome to IT Company Discussion's Private Community

Just moved from a WFH startup to a Full WFO legacy corporate company.

These corpo people talk so much, too much restrictions to get access or to create a MVP, a lot of unnecessary paperwork/ email loops.

I feel sleepy all day and these people find and make you speak hell lot making me confused and feeling that I have done no work and what will I say about deliverables 🥲.


Side note: renovation going on so not getting any corner + the setting are like this getting it is difficult 😭

Any suggestions or I am over reacting 😄

Rant and Feeling confused

So, I joined a startup as a content writing intern.  the timings were shitty (10hrs Mon-Sat)  but it was good. I had already told them my situation that I do have classes for 2hrs I need to attend but otherwise I'm free (distance learning hai). I also need to go twice a month to centres for assignment submission  or queries.

But, the worst part is that no one was giving me feedback and I was still getting to know how things work on my own. However, after 20 days, they terminated my contract saying I wasn't up to mark and without any warnings or feedback. I was so flabbergasted that I couldn't voice my opinion. 

Now, I have gotten.internship opportunities from 2 startups. I don't know if this is how startup works and I don't want to get so stressed about it. Is this how startup environments are?

P.S. : That was my first experience working with a Startup

Are Startups like this?

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

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.

Currently working in a flat organization. Never again.

Software Developer

I recently worked at a startup and it was terrible. 

To be honest, I still worked at one of the better ones but it just sucked. 

Some of the clear downsides I see 

- Survival mode leads to chaos. You can be treated anyway and asked to leave whenever  even though you left big opportunities to be here 
- Brand loss to find next job (Big problem)
- Trying to make you feel unworthy(Doesn't bother me but I have seen people lose self confidence)
- Loss of opportunity to build real skills like building sustainable teams for the long run

I think over all working at a startup especially early teams is a losing proposition. Do it only if -
 - you know the founders/team well 
- you know the industry and market well and it is a bet you personally believe in
- you are secure enough in life that if you go back to your job, you will easily get employed 


For middle class kids, startups are the worst bets one can take.

Working at startups is terrible

Product Designer

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

1. High pressure on timelines- business and top management shits on you if you don’t deliver on time
2. No power to control the outcome- engineers don’t listen to you neither does the design or analytics team, you end up begging for resources
3. Too much politics- business or a senior PM can steal your bandwidth anytime
4. Lack of recognition- if it succeeds business did it, if it fails it is product teams fault (engg never gets blamed for shit)

I believe Product Management is a really toxic role

Product Manager

I used to work at a product-based company, joined as a fresher worked for 2 years, it was a perfect job, in the sense that there was little to no work related stress, decent pay, and all the perks you get at a typical big product company as an SDE.

I decided to move out of my comfort zone and joined a bootstrapped startup. It sounded stupid when I left but I just wanted to experiment with working in a high-paced environment.

3 months in and I am very frustrated there is no sense of urgency even in a highly competitive space, all 3 co-founders are busy fundraising and rarely talk to us except for standups(which are also skipped regularly) most other team members(a total of 11) work like govt employees, no hunger, passion or curiosity. 

I joined because I love the problem they are solving and I am genuinely passionate about the industry and problem space but I don't even see 10% of the same passion in any of my other teammates they come in at 10 and leave by 4.

Sorry for the long rant but need genuine advice, will things change after the fundraise and as an employee how do I raise my issues with company culture with co-founders without sounding too bossy and pissing off my other teammates.

Frustrated with my Startup

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

Hi everyone, I joined a startup back in May which started in May itself. I wrote the first line of code and it has been the backend work since then and have hired a few interns along the way. 

I took some pay cut to join this startup and i didn't receive any share/ESOPs as well in my offer letter. but whenever i talk to my friends who have worked or are working in these types of companies, ask me to ask for the ESOPs/equity from my founder. 

I did talk about  equity/ESOPs before accepting my offer letter but that time, they said, you will be issued ESOPs later on when we raise some funding. We will make some ESOPs plan when we raise funding. 

I know that our company has only raised friends and family round of amount near to 1cr. 

Now I need advice on.. should i bring up this conversation again with the company's founder ? 
And how much percentage of equity should I be asking..? 

 given that I am giving my 101% daily and leading the backend team.. although i have industry experience of only 3 years but have good academic achievements and has completed graduation in computer science in tier-1 college.

How to ask for ESOPs when you are a founding engineer

Welcome to Data Scientists's Private Community

Currently working in a startup and contributing in data science projects. Learning is good but a lot of time goes down in meetings and discussions and I have to do late night work. Everyday starts to feel like the same and I am not able to get time for extra learning to enhance my knowledge and tech stack.
Also thinking of company change but most of them need 3-4 years exp to the data science team. 😭

Feeling losted

I’ve been working in a startup since last 8 months and I am exhausted. The team size is around 30 (frontend and backend). Some weekends are working too and there’s nothing like timings. 
I am left with nothing but just work, no other activities and no social life. Is it same with everyone working at a startup? Curious to know
Ps - it is a work from office job!

Are all startup life is same?

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

Huh! So i resigned from my job without any job offer. I am not sure if this is right/wrong, dumb decision maybe but i was at my saturation point. I joined this organisation as APM in April 2024 and resigned in September end, almost a 6 months of journey. This was a fast faced startup with a lot of micromanagement and toxicity. My manager was an asshole. There was a time when i was filling time sheets which was just to justify my manager. Imagine a product manager filling time sheet who is already involved in multiple small and large discussion with tech,qa, marketing, operations etc. The shift was of 9 hours and he asks me to stretch to 10 hrs sometimes as he as a bad habbit of same. There is much more. One day due to an instance i decided to resign without any job offer. My family did supported me which also gave me the confidence to do so. I don’t know what to say to next companies. When will I get a new job. Just wanted to share this somewhere and thought of putting it up here. Open for all your thoughts and comments. Also,Let me know if anybody could help me in any referrals😅preferably in Delhi ncr- Hybrid/wfh.

Resigned without job offer

Associate Product Manager

IIT grad here building a venture backed startup. I think 99% of folks here believe that venture backed founders are super entitled and in a much "cosier" position than employees

Just sharing a few facts about our journey so far if it helps anyone improve their perspectives-

1) Paying ourselves 33% of our campus salary & 60% of what we are paying to our employees (Talking about Pure Base Salary here, not including ESOPs)

2) Insane stress - You basically have to raise money to build (esp if its deeptech because of the high fixed costs) and there are predefined metrics you have to always chase, sometimes just beyond yourselves. 

Your product will be copied if it's good because well, they always have more money than you. You work 7 days a week for insane hours, chasing metrics required to be "afloat" 

3) 99% of venture backed startups result in 0 liquidity gain for founders. So basically in all likeliness, everything is for a net negative return compared to if we took the campus job

So, when you wholeheartedly bash founders as if they are sitting On a goldmine while you are toiling for THEIR gold Treasure, just understand that more likely than not, there is not really any gold but rather an irrational hope they are clinging to

Also, Yes-we pay above market to our employees (100% hike for the last one) but the truth is some startups just Can't afford it. And ironically, there is a much higher looking down on these startups with meagurely paid founders rather than giants like Tech Mahindra paying peanuts to their employees while having a 1000% salary hike for the executives. 

Yeah, most startups need to do better but please appreciate if someone is atleast trying to do better because trust me, it's INSANELY HARD.. 

The number of posts I see about Flipkart making hundreds millionaires is way too less than the ones I see about pinpointing at every single mistake early stage startups do & I just wanted to express my opinion on it

Peace!

People way overestimate the life of founders

Oh no poor founders, they have to pay fair salary to their employees.

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)?

Just a rant!

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