Are all startup life is same?

Startups life. No sleep, late nights, weekends, no Diwali holidays, not seeing your family for years, unethical Founders, difficulty to build trust with friends and ex colleagues after you moved to startups, what has been your story.

I'm surprised to see on the comment section that people actually support this load of crap. To any newbies or freshers entering tech this year, don't follow this advice. These CEOs exploit your time to gain revenue and when the time is not good they wouldn't think twice before considering layoffs. Just do your job and go home to your life and family. This advice only applies to entrepreneurs who have huge stakes in the company. Because if the company do well they get millions in returns as dividends. As an employee, even if you work for 25 hours you only get the same salary. Don't follow any so called self procalimed entrepreneurs advocating for the hustle culture. You hustle for your life, not for your boss or your job.

So I am working at a startup for around a year now. Everyday I see, it feels, what am I really doing? Where is the life headed? Doing bare minimum or doing your tasks and fucking off isn't enough. It's expected that we outgrow constantly, as if it's this work that we can always think about and nothing else. At the end, am wondering if it's still worth it? 1 day it feels that let's just quit it! Next day I feel, okay, I do want the money. I ain't looking for suggestions here, just wanted to see if anyone else felt this way

When do you realise that you are done working at startups? What’s that feeling like ?

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.

I work in a startup, have been since the past 4 years. Earlier it was WFH, I had the liberty to work whenever I want - task had to be done. With experience, I've felt that my work life balance has gone for a toss. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, I feel exhaused and burnt out. This is also sucking out ownership from what I do. To all the GVs out here, have you guys tried doing something that's helped you? Or are we all on the same boat here? Are folks in MNCs going through the same? Genuinely seeking for help here. I just feel ki, I should stop running behind money now. Take a pay cut if needed and join a company thats a bit more established. Ps: In my case working from office seems like a total waste of time. I had been so much more productive at home. Thanks!

Current state - I work as a PM intern at a startup. We shipped a major release few months back and since then I barely have any work. It's an ops heavy startup, so the work we do is just supplementary and I'm not making a huge impact anymore. I'm one of the select remote workers here and I've been with the org for the last 2 yrs, working parallelly alongside my college. Initially the work was exciting but now it has died down. The org has a okayish culture. There's no downside but limited upside as well. Pay is pretty good for me (considering I work <2hrs/week) but below average for fulltimers. A little context - I'm pursuing an integrated(5yr) degree from a reputed B-school in Mumbai and I'll be graduating coming July. The placement cycle will start soon but I'm extremely unsure of what I want to go ahead with. I have varied interest. I like to tinker and play around with things. I've built successful social media pages & YT channels in the past. I've freelanced in digital marketing, web development and made decent money out of it. I've built chrome extensions and apps with several thousand users. I feel like I also have interest in web3, strategy, founders office and consulting roles. Few months back, I got an offer from a DeFi company, however they receded it once they realised I still have more than a year left to graduate. The confusion - I feel like I should leave my current org as there's no more learning here. However, I don't know in which direction should I proceed after that. The only thing I'm sure of is I'm not built for big corporates. I enjoy working with high ownership and small sized startups seem like the only option. I have 8 months of college left and I'll have to start looking for jobs within next 1-2months. (continued in comments)

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?