Which roles are wasteful and can easily be eliminated from startups?

I have seen lots of people joining startup for 2 main reasons - Pay & learning. I am fine with people joining just for pay (depends on person), but little skeptical with the "learning" aspect. Having 10 years of experience, I have worked for both Startup & Stable companies. Currently we see hardly any startup being actually profitable/sustainable. So the tech solutions applied mostly deal with the short-term profit and growth. This often result in over-engineered solutions and unnecessary tools being used. Again, it's not that what we learn in startup is waste. But would you rather learn building long-term sustainable software or short-term with unreasonable user-base? Open to be corrected here!!

Company name - Chat360 It's pretty small and inconspicuous, but if I save even one person from joining this organisation, I will consider it worth it. Based on first hand accounts from 3 very reliable sources who are confirmed employees. A very basic chatbot platform, being marketed as a Gen AI first product. They don't even have basic NLP and claim to be Gen AI.  The founder & ceo is completely directionless. This is his side hustle, but while interviewing new hires he claims that he is the full time CEO (this is not true, he is barely available and always busy in his main business which is a car dealership)  The co-founder is an IIT-grad, and due to the Founder's absence is basically running the show though he has zero business acumen. He constantly bitches about the founder to senior employees. Of course, with such a toxic back story, it is hell to work here. No unity in the team, lot of back biting and bitching, public humiliation on WhatsApp groups, constant blame game. Basically, a shitshow.  Do not, do not, do not join this place. Avoid it like the plague.

have been seeing a lot of startup’s having multiple CXOs leaving within a short duration of them becoming profitable. Is this another cost saving measure?

Be it about investors, co-founders, hires, freelancers, family, or yourself

Being an investor in equity markets, i was aware of the fact that US market will crash as the free money by fed draws back. I obviously was not able to link this up with the funding dry-ness. I still expect a founder to be aware of these economic events. I am curious how could the management decide to go for hiring employees only to lay them off a year later. If you are a founder, would be happy to know the other side of the story.

It was a pretty tense situation at the office. Nearly all engineering managers were laid off, most of the SDE-2s who were not the core engineering team and a lot of SDE-1s who had just joined this year. Even the interns were let go today. Pretty scary scenario today. Just putting out an update. Apparently it was done to please the investors for the next series of funding. Can't say for sure though.

With so much going on in the startups scene and companies going in any direction (Think Dunzo, Byjus, Dukaan, etc from recent memory), how exactly should you judge a prospective company from the outside? Tips appreciated Sada shukriya Shri Shri angoori dev ka (#GrapeVine Lords)

1. Novel/new business idea 2. Degrees/MBAs 3. Experience/reputation 4. Money (hardly 20-30k to register company) 5. CTO 6. Employees/Co-founders 7. External investment 8. Website/app 9. Social media accounts 10. Office location (register home as office) Far too many people focus on needing xyz before starting up. Most of them are excuses and self-imposed roadblocks from what I've seen in my conversations with people. I'm currently working on 2 ventures that still have many items missing from this list. Doesn't really stop me from making revenue and profit. Sure, there may be some things required from this list for specific businesses and at diff stages. But they are mostly an extra, good to have but not required. What is required in copious amounts is courage and will power, willingness to face rejections and ability to withstand multiple failures only to get back up and try again. Also, a healthy enough risk appetite. I hope to see more young and talented folks (especially MBA grads) start their own thing some day. Best time is in your twenties and early thirties, when you have little to lose. If you have any business ideas you want help with, I'd be happy to discuss and share contacts and resources if required. Good luck soldiers, see you in the arena 🪖

Employees who are top performers are laid off. Employees who are in a firm for a long time are laid off. Employees who are freshers are laid off. Employees from IIMs/IITs are laid off. Employees who work just to get the job done are laid off. Seniors are laid off. Juniors are laid off Hard working employees who get good ratings and give extra hours are laid off. Bad peforming ones are obviously laid off. Is there anyone who is safe. It's just at the mercy of few decision makers at the top and no matter what you do you will never be safe. Now I understand why parents say that government job is better.

I really wanted to build great products and have a say in how they would be built. To thrive in ambiguity and find relationships between causality and features is an addictive feeling. What about you?