The Blameless Culture

They have no life They have nowhere to go They have no one to be with They have no passions outside work either And they make your life hell as they become the baseline for comparison for all sorts of management from appraisal to work distribution. Feel free to disagree with me, but I’m genuinely pissed today. How do you deal with them? I have a decent life outside work but lose most of it while trying to catchup to such people so that I don’t get fired. Sorry for the title.

I go through multiple posts every day. Every one is cursing their company. The bosses are bad. Managers suck. Company is fraud. Is it always the company, managers , bosses at fault. How can we create better work environment in Indian Startup’s.?

As everyone knows that zomato is now hiring 800 employees after two months of a mass layoff, and exit of senior profiles like VP and CTO. Let me tell you the truth about the founder. He is an opportunist. He doesn't give a shit about the culture or any employee. The company is built on the death of many riders and cheating with low-wage workers. Timing- Isn't it a bit weird that a company that did a mass layoff two months back is now hiring? Seeing that many employees got laid off from the top-tier company. It is a great time to employ smart folks as the hiring competition in the market is at its lowest. Or the mass layoff that happened previously was planned with the thought of hiring again next year with very little competition and desperate candidates.  Layoff: In zomato, it's hire and fire culture. I have seen many of my friends leave even after performing well. Honestly, sometimes I don't even feel human. It's expected from employees to start their day early and go late at night. If you want to leave early (around 6 or 7), you should have a solid reason for doing that. Here code release happens late at night due to less traffic. So it's expected of you to be available all the time. Incompetent Managers- I have worked with two managers here. Both know the existing system as they were once an IC building that system. The issue with these people is that they grew up the ladder because they were the only ones left behind in the team. They lack real-world system knowledge. I have previously worked at amazon, and I know the team lead level there. But here it's like jo ruk gaya vo raja hai. It's hard to work with these people as they lack proper estimations of the projects and at the end of the day. The ICs have to face the wrath of the product teams. People who are planning to join the company. Please do join, as working 24/7 you would learn a lot in a very short period of time. Also, the culture is team dependent, so you might get a team with chill environment.

Apart from monetary dissatisfaction, when will you think of resigning from current PM role?

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 😄

Can’t believe what I’m reading 😭

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?

Can anyone share for the benefit of those who are keen to avoid making mistakes..

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.