Even the hiring process of Indian companies is exploitative 😐

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?

Recently while working for an Indian startup I had a terrible experience, not because the entire team was bad but just the one person, the team lead treated me like shit. Never left an opportunity to humiliate me publically, no appreciation, no feedback, no proactive help. Just pure toxicity. Is being a good person too much to ask from seniors? Fortunately for me, I never derived my self worth from him else I would've killed myself by now. I am now planning to switch companies, and I want to know how to find and gauge good people beforehand? What can I do to make sure or atleast increase the probability of me being with good people? Is this even possible? Anyone can share any anecdotes on their startup stints and their relationships with people there is also welcome.

Hello all! I am working as HR Head in a growth stage startup in Bangalore. So many people here talk about compensation, culture, growth etc. Happy to answer questions related to HR/Culture/Startups.

My cousin is joining this small (15 people) agency/startup and has been asked these IMO Previous employer's offer letter and payslips are kinda sus? Thoughts? P.S. Offer letter has still not been processed What should be shared and what not?

I have read that they are burning a lot of money. But I still see them hiring. Have they laid people off recently? Current employees shed some light on what’s happening internally.

One of the old employees dropped a bomb of an e-mail against the entire leadership of PhonePe Mass Offline leadership addressing about mental harassment, hostile comments, threatening to sack, and pushing employees to have no work life balance. This mail was sent to the Founder Sameer Nigam and the HR Head.

I'll go first. I got a call for an APM role from one of the companies which did sound pretty sketchy and the recruiter was started bullying me into answering questions, when I asked to know more about the role. The recruiter was extremely unprofessional, and obviously the conversation was nowhere great. They however, did go ahead and sent me the JD and other links, etc to fill in and apply for the job. Mind you, I hadn't applied for the job. 🥲 It just was a pretty sour conversation which had left me in an uncertain situation. Any similar experiences?

Last month I interviewed with NoBroker for a Demand Servicing Head position. The process went like this: 2 rounds of screening with HR/TA - was okay, good conversations. After which they scheduled an interview with the Business Head for the particular team. This interview went well too. After this they sent me an assignment - the longest assignment I've ever worked on as a part of the recruitment process. It asked me to write multiple detailed SOPs for the sales team, build a demand forecast model, and a complete demand generation plan for an oddly specific scenario. They gave me 5 days for it. I worked my a** off, desperate to get the job as I've been unemployed for some time. I did the assignment close to perfection - spoke to so many industry folks in real estate and made realistic assumptions, covering all possibilities. All in all I've not been so confident about my work ever like I was in this case. I submit and they acknowledge. Few days go by, I follow up, only to be given generic delay reasons by HR. Eventually, after more than a week they rejected me. When I requested for feedback on the assignment they completely ghosted me. I don't know why I'm sharing this here, but it's been hard. I've been jobless for > 5 months and every such experience completely shatters my already low self esteem further.

Why? Pay what you can or just say no

Ghosting by HR is becoming increasingly common. This is not only for junior or middle level roles but also senior level. Talk to a prospective candidate and go to sleep. One more round and then go missing again. Repeat the process till the person starts to question the culture. And ya, when you wake up, expect the candidate to leave everything and respond..else, you will go ahead and open the position. Anyone else facing this in startups?