Ethical dilemma at work: need guidance
Lately, I’ve been at a bit of a weird place at work. I’ve been working at a startup for the last 1 year. This is my first startup experience. It had been a pretty good experience thus far, as I’ve started doing well, the trust on me has increased, and the kind of asks have become weird.
I’ve increasingly started doing founders office work, which includes helping with the MIS, build projections. As I’ve started working on this, what I’m realizing that a lot of it is hogwash. A lot of the transaction that is reported is not meaningful. Additionally, we are reporting unachievable projections, even though it is evident it won’t work out.
It’s kinda on the fence, and I don’t feel like doing it. But then again, this might just be how most startups work.
Have you guys faced this? If yes, what would you do in my position?
Unfortunately, all startups are like this. But given the funding winter, the unrealistic targets caused by the mentality of growth at any cost will go away and be replaced by meaningful businesses. Stick around and learn both good and bad of startup world. It will all work out in the end
Hmm. Yeah, I don't have other alternatives currently. Finding a new role would take a couple of months
How did you land into this role? Was the founder sane a yr ago?
Read about the startup and then cold emailed the founder The founder has been sane. They've been very kind to me in general. But it's just that they're aware of the metrics being overstated and very comfortable with it + expect all of us to follow
Looking from another perspective- “Not meaningful” - For whom ? “Not achievable” as per whom ?
Vanity metrics has been in the start up world for quite some time . It is for the people looking at the numbers to question it. If some fudging happens then u can have an ethical dilemma, not for this
Not meaningful: practically. It is GMV that can never be converted to any revenue. Because it's existing offline transactions that would happen even without our intervention.
Not avhievable: in this case, even the founder knows they're not. When we were building the projections, this was commonly joked about even in the room