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
I think over all working at a startup especially early teams is a losing proposition. Do it only if -
For middle class kids, startups are the worst bets one can take.
Much of the upsides people mention do not exist ot matter as much
VCs invest in 20 companies and one works out. You as an individual will have to work in too many startups to have the upside.
Odds are stacked against you
The skills you learn at startup especially non tech ones may not be that useful because they fail at scale. You don't get to manage large teams which is a problem
The Growth is often an illusion. Sure you get a larger title at a small or. But the moment you will go back to large org they will move your title to the same.
I agree on 1. But that's the bet you take when you get into a startup 2 and 3 - maybe true for non tech, but definitely in tech it isn't. It's very lucrative, you scale up pretty fast
Yes, it is better for tech.
I could relate to this post. Working at an extremely profitable startup.
My experience has been a hit and miss. Joined almost like a founding team member but without confounder level leverage.
Joined at the below market salary, ESOPs were a verbal promise but no clarity on volume and value until recently when it was given, it got low balled.
No title promotion as I had almost the same YOE as the co-founder boss.
The grind, effort, hustle, stress all were equally the same as the co-founders or may be more as early employees.
But the non linear rewards are only for founders not the employee.
Just got to know that the amount of salary cut I had taken, had I invested the same amount back when the company started I would have gotten more shares as a seed investor!!
I'm still grateful that I got to build a team that respects me and that's the only motivation ( alongside the average cash increments in the last few appraisals ).
After making the startup profitable, the founders develop a god syndrome and play information asymmetry game.
They forget that it's the people below them whose goodwill and grind gave them their current success.
The non clarity on ESOPs sucks so much.
Makes one feel betrayed.
Glad you found some solace in the team you built.
Totally relate to the non clarity on esops. I think information asymmetry is being used as a tool by these companies.
Experiences vary from people to people. It seems you ended up at a place where there was no direction.
I think that is the norm not exception going by everything around. Just recently seeing people post about their HealthifyMe experience.
I am sure some good ones exist but that is few and far in between.
And you are a recruiter 😂
You want to play with fire 🔥 then join startups which maybe highly rewarding. You want to stay chilled like ice 🧊 then join good service based companies having good long term projects which may or may not be rewarding.
There are many good product based MNCs also out there and they even pay good. E.g. Service Now, Freshworks, microsoft, google, salesforce etc.
Freshworks doesn’t have a very good culture though. They are known to have biases for Tamilians and it gets super chaotic. The company is struggling to maintain share price. Have not hear very good things about ServiceNow either.
It has its place in everyone’s career ladder but ya I haven’t seen long tenured folks in startup unless they’ve too much at stake (esop/equity).
Razorpay has a lot of them. All of them were hired in the boom of 2020-21 with great CTCs and have sizeable ESOPs. Now they are stuck - bahar jayenge toh na wo title milega aur na utna compensation. They have become ADs, Directors and SDs. So they have stuck on, and have created a fiefdom of their own, making sure that no one else can ever create an impact.
@CorpCultureSucks Damm didn’t knew thi
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