Sick of these startup executives, painting a rosy picture for employees

Big tears.

Start ups are extremely high risk. If that’s not your cup of tea then go work for a mega Corp with better medical and retirement benefits.

Hiring is just like any other kind of marketing: an employer is going to paint a rosy picture to get you to join, and you are going to paint a rosy picture to get hired.

At the end of the day ignore the rosy picture and look at the fundamentals - whether it's a big organization or a tiny startup. Will this job be good for my career? What's the feedback from ex-employees or customers? (Glassdoor etc). What's the salary like? What are their coding practices? Are they nice people?

Look for the warning signs: negative reviews, over-convoluted and time-wasting interview processes, asshole behavior at interviews (turning up late, rudeness etc), blank stares at the phrases "continuous integration" and "testing practices", low salary offers, and so on. If you are going to dedicate a chunk of your valuable lifespan to a company it's on you to do due diligence and adopt a healthy attitude of scepticism.

In other news: water is wet. Company isn’t a family, HR isn’t your friend, CEOs care about shareholder value. But no point being upset about it, you can learn to filter the copro speak out.

I'm CTO at a startup and I've made a 180 on this in the last year. I used to paint a rosey picture. Now I feel it's my duty to give employees full disclosure on what they can expect: cash burn, runway, technical debt, what we likely can and can not spend time on, that potential stock options should not influence the decision making, because the future is impossible to predict and it's very likely to be worth nothing.

I do also tell candidates that it's an investment in themselves and a great learning experience. You'll get more responsibilities than in typical companies and you'll be very out of your comfort zone. If you're the kind of person that thrives in such an environment, and learns best by experience rather than by theory, then this might be for you.

So sick of this too, particularly the notion that you should be thankful and happy to work for a startup.

Do you believe strongly and are you passionate about what we are doing?

I'm like no dude I can code and want to get paid for it, do you ask if your plumber is very excited about fixing your toilet?

Like all companies, you need to make sure, and having in writing, the bits of your job you worry about.

For example when I joined a startup, I got in writing that my hours would not exceed 40 a week. If a company doesn't want to do that, then I don't join.

Now we are lucky that presently a sysamdmin/SRE/devop can be picky.

There are so many startups out there, some are run by people who genuinely care about their staff, and some are run by callous shits. As with any job interview you really have expend effort reading your interviewers.

Are they worried about speaking plainly?

Do they raise eyebrows when you say that you have a family you want to see?

Do they get defensive when you ask them about engineering choices (platform/language/pattern)

Do they use issue tracking?

Etc, etc, etc. as with all interviews, you need to make sure that you are happy with the answers, and have no nagging doubts before joining (unless you are desperate for a job of course. )

Lol, she mentions you don't need a degree. Would like details on how many employees she's hired without a degree or rejected applicants like that

On a broader note- It is usually the HR & not the company per se at fault. Ex. A lot of FAANGish companies in India have the best engineers(who might have worked abroad or in better comapanies) but the same shoddy HR personnel from other local cos. They bring their own play it safe by the rulebook policies which would actually fly in the face of the company's founding/founder's ethos, ex. Google - They do hire folks from varied backgrounds & couldn't give a damn about your degree. But in Google India & similar offices to even get a foot in the door you need a premier college degree or have an MS from abroad. Just check their postings on LinkedIn if you have the time.

It's a lot like dating a "nice guy". They're awfully defensive and insulting about how nice they are. But that doesn't mean all of them are bad, just the ones who insist that you're a moron for not being able to see what's in front of you.

There are definitely some good startups. Glassdoor has some good reflections. The good startups are rated higher than FAANG. They often have high CEO approval, and talk about how high the pay is and how hard the work is, but they'd never want it any other way. I'd say those have a legitimate shot at becoming a unicorn. They take hiring risks that large, established companies often don't.

Simply having a cash cow doesn't make you a learned person on all matters startup

Am I the only one who doesn't see a rosy picture in the Twitter thread? The tone is definitely positive compared to huyenchip but it isn't idealized to the point of being disingenuous. I'd say it even paints an accurate depiction of a start-up's struggles.

Her first point is even "Play the long game". It's not an overnight success. "Wealth creation doesn't happen in one go, make it a long game, with regular payouts, that then get invested in some form again & grow more & more".

The Twitter thread and the blog post aren't contrasting experiences. Yes you had to do lots of something you didn't want to do but that something was you, an engineer, had to do market studies for a feature you would later build. Yes most startups won't offer a clear career trajectory because, quoting the thread, "Will you be a brilliant full stack engineer or do you have potential to start as a good one but can pickup quickly & grow into a data engineering role".

Yeah start-ups could overhype the experience the way they oversell their product. But I don't see the that in the thread.

Misrepresentation and lack of appreciation is common to plenty of companies; nothing to do with startups particularly, so I'm confused as to the reason for that specific targeting.

I think as much as anything its just (unfortunately) part of the system; some people lack ethics, some are just under pressure to recruit without anything to distinguish them to the employee beyond what they can conjure up as a goal and hope it sticks.

Needless to say, there are plenty of recruiters who could point their fingers at employees not fulfilling their part of the deal as well.

Best way is to not get involved. I don't mean don't get involved in startups but just don't follow so-called thought leaders and focus on yourself.

These posts are primarily to create engagement and promote themselves / their business. In general it's mostly hackneyed talking points because they are the most likely to get liked / retweeted.

I always do "back door" interviews for this reason.

I try to find a recently departed employee and ask them what it's really like. Not every founder is trying to pull one over on you, but some are...overly optimistic.