Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#101

Post by lxt » Mon, May 14, 2012, 1:27 AM UTC

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #24

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #22

Three founders and one engineer that creates products? Move on as fast as you can. Is not that you can't partner with some idea guy but three of them is too unbalanced. Doing anything takes an enormous amount of work, you can't change the idea every week(well, yes you can if you can reuse what you had already done, or if changing means less work or satisfying your customers much better, but usually you should not). B…

PD: If someone that tells you that he likes you, suddenly hates you while you tell them you take a different path than them, then they never liked you in the first place. They were just using social engineering to get what they wanted from you.

I can't vote the parent up enough. Wise, wise words. Don't let yourself be manipulated.

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#102

Post by balajiviswanath » Mon, May 14, 2012, 5:20 AM UTC

If you get a competitive pay, try to hang on more and see if you can turn around the company. Tell the founders about your concerns and see if they will let you get added as a co-founder (so that you benefit when the company finally turns around).

However, if you get a lot lower pay than what you get in a bigco, you need to talk frank with your founders. More than the revenue and lack of funding, it is the Zero active users that concerns me. Momentum is the key in a startup and you guys seem to have lost it. When you are in a hole, stop digging.

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#103

Post by balajiviswanath » Mon, May 14, 2012, 5:28 AM UTC

Out of curiosity, what do those 3 founders really do? If they don't develop products or sell the products or get the funding they have no business to be sitting as founders. Many non-technical founders have the weird notion that ideas matter a lot. However, unless you develop & sell them - the ideas are worth zero. So, their contribution is effectively 0.

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#104

Post by jtheory » Mon, May 14, 2012, 11:55 AM UTC

JeffBlauser wrote: post #61

adriand wrote: post #49

Everybody keeps telling you that you ought to leave, but that advice isn't terribly helpful, since it is obvious that you already know you need to do that. Often, many of the most difficult decisions in life are not what you should do - because deep down, you already know - but how do it. This is true for your decision right now. A few thoughts for you on that: 1. Irrevocably commit to doing it. Book a meeting with t…

Yes, face to face is best. It sounds like they aren't oppressive, so this should be possible to do the right way. As someone who has both quit jobs and had staff quit on me with varying degrees of decorum, the way you handle it determines the long term result. You may be surprised at their response. If they have any experience, they will understand it is in their best interest to end things gracefully. It may not be…

Also worth noting -- if they offer more money, and you stay, that implies that you were leaving (or just threatening to leave...) because of the money (rather than discussing money with them in a more upfront way).

That would change your relationship somewhat, going forward, so don't do this unless you actually would be content to stay at the higher salary longer term.

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#105

Post by lollancf37 » Mon, May 14, 2012, 11:57 AM UTC

From what you say, I don't think that you communicated all that you've said to your bosses. If what you say are facts and not your opinions, I think that you should go to see them and tell them what you think, what you want. It's okay to be involved with people at work, it's not okay to use this as an excuse.

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#106

Post by lollancf37 » Mon, May 14, 2012, 11:58 AM UTC

lollancf37 wrote: post #105

From what you say, I don't think that you communicated all that you've said to your bosses. If what you say are facts and not your opinions, I think that you should go to see them and tell them what you think, what you want. It's okay to be involved with people at work, it's not okay to use this as an excuse.

Good luck

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#107

Post by michaelcampbell » Mon, May 14, 2012, 12:18 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #96

larrys wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Competent employers do not have an expectation that they're going to get a heads-up before you start interviewing." 1987. My sister didn't know there was a root user on a Unix system. I found out she was interviewing after seeing her resume in her home directory.

Why were you looking in her home directory? :)

Totally tangential to the issue discussed, but years ago I was doing interviews of college kids for dev jobs in a unix env. The recent graduates had had some unix in school, but not much. When asked some questions about it, one candidate let slip that he wanted to see what other people were doing so he started looking in their home dirs.

We hired him. He was absolutely fantastic.

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#108

Post by georgemcbay » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

larrys wrote: post #95

tptacek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the fact that circulating resumes is just about the worst way to find a new gig, I don't understand the mentality that suggests he should give notice before finding a place to land. Find a new job, then give notice. I've worked in this field since 1995 and am an employer at a fairly sizable team now and I'll tell you this is pretty close to industry standard. Competent employers do not have an expectation tha…

"Competent employers do not have an expectation that they're going to get a heads-up before you start interviewing." 1987. My sister didn't know there was a root user on a Unix system. I found out she was interviewing after seeing her resume in her home directory.

Was your sister working for you? If so, why? If not, how is this connected?

Also I'm not sure how the existence of a root user plays a part because on the vast majority of unix systems the default home directory permissions are permissive read (this was true in 1987 and is still true now) and if your sister didn't know about root users it seems fairly unlikely that she knew about chmod.

Re: Ask HN: losing faith in the startup where I'm employee #1

#109

Post by accomplice » Thu, May 17, 2012, 11:57 PM UTC

I have been in similar situations with very distracted CEO's who just thought of everyones input as opinions, or content to digest. Big problem, but solvable if you get another engineer to help make cases with you and help mentor (without explicitly stating that as a goal of course) the other founders a bit on how to run a tech startup, as opposed to a marketing effort.

You can get another engineer!