Ask HN: Typical Startup or Abuse?

And I wish it was Drupal, he refused to move away from .NET. I will say the CMS we used is the worst experience I ever had. It is horribly bloated.

lawsuits

Do not be surprised if your "boss" freaks out and threatens you with a lawsuit. He will probably be bluffing. You need to just ignore him and ride out the storm.

I actually had a boss like this once. Not quite as pyscho, but still in the same orbit of madness. What worked for me was quiting. Every time I quit he offered me more money. I went back 4 or 5 times. Over the course of 4 years, my pay went from $15 an hour to $50 an hour.

Mind you, it was important to really quit. Bluffing did not work.

If I said "I will quit" he would say "I am sorry to hear that but we have no extra money that we can pay you."

Only when I quit and went and got another job did he offer me more money.

There came a point when I realized that simply working for him was bad for my career. No matter how much money he paid me, his business was run on a profoundly unprofessional basis. It was never going to lead to something great, and every day working with him was a day spent learning how to deal with a psycho, rather than a day spent learning how to deal with a professional, well run business.

So in the end I quit, and he could not offer me more money to stay.

That is when he started threatening me with lawsuits. These came in 2 varieties:

1.) My non-compete agreement - he briefly argued that my non-compete agreement covered the whole technology industry, so I was not allowed to go to work as a computer programmer anywhere. This was a really a non-issue, partly because no court would uphold such a broad claim, but also because the non-compete agreement had a 2 year limit and when I quit we were only a few weeks away from the end of those 2 years. So the issue just went away.

2.) Copyright. He had stupidly never asked me to sign anything regarding copyright. So I owned the copyright on any code I'd written while an independent contractor for him. He then argued that we had had an implicit agreement, and that he would sue me if I ever re-used the code. But I re-used the code on another project, and he never sued me.

One thing about these kinds of bosses: they crave control. When you quit, they go wild, because you regaining control over yourself. At such times, such bosses go a little crazy. It's best to ignore most of what they say at such times. 99% of the time, it is all bluff.

You might be interested in this article:

http://www.inc.com/guides/managing-independent-contractors.h...

This article is actually aimed at the employers, but it warns them about the IRS re-classifying contractors as employees.

Some interesting bits:

"Legally, the contract is a key part of establishing a non-employee relationship, though it doesn't guarantee that the IRS or other agencies will agree that your contractor should not be reclassified as an employee. If the IRS deems an employee misclassified as a contractor, some states – particularly Colorado and Maryland – can enforce hefty tax penalties on the employer. When in doubt, consult the IRS's guidelines on the difference between an independent contractor and an employee here.

With the IRS estimating that 15 percent of the U.S. workforce is misclassified, you'll want to be firmly within legal grounds – and to document a work arrangement meticulously – when working with an independent contractor, so that there is no doubt about the nature of the relationship.

The basic rule, experts say, is that you determine the what and the contractor determines the how. You say you want a piece of market research or a graphic design turned into you by a certain date; the contractor decides how to create these deliverables, subject to your approval. It's important to outline specific goals, but the contractor must provide their own tools, equipment, and facilities to complete the work.

In probing the nature of the relationship, the IRS might examine the contractor's level of freedom, including setting his or her own hours, paying his or her own business expenses, and hiring support staff or assistants as necessary."