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After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

torontolife.com

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Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#81

Post by Delmania »

Whenever I find myself falling for this, I keenly remember the advice given to me from Your Money or Your Life, which is that you are at work for 1 reason and 1 reason only: money.

Many people say they work for other reasons, like socialization, meaning, etc. Robinson (the author) makes a point that you can find these things in volunteer activities, and that your loyalty ends at the paycheck. Your company will not hesitant to eliminate you when it's financially viable. Why should you be any different?

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#82

Post by brailsafe »

starkingclojure wrote: post #79
brailsafe wrote: post #25

Seems like there's not a lot of circumspection happening in these responses. I truly don't know how true the "brogrammer" stereotype in SV or Toronto is, but my opinion changes dramatically between HN (in general) and say Blind, where engineers with the vocabulary and attitude of young children are regularly found waxing insecure about their 300k+ inflated salaries (as just one example). I imagine the culture can var…

What's Blind? Is it a community? Tried googling but could only find a consultancy of some sort.

Seems like that's what it is. Only heard about it recently through another offhand reference in another HN comment.

https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#83

Post by hvidgaard »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #50
randompi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the 2 red flags?

Nothing wrong with family funded business but if after 18 years the 'dad' is the major shareholder it's a bad sign they were not able to raise much outside capital. It's not so bad, most companies are not 'high flying' but if they have 'startup culture' ... maybe not such a great thing. Also - family companies can be odd. It very much depends on the situation. An 18 year old company should simply not be referring to…

> Nothing wrong with family funded business but if after 18 years the 'dad' is the major shareholder it's a bad sign they were not able to raise much outside capital.

Or they didn't have a need to. Why depend on other peoples money if you're fine without?

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#84

Post by CalRobert »

mettamage wrote: post #72

In The Netherlands I see some similarities, but also a couple of differences. The startups that I have worked for (3) did: 1. Put in long hours (mostly as a result of deadline stress). 2. Have a mission/vision. 3. Acronyms and own company words that they invented themselves. Not necessarily a bad thing, a new word can mean a very specific concept. But they didn't have: 1. Stock options 2. An explicit company culture…

That's sad to hear. A friend of mine has been trying to get me to work in NL for a while and she says a common hatred of overtime is a big plus. Maybe it's just the company and not the country.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#85

Post by carlmr »

scandox wrote: post #77

> A job for life also meant that your job was your life. You went into teaching or sports reporting or proctology because it was a calling—it was who you were meant to be. But it’s been a long time since anyone has been able to count on a job for life. The tech industry led the way: our shift to precarious employment was hastened by more efficient algorithms, apps and Amazon. What is the real history of employment st…

>I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is even that really true?

I'm guessing in most countries a Blacksmith (a toolmaker if you will) was usually self-employed. Of course they were "in-for-life", nobody was there to fire them. But this doesn't mean that it was easy going, they could still have a bad economy or some other blacksmith underbidding on price (or offering much better quality, marketind, whatever).

You can open your own toolmaker shop as a programmer. Your success won't depend on whether your boss likes you, but whether you can sell your tools, whether you can provide the appropriate quality, and whether you're not underbid by a large competition.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#86

Post by sametmax »

scandox wrote: post #77

> A job for life also meant that your job was your life. You went into teaching or sports reporting or proctology because it was a calling—it was who you were meant to be. But it’s been a long time since anyone has been able to count on a job for life. The tech industry led the way: our shift to precarious employment was hastened by more efficient algorithms, apps and Amazon. What is the real history of employment st…

Well 2 of my grand father and my father worked in the same trade for their whole life. Their entourage mostly did.

Now appart from very specific jobs like lawyers and doctors, I don't know many people around me that haven't already changed job several times.

Just a data point of course.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#87

Post by stwr »

CalRobert wrote: post #84
mettamage wrote: post #72

In The Netherlands I see some similarities, but also a couple of differences. The startups that I have worked for (3) did: 1. Put in long hours (mostly as a result of deadline stress). 2. Have a mission/vision. 3. Acronyms and own company words that they invented themselves. Not necessarily a bad thing, a new word can mean a very specific concept. But they didn't have: 1. Stock options 2. An explicit company culture…

That's sad to hear. A friend of mine has been trying to get me to work in NL for a while and she says a common hatred of overtime is a big plus. Maybe it's just the company and not the country.

This is true, Dutchies tend to hate overtime and often in the elevator at 16:59. but there are of course exceptions.

The Netherlands is a great place to work though :)

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#89

Post by soniman »

nwatson wrote: post #26

The setup for this article sounds like a rip-off of Dan Lyons' book "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble." That was a fun book also about a journalist joining the marketing startup ... this one called Hubspot. Dan Lyons' blurb from Kindle edition: "Dan Lyons is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He is currently a co-producer and writer for the HBO series Silicon Valley. Previously, Lyons was techn…

That was one of the few books that made me genuinely dislike the author. By the end of it everybody at the company hated him, he didn't do any work but wouldn't quit, he thought the job was beneath him and was contemptuous of the people who were actually doing their jobs.

Re: After landing a lucrative job at a tech startup, I had made a terrible mistake

#90

Post by CosmicShadow »

herostratus101 wrote: post #68

This writer really needs to learn how to edit his writing for length. No one is that interested in his experience and he repeats himself constantly.

I read the whole thing, even though I knew it was nothing that new, but if you look at where it's published and who the general demographic of reader would be, it would be much more riveting and informative than to people on HN where this is old news.

I read it because it was well written and about Toronto companies, which is relevant to me based on my location. I got to see a bit inside companies of which I am aware of and/or have met the founders of. There are only so many large Canadian "Startups" so it's interesting to see a viewpoint from the inside and how they compare to SF companies.

If you knew nothing of startups and happen to live in Toronto, this would be a great read to learn more about them, especially ones you've heard of. I'm pretty sure magazine style publications commonly have long articles, so I don't know what you would expect. How often are HN submissions short and/or designed for readers from HN?

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