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

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

#121
post #3

I am incredibly sick and tired of this stereotype: > The most common is the engineer who, slaving for hours in the proverbial garage, programs his (or, infrequently, her) way to glory and gets showered with millions by venture capitalists. He is the tech cliché—nerdy and socially awkward. At least 90% of the technical co-founders I know are well spoken, well dressed, and perfectly capable of attending social events.…

"I've ran teams that had Whisky Friday, at 5pm we opened a bottle and invited members from all teams to come, sit down, talk, and have a drink."

How late did whisky Friday run? On the clock or off?

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

#123
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working for a big company/megacorp without valuable good stock options/bonuses on weekends and off-hours is dumb and abusive. On the other hand these startups are voluntary organizations. You choose to work there or not. I don't see anything wrong with a company deciding on a culture/work enviornment which attracts people who are very dedicated to the company (and hope to be rewarded in the long term as such) and are…

> On the other hand these startups are voluntary organizations. You choose to work there or not. I think this sounds good in theory and is very shaky in practice. For example, look at indentured servitude [1], where people can sell themselves into time-limited slavery. Once common, it has been banned. You will find people suggesting we bring it back while waving the banner of "freedom". It's especially erroneous here…

He talks about it as "cult-like" because they had standup meetings and used industry-standard acronyms. It certainly does feel weird to transfer into a new industry where there's a huge set of conventional wisdom you don't know, but that's not exactly manipulative.

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

#125

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 he…

Because your incentives are different from your company's incentives.

I'm working for money, but why can't I "double up" these working hours to also get socialization and meaning out of them? Sure, I could volunteer, but that's not an efficient use of my time.

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

#126
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working for a big company/megacorp without valuable good stock options/bonuses on weekends and off-hours is dumb and abusive. On the other hand these startups are voluntary organizations. You choose to work there or not. I don't see anything wrong with a company deciding on a culture/work enviornment which attracts people who are very dedicated to the company (and hope to be rewarded in the long term as such) and are…

> On the other hand these startups are voluntary organizations. You choose to work there or not. I think this sounds good in theory and is very shaky in practice. For example, look at indentured servitude [1], where people can sell themselves into time-limited slavery. Once common, it has been banned. You will find people suggesting we bring it back while waving the banner of "freedom". It's especially erroneous here…

indentured servitude may be banned, but similar dynamics still exist today. in the abstract, the college loan system in the US is not so different: you receive something valuable upfront (an education) and then you have to pay it back before you are really free to enjoy the fruits of your labor. while on the one hand you are not bound to a particular employer, the length of "servitude" is not set at the beginning and is likely to be much longer if you don't land a high-paying job.

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

#127
post #93
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will think of this every time I see a getter/setter pair on a class. The illusion of modularity and encapsulation with net negative in code quality.

Let's not forget about one Interface for one Class, because that adds flexibility in the future :)

I never understood this objection. The interface adds flexibility in the present - it allows other classes to depend on an abstraction instead of a concrete class. The future is absolutely irrelevant here, since YAGNI.

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

#128
This is textbook bad culture fit. It's okay to not fit, but pretending like no one will fit is wrong. I like being "on call" 24/7, I like working 12+ hour days, I like being drawn away from social situations because of a work issue. Why do I have to conform to the author's idea of what an employee is?

This article is a lot of words to say, "I didn't fit in with the culture of this company, here are their names and you should think less of this company because I didn't fit in."

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

#129
post #6

Culture is an obsession at start-ups. They talk about it nearly as much as they talk about sales targets. Its a signal for: don't apply here if you're over 40.

Believe whatever you want. But I'm never hiring a guy whose belief is that as a developer his job is only building whatever some person thinking about the product wants. I want to work with engineers who want influence over the product. That's a culture difference. I'm never hiring a guy who thinks it's his job to only write code in the stack I tell him to under the rules I place him under. I want to work with people…

I want to work with you!

Of the 3 points you raised the 1st one strikes the highest chord with me: it really sucks to be working with someone who just likes to move stories/tickets from left to right.

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

#130
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget about one Interface for one Class, because that adds flexibility in the future :)

I never understood this objection. The interface adds flexibility in the present - it allows other classes to depend on an abstraction instead of a concrete class. The future is absolutely irrelevant here, since YAGNI.

> it allows other classes to depend on an abstraction instead of a concrete class.

... which has exactly zero concrete advantages if there's only one implementation of the class.

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