What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job? • Hacker News Board

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#21

Post by carbocation » Sat, May 23, 2015, 4:12 PM UTC

tritium wrote: post #20

carbocation wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you apply this to lawyers, doctors, and the working poor?

Lawyers are often known assholes, and in most cases have fun pretty much exclusively at other's expense. I hope their jobs aren't fun, because when it is, it can be deeply disturbing. Doctors can assuredly have fun in responsible ways, and you know what? I want my doctor to be a happy person who enjoys their livelihood, because if they aren't happy... well... The working poor are an explicit example of what becomes o…

Medicine stops being fun about 2 weeks into internship. It gets much more fun after that... but there are times when it's not fun. Same with research. Same with business. There are times when things aren't fun.

Sometimes it takes discipline to continue when things aren't fun in pursuit of a goal that is noble (or fun).

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#22

Post by michaelochurch » Sat, May 23, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

morgo wrote: post #14

One thing that really turns me off is when people talk really negatively about former employees. I met a CTO of a company in Toronto who told me how his predecessor had set up MySQL all wrong. I pressed him for details, and it was not setup any differently to how I would have. This was not in the context of an interview, but it left a very lasting negative impression.

I agree completely. Bitterness or negativity toward people who leave for normal reasons is a common sign of a bad company. Also, when people speak negatively of the person who's in some way my predecessor in a role, I tend to wonder if they're going to say the same things about me in the future.

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#23

Post by lordnacho » Sat, May 23, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

What about when you notice the politics that creeps in when the firm grows? The culture can easily change from a single team on a mission to competing teams, which often isn't comfortable for people.

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#24

Post by bitwize » Sat, May 23, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

When they can't pay you

That happened to me once

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#25

Post by saalweachter » Sat, May 23, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

morgo wrote: post #14

One thing that really turns me off is when people talk really negatively about former employees. I met a CTO of a company in Toronto who told me how his predecessor had set up MySQL all wrong. I pressed him for details, and it was not setup any differently to how I would have. This was not in the context of an interview, but it left a very lasting negative impression.

One of the things I eventually realized was that -- maybe not for everyone, for all programs, but certainly for a lot of people -- the programs we write are very incomplete. There's a portion that we write down, that the machine runs, and then there's a portion that's only in our head.

When you've got both portions, everything is awesome. I'd worth with a guy for years, and never had a problem with them. If I was working with some code they wrote and didn't get what was going on, I'd ask them, they'd explain, it'd make sense, and everything would be fine.

Then they'd leave, and I'd no longer have access to the portion of the program in their head, and the code they'd left behind would become worthless crap. The structuring was all wrong, the choice of variable names idiotic, the corner cases they handled seemed trivial and the ones left unhandled, crucial.

Maybe there's something wrong with everyone I used to work with (as I tended to think the first time or two this happened), maybe if we were better and writing documentation this wouldn't happen. But it is very, very easy to be given a codebase from a former employee -- a perfectly fine codebase written by a perfectly competent employee -- and conclude they are an idiot, because you're missing the portion that's in their head.

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#26

Post by tmn » Sat, May 23, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

larrys wrote: post #18

"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something. If your gut tells you to not work at a particular company (or to stop dating someone), trust it implicitly as your gut is much better at saving your life than it is at figuring up upside opportunities." The problem with this is that we have no data on people who had a gut feeling that something was not right but were wrong about that gut feeling. People would tend to…

That doesn't really contradict his point. It's all about probabilistic expectation. Presumably you have a myriad of options to choose from. If you have a bad gut feeling about one, move on. Obviously there will be counter examples to where this was not the optimal choice, but it is a valid heuristic. Generally in most peoples lives, there is more to lose than there is to gain. You want to skew decision making to minimize potential loss.

Once again, there will be exceptions and people where such an approach isn't ideal.

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#27

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 23, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

larrys wrote: post #18

"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something. If your gut tells you to not work at a particular company (or to stop dating someone), trust it implicitly as your gut is much better at saving your life than it is at figuring up upside opportunities." The problem with this is that we have no data on people who had a gut feeling that something was not right but were wrong about that gut feeling. People would tend to…

[deleted]

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#28

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 23, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

larrys wrote: post #18

"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something. If your gut tells you to not work at a particular company (or to stop dating someone), trust it implicitly as your gut is much better at saving your life than it is at figuring up upside opportunities." The problem with this is that we have no data on people who had a gut feeling that something was not right but were wrong about that gut feeling. People would tend to…

[deleted]

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#29

Post by walshemj » Sat, May 23, 2015, 5:06 PM UTC

carbocation wrote: post #8

walshemj wrote: post #4

no 1 should be "when it stops being fun" and this applies to all jobs

How would you apply this to lawyers, doctors, and the working poor?

Well for the professions you can switch to a less pressured role or career.

For the working poor well night school or improving ones skills - yes I know that's not always easy but life is what you make it.

Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?

#30

Post by pavel_lishin » Sat, May 23, 2015, 5:07 PM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #2

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom

> Your execs with spook connections arrange for your crooked embezzling CEO to meet with someone in the WTC on 2001 September 11 (true story - but he escaped...)

What.