Also worth reading: Sick Systems: How to Keep Someone With You Forever: http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html
I think sects use mechanisms similar to what is described in your link. Scary read.
What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
51–60 of 72 posts
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#52One 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 consider it a major red flag if a potential employer starts trashing former employees.
Any employer who trashes a former employee to you, will trash you to the next guy who comes along.
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#53CTO is not technical.
Or worse, the CEO says he still likes to get involved in writing the code.
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#54"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something." Having learnt that lesson the hard way, I whole-heartedly agree. Our "gut" is the equivalent of a supercomputer against the hand-held, battery-powered rational part of our minds. And it is there for a reason. If your "gut" screams at you to just run , you should at least seriously consider walking away. Every time I failed to do so, I came to regret it.
I'm really not happy with this assumption that you've got this incredible intuitive part of your mind that can predict things with uncanny accuracy when we can't reason through it. Snap judgements of situations are also well known to be extremely wrong. Ever judged a book by its cover and been wrong?
Could your experience here be confirmation bias? You remember the cases where you felt you should run but didn't and it went wrong, and forget those where you felt you should run but didn't and everything was just fine?
The other side is that if you leave, it's very hard to say what would have happened otherwise. You may feel you've dodged a bullet when there was in reality no gun.
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#55One 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 consider it a major red flag if a potential employer starts trashing former employees. Any employer who trashes a former employee to you, will trash you to the next guy who comes along.
This is good dating advice too.
First comment about employers treating a coworker badly. It's a good general rule, if someone does something nasty to someone else, stick around and they'll do it to you too.
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#56If the recruiter tells you that they need to fill the position quick because the last guy burned out...
Had that happen with me. Someone I grew up with up held a high position at a consulting firm, and was recruiting developers. He told me that they kept having problems of people who simply wouldn't show up to work. My guess was they got burned out due to the work. Kept on with the interview process and got a ridiculously good, but unofficial offer via email. However, in order to fully get the offer, I'd have to quit my current job first, let the new company know that I have, and then let the new company contact my now former boss for a reference. I vehemently protested against this and they backed down on it. The final nail in the coffin came when I pressed to know what city my first assignment would be in, and they wouldn't tell me. Very shady, and I can't believe some companies could operate like this. For what it's worth, my friend just recently quit from the company as well.
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#57One 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 wor…
See Peter Naur's essay "programming as theory building".
link:http://www.dc.uba.ar/materias/plp/cursos/material/programmin...
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mini…
Ok that is fine but where is the correlation between what someone feels in their gut and what ends up being true in the end? Plus, what is the downside risk of being overly cautious since that has to be factored in. If the gut is based on things that you have observed in the past, or your personal experiences, then it is also possible that you will jump the gun by being overly sensitive and matching a pattern incorre…
Actually, your brain/gut is a parallel supercomputer. If your "gut" tells you that this is a bad situation, it probably is correct, even though you may not consciously know the reason. Your gut is processing a lot of information based on your experience, some of which you may not know consciously.
I don't have that problem so much anymore. When my gut tells me something is wrong, I usually also have a conscious logical reason. It takes a lot of self-awareness, though.
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#59I've been through a few startups, but one experience really has stuck with me. I was an early employee in a turnkey software startup built on ideas from a moderately noted researcher in the field the software was designed to sell to. I had known the researcher off and on over the years and he had been brought on as the CTO with the investors bringing in an outside person they knew as the CEO. They were still in "stea…
This should be a longer blog post; especially the turnaround is interesting.
Re: What are red flags that signal you should walk away from a startup job?
#60"But ALWAYS trust your gut on NOT to do something." Having learnt that lesson the hard way, I whole-heartedly agree. Our "gut" is the equivalent of a supercomputer against the hand-held, battery-powered rational part of our minds. And it is there for a reason. If your "gut" screams at you to just run , you should at least seriously consider walking away. Every time I failed to do so, I came to regret it.
I'm really not happy with this assumption that you've got this incredible intuitive part of your mind that can predict things with uncanny accuracy when we can't reason through it. Snap judgements of situations are also well known to be extremely wrong. Ever judged a book by its cover and been wrong? Could your experience here be confirmation bias? You remember the cases where you felt you should run but didn't and i…
It's not that it can predict things it's that it sees things you consciously miss.
It's the reason why you might get the feeling someone is lying to you without being able to name every single piece of body language that told you why.