11–20 of 72 posts
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom
Especially level 2's last bullet point (keep your eyes and ears open), which reminds me of this:
http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...
1) Communication during the hiring process. There's not much else that should be more important to the startup at that moment than you. If they are not fighting to hold your interest you should walk (unless they have a damned good explanation). 2) If you ask the MD what their turnover is and they cannot answer the question coherently. (true story).
Also worth reading: Sick Systems: How to Keep Someone With You Forever: http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html
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.
1) Communication during the hiring process. There's not much else that should be more important to the startup at that moment than you. If they are not fighting to hold your interest you should walk (unless they have a damned good explanation). 2) If you ask the MD what their turnover is and they cannot answer the question coherently. (true story).
MD?
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 talk about times when "I should have listened to my gut about this" but rarely would tend to talk about when their gut was wrong and they were worried for nothing. (And I can think of several personal examples of this type of thing.).
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?
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 of you, should you find yourself lashed to unsavory tasks as a life sentence. Very obviously no fun. What little fun there may be, is incidental. Asking that question is sort of tone deaf. Like asking:
Well what about the cow in the barn? Is she on board
with becoming a hamburger after she's done giving us
all that milk? We'd better ask.