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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

#141

Post by titzer »

asianthrowaway wrote: post #136
pjc50 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A good programmer plans ahead. Edit: of course it is up to individual judgement on a case by case basis, and there are instances were it is obvious that no other concrete implementation of an interface will be required. But otherwise, writing an interface is good practice because it helps safeguard against time consuming future refactoring.

This is exactly what YAGNI is meant to counter: the constant tendency of programmers to add speculative extension capabilities that are never used. These add complexity and cognitive overhead. It's a net loss.

Also, people pretend like refactoring is hard. My experience is that refactoring is only hard on the ends of the spectrum, where someone has added all the wrong abstractions, or no abstractions at all. Of the two, I'd prefer the latter, but obviously anything in the middle is usually better.

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

#142

Post by ppeetteerr »

opportune wrote: post #14

The author didn't seem work with devs (who were on the other side of the country) or investors, so I have trouble fully accepting their generalizations of tech startups as a whole. Sure, they experienced a lot of tech-specific phenomena like free drinks at the office, but it sounds like most of the problems were just due to interacting with a lot of obnoxious young salesmen. The part where they act surprised at the u…

It would appear that the marketing department in these companies was focused in helping the sales people push more product, rather than work with product to highlight new functionality. This does make sense: most companies are sales driven, not product driven.

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

#143

Post by ummonk »

gaius wrote: post #75
dmix wrote: 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…

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) That’s OK in theory but in practice it’s almost always a bait-and-switch relying on the marks not knowing the difference between preferred and common stock, or what dilution is. Easy test: do they say “10,000” shares but don’t t…

Or pitching Series A stock to prospective employees by pointing to IPO valuations of a select group of successful startups with similar products, without mentioning that those startups experienced 4-5x dilution from Series A to IPO...

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

#145

Post by hartator »

lucidone wrote: post #22

I'm surprised by the amount of salt (for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) in the comments. I've worked at a Canadian start up. It was not a unicorn, but you were expected to work long hours, be a "10xer", always be responsive, and put in hours on the weekend. Those expectations were never made explicit, but the company had a lot of churn for those who didn't "fit the culture" or acquiesce to the cult of person…

To be fair, the original article was very salty as well.

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

#146

Post by ppeetteerr »

golergka wrote: post #140
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'm also very surprised to see "employment stability" as something good. I'm the kind of person who likes to change things in life pretty often, and I change jobs around once a year, also taking shorter contracts. In the "old" world of job-for-life employment I would be complete outcast; I am really happy to work in the industry that is much more friendlier to my temperament.

> In the "old" world of job-for-life employment I would be complete outcast

This is not the case. The old world also had job variety: you could join one of the many ad agencies or one of the many manufacturing companies. Consulting was also a thing. Today's GDP is occupied more and more with startups, not companies focused on the long term.

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

#147

Post by pjc50 »

asianthrowaway wrote: post #136
pjc50 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A good programmer plans ahead. Edit: of course it is up to individual judgement on a case by case basis, and there are instances were it is obvious that no other concrete implementation of an interface will be required. But otherwise, writing an interface is good practice because it helps safeguard against time consuming future refactoring.

> A good programmer plans ahead

The comment above said the opposite, that the future was irrelevant.

These days there are tools that can help in a lot of languages; it's not a time consuming operation to press the Resharper "extract into abstract interface" button.

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

#148

Post by steve_adams_86 »

AdamSC1 wrote: post #94

The Canadian startup scene is brutal. We have all of the downsides of valley startups with very few of the benefits. About five years ago, during my last job search, I interviewed at a well funded (Series B) AI company that was looking for a VP of Marketing. After a few months of interviews, including many early on where they had asked me for my salary expectations, they offered me a starting salary of $70,000 CAD sa…

Remote work was a life changer for me too. The pay is far better, the hours are better (if you keep yourself in check at least), and... Well, I spend a lot more time with my family now, so there's nothing worse to say about it really.

In the past I worked for a lot of "performance marketing" companies, but also a few more legitimate companies like Checkfront. Even Checkfront left me feeling deeply unsatisfied despite being an good group of people and decent work. I think there's just something weird going on when companies identify as startups, especially if they're seeking funding. Things deteriorate as they grow, "perks" you mentioned like dogs in the office don't make you feel any better about not seeing your kids after school, and the free coffee tastes like shit anyway.

Worst of all though, you're blowing 8-10 hours a day on Canadian pay. If you're in the west like I am, this is a giant fuck you to your bank account. Going remote was an immediate $25k raise with better hours and no commute.

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

#149

Post by joeax »

sethammons wrote: post #38
pcunite wrote: 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.

Can you expand on that? I disagree completely, but my sample size is small. We have lots of people over 40 and we hire for culture too. We define it has folks who are happy, hungry, honest, and humble. If you fit those boxes, are enjoyable to work with, are customer focused, and interested in driving the product forward with colleagues, you will fit our culture. We guard that zealously. Edit: typo.

My personal experience. I've worked in an out of Seattle, working for some big-name companies. Shortly after turning 40 and got laid off. No big deal, I thought, because my resume, open source contributions, customer skills, and deep experience should land me a job pretty quickly, right?

Well without getting into too much detail, I was told more than once "I am not a culture fit". The whole experience caused me to rethink my career as a pure software developer, and I've since pivoted to become a cloud architect.

I'm not the OP on this thread but I do agree, when I hear "culture fit" I feel in a sense it's a veiled way to discriminate in some way, age, gender, or otherwise.

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

#150

Post by jpm_sd »

We're going to look back on these days as a modern tulip mania. So many of these companies (and serial startup employees) are not even living "fake it until you make it", they are on a new and better plan: "fake it here until you have to go fake it somewhere else, with someone else's money"
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