71–80 of 278 posts
"Never work for a small business unless you own it". Citation: me, 35 years ago after my first small business employee experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps give them some flexibility if there's a technical co-founder as CTO. It depends on what the startup is working on. If it's trying to sell into the enterprise I'd be a lot more confident in its future if the CEO is heavily sales-focused provided there's also a technical co-founder keeping things sane on the tech side.
If there is a co-founder at all that’s much better than just a single person.
Bad leadership drives out good.
This literally could have been written by any developer in the UK. I think most of us start out like this! I think the best one was a company I worked for in Leeds, it was building a secure learning platform for schools which ultimately fell flat on it's arse. The company was run by a self-made millionaire who was notorious for scamming people. He'd randomly lay off huge numbers of the sales team, and the first anyon…
> The company was run by a self-made millionaire who was notorious for scamming people. You knew this before going to work for him, and still went to work for him? What does that make you?
There are lots of these half-arsed tiny tech companies in the UK (I've worked for a few). I wonder whether this is true all over the world, or is a peculiarity of the UK? It could be that we don't have a culture of VCs who would fund a company to the required scale and provide adult supervision. I remember when I ran a company, raising money or even getting a bank loan was impossible. (We just ran it on a shoestring…
I've noticed that many entrepreneurs have this immense drive and very little ethical/moral sense, and this helps them get by the most dire situations, where common people would simply give up, because they simply go on with a "fake it until you make it" mindset. Entering very dark grey areas and leaving a lot of bodies behind (figuratively speaking). There are the stupid ones of course that don't get far, but the sma…
“Entrepreneurs are not at all like ordinary businessmen. An entrepreneur who is not in trouble closes no avenues, keeps a lot of balls in the air, and will never tell you the whole truth when a half-truth will do. An entrepreneur who is in trouble will lie, cheat, and steal. He will smuggle cocaine or ship bricks. We should never measure an entrepreneur by the standards of a rock-solid businessman.” — attributed to K…
I have an anecdote which I entitled "The Man Without Pants". It takes around 20 minutes to deliver but the gist is that I spent a month working for a man who had a peculiar dress code - and that wasn't even the weirdest thing about that place.
This is hilarious, and sadly not that unusual. You really do meet some utter lunatics working in these sorts of agencies/software houses - it seems worse in the UK too.