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Leaving a hot startup after 6 months - stupid idea?

9 points by jiminy_crickets ↗ HN
I graduated at the top of my class from a top CS school this May. Right after graduating I started working at a really hot startup.

I hate work, even though things couldn't be going better for the company. A big part of me wants to quit. (I'd join another startup or a big tech company)

Is this a stupid thing to do?

Reasons I want to leave: - I'm not gelling with the founder. I hardly ever dislike people, but I just don't get along with the founder. (I work directly with the founder)

- I'm not sold on our product. Everyone else on the team seems to see magic in what we're building, I don't.

- The standard workweek at the company is 90+ hours. That's more than I'd prefer.

- The work isn't technically challenging.

Reasons I want to stay: + My co-workers are crazy awesome. We get along great, and I have utmost respect for how smart everyone else is.

+ I don't want to be a quitter. I feel like I signed up for something, and I don't like what I think leaving says about me.

+ The startup will probably do really well (mostly because everyone else in the market is so bad).

+ The startup is very well connected. Staying part of the company's network will probably be beneficial to me.

17 comments

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chunkyslink
You are talking to the wrong people. You need to be discussing exactly what you've just said here with your boss / founder.

Explain the good parts and the bad parts. Ask for guidance and explain you are new to all this.

amorphid
Telling your boss you don't like your job isn't a great plan. Your boss' job is to produce results, not be your therapist. If you are prepared to leave your job, then maybe being candid with the boss could be useful, but I wouldn't recommend it.
chunkyslink
What you just said doesnt make sense.

Aim of boss = to get results.

To get results boss is therapist for a short time.

Boss gets results.

A good (smart) boss would appreciate you taking the time to talk to him/her. Maybe you wouldnt say - 'I dont like my job' but you could phrase it better. As I said - mention both the good and bad parts.

jdavis83
There is nothing more important than liking what you do. I think it's time for you to start looking for a new job
aeontech
The minuses you list far outweigh the pluses.

- If the work is not challenging, it will not be very useful on your resume anyway.

- The network that is important is your personal connections to coworkers - if you are not directly interacting with the people the startup is connected with (I assume you mean, who are investing in it), you might as well not exist, you are another faceless programmer that is growing their investment.

- Having a standard workweek of 90+ hours is only worth it if it's your own startup, or you are enjoying the work and are gaining other benefits from it (ie, learning fascinating new skills, building strong relationships, or some other benefit other than money). I would highly advise disregarding your stock options altogether - if they ever amount to anything, it will be a nice surprise, but counting as a direct benefit is not sensible when they will, as with most startups, never amount to anything significant compared to the amount of time and energy you invest. If you burn your energy on a product and company you do not believe in, doing work that is not mentally rewarding, you will eventually burn out.

- if you are not sold on the product, and the product is not technically challenging, neither will you produce your best work, nor will you learn much from building it. You can either

A) create your own skunkworks in the company, and find ways to make product more interesting to yourself by designing, prototyping, and proposing new features that _are_ technically challenging and give product what it lacks. This only makes sense if you believe that the company will appreciate your efforts, and that the product can be salvaged.

B) Find something else you can learn while at the company - better project management skills, pair programming so you can learn from other developers how they think and use their tools, learning how to manage people, learning how to talk to investors and network, etc...

C) If you cannot find anything else you can learn while you are at the company, quit. Good developers are hard to find right now, you should have little trouble finding other work.

aeontech
And finally, on being a quitter - you will not be seen as a quitter by people who care about your well being if you communicate the situation clearly. The people who may try to shame you as a quitter, will be people who will benefit from you not quitting. People who actually care about you will understand that you need to do what is best for your evolution as a programmer and human being. You have to watch out for your own best benefit. The company, especially if it is full of smart people as you say it is, will survive without you just fine. Depending on the founders, the board of directors, and the investors, it will also, without a qualm, throw you under the bus if that is beneficial to them, especially if you already do not get along with the founder. This is not to say that all companies/founders/directors are evil, but you have to be aware of the risk/benefit and judge it rationally, rather than sacrificing your own well-being, your irreplaceable time, and your energy on a company that does not appreciate it, nor give you a fair exchange mentally or financially.
beforebeta
I have often been in situations like this one. I have always found it easiest to just give-up and leave - quit - pack your bags. Yet, after making such a mistake once, I have realized that it is not the right approach. The ideal approach is to give it _one_more_try_.

So my advice to you: If you want to leave the firm because you don't get along with the founder -> try to talk it out with him. Often the best solution is to have an honest discussion and see if you can resolve your differences. If after you have your discussion with the founder you still are unable to "gel" - leave, its not worth your while to waste your life in an environment that you're not happy in.

chris_dcosta
Agree this is the best approach.

But a word of warning on another line... don't be tempted to discuss your grievance with colleagues, no matter how much you like or trust them, talking down something is like a virus: it might get infectious, and the worst is that people start to see you as not really buying in to the whole project. Both are not good outcomes.

Think about it another way too, does it matter if you don't get it? It's not your idea anyway, but you can help make it great and gain experience from that. It'll help you when it comes to making your own thing work - which I feel is probably what you want to do.

chris_usable
The choice isn't simply 'stay or go'. Talk to the rest of the team. Tell them what you're feeling (that you're not happy, _not_ that you're considering leaving). There's a good chance that there's work to be done that you could focus on that you will find challenging, or that there's something you can do to mitigate the hours you're putting in, or simply that talking it through might reignite the passion you (presumably) had at the beginning.

Plus, don't fall into the trap of thinking the grass will be greener somewhere else. This is your first job since graduating. You don't have much experience yet. Take it from me, almost every job is the same. It's actually easier to tailor your existing job to be something you like than it is finding a job that will suit you better. (Caveat: This is true of everything bar the number of hours you're working.)

nandemo
I think "not gelling with the founder" isn't a good reason to leave. Working with people that you don't particularly like is part of what we call "professionalism". As long as your boss is respectful and doesn't constantly underestimate (or overestimate) your skills, it's OK.

On the other hand, working 90+ hours in a company that's not yours is crazy. 15h/day, 6 days a week? Or 12/day, every day? It's simply not worth the downside in health and missed opportunities.

hansy
I feel your "professionalism" may be more applicable to larger, corporate environments.

With a small team size accompanying early startups, I personally feel having the core people click is extremely important.

I of course don't know what number hire the poster was to the startup nor do I know how long the startup has been around, so perhaps the startup is past the "honeymoon" period.

gaurav1979
If this is your first real job, then I very strongly recommend that you stay. 6 months is a very short period of time to take this call. Give it at least 6 more months. Righ out of college, sometimes 6 months can feel like a really long time especially if you are doing 90 hours weeks. In another few months, perhaps the workload would reduce, some of your options would vest and you would feel that you have given it a fair chance before you finally take your decision!
devs1010
It depends how long til your options would vest, if its more than another 6 months, I strongly recommend you consider looking for another position, even with only 6 months experience you can find another job, especially after having been working 90 hr weeks
devs1010
Just leave, find another job, working 90 hours a week is ridiculous unless you stand to make a large amount of money based on the performance of the company.
nurik
Don't Quit. 6 months is just too short of a time. No matter what you do afterwards it will always leave a question mark why you left so early, in particular when the start up has so much traction. That the founder sucks is too bad. However, to get along with people on a professional basis is way different than getting along with them on a private basis. Think of the army. Imagine people would quit just because they dont get along with the General. Persevere and try to stay at least a year...
lnanek
I had a really bad experience with a startup and attribute it to not getting along with one of the founders and trying to stick it out despite that. When it comes down to it, people just naturally treat their friends very well and look out for them, but people they don't like tend to get taken advantage of or simply forgotten unless they have leverage or clout to prevent it.

The success chance was similar: they had a top ranking spot in an app store, which is tough to lose no matter what you or competitors do, and generates enormous traffic. You can use the traffic to promote other apps your company makes and give them a terrific advantage too. That said, they were moving away from the employees' personal interests just to get more users in the future. We weren't solving our own problem any more which makes things less fun. The founders would often agree to compromises on features in public meetings and then cancel them privately after.

If you and the founder aren't getting along, it may be better for you, the founder, the company, and your relationship with it and its network to just leave early while there are still some good feelings all around. Leaving early you can leave as a good coworker who just moved on to another opportunity. Leaving later you might be the stereotypical disgruntled coworker. This reasoning inverts some of your pluses.

Looking back on it, the things I stuck through were ridiculous: they often forgot to pay me or got the amount wrong (always too low, never too high of course), didn't come through on agreed benefits like a paid gym membership (I took over paying for months when they randomly stopped, then it took a dozen emails and a meeting where they tried to get out of it when I asked them to pay any amount at all), kept scheduling construction on the weekend without putting it on the team calendar after agreeing not to, and one final nail in the coffin re equity.

They asked me to take more equity instead of cash for pay, I agreed if they'd do some paperwork things I needed, like changing my address to a house in a nearby state I moved to with my wife - I needed that for our immigration case. They were happy to pay me less cash and did so, but they never updated the address (probably didn't want to pay the accountant for the change and different state taxes) and claimed I was accusing them of negligence when I brought it up instead of fixing it.

As a developer, is was easy to find work once I left where no one pulled any bullshit and I could just concentrate on getting my job done. Should have just done that when they first started playing fast and lose with the pay checks instead of getting involved in some sort of adversarial relationship.