I am addressing this article to novice programmers who either have no work experience at all, or have little experience (up to 5 years). As practice shows, it is this category of people who have the most distorted ideas about startups in the IT field. Distorted - in the sense that when asked "what can you say positive about startups?", They can retell someone else's and largely outdated thoughts for a long time, and when asked "what is wrong with startups?" - in response, they can only ask uncertainly: "can they not shoot?"
This article is intended for those who just never thought about the question of why you shouldn't go to work in a startup as an employee. Go!
To begin with, let's define what a startup is. I would single out 4 criteria for a startup:
- The company is young, no more than 3 years old.
- This is a small business (or even a micro-business), the company employs no more than 50-100 people.
- The company has no successful and experienced managers or founders - only young people.
- The company does not have direct government funding and support for daddies.
Yes, I know, there is no universal definition of a startup, and there are no universal criteria. I have given only those criteria for which, if they are met simultaneously, then everything stated below is true. So this is my definition. Treat it like a definition.
Let's take a little test to understand the definition. This is necessary so that it is clear what it is about, and so that no one ascribes to me those interpretations that I did not say.
Are any of the brainchildren of Elon our Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink) a startup?
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Is the Nanosemantics brand that develops a voice operating system a startup?
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Is the company of 25-year-old Vasya Pupkin, a recent graduate of the Higher School of Economics, who managed to find as many as 3 investors, who managed to hire 10 of his classmates and makes a food delivery service for dogs - is this a startup?
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So, back to the discussion of these very startups, what is wrong with them. You are a young professional getting hired by a startup. What's in store for you?
Thesis 1. Most likely, the startup will burn out, with all that it implies
The reasons can be very different, including external ones that do not depend on you personally. Optimistic assessment of the future for startups - 90% of them burn out in the first few years . Pessimistic - 99% will face this unenviable fate . Do you want me to voice only a few life stories that former startup employees shared with me? You are welcome.
- The investor was a rich man from the nineties. At some point (already in the mid-2010s) I didn't share something with someone. They put him in prison. He no longer needed a startup.
- The CEO was hit by a car, and he could lie in intensive care for several months. The investor considered this a sufficient reason to stop financing.
- The CEO had a falling out with the main developer, who left and took away a third of the team - 8 people. This was enough for the startup to stall by itself.
It would seem, but what if the startup went bankrupt? Well, it happens that ordinary employees are not to blame for this. Here is a young university graduate went to a startup, then the startup closed, what is the fault of yesterday's student? Everything seems to be so, but not quite. When hiring such a failed startup, HR look wider. You know, there is such an anecdote.
There are two personnel officers, one experienced and one young, with 300 resumes in front of them. An experienced one takes and throws half into the trash. Young: how is that? And an experienced one answers him - why do we need losers?
So, in the eyes of some (not all) employers, such failed startups are losers. You know, everyone remembers the phrase “a person who is the creator of his own destiny,” and from the point of view of the employer, the young graduate knew what he was doing and the responsibility was on him. Thus, the “loser effect” reduces the likelihood of successfully getting a new job for a person who recently unsuccessfully got into a startup. I want to emphasize that the fact that the past startup was burned out does not in any way put an end to the young specialist, but leaves some residue that many employers, along with other factors, take into account when hiring and interpret it not in favor of the applicant.
But the much bigger problem is this. To begin with, anecdote.
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So, the project manager sits and recruits a person to his team. He has a choice of two candidates. One - Seryozha Ivanov, he is 24, worked for 2 years in a successful and recognizable company X, the resume says - he achieved this, did this. Another - Petya Sidorov, he is 24, worked for 2 years in an unknown startup Y, did not understand what, but no results, says that he did not have time to reach the result, since the startup closed for reasons beyond his control. Who will be hired? They will take Seryozha, since he is at least not a dark horse, and it is much easier to understand his real qualifications from him, even if he embellished and multiplied his achievements (and he definitely embellished and multiplied them, an experienced personnel officer knows). And nobody needs Petya without results.
Thesis 2. If your startup has failed, then half of the knowledge and experience you have accumulated has also been destroyed.
You can't successfully sell it to your next employer. In his eyes, your work experience in 3 years will be regarded as work experience in 1.5, or even a year. And payment accordingly.
Indeed, if at a startup you were engaged in bitcoins, and at a new job, automated accounting systems are being developed, then what should the employer pay you for, if he does not need bitcoin at all? As a way out, you can try to look for companies dealing specifically with bitcoins, but bad luck - half of them also went bankrupt, throwing a bunch of employees into the market, and half of the others simply do not need recruiting. Practice shows that it is almost never possible to apply the useful knowledge gained in a highly specialized startup.
The general rule is as follows. The more difficult your job was in the past startup, and the more qualifications were required to successfully complete it, the more you will lose. Now, if you just chased bits with bytes (for example, wrote a parser to import from json), then you will not lose anything - this is an elementary work for a junior at the level of the greenest beginner. But if, by order of the patriarchal Arab sheikhs, you wrote the recognition of pornographic pictures for their automatic ban (well, as they wrote, they tried, but nothing happened - a startup :-)), then appreciate such work and offer an equivalent job and salary in the market almost no one can.
Thesis 3. You won't get rich in startups
All startups are overly ambitious, forward-looking, growth is extremely important for them, preferably explosive. As the saying goes, a messenger that does not want to become a Telegram is bad. And since the goal is future well-being (and, in the long term, the possession of world domination), all resources will be invested in expanding the business, in hiring new employees, in renting new space, in increasing advertising, in attracting more expensive designers, etc. But resources will not be invested in improving the well-being of employees. From the point of view of the startup owner, this is simply irrational.
At the stage of opening a startup, there may be exceptions - you need to recruit a team, and for this you need to lure employees with something. The surest, old-fashioned way is to promise a good, above the market, salary. Therefore, the first wave of recruitment may even feel lucky for a short time. But only for the first time. Pretty soon this feeling disappears due to the most serious overwork, with which the employer compensates for the financial dumping in hiring. Did not hear? Well here's a real and common example.
The employee worked for company X, had a 40-hour work week, for which he received 60 thousand (Moscow, junior). And there were also bonuses, irregular, but due to them the average monthly income increased to 80 thousand per month (this is the maximum, and sometimes 70, and if there were no bonuses, then only 60).
Then the employee was lured away by a promising startup that was opening, offering him a promotion to the middle, a salary of 100 thousand per month, but without bonuses. And at the interview he mentions that work for the result, and sometimes you have to work harder than usual. The employee is immensely happy - the salary was raised almost 2 times! What is “to work more than usual”, the employee still has no idea ...
Well, the employee goes to work, and in the first week, in an informal setting, they inform him that it is customary to work in the company. Well, that's such a progressive corporate culture! This is not a scoop for you! Well, okay, the employee thinks, and begins to work as much as 9, and then 10 hours every day (5 days a week).
At the end of the first month, the boss informs him that the results are somehow not enough, that he works at the level of a green june, but he was actually taken in the middle. Fair enough! - the employee thinks, and it turns out, like all his new colleagues, to work 12 hours a day (5 days a week) - otherwise, productivity cannot be increased. On the eve of the first release (after, for example, six months after the start-up was founded), all employees spend weekends in the office, sometimes they sleep at work on weekdays. Our new employee, too, willy-nilly does like everyone else. Everything, from this moment on, there is a habit of working on Saturdays for another 6 hours, by rail. In total, after 8 months of work in a startup, an employee for 100 thousand rubles a month devotes to work 5 * 12 + 6 = 66 hours a week.
So what's the catch? Let's count. At a new job, an employee works for 100,000 / (66 * 4) = 378 rubles per hour. (Here we roughly calculated that there are 4 weeks in a month.) But in an old job, he would receive from 60,000 / (40 * 4) = 375 rubles per hour to 80,000 / (40 * 4) = 500 rubles per hour. But that is not all.
According to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation (about which the startup has not heard), overtime hours must be paid, and at an increased rate! The first 2 hours of overtime are paid at a one and a half rate, and the next - at a double rate ( Article 152 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation) Thus, work for 12 hours a day in terms of ordinary "hours-rubles" should be 8 + 2 * 1.5 +2 * 2 = 15 hours. That is, work for 12 hours a day should be paid 15/8 times more than work for 8 hours a day. Thus, agreeing to work 12 hours a day on weekdays (even if you don't have to work on Saturday, let's forget about it for simplicity), the employee would have to ask for a payment of at least 60,000 * 15/8 = 112,500 rubles per month. And he agreed to 100,000.
Well, they'll tell me, it's not just about the money! In addition to money, they also give start-up shares! You can get rich on them in the future when the startup is promoted! Unfortunately, this information is outdated. Moreover, it is incorrect. Yes, in the distant years of the emergence of modern it-giants, before they entered ipo (and some time later), this was a really working scheme for employee enrichment. But, firstly, at this moment these companies were no longer startups (see my criteria above), and, secondly, this scheme does not work now. It's not that none of the companies (not startups, but more or less large companies) are giving out shares. They are distributed, but it does not lead to the enrichment of employees. The employees are told - let us pay you less, but for this we will give shares at the market price (or almost at the market price). And then play the sweepstakes, maybe you're lucky!
Even if we imagine that some modern startup (or well, a slightly larger company) that delivers food to dogs will start handing out cut paper called "shares", then who in a sober mind and sober memory will believe that this is the real way to enrichment? Even if a startup is lucky to "shoot", then it is 100% likely to be bought or absorbed by one of the IT giants (after all, it is interested in monopoly, not in competition, right?). Moreover, he will try to absorb before entering ipo, so that it is cheaper. And then the cut paper will definitely go to the toilet ...
I know that questions about money are the most burning, and there are many who want to argue. There are rich CEOs in startups, but rich employees (albeit of good qualifications) who can buy a normal apartment within walking distance of their favorite job without mortgages ... I haven’t heard of this.
4. –
The qualifications of a programmer who goes to work in a startup will grow very, very slightly during the time of working there. And the qualification of a programmer is his capital. A name is created on the qualification, which can then be successfully traded. The reason for the slow growth of qualifications lies in the fact that a startup almost never has good curators, experienced gurus. Where do they come from if you are a 25-year-old student of yesterday, and your leader is only 2 years older than you, for him this is the second project, and the first one has failed? There is no curator - you have to learn from your mistakes, and not from others. Trust me, this is much slower. Yes, there are books, a bunch of educational articles on the Internet on how to use one or another programming tool, from design patterns and load testing to parallelization methods. But this theory,you cannot fully master it without practice. And an effective practice that causes rapid professional growth can only be with an experienced curator.
In addition, startups invest little or nothing in staff development. There are simply no resources for this. And besides, there is always the possibility that if an employee is well trained, he can move on to a more paid job with competitors. No, this is not an option, it is better to squeeze out everything that is, and then at least the grass does not grow!
Thesis 5. Under the guise of caring for employees, a startup squeezes everything out of them
Startup executives are generally highly motivated people. They have read a bunch of business books and are doing their best to become like the authors of these books - retired business gurus. Therefore, such charged leaders try to energize their employees, to achieve the greatest possible return. This is expressed in the distribution of material, but not cash, buns: employees are bought free cookies, a coffee machine, fashionable designer chairs for programming while lying down, a gym is rented, joint paid outings in karaoke on Fridays are held, ordering pizza for the team in the office and, as a top, the employer pays taxi to the house if the employee is late at night at work. It would seem that this is great! What a caring employer! He cherishes and cherishes his employees! This is partly true. But only partially.
The purpose of all these actions (one and all) is to arrange so that the employee devotes as much time as possible to work, so that he becomes attached to it tightly, so that work for him replaces family, relatives, and friends. All this - and unpaid overtime, and the occupation of personal time of employees, and free pleasant buns - in the most direct way is transformed into the employer's profit by saving on labor force, due to underpaid working hours of employees.
Not obvious? Then let's take a closer look at examples.
Example 1... Vanya Petrov lives in the near Moscow region, works in Moscow, in a startup for 12 hours a day. Arrives at 10 am, leaves at 11 am (lunch for half an hour, dinner for half an hour). The generous boss pays him a taxi home every night. Vanya's salary is 100 thousand rubles a month. One taxi ride costs 1000 rubles. Vanya feels like a valuable and important employee. What does the employer feel? And the employer feels that he is saving 65 thousand every month on Vanya's unpaid labor. Why? It's simple.
Vanya must receive 100 thousand rubles for an 8-hour working day, as it is written in his contract. Everything else is overtime, and they are paid at a higher rate. The first 2 hours of overtime are paid at one and a half rate, and the next - at double... Thus, the employer would have to pay Vanya 100 * (8 + 2 * 1.5 + 2 * 2) / 8 = 100 * 15/8 = 187.5 thousand per month, and he pays 100 thousand directly to Vanya, and another 22 * 1000 = 22000 per month for a taxi driver (22 is the approximate number of working days in a month). In total, the employer's savings are 187.5 - 100 - 22 = 65.5 thousand every month.
I hear a murmur rising. Why would an employer pay an employee not 100, but as much as 187.5 thousand a month? Because the contract does not mention anything about irregular working hours, and if so, the figure of 100 thousand in the contract is exactly according to the norm of an 8-hour working day, a 40-hour working week. And everything that is above is processing, and according to the Labor Code, they must be paid separately, at increased rates.
Example 2.Key specialist, talent, rare emerald Timur Pushuev fell ill with coronavirus. Temperature 38.6. You can't get sick - he is a key specialist of the company, half of the business is based on him. I decided to work as before, only remotely. The doctors prescribed medication. Timur could not find some of them - either rare, or the head at 38.6 does not work very well, even just ordering on the Internet is difficult when you also have to work at the same time. It all ended with the fact that the gendir personally brought him these medicines to his apartment. Timur worked this way: he took antipyretic drugs, they worked for an hour and a half, during which he worked hard, then the temperature rose again to 38.6, and so on in a circle for 2 weeks in a row.
Timur is fully confident that the boss showed him rare and touching care. He is very pleased that he was once again singled out. And what about the boss?
And the boss in these two weeks, more than anything else, feared that the key specialist, who brings in considerable profit every month, would stop making it. And then he will die altogether. There is simply no one to replace it in the short term. And in the long run it is not a fact that it will work out. The solution to the problem is an hour and a half of calling pharmacies, buying medicines for 6,000 rubles and Timur is back in business, even if only in fits and starts! Who is great? I'm fine fellow! It doesn't matter that Timur now more than anything in the world would like to lie down quietly, relax ...
Example 3. Active entrepreneur Denis Podkopaev hired a team to create an online store for sale
It seems to be an idyll. Denis is a fine fellow, a smart manager. So what's the catch?
The fact that as soon as we switched to a remote location, Denis stopped renting a comfortable, cozy, designer office with air conditioning in a quiet Moscow courtyard. The rent was not cheap, after all, the center of Moscow. He put the rent money into his pocket. In return, the staff received a penny inflatable elephant and penny yoga. And the prospect of working in a cramped Khrushchev building in Bibirevo, without air conditioning. By the way, Denis convinced the employees that since they no longer spend 2 hours a day on the way to the office (an hour there, an hour back) and generally save on transport, they can devote an hour more to work instead. Is free.
Thesis 6. The level of arbitrariness and dictatorship on the part of the bosses in startups is off scale
Very often, decisions on all key issues in a startup are made by 1-2 people. Usually one is the CEO. He knows for sure that resources are scarce, and there is only one path to success, it is narrow and slippery. A step aside - the startup will burn out. Therefore, the will of the leader turns into law. Even if someone doesn't like him.
What names come to mind when we say the word "dictator"? Gaddafi, Bashar Assad, Lukashenko? No, these are just stereotypes. And the real dictator is Artemchik Sergeev, an undergraduate student at the Higher School of Economics, who left there to open his own super-innovative startup with a claim to conquer the world. Artem has already done it 2 times, but it didn’t work. For the third time, Artyom intends to take into account all his mistakes of the past, and get out of his skin to prove to the whole world that he is successful. If for this you have to force the leading front-end developer to come back to work on Sunday, then you will have to. If you have to fire a pregnant woman, then we will do that too, no matter how it complies with the laws.
Thesis 7. When getting a job in a startup, forget about your personal life and the right to a quiet rest
From now on, you belong to the work. At any time of the day or night. Night call with shouts: "the build is not going, urgently fix it!" - routine. You can't turn off the phone - they won't understand. All work messages - in personal WhatsApp or Viber, but by no means in a special, work messenger like Rocket.Chat or Slack. The pool, the gym, dating a girl in the evenings are no longer your destiny. Your destiny is to work late into the night for the benefit of investors. Why is that?
A year ago, when laying the architecture of the main solutions of the project, the main developer simply made a mistake, and made a mistake many times in a row. He is 29 years old, and in his last job he was only middle. And in this startup he was honorably taken on as a senior, and entrusted with doing fundamental things - thinking about the branching scheme in git, drawing the boundaries of the division of microservices, etc. And he, of course, puffing out his cheeks importantly, began to do it, although he simply did not have the qualifications for this. And the incorrectly laid base (and the overgrown spaghetti code) quickly affected the fact that it was impossible to add any new functionality quickly, without crutches. He compensates for his strategic miscalculations a year ago with large overhauls, adding more and more crutches. And you, as his subordinate, have nothing left,how to do the same - to fight the spaghetti code for 12 hours a day. As a beginner, you may not even always realize that the code is bad, that the architecture is bad, and the branching scheme is suboptimal. But the culture of a startup will instill only one thought in your head: we are a team, and we will achieve results only if we work a lot (yes, a lot) and heroically work for our bright future. Only the statistics of start-up closings suggests that a bright future for your spaghetti-code startup, most likely, will never come.a lot) and heroically work for our ill-fated future. Only the statistics of start-up closings suggests that a bright future for your spaghetti-code startup, most likely, will never come.a lot) and heroically work for our ill-fated future. Only the statistics of start-up closings suggests that a bright future for your spaghetti-code startup, most likely, will never come.
In addition to the fact that you are no longer entitled to normal sleep, in a startup you are not entitled to a normal vacation. Taking a vacation for 4 weeks in a row is impossible, otherwise you will let the team down. Maximum for a week. Well, if you are very lucky, then the boss will let
you go for two weeks, but only when it is convenient for him.
From interesting situations I know a case when a young girl did not want to give one day off for their own wedding. Like, this is a very important day for our company, you must be present. Long negotiations ended with the fact that they still gave the day off (in exchange for work on the weekend) and even provided paid leave for the "honeymoon", but it was given 2 weeks after the wedding, and then only for a week.
Thesis 8. When working in a startup, forget about the Labor Code
In a startup, life does not follow the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, but according to concepts. According to the personal concepts of the authorities. It happens that the bosses have quite good ideas, and sometimes they are even fair, despite non-compliance with the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. And sometimes it doesn't. Although everyone has their own concept of justice, but still.
The most common principle of fairness in a startup is that if you don't work, you don't eat. Translated into Russian, this means that vacation pay will not be paid, as well as sick leave. This principle follows all from the same initial settings: resources are scarce, therefore it is impossible to spend them not for their intended purpose. Any benefits, vacations, etc. are considered by the management of the startup as "social ballast". It gets in the way. Therefore, very, very many employees have to work remotely at the time of illness, and during vacation (you will not believe it!) - also work, with that only indulgence, which is a little less than usual.
A very common situation - an employee is sick, calls the boss, says that physically he simply cannot go out to work, he feels bad. In response, the boss voices a generous lordly position: okay, lie down at home for a day, we will arrange a vacation for you at our own expense, and the day after tomorrow come and work. On coldrex and teraflu. You can't not work - in a month the release will be shown to the investor.
By the way, have you ever asked yourself the question - why in startups there are almost 100% young people, and there are almost no middle-aged, let alone elderly people? So, one of the reasons is that young people get sick a little, and almost never get seriously ill (so that they go to the hospital for a month right away). This means that social spending on them is almost zero. I know of many examples where social spending in startups is not just nearly zero, but exactly zero. Bingo for the investor!
It would seem - that we need this Labor Code! This is a relic of the past! We will do without it, there is a lot of strength and health. This is said only by those who have never worked under the normal, dense protection of the TC. This is said only by those who have never been admitted to the hospital for 2 weeks and have not recovered after a month. This is said only by those who have never gone to the taiga for 3 weeks in a row, without telephones and communications, but with a fishing rod and loyal friends. This is said only by those who are ready to be a slave in fact, not considering themselves so in form.
Thesis 9. In a startup, you can be fired at any time, and you will not be able to protect yourself
There are a lot of dismissal schemes - from not very legal, but poorly contested in court, to completely legal. Needless to say, a startup pays no severance pay to anyone. Perhaps, even if he wants, he will not be able - there are no free resources.
Semi-legal schemes include putting pressure on an employee. Like, either you leave of your own free will, or we will find something to dig into and fire ourselves, but then we will enter it in the work book. For example, in the labor office it might be written something like this: “fired for being late,” and explain to the next employer what caused such an interesting inscription. And it can actually be caused by such a document as the Internal Labor Regulations, in which it is written in black and white the start time and end time of work - 9.00 and 18.00, respectively, as well as the employee's obligation to arrive on time. What schedule did you work on? From 11.00 to 20.00 (because at the interview you were promised a flexible schedule in words)? Well, this is a violation of labor discipline, and a repeated one, your colleagues confirm. Keep tainted labor and cut down.
Yes, such situations can theoretically be challenged in court, and there is even a chance of winning (if you know the nuances and understand the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). But only who will do this? As a rule, one fact of pressure is enough for an employee to quickly write a statement of his own free will. Moreover, if we are talking about a young techie who devoted his student years to studying mathematics, programming, technology, but not boring humanitarian studies like the Labor Code.
One of the legal schemes is the transfer of some employees to another organization and its immediate closure afterwards. Which employee will be able to recognize that they are being transferred only for dismissal? This is an inexperienced young techie.
And you can also transfer employees to individual entrepreneurs or to the category of self-employed by concluding civil law contracts with them instead of labor contracts. Then the employer generally has no responsibility to the employee, because there is no employer or employee.
But you can ... This topic can be continued forever. Believe me, there are a lot of ways, even in those cases when the employer works mainly according to the Labor Code, and he has a white salary. What can we say about situations when the work goes "black"?
Thesis 8. Startups have low resilience to any, even minor, crises
Not only small companies and startups have poor resilience to crises, but also large, established ones, including those that have recently grown out of startups.
At the beginning of the first wave of coronavirus, yesterday's startups Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Careem , Bird , and many others were fired en masse .
What can we say about startups that do not yet have a stable business model or reserve resources ...
The coronavirus that has recently entered our lives and the coronavirus, which is closely related to it, has opened a rather interesting litmus test of the company's resistance to crises. Do you remember the President declared the days from April 1 to May 11, 2020 to be non-working with pay? So, how many startups were able to fulfill the presidential decree? I think I will not be very mistaken if I say - not one. But many companies that are not startups did not fulfill, at least partially, the entire period. They paid their employees money and did not require them to go (including remote) to work. And they were able to do this because they used mechanisms that were not available to startups - the accumulated resources of previous years, a stable client base based on the company's high image, the ability to reschedule tasks and move the terms of contracts,refusal of some vitally unnecessary projects (not to the detriment of employees), etc. Startups could not afford this, and therefore employees were faced with a choice - either you work and only then you get money, or go out!
When I say that startups couldn’t, I’m a little cunning. Still, at least in theory, at least some of the most successful could. You know, when, according to the results of 2019, the CEO buys himself a new Mercedes and closes the mortgage, and the investor buys a new limousine, and we, a development team of 10 people, are told that there is no money to pay for a month of our work (only one month!), Then it looks unconvincing. But we are the techies of the Y / Z generation, we were brought up on the idea that no one owes anyone, and it never occurs to us to doubt. And we go silently to work remotely for the investor's new limousine ...
No, I'm not talking about the fact that the personal savings of a respected uncle-investor should be taken away and fed to a dozen parasites for a month. Such options and remotely similar ones are generally impossible within the framework of the current socio-economic formation. I'm just saying that sometimes startups still have resources, but no one intends to direct them to increase crisis resilience.
In the current example with 10 developers, one could try to solve the problem of the crisis without revolutionary ways. How? For example, do not chase self-promotion and do not hire an SMM manager in 2019. His annual salary would be just enough to pay for a month of work for the rest of the team in 2020. But a startup is a startup because it cannot help dreaming of explosive growth and strive for popularity and recognition. Therefore, we have what we have ...
Thesis 9. Often startup employees burn out emotionally
This is due to all the factors that are discussed in detail above: constant overwork, and the lack of normal human rest, and the failure of the whole team as a whole, and the slow accumulation of their own savings for an apartment, and a gradual understanding of the instability of the future, and the realization that somewhere you turned the wrong way, and undermined health, and whatnot.
As a result, such a burnt-out employee has neither the strength nor the desire to continue along the path of programming. Imagine: a mature 35-year-old man, 10 years of his life selflessly devoted to programming in startups, lies on the couch and plays WOT out of grief, he has two children and a wife, and an apartment on a mortgage with a large debt ... Sad picture.
Thesis 10. Startups can be very corrupt, they often know how to cut as well as officials
Startups steal investor money. Yes, you heard right - they steal. And they know how to do it no worse than real officials. At the same time, everything is formally legal.
This is the biggest secret of many startups. We can say like a Kashchei needle. And you can only recognize it through a very confidential conversation with the CEO, having drunk a lot of alcohol before that.
What's the point? Investors provide funding to a startup for solving specific problems. Investors can be both individuals or commercial funds, and business incubators on the state budget. So, whoever they are, they almost always barely imagine whether a specific task can be solved at all, what resources are required for the solution and what time frame. And so potential performers, candidates for CEO in a fresh start-up, take advantage of this - this ignorance and lack of proper qualifications of the investor. A young startup, essentially “being created” for a specific task, promises the investor that he, a startup, is a guru in solving such problems, he owns modern technologies, and in general there is no reason to let the investor down. But in fact, deep down in his heart, the CEO knows that this task is beyond him, and maybe very many are beyond his abilities (very difficult,very big). But, knowing this, takes on it, hires people, starts work (or the appearance of work). And this is all with the exact knowledge that there will be no result!
Is this CEO theft? I believe it is. Because it is based on deception with the deliberate understanding that there will be no useful result anyway, but instead there will be stupid consumption of the investor's money. Sometimes (by no means always) - a leisurely raising of the qualifications of the entire startup team (including the CEO) at the expense of the investor.
Want an example? You are welcome. 6 years ago, a Russian company existed on the market, which promised everyone that it would make a cheap satellite Internet based on a large constellation of low-flying satellites (does it look like anything?). The site of the company was so beautiful, creative, all sorts of slogans: "We are young, but experienced, ...", "Our mission is blah blah blah ...". So, do you know how many employees were at the peak of development in this company? About 50 people. At that time, Elon Musk's plans to solve exactly the same problem were not widely announced (they were in the bud), but before my eyes there was by no means the funny experience of other giant companies (by no means startups): Globalstar , Iridium . They employed orders of magnitude more employees, but they did not manage to create either a cheap Internet or a cheap connection ... It's too difficult a task. Both Globalstar and Iridiumwent through bankruptcy proceedings . So how many chances did a team of 50 newcomers have to create an entire industry from scratch (with factories, logistics, sales), and even in a start-up "breakthrough" mode in 3 years?
The chances are exactly zero . ZERO. Everyone who was in the subject knew about it, but the CEO was still able to knock out money for a year or two.
So for the founding fathers, startups are a very convenient business. Money is someone else's, but there is no responsibility. Neither criminal nor financial. Well, except maybe the loss of image. Although what kind of loss of image can we talk about in the case of 25-year-old Vasya Pupkin, whom no one knows anyway?
Well, you say, it’s not a big deal to deceive a silly moneybag with money, it’s his own fault. This is not budget money. But not quite. In the Russian economy, about half of the money is budget money ( from 30 to 70 percent, depending on how you count ). The state allocates them, and they feed private traders through a chain of distribution hubs, including through business incubators, all sorts of grants. Who can surely guarantee that the investor's money is exactly his, personal, honest money, and not money that came from above under the state program?
A simple example is software for clinics. How many times have you seen this oil painting: an elderly therapist, hesitantly typing visitor data on the keyboard, endlessly curses and curses this constantly freezing, uncomfortable, buggy program on which he is forced to work? It would seem, what does the startup have to do with it? The Ministry of Health announced a tender for the development of software for clinics, held a competition, it was won by some large private company (not a startup, not once), and it was she who made such a crooked buggy software.
Yes that's right. But there is the concept of subcontracting. A large company gives parts of one big task to small companies (a startup was allowed to do, for example, an entrance to a personal account using a fingerprint), and they, to the best of their qualifications, do them with one or another quality. In the case of a startup, the quality is not always high. And that's when we have to watch the cursing therapist ... Part of his salary was put into his pocket by a successful CEO who received a fat order from the state (indirectly) and repaid him with shit code. Without any responsibility. As they say, nothing personal, just business! That large private company that won the tender, naturally, is also very guilty, but at least somehow you can ask from it, what can you ask from a noname startup?
Conclusion
With these theses, I am not trying to prove that startups are a universal evil. I'm not trying to prove that there are no good things in startups. I am not trying to prove that non-start-up companies are completely devoid of the disadvantages described.
I just showed the other side of the coin for those of the readers who seriously think that there are almost no downsides in startups. I just showed what is characteristic of startups first, and only then all other types of companies. And this does not in any way negate the fact that there are exceptions to any rule.
Do not be ill!