It was a mistake to take it, with some alarming red flags from the very beginning, during the interview process, but I took it because I wasn’t getting many appealing options, and felt the money would be worth it. It was also moderately different than what I’d done in that last and would have a higher career value (in terms of work done, tech used, skills gain) than any of my prior work.
I’m sure I’ll perform fine technically, but culturally, I picked up on some concerns from day one and by day two I already saw them start to manifest. I figure in a month or two I’ll be able to tell whether I’m likely to be pushed out or not. I could start the job hunting process again now, but the results were pretty bad a month or two ago and it’ll just add more logistical problems. I’m already a bit stressed and unable to sleep with is just furthering the issues.
I’m just burnt out from the career in general. All the options available to me suck in one way or another. In my dreams, I’d just quit and go back to school, or even less realistic disappear and bounce arounds and travel while I figure things out, but both of those are financial suicide and would likely land me homeless without a fat paycheck backing them up.
Eventually started at mid-September and I was a given a greenfield project extremely far away from what we talked that I'll work on. The "project" is basically "bootstrap a new side business for the CEO, by hopping on a crypto hype train"; happily I don't do everything there but everything on the backend and day-to-day Ops is 100% on me (at least the leader re-provisioned the servers when it was needed... once).
A few days ago the leader hinted that they'll try to hire new programmers soon and that I'll have to evaluate them. I don't even know if I will last this one last week of the project and he thinks I'll tolerate even further departures from my agreed-upon responsibilities!
The red flags are piling up.
On the other hand I was told that most of the people responsible for communicating with me on this project were extremely busy and had a lot on their plate in the personal sense as well... which is fine and I can relate because it happened with me in the past, but that has lead to me wasting part of the time on the project just thrashing around and trying to figure out WTF was I supposed to do exactly.
One other team member reached out yesterday and we had a very pleasant chat where he apologized for me being practically isolated in a new company... not to mention left with a huge responsibility on my lap to boot. And he kept reassuring me that the rest of the work in the company is nothing like this one project. I see no reason why he'd lie to me but who knows.
But I feel the damage has been done already. Plus I am not 20 year old anymore; you can't just tempt me with nice words and "team spirit". The money I get is on the mid-high end for EU but still far from enough for that level of stress.
...And I have an offer waiting for me, right now, for 2.3x the money, with a much more exciting (for me) work in the projects.
What's really saddening to me, and what disarmed me and made me grind my teeth but still push through, is that I was crystal clear that I wanted a more chill position, working on products with clear vision, clear requirements, and want to be given time to achieve excellence in my technical work (bonus points for the fact that technical excellence really does help the company's core products, by the way; I was told that by the leader and the other devs). I was promised all that and then... was practically thrown at a startup project with non-negotiable deadline, and with almost zero communication. My leader was routinely taking 5-6 days before answering anything I asked on Slack.
I can forget but I find myself unable to forgive. And I am not even sure I want to work on the originally agreed upon projects (just one week from now) anymore. I've been at this for almost 2 months and I am already severely burned out.
Because let's face it, if the company routinely conflates "senior dev" with "technical cofounder", "semi project lead", "interviewer", "ops" AND "anything and everything else we can think of", that's basically an abuse of my trust. Again, I was crystal clear about what I want in a job. I was being a professional and did not, in any form, try to force my way in through lies. I did quite the opposite!
I don't mind that such companies exist. And there are plenty of people who even thrive in these conditions. But I severely object to being lied to when I specifically didn't want to work in one!
I don't even care if they scan HN and find this thread and recognize me. Pfeh. They'll just give me one final small nudge that I need before I tell them to eff off.
Any advice or observations, guys / girls?
MLabs is hiring Haskellers/Purescript Developers! (Full remote, worldwide)
MLabs is a rapidly growing, globally distributed software consultancy, working with Haskell, Rust, and Python.
Currently we are looking to fill a position with a great opportunity to use both Haskell and Purescript.
You will be a part of an established team and work collaboratively to come up with solutions, on an ongoing contract basis.
Experience and/or interest with any of the below technologies/business fields are an asset:-
- Blockchain, Especially Cardano or Ergo - Functional programming - Finance - Consultancies/Agencies - NFTs - Web Stack - Formal Methods, Dependant types, theorem provers - Sales engineering - Cybersecurity
We offer competitive salaries and varied shift patterns to suit everyone. Whether you want to work one day or a week or five we want to hear from you!
For more information about these roles and applications, check <https://apply.workable.com/mlabs/j/63DAAA4AEF/>
In case of any questions please send an email to: oskar@mlabs.city
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