1. The company is an AI company, and any needs for labeling are my tasks. This means that I may work for 2 months straight doing close to no coding. I mentioned this to my manager, and he told me that it's part of a software engineer's tasks.
2. There's barely any web development. My interview process had me think that this is a company that hires me for my web dev skills, but after a year I only had web development tasks for 4.5 months, and that's pushing it. The rest of the time I'll be creating Python scripts that have a low lifespan, meaning I have no performance or tradeoffs to consider.
3. My lead brought up the fact that I'm using the tag "junior" on my own, because they never assigned it to me. I told him that what I'm currently lacking is technical expertise and as long as I'm lacking in that regard I'll keep referring to myself as junior. I also told him that, outside of technical expertise, I lack a lot of experience (shipping products, building real projects, considering various approaches, be a part of a team of developers - I work solo atm). I also challenged the notion that "tags don't matter" by telling him that just because I don't have the junior tag (for the sake of the argument) doesn't mean that I can produce software that is as good as his. He didn't responded.
Last but not least, he told me that he sees me as more than a code monkey, and that in big corporations (companies that I'd be building software products) I'd feel drained after a year of working there. A bold claim, because I responded with the fact that that's exactly how I feel right now working for a startup. It feels like I'm either at the same skill level as I was before my first job or worse.
I understand that HN is biased towards startups, so I wanted to ask: Am I being unreasonable for expecting that the startup life would be full of technical challenges, or am I holding an unrealistic romantic notion of what a software engineer does working for a startup?
A couple things:
>At this point in your career, no one is paying you to explain anything to them, u less they ask. Your unsolicited opinion is only doing you harm.
>Your are the most inexperienced and, likely, the lowest paid. You will get the grunt work.
>The fact that you are overqualified is of no consequence to them.
>Not all jobs are like this one. But, many are. Just do the best job you can do, until you find another one.
>Don't burn any bridges. The best outcome is making everyone love you and think you are a huge asset. Trying to reason them out of their plan will make you an ass^at, not an asset.
Good luck.
2. Don't call yourself junior if other people aren't calling you that.
3. This environment isn't good for you. Go somewhere where you'll do actual software development work and where you'll be able to learn from people who know more than you.
Startups need everything done all the time, so there's a much higher probability of being pulled into non-coding tasks. That said, it sounds like your boss & company don't really seem to care what you're looking for in terms of growth and experience. Again, this isn't uncommon at any company. You may have just landed in a role that's not a great fit for you.
Startups I've worked for have been fairly flat structured and typically everyone is trying to do everything all at once. There usually wouldn't be any formal planning or allocation of tasks – there's just things that you need to do as a team of people with difficult skills and abilities.
And that's the way it has to be in a startup because you can't afford to have a team of user researchers, UX/UI designers, BAs, devops engineers, frontend devs, backend devs, TAs, etc. Instead you tend to just have a few technical people who have broad experience and are comfortable learning and doing anything that's needed of them.
If the company is large enough to have hierarchy and to delegate tasks to certain individuals it's probably structured more like a typical tech company, hence why you're being pigeonholed.
I have quite strict opinions on what is and isn't a startup though... It's common these days for tech companies that have been around for years and have hundreds of employees to claim they're a still "small startup". And that's generally why when speaking to recruiters about startup roles my first two questions are how big is the company, and how many devs do they have? More than 3-5 devs and 20 people at the company in total and it starts to become less like a startup and more like your typical software engineering gig.
It sounds like you're a useful member of that team doing things like tagging and scripting. Maybe you are too inexperienced to do coding work or maybe they just need someone to do those tasks and you were willing to do them so it works.
If you want to do something different, then it sounds like you need to look for a different job. Your boss is kind of right - a big company will put you in a narrow specific role like "frontend developer on the gmail inbox team". Some people like that and some people hate that.
If you join a big company, you will be treated only as a developer. You'll be writing features, reviewing other people's code, and going to lots of meetings. You will be surrounded by mentors and your manager's main focus will be helping you grow your career. It's a great place to be inexperienced and to learn skills.
However, some people find that kind of work monotonous, they hate all the meetings, and they want to have a more of generalist role instead of being typecast into a narrow type of work. Those people enjoy working in startups.
1) Startups aren't mega-corporations with clearly defined roles: you're expected to try and do whatever is needed for the company to succeed and that means wearing different hats. At one of my first startups, I was hired as a software engineer, but happily helped move office furniture around when we were reconfiguring the office layout or washed dishes from time to time in the office kitchen. These extra efforts helped me get lifelong friends and business partners. You do you, but you're probably not going to get far in a startup by saying "that's not my job description" too often in an annoying way. It sounds like you might not be a great fit for that startup and you might want to move on. Not sure if that's the best move in a tough job market.
2) Your job isn't necessarily to write code: it's to solve problems. Sometimes that means making websites. Sometimes that means creating some scripts to process some data. Sometimes that might mean manually labelling some datasets. Sometimes that might mean writing a blog post even though you're not hired as a writer. Sometimes that might mean taking pictures for the company website even if you're not a trained photographer. It's all part of being in a startup. By all means, tell your bosses that you're particularly interested in web-development and don't want your skills to get rusty and you want to have opportunities to learn and grow, but be a little cautious how you go about it if you care about your job.
3) It's ok to think of yourself as a Junior Developer because that's probably what you are in the marketplace, but I'd recommend not plastering that label too heavily everywhere otherwise people might think less of you. There's a fine line between appearing humble and realistic about your experience, and appearing to be too low-confidence and self-deprecating.
4) Big corporations are draining in different ways than startups. You might have a more clearly defined job description in a big company, but even worse office managers and processes. In a startup, if there's a problem in the workplace or you want to try X new thing, you can probably walk down the hall and talk directly with your CEO and at least give them your pitch. In a big company, you might have to work through 10 layers of managers in different departments and send 50 emails to figure out if some new process is even permissible.
5) If you don't have any equity in your startup, I can see being a little miffed about this situation. It's one thing to go the extra mile when you stand to gain extra, it's another thing to let your skills atrophy and push yourself to do new things when you don't have a direct stake in it.