LinkedinLunatics

My actual reply to this nonsense that I’ve experienced before. Tell me what your startup does that benefits humanity. Other than making a few people rich, how does humanity benefit from this product. You want me to give up my life outside of work and I will, the moment you tell me this product will make humanity better.

I’m too tired of this bullshit. These people would rather just keep digging holes than determine the best way to build a house. If you’re ever in this situation, you dodged a bullet.

fuck off Brett. report spam

No question this guy is a tool, he's posting on LinkedIn. However, he's not wrong about startups being a bad fit for anyone looking for work-life balance. You're literally trying to build a business from scratch as fast as possible before the seed money runs out, and your compensation is usually more equity than salary. No time for anything but work in that scenario, or no one gets paid.

I know he’s not the only one but the exploitation of salary workers is insane to me. I’m a PM at a niche contracting company, I’m hourly and 40 hours is full time. I’ve had conversations with my boss about going salary and told him that it’s still only 40 hours a week.

I’m still hourly and I work overtime occasionally but you better believe I’m getting paid time and a half for any time over that 40 hours. And if I even touch my work phone while I’m on vacation, I’m billing those hours.

If that’s a decision you make for yourself, that’s great. Do that, as the owner.

Expecting it if anyone else, who, in reality, will never be as into the business as the owner, is exploitative. The level of entitlement in that expectation is not much different than that leechy individual you know who is forever trying to get more from others because he feels like world owes him. Expecting dedication to your dream, not theirs, is like that guy who verbalizes a demand for respect on every occasion.

You want labor, then pay people for it. You want trained, experienced labor, then pay people commensurate with their skill level. This means raises each year as they level up that experience working for you.

I don't see the problem. He told him honestly: this is not a job for you.

Maybe it's exploitative, maybe not, maybe they are offering stocks. Maybe they are taking a chance on a junior role. Whatever. It's all good if people are honest and if the work is long hours, that those hours are paid. That's it.

I've worked in a startup and a lot of times it's honest people that want to make something succeed and are in a hurry. It's a normal situation. They want someone that's like them, to put in long hours and make it work. I think that's ok, if it's communicated at the start and then paid in some part ownership. And we don't know if that is the case here.

On the plus side, sounds like the applicant dodged a bullet.

Truth to be told, the only good capitalist is a dead one. LinkedIn kinda proves it every day.

people who deeply believe in the mission (and the future value of their equity)

A perfect summation of the worthlessness of techbros - outwardly all about "the mission" (inwardly all about getting their $$$ and getting out).

Yep, sounds like startups aren't for me!

If I want to work for next to nothing with little chance of it paying off, I'll just keep my real job and keep making my own videogames.

At least that's actually fun.

lol startups. “Sorry we are looking for someone to exploit to get us up and running and then fire so we don’t have to agree to pay them what they’re worth once we can.”

I doubt this actually happened because we all know our potential bosses are incredibly fragile when it comes to any traces of reality intruding on the bizarre bubble they’ve created for themselves. You’d lie through your teeth and say “I want to work somewhere that is like a family and I’ll work any amount of time until the job is done!”.

He’s actually not wrong. Startups are brutal, you have to literally take in the whole world with as little as possible.

Once you carve out your niche, then you can relax a bit. But before that you are in a race with an unknown number and quality of competitors. You can’t afford to have a good work-life balance.

So; the candidate did tank their chances by mentioning they wanted better work-life balance. You don’t apply to startups if that’s what you want. Look more towards established banks and the like.

But the dude in the post yapping about loving 80hr weeks is clearly deranged (or trying to impress some VCs)