Actually what you’re suggesting is working against your own interests purely for the sake of working against somebody else’s too. There was also nothing imprudent about my decision. I saw an opportunity to develop my skills and took it. If it wasn’t working out, quitting would have just put my back to exactly where I started. My advice is that if you see an opportunity to advance your career, you should focus on what you’ll personally get out of it. Countering your apparent blanket stance that you shouldn’t do things that don’t benefit you in the short term, and that you shouldn’t enter into employment agreements simply because an employer may be getting “too much” out of it, regardless of any potential long term personal benefit. Personally I find more success in looking at what I can get out of an opportunity, rather than what I can deny others.
That makes sense if you're a 3rd world immigrant, because the value delta between your old life and your new life is immense. For someone born in a 1st world country, it makes little sense to compare their situation with that of a 3rd world denizen. Reference points are subjective. I take issue with the way my government collects taxes and how it distributes them. I don't care how Africa or India are doing.
You are entitled to your sentiment, but calling people and their approach to life "toxic" is a good way to alienate them and dismiss what you have to say. There are many ways to run a business, and I've run teams that have shipped multi-million dollar software entirely remotely, with minimal face time and non-work related socializing.
There are plenty of companies that manage their work in a way that minimizes the human component and maximizes the technical utility of their engineers (judged on productive output alone), almost in a way that makes the human component and all it brings with it (unreliability, politicking, emotional outbursts, backstabbing, you name it) irrelevant. In fact, my ideal company reduces face time to close to zero, because that's the only reliable way to eliminate politicians, bad actors and people who try to game the system using social skills and emotional manipulation. A nice side effect of remote work is that it automatically creates that sort of environment, unless you go out of your way to change that (but then the remote work model is probably not for you).
>renders you to be a piece of quite primitive carbon-based technology.
The fact that you don't know how to manage engineers in an entirely meritocratic, non-political environment, says more about your management abilities than anything else.
I've been in a similar situation and all I can say is I feel you. I've become very distrustful and suspicious of people in this industry, especially the fast-talking "we're changing the world" kind.
Ultimately, if people want to renege, they will renege. Unless you have a ton of money and energy to throw at lawsuits, it's better to structure your deals in a way that clips your potential downside (e.g. work on a retainer basis, don't accept stocks in lieu of cash etc).
> Based on my experience I am 100% convinced that people that can't find joy in the happiness of others should remain single and even more important: never, ever have kids.
As a counterargument, I've seen a few people turn into complete monsters once their kids were born. Their justification was "I have kids now and I'll do literally anything for my family, fuck everyone else and their needs." (paraphrased). It's all fine and dandy until the instinct for survival kicks in.
What if you value your consciousness and the here and now more than the idea of your DNA staying alive well after you're dead?
To me, my consciousness is my identity (myself). The body is just a vessel for it, and once it craps out, and takes the consciousness down with it, I couldn't care less about my DNA (a bit of a tautology, but you get the idea).
Yes, I agree, we can value our consciousness more than the idea of DNA survival, but the reason it exists in the first place is to protect the DNA. It's just a mechanism to adapt and accommodate the organism to the changing external conditions.
A counterargument would be that it's harder for a big government to change direction easily, once decided and set in motion. Wrong decisions can compound because it's easier for a large organization to stay its course, even in the face of increasing harm, as evident by the Vietnam war.
As I'm entering the fourth decade of my life, I have actively started avoiding any company that 1) self identifies as a startup, 2) employs less than 50 people, 3) is VC funded in any capacity. It's not because I have anything against them in particular, it's just that my risk profile has been changing together with my age, and I'm not really willing to put in the same crazy hours as 5-10 years ago in return for the right to participate in a de facto lottery.
A company working in an unknown space, that doesn't even know how to be the kind of company it wants to be; a startup can be very exciting for an experienced engineer because (if you're like me) you do like to solve problems, and I (at least) view software as only part of the problem space (make the business money).
To that, I'm willing to bring wits, flexibility, and broad experience. I bring value and justify my existence, and I do expect to be appreciated (compensated) for that; I expect to have a much higher salary than at a non-startup, not a lower salary and a lottery ticket.
The sheer number of "startups" that want me to work for peanuts just tends to make me avoid the term startup. Instead I look for their investors looking for someone to help them manage their risk, and treat it as a consultancy.
On the other hand, I think the pleasure is to have 1) startups as a customers, because 2) It has few employees and you can quickly negotiate with them, and 3) They are funded and can quickly spend money to speed up or improve their product. Just from a risk perspective, in economic crises (e.g. 2007/2008) we had a flat line near 0 of revenue coming from startups.
I've recently entered the fifth decade of my life, and I actively avoid any company that does not identify as a startup, or which employs more than maybe a hundred people, because I've already wasted too much of my life struggling to do work I don't care about or even believe in, just because some unknown committee of managers in some other part of the megacorporation employing me decided it needed to happen.
I look for small teams, instead, who are hot to try something new, where I can personally accomplish something significant and where I'll have enough breathing room to exercise my own initiative and apply my by-now-considerable experience to the choice of tasks we undertake and the design of the solutions we implement. I won't suffer through any more small-cog-in-a-big-machine experiences, no matter how much money they're offering. Life is too short for that.
Still, I agree with you about the lottery: equity has lost all incentive power, and salary is the only form of compensation I care about. I just see money as a tool for living an enjoyable life, not as an end in itself, and it would take more money than anyone will ever be willing to pay me to make up for the suckage another boring corporate grind would inflict on my quality of life.
I'm in a similar situation as the op. I personally enjoy that phase of a company's lifecycle. So long as there is runway (1-2 yrs). I love that edge of the seat do whatever it takes to try and make it work feeling.
I think in my case I've just become more aware of the fact that an exit is the exception rather than the norm. I've also had to educate myself a hell of a lot more regarding the intricacies of equity, i.e. investors preference, etc.
Possibly, due to a lack of long term stability and job security. When every round of financing results in a different VC installing its own people in the company and shaking things up, I don't feel comfortable betting the life and wellbeing of my family on the fact that some 24 year old "product manager" is going to act rational.
In other words, they'd really need to pay me a lot more than an established company in order to offset my risk.
Ah, the standard phrase used when people try to get you to work against your interests.
The rest of your post amounts to: "Doing the imprudent thing X worked out for me this one time, so everyone should do it."