A while back, one of my friends joined a start-up in Silicon Valley, and invited me over to their company for lunch because they had amazing free food. We tried to setup times on several occasions, but it just never worked out because something always came up. In either case, eventually our times lined up, and I made an appointment.
I got to their offices, and my first impression was, wow this place is really disorganized. They had networking cables all over the place, a bunch of people crammed around make shift computer desks, some contractor was painting their offices. Anyway, that was fine, since I was there only to see my friend, oh, and free food.
We head into the kitchen, and there's food sprawled across kitchen counters. There was a mix-match of Indian food, Greek food, and pizza. He was ranting and raving how they got free lunch and dinner every day and how delicious every way; however, the menu wasn't too appealing to me. I don't think I found anything of significant nutritional value. I guess I'm getting old, as pizza isn't all that appealing to me anymore; stereotype dictates that your average computer geek should be put on a strict pizza and coke diet.
Anyway, we start doing some catching up, and he starts talking about how great the company is, and how much power he wields. The red flag went up when he started asking me about what type of work visa I was on. This was odd because this is not a normal conversation piece. I had a suspicion that something weird was going down. Half way through the meal, the CEO comes through to the kitchen, and I'm introduced to him. My friend goes, oh you should talk to the CEO for a few minutes afterwards. I thought... why would I want to talk to the CEO? Oh crap, this is an unsolicited recruiting session. By this point, I have marked my friend as a hostile entity and the goal shifted to getting out as fast as possible. Unfortunately, there was only one exit out of the lunch room.
We finish lunch, and we start heading back to my friend's workstation, but we take a turn to a conference room, and my friend says, oh the CEO wants to meet you. The CEO comes and starts with some small talk, like how long I have been working at my current job, how do I know my friend, blah blah blah. He then starts talking about his company and the business model.
You know how some people are suckered into getting a free vacation somewhere, but it turns out that you only get it after listening to a crazy time-share presentation. This was the exact situation I was in. Anyway, the CEO started throwing out names of executives of other companies that he's met with, and he's throwing out random numbers and metrics proving the greatness of his company. Part way through, one of his minions enters and hands me a box of their schwag. The whole time I'm just nodding my head, simple because questions would merely prolong the ordeal. During his talk, I got a few other red flags from him. He seems like the slimy business type, and he openly acknowledges that people generally don't like him. I also thought their business model was fairly brittle. In either case, the talk ends, and he sends me back to my friend, but my friend is dealing with server issues, so I leave. I couldn't believe what just happened, and I felt dirty.
Later in the evening, my friend contacts me and starts talking about all the company perks, and how well they treat their employees. For example, everyone is given a free iPhone. Ooo.... a free $200 phone, that's quite something. He's also ranting about how one can make a lot of money in a short period of time. At that point, I stop him and say I'm totally not interested, I'm not even on the job market. We haven't talked since, and I don't trust him anymore.
There's a few reasons that I tend to stay away from start-ups and this particular company:
- Absolutely no job security. If they run out of money, you're out of work, and all those shiny stock options that they shower you with are absolutely worthless.
- The majority of start-ups do fail. The appeal I guess is that there are a few that succeed and make it big, but that's an exception.
- Coding wise, it's always a pain because you're starting from scratch, and a lot of boring code needs to be written from scratch. That generally means, instability, and awful bugs.
- Recruiting talent is hard because no one knows you. I've worked for some smaller companies, and when you hire an incompetent programmer, it's not fun at all. I use the term "amateur hour" a lot in these situations.
- I am a technologist, and what this company was trying to solve was not interesting from a technology perspective. Case in point, during their pitch, there was no mention of their technology, only their business. At Yahoo!, during the pitch, the first thing they covered was, look at this awesome technology, and you get to work with some of the top minds in this field.
I think why I was offended by this was because he thought he could make me defect by using some shiny objects like an iPhones, which I couldn't care less about. As I mentioned before, one annoying aspect about Silicon Valley is how people jump from job from job so quickly. I am not going to perpetuate that behaviour. I'm ticked off that he thinks I can be swayed so easily. I'm also disliking this headhunting behaviour that everyone seems to have, and they're so desperate to get talent at any cost.
I think there's something really wrong with a company's culture if they only attract gold diggers who are willing to fight for the highest bidder. A mercenary army, as history has shown, can be your undoing, because they can easily be bribed to go fight for another cause.
There's a saying, "stand on the shoulder of giants", and that's the feeling I get when I work at Yahoo!. That is, achieve greatness by leveraging what the giants have already done. When I was job hunting last time, I was explicitly looking for large companies to work for, because I became tired of limitations of smaller organizations.
Honour before money.
Note: I'm not condemning all start-ups. There are those who are working on interesting problems. If someone can make me passionate about a technology company that was trying to solve something that was world-changing, or helped a lot of people, then that would be appealing.
