Y Combinator here I come

I think it's always good to be traumatized by an experience in a crappy company at the start of your career. It gets it ouf the way, it makes you understand how terrible management can ruin pretty much anything, and it's better to have those realizations at 22 than at 45 :)<p>Good luck, and keep us posted about your startup adventures!

"At about that time I decided to keep my mouth shut, after all that is what they wanted, someone who would keep quiet."<p>Just came to this realization myself last week. Doesn't matter if they're forcing iOS UX on to Android UX, sometimes they just don't to hear it. Promises of 'We welcome fresh and new perspectives.' or 'We want someone who isn't afraid to make comments and suggestions.' are usually warning signs during the interview. I even ask fellow team members how did some of the less than optimal choices manage to get passed through, they'd just smile and whisper that how things are done – management doesn't want expertise, they just want soldiers.<p>Poor management team can really kill team morale, but try your best to make the best of it while you're still there. Chat up and learn from people from different departments, especially if you are interest in doing your own startup. There's so much to learn other than just design and coding. So so much!

I'm guessing you've been thinking about applying to Y Combinator for a while, if it was the first thing you did after you were laid off.<p>That said, I have to ask....are you <i>sure</i> you want to apply to Y Combinator?<p>There are startup jobs out there where this sort of mismanagement is not the norm. I was in your exact shoes at one point (although I left due to repeated missed paychecks, not due to layoff) - and I began to doubt if <i>any</i> company would be competent, except one I started myself. (This was compounded with my own minor successes in the startup game, having gotten personal momentum with an idea on the side.) It pains me to admit this so publicly...but it took me a year to realize, that my experience there ate away at my trust in <i>anyone</i> as a potential employer.<p>I guess all I mean to say is, YC is great - but if part of you still wants to join an early startup and learn while you're young, there <i>are</i> good employers out there. They're few and far between...but please don't give up. They're absolutely worth the search.

Looking forward to meeting you :)

You're not the first young person to smell a rat and assume that everything is ok because some senior people say so.<p>Your lessons here: 1) gut feelings are usually correct, and 2) many startups are run by delusional idiots with impressive backgrounds.

I'm not clear on what you were hired to do and it sounds like you weren't either. Sure, they said they want someone who isn't afraid to give feedback and improve the product. But it seems you took that one statement as an encouragement to run circles around the org-chart.<p>Were you hired as a programmer or a designer? If the marketing copy or the UI/UX is already clearly specified, as a developer you should be thankful. It makes your job easier when you aren't expected to 'improve' loosely specified things that aren't your specialty.<p>I'm a programmer in a three-person startup (along with the founder and a designer) and role overlap must be our biggest problem. The founder is the domain expert and the designer is an excellent graphic designer, and none of us can resist offering his/her two cents on the UI/UX - the back and forth is endless. As a programmer I'm lucky to not worry about the rest of the team reading my code and offering constructive criticism or insisting on a refactor.

I had a similar experience at my first job (while I was still going to uni). The funny thing is the CEO would often take me to his office and show me how much money they were making with the work I was doing. He would brag that the last change request made them xyz amounts of money. I was being paid very little for my work. It was a great learning experience for me and pushed me to try my own things.

"At about that time I decided to keep my mouth shut, after all that is what they wanted, someone who would keep quiet."<p>This is when you KNOW you're in the wrong place. Definitely not the bitterness of someone whose been laid off. Any founders or managers who don't want their team mates to be self driven, are hiring B-players.<p>Good luck in your YC app!!

You helped them rewrite their mail/newsletter but there are typos all over your blog post. It's worse than a TechCrunch article. This makes me question certain things about your side of the story, the only side available to us.

You are extremely lucky.<p>You had excellent opportunity to learn some important lessons when young and after investing only 7 mths of your life. I think this is small price to pay.<p>I've had similar situation, but I invested 5 years... My friend was cut loose after ~15+ years.<p>Celebrate and move on!

that seems what most people miss out on<p>not all startups are created equal...not all of them will have an early Google atmosphere...plenty of them are started by corporate drones<p>so you get a bad work environment, paired up with a company that still hasn't figured out how to become profitable

Strange startup to hire creative people to do "just what we say" without interest to hear fresh ideas, point of view...<p>One my friend who launched startups said how important it is to encourage people to express new ideas and support making a great product.

this job sounds like the worst of both worlds. A corporate job (you do what exactly you got hired to do) without the secure business model.

I can relate to a bad-mgmt experience. But 8:30 to 6:00 is nothing to complain about in startupland (or medical, legal, finance, consulting, etc.). In fact, I'd call 8:30 - 6:00 light (even very light).

Great one. Hope, you'll be in. :) In fact starting to work on startup having a hope to have some valueable stock in the future is like starting to work on your own project with some differences. While you work on your own project, you'll always have a chance to make a pivot and to change something you don't like. If you work for someone, you have to be sure that they're reasonable to pivot when it's necessary and that they will listen to your ideas and appreciate your help etc.

the big lesson here is that the problems with their business were forseeable, this is the type of thing i would want to get sorted before and during the interview process.

Ive been having a similar experience to you. I work for a big corporation with over 20k employees and the process is suffocating. Its hard to do my job sometimes because there is so much process. The people as well are super secretive with things they are working on to protect their status at the company. Its a completely toxic environment and I also applied to Ycombinator. I hope to see you there!

Too != To

Too bad you stuck around for 7 months. You sound like a person who knows you should have left after month 2-3.<p>Best of luck.

&#62; "We have to terminate your employment contract."<p>Curious if you actually had a contract and were bona fide employee. I hope you got favorable terms upon departure. The whole thing sounds pretty shady. The company did not even provide equipment, right?

want to work with me? :-)

Best of luck to you, if you don't succeed and fancy coming over the pond to the UK give me a shout. I hope I don't hear from you but read about you though.

"It started out intense, they had so many things they wanted me to do, I showed up at 8:30 and didn’t leave till 6, they’d captured my heart and mind… or at least convinced me it was worth my time."<p>Here's some advice, if you think that schedule is intense, you're not ready for a startup...

Why in the comments here are most assuming that<p>a) his story, one sided, is correct<p>b) he was fired because they were running out of money (even his "quote" of what was told to him doesn't say that)<p>c) his advice was really helpful.<p>And with respect to this:<p>"Next, I found a letter that was being sent out to customers, it was a huge pile of text that needed paragraph structure. I figured if I got it, I wouldn’t have read it, there were to many words and to much ‘blah’. There wasn’t a clear or simple explanation of what the users needed to do and there were no action words. So I worked on it, cleaning it up, cut the text in half and made it more clear. I submitted it through the appropriate channels as defined earlier."<p>There is no safe way to navigate that without stepping on toes unless you help the person who is working on this without regard to getting any credit yourself.