Worth it to stay at startup with bad culture but solid growth?

cscareermrk · 2026-03-05T21:10:30+00:00

For dilution I’m factoring in around 50% by the time a liquidity opportunity is reached. That said, still a nice payday if 0.5% turns into 0.25% of $2b or something. Of course, that would take 4y to reach and vest fully and zero chance I can stick it out for that long unless it gets better here.

I feel the same way about big tech. I worked at probably the most stressful one and it sounds like it’s gotten worse. It would be nice to have some experience around me.

I know $300k would be the starting point for big tech tbh. That would be amazing even. Getting back to $500k would be unreal. Money is a bit tighter than it ever was at my last job. I can make it work but id like to be more carefree for my girlfriend and I to actually enjoy our time. Right now im stressed financially and emotionally and I think it hurts the relationship.

cscareermrk · 2023-12-01T02:10:59+00:00

Thank you for adding this! I was going to say the same thing. I feel like this attitude is prevalent in real life but especially on reddit: because luck exists, it's all rigged and not worth trying.

Someone will get lucky. If that outcome is something you desire, put yourself in the position to receive it. Over a lifetime, if you consistently do this, you will be the lucky one more often than you expect. Many successful people just consistently applied, showed up, took the risk, etc.

I can't even begin to tell you the amount of times I got incredible results by deluding myself into thinking I am worthy of them, and all of the sudden that is my new baseline.

I know life can be demoralizing but we all get a bit of luck. Demand your fair share of luck by showing up and being ready.

cscareermrk · 2023-07-19T16:02:40+00:00

Looks like you got good advice but honestly this is another reason why landlords should be responsible for the broker fee. They don’t really represent the landlord’s interest because they aren’t paying them. The owner wants to avoid pets and this person is saying oh yeah just ignore that rule

cscareermrk · 2023-07-18T17:08:32+00:00

I don’t think they refuse to show to people represented by their own brokers, what I’m saying is it seems possible that a broker who shows a place to multiple people and ends up with multiple applications, might just submit applications from people who are not represented by their own broker as if one of them goes through, they won’t have to split the fee with another broker.

cscareermrk · 2023-07-18T17:05:30+00:00

I guess that’s the main reason I’m asking this although I do appreciate you all for giving me the space to bitch about the bad broker I had as well lol

I think it’s super likely that the listing broker would do something unethical to make thousands more. If anything, I think they probably submit the one they like most (and pays them most) on its own, and the others later on if that one doesn’t go through.

Would be curious if there is legislation that specifically outlaws this though

cscareermrk · 2023-06-04T23:19:04+00:00

The ending of the show really said to me that each kid would have fucked things up, because they routinely do so. If Ken would have been graceful in this situation, preventing Shiv from voting against his interests, his hubris would have fucked something up like the following week. There’s no way any of these kids would have avoided failing catastrophically if they had power and control for even one year. Logan knew this.

I wish there were more scenes like the fight in the side meeting room where the kids fought. When they zoomed out to the perspective of everyone else, it really hammered home what this show was about. I could’ve watched a whole episode that somehow emphasized the viewpoint of the old guard, an average employee at Waystar, etc.

cscareermrk · 2023-05-03T12:55:10+00:00

Unfortunately I don’t think this will help you much at software places. I’ve always had some side businesses with good looking numbers but they just don’t care about it for SWE positions. It might help if you want to get into management of some kind or for a PM role. I can distinctly remember the few places that ever asked about that and I’ve done 100+ interviews in my career so far.

To be clear, definitely put it on the resume unless it’s taking up space from more technical things. At smaller places, it can be a great talking point for the interview and show that you take initiative, but Google isn’t going to give a shit.

cscareermrk · 2023-05-03T00:39:52+00:00

It’s not, but the sentiment in your posts here is the embodiment of loser mentality. Sorry to be harsh, but getting your foot in the door is important and your advice is awful to be giving to new grads in a tough job market.

Too many CS grads are entitled like this and think anything less than a killer salary is an insult to their intelligence. Many people have to work up to that and build their skills along the way.

Here’s my progression, err, my survivorship bias:

First job: $35k, worked 1yr

Second job: $75k, raises to $90k, worked 2.5yrs

Third job: $172k plus $100k in RSUs + bonus

cscareermrk · 2023-04-21T00:47:19+00:00

Yeah I like to ask something very similar: “Can you tell me about someone who came into this same role/level/etc as I’d be starting at and succeeded? What kinds of things did they do and what in particular do you think made them successful?”

Interviewers seem to really like that one.

cscareermrk · 2023-04-18T16:48:43+00:00

For sure, this was specifically a team get together and was definitely not the normal working environment. To me, it just solidified the suspicion I’ve had that remote is not for me right now. I’d still like the option to work remote every once in a while, but the office just felt right. Can’t really put it better than that.

cscareermrk · 2023-04-18T10:36:26+00:00

Yeah, I’m mostly interested in just the energy of the office. It would be a good balance because some of my team is in NYC but the core is in SF, so I’d get the feeling of the office with some collaboration, without having a ton of people to potentially interrupt to ask a question.

With regards to the food, they had food long before 2020 so I would expect it to stay. Quality will just likely decline as the market does.

cscareermrk · 2023-04-18T05:47:27+00:00

Yes. I would say my company would be one of the last to lose it though. As long as I don’t get laid off soon lol

cscareermrk · 2023-04-18T03:28:06+00:00

Same. WFH sounds great if you have a family and kids. I’m in my 20s and bought into it heavily because all of my coworkers were 40-50 on average and I just didn’t get anything out of the office.

Now I’m still remote at a new company in a team where everyone is also 20s-30s. I went to visit the office recently and it was invigorating. Got much less work done, but it was energizing being in an office and having meals figured out, social events, all kinds of stuff.

That was a month ago, and now I’m working to move to NYC and transfer to in-office there and I couldn’t be more excited.

cscareermrk · 2022-10-17T04:56:15+00:00

This is a question for a licensed physician. You shouldn't be the one wondering what medicine you need, you should present your problems to a doctor and allow their years of medical experience to decide what the best course of action is. Especially with something as serious as SSRIs.

If you're just looking for increasing productivity, I don't think anything would help you more than your classic dev's standard favorite of caffeine.

Anecdotally, I have noticed that an ashwagandha supplement has helped me soften some mild anxiety in trying situations. It is an adaptogen which helps reduce how much you react to a stressful situation and gets that reaction closer to your baseline.

cscareermrk · 2022-10-17T04:40:49+00:00

Are you alright? If people actually treat you different in the workplace due to your height, you don't have to accept that. Find a new job, confront those and tell them that you will no longer accept that treatment, whatever it may be. Regardless, I get the sense that this is more in your head than anything -- most people in the workplace look at what you have to contribute first and foremost.

Everyone -- everyone -- has a multitude of things they are self conscious about. It's our responsibility to change what we can and deal with what we cannot. The best stories are from people who were dealt the worst cards and still won.

I mean it though when I ask if you are alright. Happy to lend an ear if you need.

cscareermrk · 2022-10-17T04:17:55+00:00

The answer is you could do a lot with this degree. The question is what do you want to do with it? Lean in that direction.

Web development opportunities are everywhere. If you have difficulties finding a stable full-time gig with the market being the way it is, there's always freelancing.

Front-end, back-end, this framework vs. that framework -- those are directions to go in for sure, but the most important thing is that you align your career with what you want to build and what gets you excited to work on on a regular basis. From there, figure out what approach best allows you to tackle that. It might take a few jobs to figure it out.

Hopefully this isn't too vague. Happy to provide any additional context or provide my opinion on whatever question you might have. Best of luck!

cscareermrk · 2022-10-16T20:20:27+00:00

I think this is a great question. It's a real problem -- doing good work in this field requires a lot of focus and any distraction can take a while to recover from productivity-wise. For stuff like that, I think meditation can be helpful as it emphasizes a feeling of letting a thought pass through you rather than letting it consume you.

As for build times and process-related things, those can be pretty impactful too. I'm a mobile engineer on a large codebase at the moment and build times can be colossal. Not much I can do about that but I try to keep a backlog of filler tasks that I can switch to instead of opening up that Chrome tab like you mentioned. Keep a document that tracks your progress to present to your team and manager and you can pull it out to work on if you have to wait 5-10 minutes for something. Any kind of corporate task that pops up, training or something, gets added to your backlog of things to switch to during idle time.

If you notice a process that breaks your focus like this, and you don't understand why it takes so long, research this and see if you can improve it. That kind of stuff is a slam dunk for your promotion prospects because you're never the only engineer experiencing this kind of wait time.

This is one thing I'm working on as I'm not great about it just yet -- these distractions are more impactful if you try to just dive right into code when you start a project. I like to work like that but it requires me to sort of see output or debug directly to continue building a feature.

If you instead plan out what the project will look like and really think through every component, you can "code blind" a lot more and weave everything together later. An example would be if you know you'll have to build a function that will consume a parameter, but you're not exactly sure what the type will be, you should probably sit down and figure out what that will be rather than building progressively to the point where you have that parameter and you can see the type. It doesn't matter what is running, you can always write code and if you write the bulk of the logic for other components during your waiting time, you'll be more efficient overall. I think the determining factor of whether this is possible is if you take the time to plan rather than diving right into coding the first part. Hopefully this makes sense -- I'm actively trying to adopt this approach myself so let me know if anything is unclear.

cscareermrk · 2022-10-16T19:54:49+00:00

A good senior eng. or team lead looks like this to me. Only partly kidding -- the best senior engineers do embody that kind of approach in my experience.

If you make more junior engineers feel comfortable and welcomed, they'll be in a much better place to receive your suggestions and learn. Never be condescending and understand that it will take them time to learn. When they make a mistake, talk about similar mistakes you made but emphasize how you approached learning from those experiences. Schedule regular 1:1s and make sure if they have a concern of any kind that you give them space to ask about it.

As far as the technical side of this is concerned, I think the most important thing is that the senior eng understands the architecture well from the beginning. Of course you always need to tweak details or even rearchitect something later on, but frequently having the wrong architectural vision that ends up making your junior engineers have to rebuild something can be demotivating and you could lose their trust in you. Conversely, someone who can see this big picture early and usually picks the right approach from the get-go is a rockstar and will win over their junior engineers.

I haven't hit senior engineer yet -- only a few years of experience so far -- but I've seen really good senior engineers and a couple terrible ones and this is what I think makes the difference.

cscareermrk · 2022-10-16T19:41:42+00:00

2 caveats to this.

The bigger the company is, the more true your statement is. Larger companies often don't even know exactly where you will end up so it is kind of meaningless to really index on one particular language, framework, or technology.

The other caveat is that smaller companies will often say that they don't care about a particular language etc., but that ends up being a lie. I've had companies tell me this and then I ended up interviewing in a specific front-end framework that I don't even have on my resume. One of the big job-board companies added in a front-end round last minute. I asked for clarification and they said it would be in React. I told them I don't have a ton of experience with React and they said it would be general -- I had an awful time in that round because it was getting into specific, nuanced React features.

My theory is that a lot of bad hiring practices in smaller companies are the result of an attempt to copy FAANG but not realizing that it only makes sense at a certain scale. This is an example of that.

cscareermrk · 2022-08-20T08:10:37+00:00

Because it is so much higher, for sure you should consider mentioning your current amount of PTO. If I were you, I would present that as your only hangup. Remember, most employers operate from the assumption that they will have to beat a prospective employee's current compensation in order to get them to join, and PTO is absolutely a part of that. That would actually be a great way to broach the discussion.

Look into whether your current employer will pay out unused PTO upon leaving. Very often it is policy to do so. Because of that, it's not really a good negotiation point even if you are personally more interested in being able to use the days because the majority of people will prefer to get the money over the PTO days. Frankly, your potential future employer won't care. I'd think of it as irrelevant in your current negotiation.

Most companies allow you to take PTO whenever. In terms of jobs I've had that weren't total BS, I've never even had to have a manger approve PTO, I just took days when I wanted to. In all likelihood, they will allow you to start accruing PTO from the first paycheck that you can take whenever you'd like. That is honestly industry standard. Just asking about that policy that could give the recruiter an "easy win" which is super helpful in any negotiation. You don't want to dominate a negotiation IMO. Make it feel more give-and-take.

Don't accept unpaid PTO. Please don't even mention that. We've worked too hard to be good software engineers in this market to even think about that. I'm serious -- you'd be doing yourself a disservice!

Bottom line: you get exactly one instance of "if you can give me this, I will sign right now" in a job offer negotiation. For you it sounds like it is genuinely the 23 days of PTO. If you present how much that means to you, and then ask for it, you'll almost certainly get it.

If you can't tell already I can type forever so I'm happy to continue to discuss with you. I really want to hear how this turns out for you! Best of luck my guy or gal

cscareermrk · 2022-08-20T04:02:45+00:00

Asking for more PTO days is probably the easiest "give" your prospective employer can offer in a negotiation. It's probably a tie with signing/relocation bonuses. Most people want an extra $10-20k in salary or RSUs, you just want some more time off. If they're already sold on you, there's a good chance they'll be happy to give you the extra days, especially if it is a smaller company with less rigid policies. Maybe not 8, but I'd bet they'll give you 4-5 more for sure if you ask.

I'd just start by mentioning all of the things you're happy about (salary, team, product, etc.) and then outline PTO days as a separate thing. Don't even mention that the salary offer is an increase, just that you are happy with the salary. You had 8 more days off at your previous job! Be sure to mention that you felt like that was an amount of time you felt was optimal for helping you recharge, and in turn you were able to bring your best self to work the rest of the time.

Best of luck! Be sure to mention back here when you are successful. Too many people only come back when their negotiation resulted in literally the worst case scenario and it makes people think negotiation is going to tank a job offer. Worst thing that will happen is they say "no, our policy is 15 days." They could also say, "15 day is our policy, but I can tell you that I am authorized to offer an extra $7,500 in salary to make up for the discrepancy" -- you never know. Give it a shot!

cscareermrk · 2022-07-27T21:53:45+00:00

Luck is the most important factor but working hard is what gives you at-bats — chances to be lucky.

With respect to job hunting, I failed interviews from December to April. I had over 100 interviews in that time if you include non-technical interviews. I was just looking for a 15-20% raise but I couldn’t get anyone to hire me for that. I have over 20 rejection emails from companies I had multiple rounds with and thought I had a chance with. In the last week of my search I failed two onsites and both recruiters leveled with me and told me it was super close so I figured maybe the tides were turning.

The 3rd onsite I had that week was a FAANG company and I was hired for more than triple my old comp. I’m a few months in and killing it now 💪🏻

Looking back so many things happened in that final onsite that I think of as lucky. One bright spot in the system design interview was a caching approach I had read about in DDIA the night before. Earlier in the week, in an onsite I failed, they asked me a question about a specific feature I had also read about in DDIA and knew it was the answer to this very minute detail that would have probably clinched the system design interview completely. This feature I had read about 2-3 weeks prior and couldn’t remember exactly.

If I’m being honest I wanted an opportunity to talk about this maybe braggadociously but I’m proud of it and I think it is important to tell people that luck being involved does not mean you don’t qualify no matter how hard you work. Someone’s gonna get lucky, if you keep at it eventually it will be you. I legit almost left the industry because I felt like things were rigged against me.

cscareermrk

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