I joined as their 3rd employee - as a junior developer to assist the current senior. When they saw how good I was, they sacked the senior. I was given a pay cut, ostensibly to keep the lights on, prettied-up with a new contact saying if after a year they were still in business I'd get my salary restored, but a major bonus if they reach profitability or were bought out within a year. Cue 12 months of being an idiot, regularly working weekends and all-nighters to add major features on little notice for meetings with potential customers and developers. New projects were piled on with no regard for workload or realistic deadlines. They needed a new DC, but rather than hire a sysadmin they passed it to me because I'd had experience on my CV.
By this point I'd lost sight of salary and bonus - I was working to try to avoid letting the team down by missing deadlines. As absurd as it sounds now, the atmosphere in the office made me feel I was part of something special, I was doing my part, and I was going to anything I could to keep up my part. I'd been hired part-time, but I worked full time, and then some, spurred on by my mis-placed sense of loyalty and necessity to cope with my workload. Then at the end of the year they said they couldn't afford to give me back the pay cut, and a couple of months later they announced they were going to be acquired - conveniently close to the year end to be a coincidence. I realised that I wasn't part of the team, I was just employee 3. I'd already started to suffer major burn-out / a bit of a breakdown, so I quit. That was years ago and I'm only just starting to get myself back together.
I blame myself entirely - I was naive and let myself be manipulated and used. By that point I was so deep into the "we're all in this together" that I couldn't see what was happening. But you're not in it together - there may be more honorable founders out there, but at the end of the day, you're working to line their pockets, and just because you've got a bit of paper saying they'll be nice doesn't mean they will. Trust no-one, get everything you're owed up front, and remember at all times that for you it's just a job.
Work to live, don't live to work.
(From a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Ahh, that's better ;) )
Sounds like my 2010, I was underpaid, I didn't take a pay cut though I would if asked.
I was naive enough to don't get the raise I was promised because I cared about the company, got fired on December 22nd (I'd never forget that, since, I've already spent my money on gifts and stuff) after they got more funding and they went for more-experienced-talent.
Karma is a bitch though, most of the people they hire quit because of the working conditions, from a team of 10 (that I was managing) they're down to 2. Recently they asked me to join them again, I told them "fuck no!".
Now, I'm happy at another startup but making an industry level salary (probably more, since I live in Florida) and stock options (which are a bonus since I already make a good salary, and to be honest I don't care about them too much). Also I have time to live, I go out now, get drunk, clean my apartment, I started a company, I launched a product recently, we even got some customers already! I read books, do some consulting for friends.
I feel you. The first company I worked at was like this, except I got out before I got completely exploited. It's a charming story.
I was interviewed by the lead developer and the head of Human Factors. Fresh out of college, I didn't have much experience other than a campus job, so I was turned down for a developer role. Two weeks later I get a call saying they'd like me to join their Human Factors team.
I accepted. Three weeks in I was tuning their speech recognition applications and committing code to their main application repo. Six weeks after that I wrote an algorithm to optimize grammars on sentence fragments for searching databases by speech recognition. They moved to have it patented. However, they ended up firing my boss and they put me on more mundane tasks. I ended up leaving because the CTO was more impotent than my grandfather after a bottle of Jack and the president thought he was Steve Jobs. It became a terrible place to work.
They never patented my algorithm because I was the only one who knew how it worked. The other developers weren't computer scientists and were just wasting time trying to dissect an implementation of expectation maximization. I'm kind of glad they spent a boatload on lawyers and came up empty-handed.
I will never again work for equity or shares unless I really trust the organization or people involved. Money (cash) talks, and paper is used for wiping your ass.
Should be revised to "Work to live, don't live to work. (unless it's your own startup)" :)
Perhaps his thread can also be good lesson for those trying to run a startup, to treat your employees fairly and don't take advantage of them (no matter if they are a programmer or not)
This is a familiar story to at least a few Hacker News readers. You're not alone.
Rule 1: Get all compensation and consideration in writing. Even if you think the people on the "other side of the table" are trustworthy, you could face an entirely different set of people when the contract actually matters.
When did you sign over the IP? The absolute latest time to get your compensation (including what happens to your equity if you leave or get fired) locked down is when you assign the IP. If you've never signed over the IP, this is good news but you must talk to an attorney right now.
Rule 2: If you have any documentation, the court system is your friend. If there's a substantial amount of money involved, and it sounds like there was in the context of the acquisition, an attorney will take your case on contingency. Trust me: this is more common than you think.
You absolutely must get at least a settlement out of this. Being beaten down at a previous job makes it hard to keep on an even keel, emotionally speaking, at the next one. Even if the money means absolutely nothing to you, you must fight.
There are good startups and good founders out there. You just fell in with one of the bad ones. The good founders will set fair contracts (not just golden-road promises) in advance. Talk is cheap. It's easy to make someone "feel like" a real co-founder but it's hard to actually show that the person is one.
By this point I'd lost sight of salary and bonus - I was working to try to avoid letting the team down by missing deadlines. As absurd as it sounds now, the atmosphere in the office made me feel I was part of something special, I was doing my part, and I was going to anything I could to keep up my part. I'd been hired part-time, but I worked full time, and then some, spurred on by my mis-placed sense of loyalty and necessity to cope with my workload. Then at the end of the year they said they couldn't afford to give me back the pay cut, and a couple of months later they announced they were going to be acquired - conveniently close to the year end to be a coincidence. I realised that I wasn't part of the team, I was just employee 3. I'd already started to suffer major burn-out / a bit of a breakdown, so I quit. That was years ago and I'm only just starting to get myself back together.
I blame myself entirely - I was naive and let myself be manipulated and used. By that point I was so deep into the "we're all in this together" that I couldn't see what was happening. But you're not in it together - there may be more honorable founders out there, but at the end of the day, you're working to line their pockets, and just because you've got a bit of paper saying they'll be nice doesn't mean they will. Trust no-one, get everything you're owed up front, and remember at all times that for you it's just a job.
Work to live, don't live to work.
(From a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Ahh, that's better ;) )