What it's Really Like Working for a Startup
I once shared some office space with a startup that hit a $5.5 billion valuation shortly before it was revealed that they defrauded investors by inflating their sales numbers. The founders were investigated and eventually indicted.
One of my friends worked for a startup that was working on a new round of funding when one of the co-founders died unexpectedly. The other co-founder and employees floundered, and the whole thing eventually fell apart.
One startup I worked for raised a couple million dollars and then hit a wall. With little traction and mounting debts, two of the founders had to push out two of the other founders to cut costs and narrow their focus. That was…awkward…to say the least.
My point is, when you work with startups, you learn to expect anything. This makes for interesting work, but it's not for everyone. In this post, I share some stories to illustrate this issue and help you decide whether you're cut out for the life of a startup employee.
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"It took a year of consistent work on the Draft.dev blog, but we're starting to get a steady stream of leads through our content efforts now. Here are a few things I've learned about building a content marketing strategy through the process."
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Web forms were already common when I first joined the workforce, so I can only imagine how messy it was working with printed forms to collect and organize data. Online forms are a game changer, but now the problem is choosing the right one.
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"This might feel obvious, but if I'm at a dead end on something then I'll just put it down for a bit. No reason to idle on something that's not clicking. The human mind operates on parallel tracks and even when something's on the back-burner, some part of your head'll still ponder it and come up with something later."
A big list of Developer Discords
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Cookie Banners Might Finally be Going Away
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How to implement multi-tenancy
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Leadership
Makers vs Managers: The Battle Over Remote Work
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How To Actually Boost Low Self Esteem & Stop Procrastinating
"The people who focus on limitations will have more of them. Even if they are valid. We pick the data from our minds to confirm what we already believe to be true of ourselves and the world."