gistfile1.txt

I've spent the last few months in the dark underbelly of the startup world. I
was brought in to be lead developer at a company that was getting ready to
redesign their website. They wanted something world class and amazing. It was
fun to work on something ambitious, and I felt respected and part of the team.
Because of this, for months I ignored the warning signs: the shady investors;
the fact that the half dozen partners couldn't agree on what they were even
building, so it took forever to make decisions about anything; their
unwillingness to pay for a designer for their world class website; their
unwillingness to pay for a decent logo; the lack of equity for early employees;
their bizarre employment scheme that had me billing my time to a company they
were consulting for while I did work for them. In spite of all of this, the CEO
was competent and mature, a domain expert and a skilled manager, and I thought
I could make a good product and be a part of a good company.

Well all that seediness has finally sprouted. They brought in a monstrous child
to manage me and my team, even though it was clear before they made him a
partner that he was unfit and didn't get along with the rest of us. In a few
weeks he has convinced the rest of the partners that I'm lazy and incompetent,
he has antagonized and disgruntled everyone in the office, has literally torn
apart the office, and now lives there with a random friend unrelated to the
company, sleeping on an air matress. And yet this behavior is tolerated for
some reason (he has commitment!), while I feel like I've become a pariah, and
am no longer trusted to get the job done. I've been shut out of decisions, and
now get random unexplained requests passed down to me. I can't get the once
trusted CEO on the phone, and when I do talk to him I no longer feel like I can
get a straight story out of him.

This is probably the darkest version of this story I can tell, there could be
other ones about how fun and exciting this has been, how much I've learned, and
the friends I've made, but the last few weeks have made me believe that this
dark version is also the most accurate account of the company. It seems I was
foolish to think I could stay here for a few years and build something
worthwhile in this context.

My instinct is to leave immediately, but I have a few reservations: first, I
would be abandoning the junior developer I've trained, who seems to worship me
far out of proportion to anything I deserve. I want his first professional
project to come out successfully, and I want to live up to whatever it is he
sees in me. Second, I have a "non-traditional" job history, and adding a failed
project to the top of my resume (or a conspicuous absense) would probably do
more harm to me than to some other developers. I have enough saved up that I
could live for a short few months if it took a little while to get a job, but
after this period of steady employment I don't want to go back to the marginal
freelancing I was doing before, and I'm worried whether I could actually do
better.

It's hard to explain how traumatizing and demoralizing this has been, and how
much I dread going back to the office every day. I just want to do useful work
and hone my craft. I don't want to play these bullshit games.