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Comment by snorkel | Hacker News Reader

Whole situation sounds like typical startup growing pains and this is the OPs first rodeo of this kind. The original crew of developers was happy during the early days when it was all cozy and limitless upside, but now there's new funding, new bosses, new managers, new processes, new rules, new coworkers that "don't get it" and that old fun and cozy vibe is lost. The new CEO will likely be fired by the board too, but face it, the cozy days are over. So either find yourself a role in that circus that you like, or quit.

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This is not it.

Having worked at some startups before, there's a difference between folks slowly getting off the boat because "party time is over", and the chaos described by OP.

In the former situation, these people are usually easily replaceable because they weren't committed to start with. I have probably seen over a dozen engineers leaving over the course of a year when more money required better processes and more accountability, and to be frank, nothing really happened.

In the latter though, the high performing, highly committed engineers leave in droves, and create a sort of expertise vacuum that is hard to fill just with new hires.

This is absolutely not normal. If you find yourself relating to this post, please start looking for a new job immediately, I promise it's not like this everywhere.

Yeah, this feels like a no-true-scotsman, except for 'startups', made to discredit OP's reality.

Telling OP to ignore the writing on the wall and show loyalty to a toxic leader is not good advice.

>This is absolutely not normal.

Is it "normal" for a company to stay "cozy and limitless upside" even as it grows to hundreds of employees?

>If you find yourself relating to this post, please start looking for a new job immediately

The parent post literally mentions quitting as one option.

> Is it "normal" for a company to stay "cozy and limitless upside" even as it grows to hundreds of employees?

No it isn't, but that's not relevant to this discussion. Nobody made any claim of limitless upside.

> The parent post literally mentions quitting as one option.

Yes, but it implied you're likely to find the same thing anywhere that's not a super early stage startup, which is not true.

I see nothing typical in a terrible CEO that causes such turnover among all the company. Growing pains are communication issues, less transparency, confusing career path, bad onboarding, etc. This is not that.

I've worked at a number of startups and the CEOs, beyond founders, have been great. None of what is in this post sounds normal.

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