JohnnyD10

In this case, but we aren't aware as to whether this got investigated later. I imagine any issues where they lose money they will follow up on.

There's another red flag I've seen: buyers ask to pre-pay on the spot without having seen the item. They usually want to use Zelle or Venmo, and say they're going to have a relative come pickup the item.

I have worked for a company similar in size to Google for a long time. During covid I experienced the highest high of my 18 years here. Flexibility was suddenly rampant (it was forced, but still) in a company that had been stodgy and inflexible since its founding. They began hiring just like Google and every other company did, so jobs were plentiful. This had a 'rising tide' effect on everyone (I got a promotion without asking for it, which is basically unheard of). Suddenly, I was able to define my work pretty much universally, and I was appreciated for doing do. It created an environment where I and my colleagues all wanted to contribute more than ever before. We put in tons of extra hours, many even unpaid.

Side note: it was RTO mandates that killed this.

But I digress. It made me wonder: is this fun, experimenting, creative, flexible environment one that pops up in general when all companies first form and the business realities of non-unlimited funding haven't caught up with the leadership yet? Is it something that hits all companies for a while when the economy is on an upward trend (as I attested to in my own company)? Have people found pockets of this kind of environment, even in the worst of times?

I'm trying to figure out when and where it exists so I can find it again. I'd never experienced it until covid, and now that I have, I want it back, and for the first time, I'm willing to do something major to get it because I know now what it feels like. It feels like Star Trek Generations, where that guy is trying to do whatever he can to get back on the nexus (except I'm not trying to destroy a planet).

When incorporated into Wifi 18 in the year 2046, it will prove to realistically get around 500 MB/s, and have a hard time getting through most walls.

I have seen many people like you respond here, but I felt a need to talk to you. I have a different story. I have convinced 2 partners over my younger life to have abortions. I was young and stupid. I thought life would continue in the grandest way it seemed then, and got caught off guard and was terrified. I have since had 2 children, and the sorrow and devastation of my past choices now haunts me. The love I lost. Not getting to hold and care for them.

You might say "get over it and stop feeling bad - you have something good," and I know I do, but the past hangs over me like a never-ending storm. How can I ever forgive myself for what I did? The thought of them safe in their mother's wombs and being ripped out...I can hardly bear it. I carry this pain daily. I have since learned that having kids is the best thing that ever happened to me. It taught me how to love in a way I hadn't ever before. Having this knowledge makes the past even harder to accept. Who would those unborn have been today? What would they have taught me? How can I be a caring person to have done this?

I can't say I can relate to your situation, so please forgive any apparent glibness, but I would gladly sign up to go through what a lot of people here have done for their children with special needs just to have the chance to have known them. It may sound easy for me to say, but be glad you didn't make my choices. If someone else reads this who did, please know that there is also a part of me that realizes I thought things would be different, and I went on the information I had, which was bad. I'm not at all judging you. You did the best you could. Despite me sounding self condemning, I'm just very regretful that I didn't make a different choice.

All this to say: I hope you find a little more validation from my story that you are on a good path, and that you are not cursed, but rather have a gift. It's a gift I chose to throw away. It sounds like it's hard to manage at times but it's very much a gift. I know that sounds dismissive and cheesy, like everything everyone would say because it sounds good and doesn't acknowledge the real sacrifices you've had to make in comparison to friends who don't understand, but I want you to know that I truly mean it, and I understand, maybe unlike others who say it, what it really means, because I look at you and want so badly what you have, if it meant having all my children alive in my life. Your child taught you how to love - deeper and more alive than anything else possibly could have. It may seem like life/God used force to shape you like this, but I'm learning that's the only way it can work sometimes. You have to get to a point where you are willing to see it differently, and God will find a way to show you that. Maybe your child's presence forced you to make a choice to break through your own ego and be willing to love them. If so, it no doubt transformed you. Learning that is the greatest lesson life can teach. You are on a good path. It won't be evident for a time, but you absolutely are. I send you my best.

I think the reason people are so willing to stick around is 1) I don't think they really know what the norm is for compensation in a startup, 2) the others seem to have been friends with him previously (usually a bad idea to go into a startup with friends, but I digress), and 3) to your question, he was once the CEO of a company that made the same product, so he has connections in the industry, relationships with distributors, and quite honestly, he's a sales animal. He has already pre-sold a shipping container of the product (far, FAR before us engineers will have it ready - a pending potential trainwreck of its own).

In that previous CEO role, as I understand it, he left on bad terms over some kind of compensation disagreement (ironic?).

A red flag in the beginning was that one of our engineers still runs an authorized service center for that former company's returns. Yet, when the CEO started our company, one of the first things he went about trying to do was to smear the last company in the press (which would have been technically hurting part of the business of the engineer I mentioned, who still made income servicing that company's products). The guy just doesn't think about other people, yet he's good at bringing in the dollars.

I think people are seeing the sales and letting that put off their concerns (if they have them) about whether they will be compensated and when. I have to be honest - I have seen him get us out of some sticky situations by pivoting at the last minute. He used his industry experience to do that, which also contributed to the ability to even do that. It gives him a perception of knowing way more than anyone else, and so they are inclined to trust him when he says this compensation strategy will be acceptable. With this experience, he has an aura of wisdom that makes people feel almost foolish for broaching the subject of pay (I know, I've tried it).

What's doubly ironic is that he insists on air-tight contracts with suppliers and customers, and mentions it being okay to "bend them over" once in a while, since we're paying them and they're locked in. Yet, for an employee, I had to fight tooth and nail just to get the lame contract I have with him for pay.

Thank you everyone for your views. They confirm what I think I've known for a while, I just needed some experienced perspective to validate these thoughts. I think what's made me re-think many times is that I'm surrounded by 5 other people in this company, all of whom are about 10 years older than me except one, and they seem more than eager to step up and offer this guy their near full time allegiance unquestioningly. It makes me pause and say "am I not seeing something here? Am I just naturally more distrusting than these other guys I started with?" So I've slowed down and quadruple re-thought every time I was ready to walk, trying to see it from a different angle. Still, the nagging discomfort remains. Glad to know I'm not too off base.

Update: yesterday, CEO tells me he will offer the guy who started 2 weeks ago the same equity I have, because he's done "such a good job". He has been kicking it hard, it's true, and he does really well, but he's fresh, and the CEO's perspective is so skewed based on what's bright and shiny in front of him at the moment that he totally disregards the contribution of people working for him 7 months for free who got him to where he's at now.

The sad part is I think he knows this damn well, and his strategy well may be to operate a company on a string of trusting people who he will continue to cycle in as the disenchanted ones before them leave.