Reminds me a little of one of my first jobs out of college, where the tiny startup I worked for had three founders, each of whom would often give me conflicting instructions. The lead partner was a brilliant visionary who was an amazing editor but incapable of giving actual initial instructions of what he wanted, so I'd be given the roughest idea of what he needed, go off and produce a polished version of it, and then get the most awful harsh criticism explaining exactly what I should have produced, usually with hand-drawn art of how it should look (but what he couldn't possibly tell me) in the first place. Things like "move this header one pixel to the right." Meantime, he'd tell me my priority was x, then y, then z, while partner #2 would tell me it was really y, then a, then b, then x, and so on. Took me a long time to learn to not take the criticism personally and to recognize that my time was best spent doing a VERY rough initial draft under the guise of "making sure I'm on the right track," since I knew it was psychologically impossible for him to think whatever I did on my own was actually right.
Lasted 18 months before I quit and went back to a tech support job. They were all shocked I was leaving and had no idea I'd constantly been worried I was about to be fired because I was always displeasing at least two of the three. I came back a year later to replace a mid-level manager under the condition that I only take direction from the lead partner. That was 27 years ago; I'm still there, now running the place, having outlasted them all.
You're right, you're not broken. There are too many places with people "in charge" who don't know what they're doing, don't know how to communicate, and don't know how to treat the people they retain. I'm sorry this happened, but it's on them, not you.
Ah yes, the ol’ “we want a visionary!” routine—right until you actually have a vision. Then it’s: why are you thinking so much? Just build the pretty rectangles already.
Last year I got hired at a startup where the onboarding doc was a Slack message that said, “Your laptop’s under the CFO’s desk. Password is ‘password’.” Day 2, the CEO asks me why the React app I’ve never seen before doesn’t have payments integrated. I ask, “Do we have Stripe set up?” He says, “Is that a requirement?”
By week three, I realized I was the only engineer who’d actually used Git. One guy was version-controlling with Google Drive. I wish I were kidding.
Anyway, I was let go because I “wasn’t aligned with the hustle mindset.” Apparently, asking what the product does and who it’s for is toxic negativity now.
Here’s the real kicker: the person who replaced me rewrote everything in jQuery. I checked LinkedIn a month later—company shut down.
The industry is full of losers who have never worked at a real company before. Fuck if I know how they get funding for this shit.
Reminds me a little of one of my first jobs out of college, where the tiny startup I worked for had three founders, each of whom would often give me conflicting instructions. The lead partner was a brilliant visionary who was an amazing editor but incapable of giving actual initial instructions of what he wanted, so I'd be given the roughest idea of what he needed, go off and produce a polished version of it, and then get the most awful harsh criticism explaining exactly what I should have produced, usually with hand-drawn art of how it should look (but what he couldn't possibly tell me) in the first place. Things like "move this header one pixel to the right." Meantime, he'd tell me my priority was x, then y, then z, while partner #2 would tell me it was really y, then a, then b, then x, and so on. Took me a long time to learn to not take the criticism personally and to recognize that my time was best spent doing a VERY rough initial draft under the guise of "making sure I'm on the right track," since I knew it was psychologically impossible for him to think whatever I did on my own was actually right.
Lasted 18 months before I quit and went back to a tech support job. They were all shocked I was leaving and had no idea I'd constantly been worried I was about to be fired because I was always displeasing at least two of the three. I came back a year later to replace a mid-level manager under the condition that I only take direction from the lead partner. That was 27 years ago; I'm still there, now running the place, having outlasted them all.
You're right, you're not broken. There are too many places with people "in charge" who don't know what they're doing, don't know how to communicate, and don't know how to treat the people they retain. I'm sorry this happened, but it's on them, not you.
Ugh, so sorry Ernie. Glad you've had good takeaways from this.
Ah yes, the ol’ “we want a visionary!” routine—right until you actually have a vision. Then it’s: why are you thinking so much? Just build the pretty rectangles already.
Last year I got hired at a startup where the onboarding doc was a Slack message that said, “Your laptop’s under the CFO’s desk. Password is ‘password’.” Day 2, the CEO asks me why the React app I’ve never seen before doesn’t have payments integrated. I ask, “Do we have Stripe set up?” He says, “Is that a requirement?”
By week three, I realized I was the only engineer who’d actually used Git. One guy was version-controlling with Google Drive. I wish I were kidding.
Anyway, I was let go because I “wasn’t aligned with the hustle mindset.” Apparently, asking what the product does and who it’s for is toxic negativity now.
Here’s the real kicker: the person who replaced me rewrote everything in jQuery. I checked LinkedIn a month later—company shut down.
The industry is full of losers who have never worked at a real company before. Fuck if I know how they get funding for this shit.
Ugh. Well that sucks. But I’m proud of you for having a good perspective on things. Hang in there.
Sorry to hear, but it's obviously their loss and you'll hopefully get a better chance elsewhere.