Fake it til you make it bro. I guarantee you every single one of those suit jacket/t-shirt/sneaker guys is. Look at the WeWork douche. That could be you!

Startup culture is like little kid fights on the playground. Nothing matters except attitude (and being young and looking the part - which you have). The kid who thinks he's toughest can bully a kid twice his size.

You got a battlefield promotion - at least that damn well better be what your resume says because that's defacto what happened. That's huge.

I assumed that the "upper management" position wasn't a startup. If not, I'd add to my list of startup red flags: "when startups have upper management" positions.

Suzzer, I think your startup takes aren't particularly accurate. Not that there aren't instances, but I don't think it's actually the norm. It also seems like the prevailing attitudes are starting to turn against the people like Adam Neumman (who knows if it actually is).

So is this new company going to cover all of you and your team's owed back pay jmakin?

Yes. “Upper management” is probably a bad term for the other opportunity but I’d be managing a team of project managers for a mid sized very successful startup. I got a strong, strong recommendation letter for that one.

My idea there since I’m obviously not qualified was to join on in a lower position because I like the company a lot.

Well I saw about 1000 wanna be Adam Neumans running around at the AWS conference - all having important business conversations in their sneakers, t-shirts and sport jackets. Gotta be some market left for them.

I worked with one who had a story about being in Marissa Meyer's hot tub that he made sure to break out to anyone he first met. I came to realize that having a Sili Valley "player" on your team was vital - even if he's a dumbass.

But I'm not suggesting that role for Jmakin - I'm just suggesting he could easily parlay an inflated title at a rogue startup into something similar, or fast track position at a real startup.

I'd bet money that's most of the sneaker guys at AWS did it. At least the ones who didn't go to Harvard or Stanford.

Jmakin is also young, not fat, white, and not bad-looking. Not that any of those except young are deal-breakers. But they don't hurt.

There's no such thing as being unqualified for management at a startup. I've been managed by people who were a significant downgrade from a chimp.

IT'S ALL BULLSHIT at 95% of startups. And everyone there knows it. They're just hoping to sell to a greater fool. Just keep hopping from stone to stone until you land on something solid.

Your anecdote about ReInvent is just "I think everybody in sneakers, t-shirt, and sport jacket" is an Adam Neumann wannabe and I saw a bunch of people in "sneakers, t-shirts, and sports jackets" therefore there were a bunch of Adam Neumann's running around.

I've spent more than my fair share of time talking to people at conferences like ReInvent (and including ReInvent) and I don't think your take is very accurate. But I suppose that's just an anecdote too... so who knows.

There's definitely such a thing as being unqualified for management at a startup. Again, there are obviously bad startups, but there are also a whole lot of good ones. This is especially true of startups that get past a significant amount of funding/revenue.

I realize we've probably had very different startup experiences, so who knows, maybe I'm totally misguided.

When you see a group of people (startup bros) who have more silly cliques and dress codes than high school students, it's hard to take them seriously - even if they do control millions of dollars in investor money. Remember when everyone had to wear a hoodie because Zuck wore one?

I think what suzzer is saying is that the group of people who can turn a pile of VC money into something that resembles a business is much larger than the group of people who can turn such a business looking thingy into a sustainable enterprise. I think even VCs understand and accept this because they expect 80%+ of their investments to turn into zeroes. The market opportunity, if it's the right one, is more likely to determine investment success than the team behind it.

It also means that delivering a viable product is secondary to delivering something that looks like a product, and seeming to be "on track" - because your primary goal is to exit with a few $100M or w/e.

Once you go that route everything changes.

Instead of hiring the best developer you can, you worry about how many ex-FAANG developers you can brag about to potential investors.

You worry about your devs looking the part. Can't tour the facilities and let investors see a bunch of fossils. Gotta have snacks and toys - but not too much.

Even if you don't have enough work to go around, you hire more devs because your growth plan says you should be at X at this point.

There are tons more. When making a truly viable product becomes a secondary goal, and instead you're just trying to annoy google so much they buy you out for talent and shut down your product, everything goes upside down.

Above all you can't have shlubby-looking C-level olds in freaking dress shoes, or mom jeans. And these guys always have a mini-me who looks just like them.

That's what jmakin should shoot for imo. Up-and-comer from outside the standard elite-school-senior-year-dropout club. Earned his way up through the school of hard knocks and battlefield promotions. Kept his cool as his company melted down around him. W/o being a Stanford drop out - you're probably capped at upper management and can't break into the C-level. But that's still pretty good.

Suzzer,

I think you're trying to entertain us for the most part but whatever truth there is in your advice seems quite inappropriate for jmakin.

First of all, most bullshit artists are just that and won't amount to much - they go from one thing to another without being able to build upon anything concrete and end up having an unfulfilling career somewhere between an outright fraud and a legitimate salesperson. I think jmakin has a substantially higher career ceiling than that. Second, most people that are able to make something out of this are usually far more than a stereotype. Not everyone who looks like a wannabe is and successful wannabes often have redeeming qualities. Third, even those that are on the lacking substance extreme end of the spectrum, if you only look at the most successful out of them, they have certain traits that jmakin demonstrably lacks at the moment. Drive, confidence, discipline, that sort of thing. Not the kind that comes and goes. Others have connections, wealth, credentials, extraordinary intelligence, and so on. Jmakin, as far as I can tell is a fairly ordinary person trying to make an ordinary life - he's not wealthy, doesn't have great connections, ordinary credentials far from anything that will impress, questionable discipline, ordinary drive, wavering self belief and so on. I think he can figure it all out given time, but rushing this won't help and he needs to deal with the reality as it exists first.

Even on a superficial level, looking entirely from outside, he's pretty much the farthest thing from the archetype you're talking about. He's the opposite of a young hot shot - if I recall correctly, he's kind of old for where he is in life, he's not impressive on paper, he's not willing to hustle, except when it doesn't require much effort and he's not savvy like those kids that truly made something from nothing, or had excellence guidance all throughout their youth and knew how to pitch to investors in high school. He does not look the part, not even close. The average Harvard dropout, wannabe Zuck at 22 years old, as hopeless as his startup's fate may be, looks and is substantially better than jmakin across just about every dimension that matters you can think of. He's never going to be able to look the part, literally. Instead, he needs to, eventually, be the adult in the room and that career scenario generally requires him to be a late-bloomer with substance. And to develop that substance, he needs to be in a situation where he can focus on that. Trying to be something he's not is just feeding the demons IMO.

I don’t think that’s what he’s saying at all. What you said is obviously true. But the failure rate isn’t because the people getting investment money are all a bunch of bro’s that are incompetent and don’t know what they’re doing.


Edit: His next post is what I mean. I don’t think he has an accurate view of most tech companies or the reason that they fail or their motivations.

Yeah but Jmakin looks the part. So yeah mostly I'm encouraging him to act like something he's not. Not super serious.

But if he did just wake up and say I'm gonna pad the **** out of my resume and make it sound like I single-handedly kept this company afloat and got recognized big time for it by my superiors. Then start faking it until he makes it - he could get some kind of sweet management gig and be tagged as an up and comer. Seeing chaos first hand is actually really valuable. He's got combat experience.


JJ - you've been really lucky. 99% of the internet economy is utter bullshit - always has been since the mid 90s. That's why when you meet someone who actually delivers on what they say they're going to do - you hold on to them for dear life.

Unless - you're just looking to exit like that side job I had - then you're just trying to make some crappy prototype to pull in more investors that might as well just be an invision mockup.

Not that there's less BS in the big corporate world. But they do manage to at least deliver a product usually, and there is a modicum of accountability if you just can't cut it. Every startup I've ever gotten familiar with was just hand-waving BS.

Now some of the ones I interviewed with actually seemed decent to me - basically the ones that had a small profitable niche and weren't just looking to be the uber of w/e. Like one did rent collection. That's boring and unsexy and they seemed like they had their **** together.

man, candybar, I appreciate a lot of the things you're saying and you're pretty close to the mark on a lot of them but very wrong about a few - I don't know how you can say I lack drive or hustle when I went from making $7/hr to $50/hr in the space of 5 years while obtaining a good degree. Doubling my salary multiple times in the meantime.

I also worked full time in a demanding/stressful job, got straight A's from a good school(s).

There's a few other things you're way wrong about but I'll just say for myself that I've been in a severe depressive rut, so my recent writings about myself are not on-character at all. I sense you're extrapolating a lot from that.

IRL I conduct myself much differently than on here. I can fake a lot of stuff very well, including confidence. I think it is one of my biggest strengths as well as my biggest weakness currently. I think I accidentally talked my way into a job I very much wasn't prepared for and I don't intend to make that mistake again because I think this nearly killed me.

Hint: most of those other guys are bigger imposters than you are.

The good news, anyway, is that the possible acquiring company does not want managers and wants me to be an engineer. So it's my hottest prospect currently.

Engineer is better anyway - then you get piss on the boss' desk clout.

T-shirt/jacket/sneaker up-and-comer > engineer >>>> replaceable PM who gets none of the credit and all the blame.

Don't really listen to anything I say btw. Unless it resonates. Then go for it.

I think you're both right about a lot of things. I think your view of a startup is 100% my view right now from my perspective. But I don't work for a very great startup, if I am being honest. That's evident to a lot of you but it wasn't to me for a little while. Call me delusional but I would love to start my own startup someday. It's one of the only dreams I have for myself - I should probably abandon it but it's still there for now.

Good for you, but in the grand scheme of things, that's fairly ordinary - there are far more competitive, far more driven people who are willing to do anything to succeed. There are people your age that started life in a far worse situation than you did and by your age, have law degrees from Yale and are partners at top law firms and make millions. Some of my most successful classmates from school were well known in their fields by the time they were 30. Your drive, work ethic, whatever you call it is not in their vicinity. Also, you can't just arbitrarily skip the part of your life that put you in that kind of hole to begin with. People that are very successful at a young age are that way because they're incredibly privileged or simply did as much work as you did in 30 or whatever years by the time they turned 16. Or simply a lot more gifted.

Consider how many better schools there are around the world and how many thousands of people graduate from these schools every year. There are very few really successful startups, most fail. It' like being a great athlete in high school - there are lots of great high school athletes - almost no one makes it to the pros.

I don't know that much about you but you simply can't be that driven, and like not even bother to get a job while being clearly aware that your company is going nowhere. It's so obvious you often know what it is that you should to do but lack the drive to actually do it. And "severe depressive rut" is part of who you are, don't pretend it's some external thing that you can diassociate from. Again, the totality of your life experiences led you to where you are - I don't need to know that much more about you beyond your current predicament and rough age to conclude that you have not, so far in your life, been particularly driven. And that's okay - you can do better. But you do better by acknowledging where you stand, not patting yourself on the back for being so awesome.

This is what I mean - drive, confidence and discipline, not the kind that comes and goes.

If the bar in which I am being measured against is the top .0001% of people, then you have given me a compliment.

He absolutely does not. You cannot be over about 26-27, not have had substantial career success and still be a young hot shot or even plausibly cosplay one, that's not a thing. I mean wannabes aside, startups are a winner-take-all type of game with very few big winners. I forget if he's late 20's or early 30's and that's a point where hot shots have already some kind of an exit, or managing thousands or people or something along those lines. The best possible scenario for him is a late-bloomer.

Successful people aren't this stupid. This does not work at any kind of functional place. The problem with trying fool people is that you end up working with fools. By overstating his qualifications, he would effectively be selecting for bad companies. At any kind of real company, he's not a senior engineer, he's not a lead and he doesn't know how to manage people. All these require actual expertise that is not hard to discern and to the extent that some people can fake it, jmakin doesn't have the background to do it in a realistic way to any company that is going to succeed. A company that is easily fooled by one fraud is likely also being fooled by other frauds - a company is more likely successful if it's not full of fools and frauds.

That's the point, this is the world suzzer is describing - top top people and a bunch of wannabes that are pretending to be. To be successful in either endeavor, you have to work extremely hard. Look any game that's got hundreds of millions or even billions at stake, people are going to bring their A game.

This isn't delusional but it's certainly not where you are right now and not something you should focus on given where you are in your career. Suzzer's claims aside, you're not particularly marketable as it stands but you can be in the future, especially in the type of market that values domain expertise and experience over young hot shots. But to succeed, you need to 1) acquire some kind of actual, demonstrable expertise in something concrete and 2) be in a better place mentally and have control over your emotions such that you can consistently just do what needs to be done, instead of putting them off and always having a convenient excuse.

Also, my experience is that this is actually a fairly strong signal - ex-FAANG (including other big names like MS/Uber/Dropbox/etc) engineers are going to have more options and be more discerning about whom they work for and whom they work with. In the bay area, there's a truckload of them, so both investors and prospective employees should be somewhat suspicious of companies that aren't able attract this level of talent. Because if you're in the bay area and hiring "the best" - you're going to invariably end up with lots of ex big tech folks. If not, it's going to be because you're unable to attract them.

This is nonsense. It wasn’t true at the height of the dot com bubble and it isn’t true now.

Again, there’s a non trivial amount of bullshitters and bullshit companies. Is it the majority, not at all. Is it the majority of companies that are even remotely serious (raised significant money) definitely not.