It’s very unlikely that the chief executive of an established company would see an advert on the way to work and immediately decide to use it as the basis for an entirely new go-to-market strategy, work on which must begin the second they arrive at the office. In a startup, all it takes for that to happen on a regular basis is for the person in charge to be a capricious narcissist with terrible recency bias: which, as luck would have it, our chief executive was.
A startup founder’s personality problems can manifest themselves in a variety of ways: pathological lying to interviewees and customers about the product; wildly contradictory decision-making; and the voicing of a million ridiculous ideas, every single one of which demands a response. (And because all the ideas are generally so hysterically unworkable, pointless or illegal – or all three – the response tends to be no, which of course means that you are the problem. Again.)
Unable to prioritise, it didn’t really matter what one particular startup boss I worked for was doing as long as he was doing something. Hunched over a computer, the boss in question would assault the keyboard as though his intended target was the desk beneath it. Read out of context you would be forgiven for thinking his emails had been written by somebody well into their third decade of being kept behind a false wall.
Doing battle with a mind untethered from reality required superhuman patience and resilience. All of us became the de facto quality control department for his unfiltered thoughts. You either had to say no creatively, so that it sounded like yes, or no directly, which made you the problem, the blocker and merely the latest in a long line of obstructions to his grand vision. In reality we were a team of firefighters led by an arsonist.
This isn’t to say startups can’t be fun places to work, or do great things for economies and societies – of course they can. But they operate completely at the mercy of their founders and first few employees. If you’re incredibly lucky, those people will be some of the lesser-spotted pioneering visionaries you’ve heard so much about. In the meantime, watch out for the more commonplace fiends foaming at the prospect of you joining their whimsical dance into oblivion.
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The secret life of a startup employee: it’s like being a firefighter led by an arsonist
Startupism
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/151053144852
