- a coworker and close friend was moving into management. Went poorly. We both left within six months. We had worked incredibly well together as peers.
- I joined a startup where, unbeknownst to me, the engineer who became CTO and an early hire were best friends since college. The early hire became an engineering director. He was awful. His reports knew it. We had to humor him and stop him from making bad decisions when we could. Eventually he stopped being involved in engineering, and stuck to strategy discussions with his buddy the CTO.
That company recently made headlines for hosting image generating models fine-tuned to generate CP. The founders knew about it for months beforehand. It was their only paying customer after $100MM venture capital, so they kept with it until the news came out.
I joined a startup recently (it was > 18 months ago at this point). It seemed promising but it was also strange...
I interviewed with the Engineering Director and a manager. Then I had a couple of rounds with ICs. Everything seemed great. I got an offer and accepted it.
When I started, though, one of the people who, during interviews was presented to me as an IC, was now my manager. They had an associate title. I tried to work through it. It was fucking horrible. It was hard but I walked from that job without anything lined up.
By the end of my employment there, I had learned that the entire C-suite was all friends through previous employment. That Director and the original manager were best friends from high school. The associate manager was also a friend of theirs from high school. The Ops/Infra director was also a friend of theirs from high school. And on and on it went.
- a coworker and close friend was moving into management. Went poorly. We both left within six months. We had worked incredibly well together as peers.
- I joined a startup where, unbeknownst to me, the engineer who became CTO and an early hire were best friends since college. The early hire became an engineering director. He was awful. His reports knew it. We had to humor him and stop him from making bad decisions when we could. Eventually he stopped being involved in engineering, and stuck to strategy discussions with his buddy the CTO.
That company recently made headlines for hosting image generating models fine-tuned to generate CP. The founders knew about it for months beforehand. It was their only paying customer after $100MM venture capital, so they kept with it until the news came out.