Once upon a time, I stayed at a start-up until the day it closed the doors. It was my first “real” job out of college, so I did not know yet then what I have learned by now. All I knew as a fresh-faced youth was two things:

1. Jobs were tough to get (thanks, recession).
2. I had various bills to pay (student loan debt, along with the bills folks accumulate).

When a contract gig I had hoped would turn into something permanent did not pan out, I decided I should work with a recruiter. She helped place me at a start-up that was doing start-up things, and I made it my goal to turn into a salaried employee. I did what I was asked to do, and then some, and I guess I impressed the folks I was working for because they decided to pay the recruiter to convert me to their payroll.

I kept at it, and things were great for a bit, I was making steady cash and I had perks that come with being an employee: medical insurance, a company laptop, paid lunches every now and then. You know, the stuff that is supposed to keep good workers loyal so they don’t abandon ship for a better offer at an established company. However, I didn’t know this, and just thought I had a sweet gig and was doing what I could to keep it.

In retrospect, the writing was on the wall that things were floundering at the start-up. It started with some lead developers leaving. Then there were some layoffs. After one of them, I got merged into the engineering department, and the person who was set to supervise me asked me to give a run-down of my usual day. I listed off all the tasks I was in charge of that I could remember, to which they responded,

“No wonder they’ve kept you around, you’re doing almost everything!”

It struck me as odd that in a company small enough as this start-up (seriously, less than 10 people in the office by this point), where I saw this person daily, they’d have no idea what I was doing.

Eventually the announcement was made that the doors would be closing for good.

It was a devastating blow for me. In part because I’d invested so much of myself in the job, hoping that the start-up would succeed. One of the hats I’d wear was community manager, and I knew we had customers/users/clients (call them what you want, at the end of the day they’re people) who loved what we were doing. It seemed crazy to me at the time that with millions of people digging what we were making, we’d have to pack up and disappoint them.

Afterwards, the recession wasn’t any better and I struggled to find a job. No one tells you that there’s a stigma in the Valley with being someone who stays until doors close. You can interview a billion times, the question eventually comes up about why you left, and if you’re honest (I didn’t know better to not be completely honest) you don’t get called back. There’s this idea lurking in the background that maybe your failure is contagious.

I had to leave the start-up world entirely to find steady employment. I’m not complaining, it’s how I found myself in law school and back in start-ups. However, I figure I’d share what I’ve learned in my time away from the industry, because not every start-up leads to success.