Building a startup? You are doing it wrong.

Marina L.
Marina L.
Jul 27, 2017 · 6 min read
Vintage Computer Festival

We’ve all been there. Your awesome new gig looks so good on paper but when you do actually quit your job/relocate/basically start your life over to join it, turns out to be the worst ducking nightmare.

I slipped once and took that job, you guys. From the legacy code to the terrible business decisions, everything about it was such a disappointment. I couldn’t help but wonder what I had gotten myself into. Looking back, the only good thing about it was the valuable lessons I received in how NOT to build startups. I would like to share it with you, my fellow devs. Be safe out there! Yours always, Marina.

Here’s What Happens When Your Startup Stinks 💩:


1. Setting up your development environment takes 8+ hours.

The last person who tried, quit after two weeks. (true story)

2. Their JIRA board looks like a nuclear disaster.

Their active sprint has been rolling since 2014.

3. They rewrote the legacy ASP.NET app from scratch in JRuby, and they’re rewriting it again in React.

It’s been three years.

4. Nobody in the company has seen, or used the product that they are building.

ASP.NET’s still going strong.

5. Setting up Gulp in the new project is ongoing since last December.

So much for what Webpack could have accomplished right out of the box.

6. They put each React component into its own Rails view.

7. Their node_modules where last updated during the Crusades.

`npm update` if you dare.

8. The estimate for every feature is 2 weeks.

It’s been three years.

9. They signed up for an insane amount of Amazon services, such as DataSift, RedShift, Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS, and more.

They pulled them in the project, and they might even use them… in two weeks.

10. Deployments.

There is a bash script that somebody wrote two years ago, who no longer works here. Type ~./deploy_to_prod.sh in the console and hit Enter. Oh, wait, somebody just air dropped you their .env file. Make use of it. Good luck.

11. They opted for JRuby because it integrates with Java.

Java::JavaLang::RuntimeException (com.headius.invokebinder.InvalidTransformException: java.lang.IllegalAccessException: no such method:

Also, Java integration? Never happened.

12. Their JRuby version is 1.7.11 and they are too scared to upgrade it.

They are now stuck with the least stable, outdated build of JRuby that is no longer maintained or supported.

13. They drop at least $5k a month on Amazon RDS and EC2 instances.

And let them sit idle.

14. However, it’s taking forever to get a promotion.

Because they are anxious to “cut expenses”.

15. The EC2 instances are the largest size possible, though.

[insert small penis joke here]

16. They hire a dev fresh off the bootcamp.

And they offer him a starting salary that is only marginally lower than yours (8+ years experience, CS degree, female).

17. When you point out any problem with the code your boss’s reaction is always ‘We need to dry it up a little.’

Also, famous last words before he got fired two months later.

18. And what about that Gulp task that circularly includes Bootstrap dependency in a stylesheet about a bajillion times?

This too shall pass.

19. By the way, this is the reason why running Gulp fails intermittently.

They already accepted it as one of the inherent wonders of life.

20. They hired a third-party agency to develop a mobile version of the app.

But they haven’t started on the API yet.

21. I lied. They did start on the API, but are still trying to get Twitter authentication to work.

You find versions of AuthenticationController with the chunks of the commented out code and sit quietly and wonder how much pain your predecessor must’ve gone through. It takes you an hour, a Ruby gem and 10 lines of code to make it work — afterwards they hail you as their new Messiah.

22. The best part…

When they expect the mobile folks to define API JSON response shapes for them, and get pissed when they get pissed. ❤

23. They are all about Agile methodology.

Yet, there are no epics, sprint planning, burndowns, properly defined stories, or even an assigned product owner. And their SCRUMS are, possibly, the saddest thing you’ve seen in your entire life.

24. Nobody knows anything.

Including the fact that their Frankenapp is not going to work anytime soon due to the gaping holes in functionality.

25. About once a week your boss requests you to build an Amazon SQS queue.

What is up with this weird obsession with Amazon services??

26. As a person who’s been there a week, you are also asked to implement the very critical feature that will be demoed to investors. Nobody knows when.

When you finish right in time for the demo because you are awesome, it is the only thing that works in the entire app.

27. They never miss their morning Starbucks run.

Never. Period.

28. When you are getting ready to leave at 6pm, your boss suggests you work longer hours, starting tomorrow.

You get pissed and miss a Starbucks run the next day. The entire team is freaking out, “Nobody breaks the morning Starbucks routine!”

29. They’d like you to pull an all-nighter before an important demo to demonstrate team spirit.

The next day all the night fixes must be reverted because they caused more critical issues and everybody takes a day off. Every.freaking.time.

30. Afterwards, they claim that it had only happened once or twice before you arrived, overall, it’s a slow-paced work environment.

In the next 2 weeks, you pull three more all-nighters.

31. Add your own experiences in the responses below!

I’ll be waiting patiently…


Hi, I’m Marina, the writer of thangs, tech and non-tech. I’m pleased to report that I narrowly escaped the horrors of my gig thanks to my exceptional luck (as always). The entire team was actually rebuilt from scratch only about two months in after I was hired. We’re kicking ass now. Rewrote (and released!) the entire app in Cobol…just kiddin’…in Node.js. It’s basically like Happily Tech Ever After(…aww) which gives me the opportunity to look back at this whole experience with an [evil] smile.

n3rdiii blog

Blog about Web Development

Marina L.

Written by

Marina L.

Tech, travel, and fitness.

n3rdiii blog

Blog about Web Development

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