My Misadventures In A Start Up Ep.1

I will be writing a 2 part series of the marvellous misadventures of what happened in some startups I worked for. Names have been concealed to protect the identities of the persons who disrupted my career!

Before I got my current job, I faced many trials, mishaps and failures. My journey was filled with undulations, existential crises and imposter syndrome experiences.

Back in university, a friend of mine sent me an SMS explaining an internship being offered at the university. It dealt with software development. At the time, I was at home recovering from the cramming of exams. I read his text and rushed off to the place. It was a startup that built health solutions with a Health NGO. My friend and I were hired. It was fun, rigorous and engaging building IT health solutions that were actually being used on the ground in rural areas. I could see my tech skills building. The director of the NGO encouraged openness, hard work and growth. He always did his best to light up the place whenever he came to the office. This internship went on for a year and later it became a job after our final year. Just after graduation, the Health Solutions NGO decided to change things up a bit and offer us a paid master scholarship. Some of my friends jumped on the idea but I had none of it. I wanted to develop solutions not be in class. Plus I had already taken a diploma and degree in the same university. I needed a break! So, I rejected the offer. One lecturer had a sit down with me explaining why taking a masters is important and all that paraphernalia. I knew he was pushing the University’s agenda to have as many people in the newly made masters degree programme. The way he presented the programme was like we should either take the masters or take the masters! I looked the other way, and a good job was dropped by my hand. I was determined to get the new job.

Another friend of mine linked me to an e-commerce company. I was called for an interview, and was hired as a software developer instantly. I was shocked! I had some concerns, but I thought hey, here is an offer take it now! This was in November 2015. Things looked good and promising. A remote team handling the core platform, and we, the local team, handling UI/UX for the local market before being integrated into the company. We mostly built simple intuitive landing pages with products and categories which greatly improved the SEO of the platform. This went on for 3 months with promise of higher pay. I was in a team of 4 people in our R&D department. Our R&D manager, 1 designer and 2 backend developers. Though the other backend developer left, so 3 in a team. The e-commerce company was foreign and senior management was from a non-English speaking country.

Right off the bat, Communication became a huge barrier with some of the senior management staff. Simple words sounded so different; mispronounced words confused us entirely. But at least they knew some English. The remote development team struggled with the language. Our IT director too had a problem understanding the English we spoke. We really had to break down our sentences for him to understand. It was quite difficult and equally annoying. Explaining something as simple as why I should not use cookies in the browser or why we need an SSL certificate was like explaining to a 5 year old who already knew what you wanted to say but did not know how to say it. But I took it positively and we managed to fine-tune how to communicate with them.

3 months later, we intended to ask for a pay rise, because we delivered most of the time, and management appraised our work. We faced a back and forth of “let’s meet tomorrow”. Our R&D manager went personally to a senior manager and asked. Excuses left, right and center, but ultimately, nothing! We were also promised that we would integrate with the remote core development team. The most interesting response we got was from the global R&D Director with some decent English. I will use full english to make it easier for you.

R&D manager: We have not been doing any programming. What are the plans for the local team? You told us we will integrate with the remote team?

Global R&D Director: Ahhh we had not thought that far…

WHAT??!?

We were then tasked with integrating a mobile payment system API with the e-commerce platform. This I felt was the only real growth challenge I had in the company. The integration took a while as the mobile payment system API had sketchy documentation. Though we managed to pull through.

The remote team then developed a way to automatically make landing pages though it could have been made better. This meant we had a lot of free time from henceforth. A LOT. 3 months down the road no programming at all for the company from the R&D department.

I decided to do side projects on my own. It was nice of course because the pay-check kept coming in, but, it started to suck!

After 2 months of no work, the IT director approached me and told me he wanted me to develop a platform. A friend of his, let’s call him Mr.Outsider, was the project manager. I explained to him that the project is a conflict of interest as per the contract given to me.

“I help Mr.Outsider, because he once did for me favour, and I awe him one”

We went back and forth but he did not seem to understand. I ended up working on the project with utmost irritation. Mr.Outsider used to come to my desk to check on my progress. His English too was not good!

Sometime later our designer went for a CSS competition and ended up getting a job in Europe. We(R&D manager and I) were happy for him and we encouraged him to pack his bags and get the hell out. The IT Director then went back to his home country as he felt homesick. This I took as a golden chance to tell the IT Director that the project was a conflict of interest and I would not continue. But it quickly backfired as he got one foreign manager within the company to follow up my progress and translate any requirements to English for me. This did not work so well so I just told them to allow me to communicate with Mr.Outsider directly. At this point in time, the R&D manager left and I was left alone with an IT support guy.

I never touched any e-commerce platform code nor did I do any testing. They tried to involve me by asking me to perform acceptance testing for their mobile and web platforms. This worked but they were slow in implementing any changes I requested. My role was developing Mr.Outsiders’ project that was completely unrelated to the company and helping IT support. This happened for 5 months. 5 MONTHS. We did reach out to management several times to try and discuss why they did not include us into the core team but they kept saying

We are dealing with a few technical issues you may find it difficult to understand but we will integrate soon

In the last few months of 2016, many people had left the company.

In December 2016, I got a call from a guy, LookFresh offering a job. It was still e-commerce but I jumped at it. In addition to e-commerce, they also dealt with e-wallets. Much like PayPal. We organized an interview and we had a long discussion on my skills, what he had to offer and expectations. At this time I was sort of rusty but I knew I would catch up quickly. He wanted an e-commerce built in Django. I was not too fluent in Django and I mentioned it to him but I confidently told him I was willing to learn. He later sent me a contract. I wrote a resignation letter, signed Mr.LookFresh’s contract and I was out of the e-commerce company on December 31st 2016.

The next part is here Ep.2