Monday, December 19, 2016

Why to not work in a startup in Sweden (part 2)

This is part 2 of 4 on the positives and negatives on working in a startup in Sweden.  You might wish to read about part 1 first.

Since joining a startup in Sweden, it has been nothing sort of a slow sinking Titanic.  I'm glad to say that I'll be leaving for greener pastures and have learnt a lot during these 7 insufferable months.  Let's try to create the timeline events leading up to this point.

May
Resignations: 0
I joined on the 8th of May and spent pretty much the first month looking for an apartment.  Was introduced to the team including two additional people who I have not met previously, a Macedonian, let's call him "Mocka" and a Russian, let's call him "Pushkin".  There was also an Egyptian named "Mohammed" and a Bangladeshi, let's call him "Shafiq".  I thought things were a bit weird with Shafiq when he was asking me pretty simple questions that I knew as a graduate, but cast that aside.  These 5 were part of the development team, including me.  And the team leader, let's call him "Lenin", was in Russia for "personal reasons".  So 6 in total, but there were no Swedes in the team, which was a big red flag to me.  We also had a marketing team, but let's put that aside.  Our product manager was called "Fred", his real name.

June
Resignations: 0
I went galloping around London and Belgium, moved into my new apartment and witnessed the first disastrous deployment of the company's website where nothing worked.  I have never witnessed such insanity in all of my working professional career.  Mocka and I looked were looking a problem when the website was deployed only to be told by Fred that it was a "waste of time for two people to be looking at a problem".  Lenin, our great team leader in Russia, asked me to write a document on how to improve the process, which I did.



Pretends to know about software development.

July
Resignations: 0
I lodged my first formal complaint against Lenin.  And note that I have never lodged any complaints against anyone in all of my working career.  But this insanity just had to stop.  Lenin was making crazy changes without doing any testing, on production servers.  As a matter of fact, everyone in my team had started to complain against Lenin.  Fred, our product manager, said that "something will be done in the next few months".

August
Resignations: 0
I helped Shafiq with some QA tests during this month and started to work on getting proper cloud deployment working.  Meanwhile Lenin continued his shenanigans.  We also hired another Egyptian, let's call him Balsam.

September
Resignations: 1 (Anne)
I went to Singapore and continued with the work I was doing.  Whilst I was there we had a "technical conference" on the disaster in the company, and I attended via Skype.  The owner of the company had come down, let's call him Dizzy and his good friend and CTO, Harry.  Basically there was an argument on whether or not we should rewrite the platform.  Mocka voted yes, since he really disliked Lenin.  I was rather indifferent.  To me the problem was Lenin, and he had to be got rid of, fast.  But what happened was that Dizzy and Harry decided that it was okay to do a rewrite of the current platform.  They then disappeared for a week.  Meanwhile we had our first resignation from the marketing team, a sign of things to come.


Goodbye Anne.

October
Resignations: 1 (Balsam)
Mocka was made tech lead, Pushkin was made architect, and I was made scrum master.  This was all done without consultation of the other members of the engineering team.  For me I was very familiar with scrum, so it was a natural choice, but for the rest, Dizzy decided to just "let them be".  Also Dizzy and Harry decided to become permanent members of the team.  They lived in Gothenburg, the west side of Sweden and started to spend at least 3 days a week in the office.  Big red flag, when your boss decides to come into the office everyday, you know it's going to be bad, real bad.  Dizzy asked who should be in the team, and Mocka determined that me, him, Pushkin will be the "core team".  Mohammed was later added after he changed his mind.  Shafiq and Balsam were to be made redundant because of Mocka's opinion, and Dizzy believed Mocka's words to be true.  Balsam was the first casualty to go.  He lasted a whopping two months.  The core team would be working on the new platform, whereas Lenin and Shafiq were to be working on the old platform.  Meanwhile Mocka tells Dizzy that we need more people.  Dizzy, Mocka, Harry and me start writing job specifications for the new positions.  Dizzy the owner starts thinking of "grand visions" like creating a complete management system for musicians.  Every cheers hurrah even though this has never been tested.  The "old music distribution" platform will be made redundant after the "new one" is released.  "Fee-fee", the co-owner decides to pump more money into the company.


Goodbye Balsam.

November
Resignations: 2 (Klara, Shafiq)
I went on my scrum master certification course.  Arguments broke out between Mohammed and Mocka.  Mocka pretty much thinks he knows everything.  Meanwhile I'm trying to keep it together in the team.  In the middle of the month, another person, let's call her Klara, from the marketing team resigned abruptly.  Shafiq at the end of the month was being forced out.  Another two bite the dust.  Mocka the non racist decides that Canadians and Americans should not be hired in the company, and he only looks for Eastern Europeans profiles.  Fred the product manager has been writing user stories all this time, but we have no real solid product, or have even started to create a solid product.


Mocka start building the Eastern European wall.

December
Resignations: 4 (Lenin, Anders, Mohammed, Me)
It all started so innocently like other months.  Then on a Friday after work Mohammed informs me that Lenin had resigned with immediate effect.  Since they kicked out Shafiq, there was now no one working on the "old platform".  An emergency meeting was held on the following Monday where they called in the previous consultants who worked on the "old platform" to support it.  But they had no idea on how the "old platform" worked thanks to the shenanigans of Lenin.  Shamefully Dizzy the owner had to call Shafiq back to assist in supporting the old platform, and Shafiq was so nice he had to say yes (yes karma does come and bite you in the ass).  In fact Dizzy didn't even have the face to call Shafiq, instead he sent him a message on Facebook.  Meanwhile Pushkin disappears for 2 weeks saying he was "working remotely" while doing no code check-ins.  Mocka knows this is happening, yet defends him.  I was pissed off at his leadership and completely unprofessional behaviour.  Pushkin was becoming the pet of Mocka.  Pushkin and Mocka never show up to work on time.  On the 14th of December, Anders from operations abruptly resigns on the day of the Xmas party.  After the Xmas party people got drunk, and the VP of marketing, let's call him Goose, casually mentions that "he wasn't happy being in this sort of environment".  I anticipate a future resignation in the future when it comes to Goose.  The next day Mohammed resigns, citing "personal reasons".  Come Tuesday morning I will announce my resignation.

So a total of 8 people have been kicked out/resigned and it's not even the end of the month yet.  This is coming from a team of now, less than 20 people.  After I leave there will be only Mocka and Pushkin left in the engineering team.  It's all going down in...


Flames flames flames!

On the plus side, a Ukrainian named "Igor" came into our offices and it looks like he will be joining early next year because he is approved by Mocka.  Surely Dizzy will be happy as well.  There would be more dogs in the company than engineers very soon.  I would love to see how this goes in the coming months but I have better fish to fry.

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