Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Why to not work in a startup in Sweden (part 3)

This is part 3 of 4 on the positives and negatives on working in a startup in Sweden.  You might wish to read about part 1 first.

As mentioned previously the timeline leading to today have caused me to leave the Titanic.  Here are the reasons why I will not work in this particular startup ever again.

Lack of money
During my first interview I asked the CEO about the finances of the company.  He pretty much told me that if they spent nothing on marketing they have enough money to last one year.  Which means the company will continuously need funding.  That is not a good sign.  Money (Capital) is the lifeblood of any company.  But I thought it might be a good experience to join anyway, since I have never been in a true startup environment.


But please, work for me anyway!

Lack of professional staff
Everyone is rather young and inexperienced but have fancy titles.  "Head of this" and "Head of that". But their attitudes showed otherwise.  The marketing department was spending 2000 US a day on campaign ads, and had only 15 new clients to show.  Are you serious?  Also Lenin the "leader" of the development team was a true joke who had no idea of even what continuous deployment is.


Believe me I know what continuous deployment is even though I've never used a computer!

Lack of founder vision
"Dizzy" the company founder had previously founded failed startups.  That is a huge red flag to me.  In fact I would have never joined had I found out.  Sure he might have money, but a fool and his money are soon parted.  He even hired previous failures from his startups to the present company.  Good thing he has his buddy "Fee-fee" to supply him with more money to burn.  In 2008 the company was only 3 people and has remained that size until early 2015 when for some reason "Dizzy" decided to do rapid expansion.  And why again?


Opps...

Low salaries and zero benefits
The salaries pretty much suck.  I'm probably one of the highest paid there, which is not saying much, but their salaries suck.  As one working in a large company making billions, you will make more than the "Head of XXX" in any small company almost for certain.  Plus you will also get other benefits.  Another red flag that I saw was the lack of any Swedish engineers in the company, probably they are aware that the salaries suck in the company.


Enough said...

Alienation
If you do not speak Swedish or are part of a minority in your team, you will be alienated.  Nowhere have I seen this to be more obvious than where I am now.  We have the Eastern European room thanks to the efforts of Mocka, the Swedish office, and the room for "the rest" which is me and Mohammed.  Sure they might pretend to speak English when you are mingling with them but for the rest of the time you will be alienated.  This is what I really miss about working in Australia, where it was truly international as everyone spoke English all the time regardless of race.  I'm not blaming the Swedes for speaking Swedish, but it is obvious that they prefer Swedish just like how the Chinese prefer to speak Chinese, but this only builds a wall between them and the non-Swedes.  If you are joining a startup in Swedish, make sure your team is truly international.


Sad but true.

The market may suck forever
What do I mean by this?  Startups often deal in unknown or small (but could be potentially huge) markets.  If the size of a market is unknown then it is a huge risk.  I work in music, and the sad fact is there are many musicians today, most aren't making any money.  This is a very tough market to break into where only a very small minority make money.  The market sucks.  The company that I'm in works in music distribution and the majority of money comes from a small group of musicians, but when their music ceases to be popular, then what?  The music industry is 42.93 billion.  You might think that's a large size of money, but it's all relative.  Food and agriculture is 7.8 trillion.  Or 7800 billion.  Which means music is only 0.5% the size of food and agriculture.  The aerospace industry is 588 billion.  The healthcare industry is 1.668 trillion.  All these industries are huge compared to music, so where do you think you would be making the most amount of money today?  If the market remains small it means salaries in that market will be relatively low since there is next to no growth.  Making music is tough and I respect the musicians that truly "make it".

The future!

Comments?  Feel free to add them below!

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