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Effed Company

I found out that the start-up company that I joined one year ago — the start-up that laid me off in March, sending me scuttling back to the stable company that I had left to join the start-up — finally died last Friday. It didn’t woo any venture capital firms, it lost its angel investors, it steadily shed employees, and then it just plum ran out of funding.

The start-up’s death will barely register outside of the government agencies that were piloting the technology (obviously indifferently); industry analysts who were paid to benignly analyze it; and a niche techie circle that keeps tabs on emerging competition.

So ends — completely– my dalliance with a start-up. It wasn’t the best experience, but I did learn a few things:

Lesson Learned #1: Don’t join a start-up that would throw money away by hiring a technical writer. Hey, I’m a good technical writer, but 99% of small start-ups don’t need a full-time technical writers. If documentation is a requirement, and if an engineer or QA can’t handle the documentation, the start-up should get a contract technical writer. But to throw money away on a recurring expense such as myself is just a deathwish.

Lesson Learned #2: Don’t join a start-up that would throw money away by hiring me. Maybe when I was younger I would have been keen on devoting all my life’s energy and time into a company on the outside chance that it would be bought up by a big company and I’d make a tidy amount on the meager options alloted to me. But probably not. I’ve always been sort of a slacker.

Lesson Learned #3: Don’t join a start-up that has already been abandoned by one of its founders, then been picked up and brushed off by a group of mostly outsider non-technical business people.

Lesson Learned #4: Don’t join a start-up full of creepy people. It’s very rare that I’m the most normal person in a room. In fact, it’s never happened until my first morning at the start-up, when bagels were brought in for my welcome breakfast and I was standing there thinking “Egads. These people are totally freaking me out.”

Lesson Learned #5: Don’t join a start-up that requires a security clearance. Even if you’ve got nothing to hide, the Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) will make you feel like you do. Have you lived in multiple residences? Do you travel to other countries? Have you had any contact with any “foreign nationals”? Your Diplomatic Security investigator needs to know everything you’ve done in the past 10 years. I complied. I was honest. But around the time that I making a list of people whom I dined in Montreal with 4 years ago, I knew it wasn’t worth it.

Posted in The 9 to 5.

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