2-3 years on Searching.com/Searching.ca. I definitely regret a wide swath of it, mostly not being more daring and trying out more things. They had me (a junior programmer albeit with a College degree) building out large parts of their infrastructure, then switching things at the drop of a dime. (picked up some good skills in the aftermath)
There were so many opportunities for me to have left.
- When I realized the business plan basically was formulated around a domain name.
- When a superior said "We don't have to build anything new, what people want is one place to get everything and we'll provide it to them". (Basically a "Don't innovate" directive)
- When the investors sued because they contended they company was trying to steal corporate resources (mostly domain names). (I don't think my boss was, but clearly there was a lack of trust on both sides)
- When a superior asked us to all go onto Digg and "digg down" people who had taken issue with him for trying to purchase wiki.com for 2 million dollars.
Eventually, even the depressed shadow-of-myself left after my boss said "I'm going to make Bittorrent legal! The labels will have to accept it because it will be the same as a swap meet". I realized the writing was on the wall and I had to get out. (This was... after 6 months of not getting paid)
I left about a month after and had a more interesting startup experience at Soundpedia (didn't work out either, but I have zero regrets and loved every minute of it)
I regret that I let my early start on RoR waste away while I was building stuff in PHP and Perl/Mason for them. (ouch) I regret that I didn't have the courage to try to do something on my own, or to go to the states to try working for a more properly managed startup. I regret that I didn't have a more social environment (since I was working remotely). Finally, I regret that I let myself get carried away. It was a classic story of manipulation of a green wild-eyed college kid. Someone posted a while back about the classic pattern of manipulation in an open source project and my experience fit that to a T.
Now when I look back, I can kinda laugh about it all. I learned, moved on, and I gained a lot of skills after doing so. Was I stupid? Hell yes; but it's the kind of stupid you can get away with once in your life.
Would I work for a startup again? Absolutely, even if I had no stake in the business. However, no more remote working, and I won't accept a job where I can't perform excellently.
There were so many opportunities for me to have left.
- When I realized the business plan basically was formulated around a domain name.
- When a superior said "We don't have to build anything new, what people want is one place to get everything and we'll provide it to them". (Basically a "Don't innovate" directive)
- When the investors sued because they contended they company was trying to steal corporate resources (mostly domain names). (I don't think my boss was, but clearly there was a lack of trust on both sides)
- When a superior asked us to all go onto Digg and "digg down" people who had taken issue with him for trying to purchase wiki.com for 2 million dollars.
Eventually, even the depressed shadow-of-myself left after my boss said "I'm going to make Bittorrent legal! The labels will have to accept it because it will be the same as a swap meet". I realized the writing was on the wall and I had to get out. (This was... after 6 months of not getting paid)
I left about a month after and had a more interesting startup experience at Soundpedia (didn't work out either, but I have zero regrets and loved every minute of it)
I regret that I let my early start on RoR waste away while I was building stuff in PHP and Perl/Mason for them. (ouch) I regret that I didn't have the courage to try to do something on my own, or to go to the states to try working for a more properly managed startup. I regret that I didn't have a more social environment (since I was working remotely). Finally, I regret that I let myself get carried away. It was a classic story of manipulation of a green wild-eyed college kid. Someone posted a while back about the classic pattern of manipulation in an open source project and my experience fit that to a T.
Now when I look back, I can kinda laugh about it all. I learned, moved on, and I gained a lot of skills after doing so. Was I stupid? Hell yes; but it's the kind of stupid you can get away with once in your life.
Would I work for a startup again? Absolutely, even if I had no stake in the business. However, no more remote working, and I won't accept a job where I can't perform excellently.