It is not my problem

I worked for a start up once and I enjoyed it a lot. First of all you get to know people, you build a relationship with your co-workers, everyone has their quirks and what not but for the better part everyone is nice. Working for a start up is tough though, you can’t sugar coat it. You work weekends, couple of nights, stress is high, in the good way at least for me. I always knew back of my head the product might not ship on time or quality and company could go belly up but I always had my pay check on time. This startup knew what it was doing.

I worked for a post IPO company, a publicly traded one, I went to interview and at the end the reason I joined was because a big city, publicly traded company with tons of perks, calls you like sirens call Ulysses. In the same fashion once you are closer you start seeing things you couldn’t under the spell. To me the most depressing one is a co-worker utter the words It is not my problem, at the sound of that sentence I realized I had exchanged what I thought financial security for working on cliques and people that don’t care about the others group. On a startup you have but no choice but to call your colleagues us and the others are either your competition or no one since you might be starting a new industry or segment.

I experienced on a startup the need for changing the focus and effort on everything I personally was doing, CEO told us, but I really felt he was telling me, we needed to change our direction and I instantly knew what he meant, how that was going to change even what I was going to do when I went back to the my desk.

I experienced on a bigger company, the need for change, I could see all the signs for things going south, CEO told us, but the bystander effect kicked in, it felt like he was telling no one. The greater number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. I went back to my desk and kept working on whatever I was working before the meeting.

I want to work for something in between, but might be pie in the sky. I want the startup like engagement, where everyone understands that any coworkers success is their success. But I want the financial security and work life balance. Bigger companies have better perks no doubt, but the worst I have experienced is being laid off. No matter how many perks you have at signing with them, they will go away if you are no longer with them or if the company fails.

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You might want to hire me because some of your coworkers think is not their problem if you succeed.