Help me identifying toxic culture
I work at a Bangalore-based startup, and I need help understanding whether this practice is considered a good norm.
- Initially, the Founder/CTO asked employees to work on Saturdays only for urgent tasks. This evolved into alternate-week Saturday sessions for 2-4 hours of planning. Eventually, it turned into a weekly mandate to work on Saturdays.
- The CEO instructed employees not to take leaves unless there’s an emergency or sickness, applicable until the end of the year.
- The CTO emphasized collaboration, urging developers, QA, and designers to work together on solutions. For example, developers are expected to start working on development tasks even before designs are finalized.
- Designers often find their proposed solutions dismissed by the CTO, who provides alternative suggestions. While some of these are helpful, others are unconventional and difficult to implement.
- Product understanding and feedback are gathered solely through product feedback channels, which are cluttered with numerous daily messages. There’s no direct interaction with customers.
- Employees who work long hours (11-12 hours daily) receive praise, creating an environment where working late is glorified.
- There is immense work pressure with no structured processes. Tasks are frequently marked as urgent, and if deadlines are missed, employees are told they have failed.
- When these concerns were raised with HR, they dismissed the emphasis on working long hours, stating that "working late doesn’t matter" and that employees should focus on doing "smart work.”
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I was in that type of company, I have applied for leave for my anniversary (applied before 2 months) and then they asked me to come to office on that day! I had wfh that day and all my plans with my wife had to postpone due to work! (shit work nothing serious). After two months they laid me off and fortunately I got a good job at a very good startup at a founding team!
I have been working with cofounders and honestly cofounder can make tell you that these all are not good traits of a good cofounder. Our cofounder personally appreciates mf if I deliver something to our users on weekends. And we never discuss anything that we have done on holidays or weekends! Bro it’s time to move
These people are asking everyone to push works to Sunday, so that work doesn’t get affected. Not only that, they asked designers to be on call with each other atleast for 5 hours a day. They also fired 2 devs and didn’t rehire saying the team is enough to compensate. CTO said its not like they don’t have money, but they don’t want to hire
How large is your company and in what stage (seed, pre-seed, A etc)?
Most startups have a toxic culture, thing is you smartly work on stuff that enhances your resume and then switch to better company.
I think IT industry in general has toxicity, doesn't matter if its a startup or MNC. You just have to get lucky to get into a non-toxic environment
Basically you are screwing up your personal life to ensure that CEO and CTO become rich 🤑
They said something similar to us. CTO said that they don’t wanna spend life like mediocre people because of our mistake. They spent much time on the product and want to succeed
Change your post title to signs of toxic culture, cause your company is collecting them all like Pokemon.
This isn’t toxic at all , if you have joined a startup then you should be ready to face these challenges . If you have taken a bet and have enormous ESOPs with you then I think u should take high ownership and get things done . Grit , perseverance and consistency is very much required .