The start up that I joined on Monday was finally able to get my development machine to me yesterday at 2o’clock in the afternoon, and before I was even able to set up a development workstation and start working on my first code task, I was being told over zoom it was my last day.

I was never given the opportunity to prove myself. I was as flexible as possible with my schedule for them; I even changed sleep cycle to make very early meetings I did not originally sign up for. They did not keep to the written offer letter. None of the things they promised me.

They reeled me in with a story about the company; I got sucked into the companies stated mission and thought that if I took a pay cut and looked past some of the red flags that I could do good in the world, find a work home, and finally get out of contracting and consulting.

Then after I accepted the role after a very candid conversation with the CEO where I was very careful to confirm the fact that I would be a fully remote employee on my own hours, separate from the rest of the team, fully remote, they broke trust and asked me to change my hours.

I was forced to break Shabbat for them to try to negotiate back to the original terms of my employment; but it was clear in that discussion that they had no interest. I thought “well its short notice, maybe they had something else going on, I should be flexible.” So I gave in.

I thought that by being flexible and showing care and affectively just doing what my new boss had asked me to do - to try, as the CISO explicitly asked via email - as a show of faith would be a good investment as a new employee in the life I was trying to rebuild after 2020, etc.

So I changed my entire schedule and started going to sleep earlier and earlier in preparation for that Monday, but I only had Saturday/ Sunday to do it.. so I tried like he asked explicitly over email. I was on time for the 7 AM zoom call despite having no company hardware yet.

So I did the logical thing; I pulled an old laptop of mine, wiped it, reloaded it at my own expense, all so that I could wipe it again if I needed to, but so I could still make that 7am Monday zoom meeting I was told would be my introduction to what I was told was my new team.

And because of that, because I shifted my schedule over the weekend, used sleeping aids, and gave up my entire weekend on top of breaking Shabbat for them, I was ready for that Monday 7 am Zoom video. I had arrived. I had proven my commitment to the team and the company mission.

I was so happy that I was able to make it on time, because I felt like God, the universe, whatever, was asking me to make a sacrifice, to do the work, to prove by action my commitment to the life I wanted to build in my new future; it was a holy task, a sacrifice to help others.

They told me that inclusiveness and collaboration was really important to them and that was why I was interested; I thought it was groundbreaking that they asked me what my pronouns were. I have worked at some very big companies and the number of them that did that is very small.

So I did the scary thing and I trusted them. I let down my walls and I was radically candid just like the book says. I spent the week while waiting for hardware trying to adjust to a new sleep schedule, learning the company, helping how I could, anything from 6am to Up to 9pm.

I figured it wouldn’t be a problem because they knew there was shipping issues with my hardware; I figured my job was to be flexible in the first week, try to learn everything I could to build up a good foundation, and when I had a dev box I could get going, work out hours, etc.

They said they followed best practices, so I knew based on my over 20 years of professional programming experience that I could get ramped up very quickly and get a lot of traction very fast once I started iterating and had a good foundation of knowledge about the company goals.

But when I reached out to members of leadership, they were dismissive, and minimized and deflected. It didn’t come off as humility from them, it came off as I was unimportant as the new hire that was making a lot of sacrifices and eager to help as I tried to start a new life.

I even mentioned explicitly to the CISO that I thought the biggest offender was being dismissive and acting angry at me for an unknown reason. He waved it off. I tried to reach out to the person in question, was dismissed/ignored. I wasn’t even worth a “just a sec, in a meeting”.

I actually got that once, but it happened so much after other things that the timing was completely suspicious. They just didn’t want to communicate and didn’t even try. I thought if I waved the white flag or something, it might just be a misunderstanding or difference in style.

So earlier today after getting my machine just yesterday, I am finally at a point where I can start to work, but I have compliance training. ALM. I do the training again. I signed the forms etc. Then before I can start working I’m on a zoom call being told that it’s my last day.

I was given no forewarning at all; nobody told me to expect a thing with HR or an exit interview of any kind. I was doing all the work I could do without a development machine as a programmer that was limited by compliance rules, regulations, and state/federal laws my first week.

He asked on slack if I had a few seconds to chat; it was after four and I had been up since 6am working for them wfh, but it was my first full-time job in a long time and I said yes to make a good impression and show my commitment to the company.

The first thing he asked me very seriously after starting the conversation, with an empty blank expression that just looked tired, was what the company meant to me. I told him how much I cared about the company mission, how I could be a customer. Happy to be here, boss. Why?

His response just didn’t make any sense to me; I still can’t remember the exact words; it just didn’t make any sense to me. Maybe that’s just the trauma kicking in, I don’t know. But it ultimately came down to him making statements that I could prove false with his own emails.

Thinking about the events I knew I was being railroaded, they were trying to cover for something. Thinking back around the history, The only thing I can think of was my crazy hours, and the fact I had added the Shabbat and time for sleep - to rest my good eye - to my calendar.

When I was very young a bully took my eye as punishment for standing up to him and protecting my younger brother from him and his friends; I made him look bad, so he took my “jewish eye”. I have fought against this disability all my life, but that means I have to sleep, To rest.

The bully had loved to call out the fact that I was only half Jewish, so he “only had to take one of my eyes”. I get a lot of shit from being friendly to the LGBT community or helping rape victims, but I know what it’s like to be held down as something mine is taken with a thumb.

And as a one eyed software developer with only 20 years of experience, my greatest asset has been my flexibility and desire to help others, as I’ve tried to leverage the pain and suffering that I have been subjected to, and do something good to help others with the code I write.

I have focused on companies in my career that I thought could do good at scale; I have done my best to contribute to projects that would further the enlightenment of the world and assist in the relieving of pain and suffering. I have done my best to care in a collaborative way.

So I did not join this company because I needed a job; I told plenty of big-name companies no, I did it because I cared and the CEO had made personal commitments to me via DM here on Twitter after we met online here of all places. I’m blocked now but have screenshots. They knew.

In fact I was messaged via DM here on Twitter how many shares they were willing to offer me long before I got the offer letter and it was confirmed. This was after a interview process that included multiple days worth of zoom interviews after other communication.

Twitter says I’m now blocked by both the ceo I was DM’ing and the company account, but I have the DM‘s/ screenshots, but I’m sure I’m blocked so that I can’t tag them fully in the hope that I can’t catch them or something. But why are they so Avoidant if they did nothing wrong?

I feel lied to, abused, taken advantage of; and now I need a job because I’m not able to get unemployment now that I’ve had work for less than a week. They totally screwed me in the worst possible way during a pandemic; they said to trust them. I made the mistake of doing so.

I still have their hardware here and I haven’t been paid at all so I assume I’m going to have to deal with them for another day or two and that sucks because it feels like a bad break up because I really cared and wanted to do the right thing, but was never given the opportunity.

Maybe a part of me is hoping that they change their mind and I can just sweep this under the rug but I think that’s just the part of me that wants to do good talking, and I’m tired and I forgot to eat today because I was so excited about my job... that just ended.

I’m tired. I’m probably not thinking straight. I’m just going to check this tomorrow morning and hope somebody wiser than me chimed in and gave me good advice I can follow; I think I’m going to eat first, while I still have food. Rent first, food last, as I have no income now.

So its morning. I’m up because that’s how I changed my schedule for them. Trying to get back to everybody I can and check my email to see if they’ve already emailed me to ask about the hardware or not because yesterday before this they hired a local sales guy to be #2 in my area.

Checked my email to find that they had submitted a request to Apple to return the machine and get a refund, but they want me to pay for sending it back and to print out a label without owning a printer. No. I’m not buying a printer to return hardware.

Its important to note that they also claimed to be in @ycombinator last night, He made it sound like he was some sort of 3 month graduate with them, so maybe he has people there that know him as an asshole there, I don’t know. What I do know is thats a red flag now for me, too.

Just got an email from their HR platform that my medical benefits for the month are approved because I did the paperwork earlier in the week as part of my onboarding as a full-time employee. They expire at the end of the month and have a high deductible. So they screwed me there.

Just got done inventorying and packing the two MacBooks, the two monitors, the keyboard, the mouse, and the unopened box of usbC adapters into thier original retail boxes, all into a nicely packed pile carefully set in a corner. Sent them an email. I’m not paying for logistics.

Why 2 MacBooks? Because they sent me an M1 at first and it had the wrong hardware configuration so I couldn’t use it for my work. I had expected them to know what they were doing when they offered it. When that wasn’t true, I tried to be flexible and waited for my actual dev box.

So let’s look at the timeline:

I started on Monday 2/1/2021 without any company hardware, using a 2gb winbook with a 1.6ghz cpu that didn’t really support zoom well that was my property, that I reloaded and wiped, trying to be ready for that 7 AM meeting.

That Monday I was told to expect my new Mac workstation, that it would get here early morning Monday. I have been told to expect it sooner and then finally over the weekend they said I had to wait until Monday. I tried to be flexible and patient But couldn’t do anything without.

Everybody on the team used Mac because it was a default requirement for working on the team so my shitty little windows winbook I could barely run zoom without freezing randomly was not something that I could use to run docker etc, and everybody knew it.

When I got the first Mac it didn’t have enough RAM or support other hardware I needed; even the CISO said this. My work also explicitly required docker images. There was no way I was going to be allowed/able to get any work done until I had the correct hardware.

So they ordered me the correct hardware and told me to wait until 2/2/2021 when it should arrive.

It was a day late.

I got the correct hardware at~2pm Wednesday 2/3/2021. I worked until ~9pm to update the os/etc.

My last day was Thursday 2/4/2021.

it’s now Friday 2/5/2021.

It’s important to note that the only reason I got it at ~2pm that day instead of 9pm that night or even the next day was because I called UPS and Explicitly informed them that my residential address was being used for a commercial startup and they needed to not delay/be jerks.

Because yes the first time I called up the shipping people and explained the situation that everything was late I was informed the class of shipping would differ based on residential or business. They tried to be lazy, and I wouldn’t let them.

So the only reason I got HW as fast as I did was because I worked my butt off to make sure that I took ownership of the situation and did everything I could to help resolve the issues created by lack of hardware, Because the owner/CEO/CISO of the company gave me bad hardware.

I was absolutely sabotaged from the very start, but I told myself it was a start up and I went to work to overcome every obstacle in front of me as best I could with the limited resources I had as somebody who hadn’t even gotten their first paycheck or been given hardware yet.

They just emailed me and let me know that they’re going to “get back to me” about shipping and logistics. I sent them an image of the hardware they want me to send back to prove it’s safe and packed up nicely; I can’t trust them so I’m documenting everything about that.

I don’t really want to be in the room that I had been asked to dedicate for their office, so I’m just not gonna spend anymore time in here today. It just feels so weird to have a part of my home hurt so much to be in.

Just got an email that l need to expect a pick up at a specific time from a specific company etc. so I’m going to set a timer now to make sure that I have a reminder to be in the right spot to do a complete and full handoff of hardware like a professional.

Decided that I was just going to move everything upstairs now, so I wasn’t in a rush later and could do the handoff as fast as possible after checking the security code. Yes, I just received that from them via email because I asked for a handoff code for security.

I feel better not being in that room now but at the same time I know I’m going to have to go back and make it my own again because it’s going to have to be my office when I get a job; I just wish I could do that as soon as possible, But it’s Friday.

A part of me immediately wants to start looking for a new job, the other part of me is just too tired from looking for one for so long only to be played like this for an entire week while working 16 hour days out of post pandemic new job FOMO.

I just need advice because I don’t know what to do now, and I feel utterly worthless after this experience. I utterly gave all of myself, every waking moment, to this new job and I did the hardest thing anybody could’ve asked of me: I trusted them when I didn’t get hardware, etc.

They put me in a really bad spot. I can’t get unemployment because I didn’t even work for them for a week, and I think that was their goal. They spent all that time telling me that I was going to mentor the Dev team, And feel bad for the most junior members of the team now.

Thinking about the team now and there was definitely people I wanted to get to know better but I didn’t have that opportunity because they were out of scope for my title and it was my first week. I had literally just finished compliance training. Not an hour before.

I thought maybe the universe was finally changing for me for the better, and that all I had to do is do the work and show that I was holding myself accountable. Throughout the week when things would go wrong I would just tell myself it’s OK. I have a job. I’m OK. I’m safe. Nope.

Oh great I just got the Audible bill. What should I use the 1 credit for and why? I want to cancel that as soon as possible but if I don't spend the point I lose the book. What will help me the most in this situation in terms of an audiobook, since I have to buy one anyway?

I’m reminded in the exit zoom, the CISO bragged to me about how he had hired a total of 37-ish people for the company and not all of them were still here. He seemed to take pride in the fact that he burned people out in less than 3 years before they could vest everything.

He even explicitly admitted that the average for a person was 2 to 3 years and the look of dismissal on his face like he didn’t care is something I will always remember because it snapped me into focus, it was a warning that made me pay attention, snapped me out of my daze.

Thing is, if you’ve been in business for over five years, are you really a start up or just a shitty founder that doesn’t know how to grow a business? How can a VC trust you if you can’t let go and have such extreme control issues? And they want to get funding.

I know this because the CEO has tweeted it publicly so I’m not disclosing anything secret at all. The CEO is actually very active on Twitter and tries to play the part of the leader. It fooled me. I thought she would lead; I trusted her. But her partner does all the dirty work.

Despite her being the CEO I found in our discussions that her authority really took a backseat to his, and I can’t help but wonder if he is just using her as a face of the company for tax breaks or marketing purposes.

She tweeted earlier about secret founders groups; I’m worried now that they are going to try to blackball me illegally for standing up for myself and I’m pondering if I should tag them here simply to protect myself from that.

I’m pondering if it’s even worth my time to add them to my resume because if I did that I would be forced to explain all this repeatably. Do I really want to have to explain this to every single tech company I encounter? Or is not having it on my resume worse? What’s best for me?

It’s after the time they told me to expect somebody to pick up the hardware and nobody has shown up. I have sent them an email asking what’s going on so I have a paper trail. If they abandon the hardware, what am I on the hook for?

They finally picked up the hardware; I let them know in the same email I asked when I'm being paid for my work.

Their Director of People reached out to me on Linkedin but as usual the interface on LinkedIn is terrible so there is no date attached; I accepted the connection and then removed it because I have no idea when the request was made. Before or after? I want to network but.. yeah.

Was just on the phone with their payroll vendor asking why I don’t see my paycheck yet; the service provider told me that they haven’t run payroll yet, and that was in her words, as a specialist who had access to historical data on her screen I did not, “odd”.

Found out today that they actually added the support I needed originally on Tuesday the 2nd.. to Homebrew on Friday the 5th, as I was sending back the hardware. That really sucks. It would not have solved the other hardware issues, but it would’ve been something better than this.

So the new version of homebrew with m1 support was released on the fifth... several days *after* all of this happened. Ask any dev who uses a Mac how valuable homebrew support is. So I had to wait for an Intel Mac that I had for less than a day.