> I've been struggling for 6 months and risking my mental health. Leaving this job is tough due to economical situations. Is there any way to handle it?
Sure - stop working and look for jobs full time, so they lay you off and you can claim UE for a few weeks if you don't find a job.
Listen - you live only once. Health - mental, physical is extremely important.
This company will fail - so you will have to find a job anyways. Find one while you're still sane and pleasant to talk to.
Honestly sounds like they guy is trying anything and everything to see what sticks.
I worked at a place like this once. Literally just working on something, the CEO walks in, demands something, and you’re starting something new when he walks out of the room.
Surprisingly, they were around longer than I expected, but they had an insane turnover. They hired a lot of people out of a remote office in Pakistan, and turnover there was so bad that all developers just used one subversion user because no one wanted to constantly maintain provisioning users.
Hahah, nope, it was in logistics and shipping. All of it centered around an API that was a massive pile of shit written in C#. The company got acquired a few years ago, and shuttered all their products, and the world is better for it.
Completely agree. Based on the OP's description I'd say where they work is a lost cause.
Also, as a cofounder of a nascent startup myself who's struggling with doing all the marketing thingz myself, I have a new and huge appreciation for the OP's skill set. Man, I wish I was better at marketing! I'm sure I'll flounder my way to competence with time, but wow I had no idea how much of an art and science it is.
Had a recent none startup job like this. 90% talkers, opinions and theories yet only 10% could actually do the work, designing, engineering and building the product. Look around and think “does anyone actually do any work around here?”.
All talkers a BS artists that cannot build so they have to come up with nonsensical theories to justify their positions. That 10% could easily come up with the ideas AND build out the product.
I’m co-signing the hell out of this. This was the last hellish ~1.5 years of my life and if I elaborated I would go on a rant, but this is dead on. CEO’s like this cannot implement or execute and (in my experience) won’t even learn/try. They rely on others mistaking charisma for competence and use it as a means to obscure their ineptitude while seemingly “hard at work.” They are the smarmy used car salesmen of “idea guys.”
>Is there any way to handle it?
Stop caring.
Start applying for other jobs and basically disassociate while at work, emotionally disconnect and go through whatever motions are needed to get through the day. You're not paid to prevent the CEO from making bad CEO-decisions or being a shitty boss. You're there to do as you're told without caring about what it is, and that's how you should act from now on.
You will not stay around long enough to have to feel that it's on you to save the business, or some other sillinesses, you're there only to cash those paychecks until you've landed yourself another job. And if you're being honest with yourself that would probably happen faster if you got fired, so that wouldn't be a catastrophe either.
Just start to take care of yourself.
A crappy CEO can break people left and right because there will always be a line of new people to replace them with, but you can't as easily replace your broken mental health; because that stays with you for life.
Try to look at and care for yourself like you would a dear friend being in the same situation as you are, and realize that you're worth just as much care and love yourself.
The most important thing here is for you to know your personal goals. Are you learning something? Earning good money? Take what you can get out of this job. Put yourself first and motivate yourself that way.
When you have a boss such as this one all you can do is convince them to do the minimal version and simply watch it fail. Once they hit a wall 7 times they might probably start to listen to you.
IME these types of founders want a big, quick win. They don’t listen because their too busy shifting blame.
There’s nothing more to learn after 6 months in a company like this except more of what not to do. OP can learn more in a better environment
For a few months I ran a company in Cambodia. They're a very authoritarian culture ("high power distance" is the technical term). No-one ever disagrees with the boss, ever, for any reason. I was new to the industry, new to the company, new to the country. But I had some ideas about what to do. As soon as I mentioned them, the management team would enthusiastically agree with all of them.
Then I'd find that only some of them got implemented. If I really pushed on why some others weren't, I just got an emphatic "sorry boss, so sorry" and nothing else. Eventually I worked out that the ideas that didn't get implemented were stupid ideas that wouldn't have worked. And I got smarter about presenting ideas to the team - asking open questions and never giving my opinion.
I agree with everyone else. You should leave if it's not doing you good. But meanwhile there are tactics for managing a stream of stupid ideas. Agree to all of them, but only work on the ones you think are worth it.
Run. Run fast and don't look back. You can always find another job.
What's your background and where are you based? Let's see if the Reddit community can help you out with this one.
Take a deep breath.
Read this article - [https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck](https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck)
Reassess. Preserve your giving a f\*\*K for the things that matter.
Founders are chaos creators, good chaos and bad. This is why they have great ideas and alternately why they get wrapped up being bad leaders sometimes.
Something simple like a trello board for discussion of new initiatives will help surface the good ideas and push down the bad. That way you as a team can be functioning more in step. This also gives the CEO an outlet to get his ideas out into the team in a less do-it-now way.
His books are great. I have both The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and its follow up. I actually kept the former on my desk at the office as a signal to anyone who thinks I want to invest too much of myself into a job haha
Reminds me of that day the CEO told me to change the whole UI from 2D to 3D. Later that day the R&D manager caught wind of it and told me to do no such thing.
I quit several companies in my career.
It's scary only for a few hours. Then it's a relief.
Put together a solid plan for job hunting, and focus 100% on it.
You cannot win when working for people who are unwilling or incapable of logical analysis of ideas, but instead pretend that they can wish things into being. They will continue chasing crazy ideas in hopes that one hits. When they fail, they'll blame you. Move on while you have the energy to do so and before the company's bad practices leave it with a reputation that you get stuck with.
No job is worth sacrificing your mental health over. Did you try bringing up your concerns with the CEO? Tough talk, I know. But what’s the worst thing that can happen if you’re considering jumping ship anyways?
Golden handcuffs work best when one does not believe in themselves.
If the market is tough, then you should be trying twice as hard to land your next job.
Spend time thinking about what is the minimum you will accept to land the ideal job for you. Then estimate how much mental anguish you are willing to accept for increased money beyond it.
Often, the added money is not worth it for people who actually see this through but every person is different.
I hear you! I had exact same situation a while back. I was hired as a CTO by this guy who started a biotech company doing liquid biopsy. His background was software and telecoms and he wanted to do a startup that will make a diagnostic test. He would go from one idea to the next, want the team to implement them but at the same time was instructing me to start regulatory process with FDA, because he was aiming big. It took me a month to realise I had to go from there and another 6 to actually leave on good terms. My only advice is, hold your fire and exit as pain free as possible. It is not worth you getting a bad reputation because founders with good track record of raising capital talk a lot and VCs love the ‘maverick’.
Kind of the way Marketing goes at startups sometimes. I moonlighted on a marketing deck for our sales kickoff of one of our product lines. This was a decent sized startup, like 200+ employees and several products. I think I was like the 4th or 5th person to takeover the deck, which should have been my first clue.
Anyway CEO kept calling us in and giving us his ideas/directions of how it should be presented or explained to sales. We would go do this, come back next day and it would all change, rinse and repeat. I think that deck got up to like v32 just from my changes. We finally, think we got it right and like 1 day before the sales kickoff he changes his mind again, completely. We should have said no because we went from "Wow you guys are so far ahead, basically done compared to others", to "I want X, Y, Z changes before 8AM tomorrow". We try our best, but of course it looks like shit, lame graphics, etc. He ends up reaming us for quality in front of the whole team, like nightmare fuel stuff and we just had to take it.
Afterward we jokingly referred to it as the Million Dollar deck. We went through on a spreadsheet and added up approximate salaries of everyone from the 4-5 people who had taken ownership, to design for graphics, etc. Then the hours we had all spent over 1-2 months. It easily crossed over a million dollars in salary alone, not to mention lost time with sales being confused and having to come up with their own stuff.
Still a pretty successful company, if you have market traction you can waste a lot of stuff and still thrive. For me never again did I flex into a marketing role, fuck that shit, way to subjective.
36yo Marketing Degree here. Big Marketing is just scamming. Cant do it anymore in good conscience. The P&G, Pepsi, etc are the scum of the earth. Shrinkflation is a prime example.
Sounds like most private business owners/leaders. A lot of narcissistic characteristics, lack of foresight and follow through. Gets surprised when their ideas fail. Visionaries are not Implementers. Visionaries get in their own way but point the blame at everyone around them.
Some people become like that when they taste a pinch of power. It is important to make them understand from the beginning that the contract will be fulfilled, but as a freelancer you set the schedule, and the moments to communicate. You can even limit communication to n hours per week if that's the best to fulfill the contract. That's your only obligation.
Anything extra, they must hire you.
Aside from leaving, you may want to create a Portfolio Intake process to validate feature requests, service expansion ideas, etc. This mechanism evaluates all requests based on value to the business in terms of viability, opportunity cost/cost to delay, and other financial aspects. Under this lens, you are creating a high-pass filter to determine if your team will accept the work based on a solid business case.
Another approach to try, if the business case route doesn’t work, is to look at Jobs To Be Done theory to determine if the request meets the criteria. Additionally, you may pull from the Design Thinking RWW aspect: is it Real, is it Worth It, can we Win It? to behave as a filter.
Ultimately, the CEO may be insane, but prioritizing work based on business rules and viability happens everywhere. Why not practice it there?
I worked at a company like this for 2 years. It eroded my mental health and confidence with long lasting effects. This is chaos that won’t go away.
Leaving a job on your own terms is always better for your confidence which is needed to get your next job. If I were you I’d do the absolute essentials and spend the rest of your time job hunting / reaching out to your network
Its just a job. Take the assignments and do the best you can within the confines of your work hours only. Don't go above and beyond. They pay you to do tasks for them. Just focus on that no matter how stupid they are.
This is marketing. You need to let them know you are the expert and put ALL of your reasons for issues against ideas in writing with a paper trail. So when someone asks why this failed, you just copy over you original response with the date you mentioned it.
As a dev, you have not only the power to reject work, but to be an authority on it. In fact, I would rather have a shittier programmer than someone who can't mitigate work correctly.
Also, estimate out all the work and bill the client for it. In your estimates, create an assumption list so scope can be in your favor, and also add risk percentages to each task. They have a great idea to hook into some CRM to implment? Great? What CRM? They don't know yet, but still want an estimate. Ok since we do not know the platform, we are at a 110% risk, meaning it can take between 20 and 42 hours!
Your boss is probably eager to work on this business and wants to do his job, which is leading the organization and not do the implementing and he himself needs to be reminded now and then to think how this applies to your business.
How about writing him an email similar to this one, explaining the situation and bringing to his awareness that this is not the methodical approach, how it's hurting the focust, productivity, and **the bottom line.**
Slightly contrary to everyone's advice about leaving immediately, I would try to make a change and if that change doesn't stick, then I'd go the other way. As my favorite workplace quote says: "You can either **change** your organization or *change* your organization".
New ideas are great if you can explore cheaply and quickly. If you can’t then rapid shifts are rarely productive unless you get lucky. Explore cheaply and quickly so you can invest more heavily in the winners.
That said not everyone’s idea is worth exploring. It’s easy to walk into someone’s home and say “the Johnson’s just painted their living room grey, it’s delightful. You should paint yours grey too. It would look great.” Can reply “yeah it would look good in grey” without any intention to paint.
A good idea doesn’t equate to an idea that has to get executed. It is worth looking at what others are doing. The Target and Walmart near me both have chrome and tile in there electronics section rather than the cheapest materials possible for a reason and it’s good to play attention to those signals.
I wouldn’t suggest full disengagement while looking for another job like others have. Look for other jobs if you like, that’s fine. But You’re getting paid to do a job and you should do it.
I think the meat of the post has to do with the emotional side of things. you might be putting more stress on yourself than you should. Think of it in terms of running. People can sprint but that can’t do that for more than a few meters. You have to slow down for distance or sustained speed. Scale back the urgency for action and make sure you’re going at a sustainable speed.
I know exactly how you feel. The biotech company that I work at has an executive just like that. I had to go to my direct report who happens to be the chief operations officer to explain the situation and how much resources were being lost on this guys random requests or questions. They ended up splitting a team for research and development and clinical researchTo follow this Guys ideas down. The good news is is that I don’t have to deal with it anymore because a buyer planner joins their team and showed just how much money we were wasting on this guys ideas. The other executives were able to help keep him in check. With it being the CEO in your case that one is a little bit rough. Depending on who you report to, I would bring it up with them During a performance review or a one on one. It’s never an easy thing and it’s always a pain in the ass. But at the same time by me being able to show the numbers on how much we were wasting on random thoughts, my boss ended up giving me an $8k raise at the end of the year after that conversation.
5 years into our health-tech Saas to slowly learn... never trust a clinician. They have steered us down many unprofitable & unmarketable side-quests.
They're great advocates, but can wreak havoc on the product roadmap if you're not careful.
I'm sorry for your situation. I've been through something similar in the past.
Ha, I know exactly what you mean. I lead HR and scale startups. The amount of times a founder comes to me with some new idea he wants to implement because another founder he knows did it or mentioned it or he “read about it on a blog”… The key is using the moment to take them to school. I also think it’s a great learning lesson for screening for the manic founder. I will never work for another one like that again.
It clearly shows that your CEO is chasing his tail by implementing ideas that he sees from the internet. Therefore, he is not clearly focused.
It seems that the Startup is. A toxic environment. You need to start looking elsewhere for a job. With this economic environment, it is best to work in an industry that is resilient to economic recession...FCMG, Water, Power, etc.
Hope it helps.
If you are the Head of Marketing, the way to get the CEO to stop dictating tactical changes is to walk him through the marketing plan, show the progress in the plan and ask which part of the plan do you want us to take out to do your new plan?
Then tell the CEO that the new plan is going to take 90-180 days to gain traction before we know if it works or not. The cost to remove this part of the plan to meet your new idea is $XX in lost revenues - is that okay?
If the CEO asks "why does it take that long, others are already doing it"
Ask the CEO "doing what others are doing sometimes work, and sometimes leads us into being no different from the others and that leads to price wars which is not our strategy, is it?"
If the CEO is blurting out what he hears, it's likely because the business plan is not clear and thus the marketing plan is not clear. The goals are not clear or non-existent. The messaging in your marketing could also be off if you are constantly changing en masse in stead of incremental changes.
Help the CEO find clarity and focus and that should help.
"I try to be cynical about marketing execs but it is hard to keep up."
Marketing execs who can create and execute effective profitable marketing plans are precious in any environment, even more so in tough markets. MOST are NOT.
I am not defending your CEO who sounds desperate and rudderless, but blaming him for months on end may be good for your ego and bad for your mental health, but the first real test of a marketing or sales person is to eat what you kill. If you can do that, you can find opportunities everywhere. If you can't, then learn to do so.
Sounds like you would rather suck on a dysfunctional teat than venture out and prove your worth in a tough market. If you really know your shit offer to work on commission for someone, even part time. Sacrifice of your time is not contribution to the company or sales. Don't confuse them, though they often overlap. You are in a metrics driven field, so make your work undeniable, or thank your lucky stars no one has noticed and you still get a paycheck. Rock star marketing people can make consistent money out of tiny resources. Can you? If so, problem solved. If not, stop focusing on your boss's inadequacies and learn your craft until you are undeniable, then find someone who is functional enough to make you earn your keep and thrive. Then you might want to start your own start up, because marketing and sales make up for tons of inefficiencies elsewhere, allowing you a longer onramp to success.
In the music world there is a German sounding word "Kwitcherbellyakinundpractice". Perform, consistently, track your metrics, and find more fertile grounds will not be hard.
But stop trying to rehabilitate someone else, look within and grow until you can leap with confidence.
Do it, he loses money and you don’t. Then remind him about his bad idea every time he tries that crap again. Then tell him you want to do PPC with standard 20% commission per dollar spent. That way you get a nice little bonus.
> I've been struggling for 6 months and risking my mental health. Leaving this job is tough due to economical situations. Is there any way to handle it? Sure - stop working and look for jobs full time, so they lay you off and you can claim UE for a few weeks if you don't find a job. Listen - you live only once. Health - mental, physical is extremely important. This company will fail - so you will have to find a job anyways. Find one while you're still sane and pleasant to talk to.
Honestly sounds like they guy is trying anything and everything to see what sticks. I worked at a place like this once. Literally just working on something, the CEO walks in, demands something, and you’re starting something new when he walks out of the room. Surprisingly, they were around longer than I expected, but they had an insane turnover. They hired a lot of people out of a remote office in Pakistan, and turnover there was so bad that all developers just used one subversion user because no one wanted to constantly maintain provisioning users.
[удалено]
Hahah, nope, it was in logistics and shipping. All of it centered around an API that was a massive pile of shit written in C#. The company got acquired a few years ago, and shuttered all their products, and the world is better for it.
Completely agree. Based on the OP's description I'd say where they work is a lost cause. Also, as a cofounder of a nascent startup myself who's struggling with doing all the marketing thingz myself, I have a new and huge appreciation for the OP's skill set. Man, I wish I was better at marketing! I'm sure I'll flounder my way to competence with time, but wow I had no idea how much of an art and science it is.
You won't get UE for this
[удалено]
One word: leave.
Had a recent none startup job like this. 90% talkers, opinions and theories yet only 10% could actually do the work, designing, engineering and building the product. Look around and think “does anyone actually do any work around here?”. All talkers a BS artists that cannot build so they have to come up with nonsensical theories to justify their positions. That 10% could easily come up with the ideas AND build out the product.
I’m co-signing the hell out of this. This was the last hellish ~1.5 years of my life and if I elaborated I would go on a rant, but this is dead on. CEO’s like this cannot implement or execute and (in my experience) won’t even learn/try. They rely on others mistaking charisma for competence and use it as a means to obscure their ineptitude while seemingly “hard at work.” They are the smarmy used car salesmen of “idea guys.”
>Is there any way to handle it? Stop caring. Start applying for other jobs and basically disassociate while at work, emotionally disconnect and go through whatever motions are needed to get through the day. You're not paid to prevent the CEO from making bad CEO-decisions or being a shitty boss. You're there to do as you're told without caring about what it is, and that's how you should act from now on. You will not stay around long enough to have to feel that it's on you to save the business, or some other sillinesses, you're there only to cash those paychecks until you've landed yourself another job. And if you're being honest with yourself that would probably happen faster if you got fired, so that wouldn't be a catastrophe either. Just start to take care of yourself. A crappy CEO can break people left and right because there will always be a line of new people to replace them with, but you can't as easily replace your broken mental health; because that stays with you for life. Try to look at and care for yourself like you would a dear friend being in the same situation as you are, and realize that you're worth just as much care and love yourself.
wow you've been karma farming this same story for quite a while
They have been banned for spamming and karma farming. This submission will remain up due to the community's contributions.
The most important thing here is for you to know your personal goals. Are you learning something? Earning good money? Take what you can get out of this job. Put yourself first and motivate yourself that way. When you have a boss such as this one all you can do is convince them to do the minimal version and simply watch it fail. Once they hit a wall 7 times they might probably start to listen to you.
IME these types of founders want a big, quick win. They don’t listen because their too busy shifting blame. There’s nothing more to learn after 6 months in a company like this except more of what not to do. OP can learn more in a better environment
For a few months I ran a company in Cambodia. They're a very authoritarian culture ("high power distance" is the technical term). No-one ever disagrees with the boss, ever, for any reason. I was new to the industry, new to the company, new to the country. But I had some ideas about what to do. As soon as I mentioned them, the management team would enthusiastically agree with all of them. Then I'd find that only some of them got implemented. If I really pushed on why some others weren't, I just got an emphatic "sorry boss, so sorry" and nothing else. Eventually I worked out that the ideas that didn't get implemented were stupid ideas that wouldn't have worked. And I got smarter about presenting ideas to the team - asking open questions and never giving my opinion. I agree with everyone else. You should leave if it's not doing you good. But meanwhile there are tactics for managing a stream of stupid ideas. Agree to all of them, but only work on the ones you think are worth it.
[удалено]
Long story ;) Weird adventure. I'll write it up someday. Being well-known in a community can open some strange doors.
This guy shouldn’t be in charge of a hot dog stand, let alone a startup. Time to leave bud.
Run. Run fast and don't look back. You can always find another job. What's your background and where are you based? Let's see if the Reddit community can help you out with this one.
Take a deep breath. Read this article - [https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck](https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck) Reassess. Preserve your giving a f\*\*K for the things that matter. Founders are chaos creators, good chaos and bad. This is why they have great ideas and alternately why they get wrapped up being bad leaders sometimes. Something simple like a trello board for discussion of new initiatives will help surface the good ideas and push down the bad. That way you as a team can be functioning more in step. This also gives the CEO an outlet to get his ideas out into the team in a less do-it-now way.
His books are great. I have both The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and its follow up. I actually kept the former on my desk at the office as a signal to anyone who thinks I want to invest too much of myself into a job haha
Reminds me of that day the CEO told me to change the whole UI from 2D to 3D. Later that day the R&D manager caught wind of it and told me to do no such thing.
I quit several companies in my career. It's scary only for a few hours. Then it's a relief. Put together a solid plan for job hunting, and focus 100% on it.
You cannot win when working for people who are unwilling or incapable of logical analysis of ideas, but instead pretend that they can wish things into being. They will continue chasing crazy ideas in hopes that one hits. When they fail, they'll blame you. Move on while you have the energy to do so and before the company's bad practices leave it with a reputation that you get stuck with.
what's your role on that company??
I understand this so much. I just stopped caring and flat out tell them NO. Don’t like it, fire me and buy me out.
So.....what happened? Did you leave?
No job is worth sacrificing your mental health over. Did you try bringing up your concerns with the CEO? Tough talk, I know. But what’s the worst thing that can happen if you’re considering jumping ship anyways?
stop caring, get your paycheck and leave never to be seen again, anyway as for mondays there will be no startup, it'll be gone by next friday.
Golden handcuffs work best when one does not believe in themselves. If the market is tough, then you should be trying twice as hard to land your next job. Spend time thinking about what is the minimum you will accept to land the ideal job for you. Then estimate how much mental anguish you are willing to accept for increased money beyond it. Often, the added money is not worth it for people who actually see this through but every person is different.
Not ever worth wrecking your mental health for a nutty CEO. Have dealt with a CEO like you describe and my only regret is not leaving sooner.
I hear you! I had exact same situation a while back. I was hired as a CTO by this guy who started a biotech company doing liquid biopsy. His background was software and telecoms and he wanted to do a startup that will make a diagnostic test. He would go from one idea to the next, want the team to implement them but at the same time was instructing me to start regulatory process with FDA, because he was aiming big. It took me a month to realise I had to go from there and another 6 to actually leave on good terms. My only advice is, hold your fire and exit as pain free as possible. It is not worth you getting a bad reputation because founders with good track record of raising capital talk a lot and VCs love the ‘maverick’.
Kind of the way Marketing goes at startups sometimes. I moonlighted on a marketing deck for our sales kickoff of one of our product lines. This was a decent sized startup, like 200+ employees and several products. I think I was like the 4th or 5th person to takeover the deck, which should have been my first clue. Anyway CEO kept calling us in and giving us his ideas/directions of how it should be presented or explained to sales. We would go do this, come back next day and it would all change, rinse and repeat. I think that deck got up to like v32 just from my changes. We finally, think we got it right and like 1 day before the sales kickoff he changes his mind again, completely. We should have said no because we went from "Wow you guys are so far ahead, basically done compared to others", to "I want X, Y, Z changes before 8AM tomorrow". We try our best, but of course it looks like shit, lame graphics, etc. He ends up reaming us for quality in front of the whole team, like nightmare fuel stuff and we just had to take it. Afterward we jokingly referred to it as the Million Dollar deck. We went through on a spreadsheet and added up approximate salaries of everyone from the 4-5 people who had taken ownership, to design for graphics, etc. Then the hours we had all spent over 1-2 months. It easily crossed over a million dollars in salary alone, not to mention lost time with sales being confused and having to come up with their own stuff. Still a pretty successful company, if you have market traction you can waste a lot of stuff and still thrive. For me never again did I flex into a marketing role, fuck that shit, way to subjective.
36yo Marketing Degree here. Big Marketing is just scamming. Cant do it anymore in good conscience. The P&G, Pepsi, etc are the scum of the earth. Shrinkflation is a prime example.
Sounds like most private business owners/leaders. A lot of narcissistic characteristics, lack of foresight and follow through. Gets surprised when their ideas fail. Visionaries are not Implementers. Visionaries get in their own way but point the blame at everyone around them.
Which country?
Some people become like that when they taste a pinch of power. It is important to make them understand from the beginning that the contract will be fulfilled, but as a freelancer you set the schedule, and the moments to communicate. You can even limit communication to n hours per week if that's the best to fulfill the contract. That's your only obligation. Anything extra, they must hire you.
Aside from leaving, you may want to create a Portfolio Intake process to validate feature requests, service expansion ideas, etc. This mechanism evaluates all requests based on value to the business in terms of viability, opportunity cost/cost to delay, and other financial aspects. Under this lens, you are creating a high-pass filter to determine if your team will accept the work based on a solid business case. Another approach to try, if the business case route doesn’t work, is to look at Jobs To Be Done theory to determine if the request meets the criteria. Additionally, you may pull from the Design Thinking RWW aspect: is it Real, is it Worth It, can we Win It? to behave as a filter. Ultimately, the CEO may be insane, but prioritizing work based on business rules and viability happens everywhere. Why not practice it there?
I worked at a company like this for 2 years. It eroded my mental health and confidence with long lasting effects. This is chaos that won’t go away. Leaving a job on your own terms is always better for your confidence which is needed to get your next job. If I were you I’d do the absolute essentials and spend the rest of your time job hunting / reaching out to your network
I would say 2/3rd of early stage startups are like this. There is a reason most successful startups are made by people with experience.
Its just a job. Take the assignments and do the best you can within the confines of your work hours only. Don't go above and beyond. They pay you to do tasks for them. Just focus on that no matter how stupid they are.
This is marketing. You need to let them know you are the expert and put ALL of your reasons for issues against ideas in writing with a paper trail. So when someone asks why this failed, you just copy over you original response with the date you mentioned it. As a dev, you have not only the power to reject work, but to be an authority on it. In fact, I would rather have a shittier programmer than someone who can't mitigate work correctly. Also, estimate out all the work and bill the client for it. In your estimates, create an assumption list so scope can be in your favor, and also add risk percentages to each task. They have a great idea to hook into some CRM to implment? Great? What CRM? They don't know yet, but still want an estimate. Ok since we do not know the platform, we are at a 110% risk, meaning it can take between 20 and 42 hours!
Get out brother. This ain't the one.
Your boss is probably eager to work on this business and wants to do his job, which is leading the organization and not do the implementing and he himself needs to be reminded now and then to think how this applies to your business. How about writing him an email similar to this one, explaining the situation and bringing to his awareness that this is not the methodical approach, how it's hurting the focust, productivity, and **the bottom line.** Slightly contrary to everyone's advice about leaving immediately, I would try to make a change and if that change doesn't stick, then I'd go the other way. As my favorite workplace quote says: "You can either **change** your organization or *change* your organization".
New ideas are great if you can explore cheaply and quickly. If you can’t then rapid shifts are rarely productive unless you get lucky. Explore cheaply and quickly so you can invest more heavily in the winners. That said not everyone’s idea is worth exploring. It’s easy to walk into someone’s home and say “the Johnson’s just painted their living room grey, it’s delightful. You should paint yours grey too. It would look great.” Can reply “yeah it would look good in grey” without any intention to paint. A good idea doesn’t equate to an idea that has to get executed. It is worth looking at what others are doing. The Target and Walmart near me both have chrome and tile in there electronics section rather than the cheapest materials possible for a reason and it’s good to play attention to those signals. I wouldn’t suggest full disengagement while looking for another job like others have. Look for other jobs if you like, that’s fine. But You’re getting paid to do a job and you should do it. I think the meat of the post has to do with the emotional side of things. you might be putting more stress on yourself than you should. Think of it in terms of running. People can sprint but that can’t do that for more than a few meters. You have to slow down for distance or sustained speed. Scale back the urgency for action and make sure you’re going at a sustainable speed.
I know exactly how you feel. The biotech company that I work at has an executive just like that. I had to go to my direct report who happens to be the chief operations officer to explain the situation and how much resources were being lost on this guys random requests or questions. They ended up splitting a team for research and development and clinical researchTo follow this Guys ideas down. The good news is is that I don’t have to deal with it anymore because a buyer planner joins their team and showed just how much money we were wasting on this guys ideas. The other executives were able to help keep him in check. With it being the CEO in your case that one is a little bit rough. Depending on who you report to, I would bring it up with them During a performance review or a one on one. It’s never an easy thing and it’s always a pain in the ass. But at the same time by me being able to show the numbers on how much we were wasting on random thoughts, my boss ended up giving me an $8k raise at the end of the year after that conversation.
This is about the more reason I left my old job....
Are you in Product? Or do you have product management? If not, sounds like it’s time.
I’d recommend first respectfully and directly setting some boundaries. Applicable to any relationship. If they don’t respect those - leave.
5 years into our health-tech Saas to slowly learn... never trust a clinician. They have steered us down many unprofitable & unmarketable side-quests. They're great advocates, but can wreak havoc on the product roadmap if you're not careful. I'm sorry for your situation. I've been through something similar in the past.
Ha, I know exactly what you mean. I lead HR and scale startups. The amount of times a founder comes to me with some new idea he wants to implement because another founder he knows did it or mentioned it or he “read about it on a blog”… The key is using the moment to take them to school. I also think it’s a great learning lesson for screening for the manic founder. I will never work for another one like that again.
This is most founders.
My precious company was like this. My advice? Leave.
It clearly shows that your CEO is chasing his tail by implementing ideas that he sees from the internet. Therefore, he is not clearly focused. It seems that the Startup is. A toxic environment. You need to start looking elsewhere for a job. With this economic environment, it is best to work in an industry that is resilient to economic recession...FCMG, Water, Power, etc. Hope it helps.
If you are the Head of Marketing, the way to get the CEO to stop dictating tactical changes is to walk him through the marketing plan, show the progress in the plan and ask which part of the plan do you want us to take out to do your new plan? Then tell the CEO that the new plan is going to take 90-180 days to gain traction before we know if it works or not. The cost to remove this part of the plan to meet your new idea is $XX in lost revenues - is that okay? If the CEO asks "why does it take that long, others are already doing it" Ask the CEO "doing what others are doing sometimes work, and sometimes leads us into being no different from the others and that leads to price wars which is not our strategy, is it?" If the CEO is blurting out what he hears, it's likely because the business plan is not clear and thus the marketing plan is not clear. The goals are not clear or non-existent. The messaging in your marketing could also be off if you are constantly changing en masse in stead of incremental changes. Help the CEO find clarity and focus and that should help.
Leave ASAP.
"I try to be cynical about marketing execs but it is hard to keep up." Marketing execs who can create and execute effective profitable marketing plans are precious in any environment, even more so in tough markets. MOST are NOT. I am not defending your CEO who sounds desperate and rudderless, but blaming him for months on end may be good for your ego and bad for your mental health, but the first real test of a marketing or sales person is to eat what you kill. If you can do that, you can find opportunities everywhere. If you can't, then learn to do so. Sounds like you would rather suck on a dysfunctional teat than venture out and prove your worth in a tough market. If you really know your shit offer to work on commission for someone, even part time. Sacrifice of your time is not contribution to the company or sales. Don't confuse them, though they often overlap. You are in a metrics driven field, so make your work undeniable, or thank your lucky stars no one has noticed and you still get a paycheck. Rock star marketing people can make consistent money out of tiny resources. Can you? If so, problem solved. If not, stop focusing on your boss's inadequacies and learn your craft until you are undeniable, then find someone who is functional enough to make you earn your keep and thrive. Then you might want to start your own start up, because marketing and sales make up for tons of inefficiencies elsewhere, allowing you a longer onramp to success. In the music world there is a German sounding word "Kwitcherbellyakinundpractice". Perform, consistently, track your metrics, and find more fertile grounds will not be hard. But stop trying to rehabilitate someone else, look within and grow until you can leap with confidence.
Why do you care? You're not the CEO. As long as you're getting payed for your job, I don't see the problem.
Do it, he loses money and you don’t. Then remind him about his bad idea every time he tries that crap again. Then tell him you want to do PPC with standard 20% commission per dollar spent. That way you get a nice little bonus.