Good morning everyone,

Many thanks to the subscriber who suggested today's topic as today's topic. There should be lots to entertain you throughout as we talk about start ups, but we start with a serious point:

I’m super glad that we’re starting to question some of these practices that I think have been common so long in startups. We’re holding startups and tech companies to a higher standard, but I also want to make sure that this questioning is being applied across the board to all companies.

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/do-female-ceos-get-called-out-more-often-for-creating-a-toxic-work-culture/

This gives me an excuse, however flimsy, to tell you some funny stories about the worst CEO I've ever had (a man). Sometimes I think about these things and need to actively remember that they actually happened to me. Anyway let's kick off:

This CEO was very into painting. Some generic AbEx stuff but mostly self portraits. Sometimes when I went to his desk – on an obviously unrelated matter – he would show his horrible paintings. I'd know in my heart that there was only one way to get out of this, but the solution would feel so personally and morally abhorrent that conversation would trail on for up to fifteen minutes before I could bring myself to say "these... are... good" and go back to my desk.

This next article about startups is written by a woman and thus totally on brief for Fem Fri. It's a McSweeney's list, "Are you working at a startup or are you in jail?". The pullquote here is particularly poignant to me as I have just moved teams in my current (excellent) startup:

Regardless of compliance, are you immediately made part of a specific tribe full of others like you? Say, Team BackEnd or Team Marketing, Team West Coast or Team Least Coast. Is it awkward or even dangerous if you have to interact with people from other tribes?

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/are-you-working-in-a-start-up-or-are-you-in-jail/

I was chastised in a half-yearly appraisal for not bringing the degree of feminine charm that the CEO had expected of me during my interview process. Although this should not matter, it's important for you to know that I wore a dress and heels every single day that I worked there. This was so that no one knew that I was interviewing for other jobs.

Obviously silly office decor is something we can all enjoy, Chappell Ellison's thread on this topic is a classic:

https://twitter.com/ChappellTracker/status/707990939562856449

Now that you know I was wearing heels every day, let me tell you about our standups. For readers who don't work in technology, standups are a sort of meeting you do standing up, so the meeting doesn't run long. A memorable such meeting at this startup that the CEO ran lasted for two hours, until 6.45 in the evening. For those of you who have not stood in place in heels for two hours, what happens is you start wondering when the UN are going to intervene around minute eighty. Also, this whole thing happened on Valentine's Day.

I hope you have enjoyed this newsletter. If you want to know how to avoid horrible startups, a good tip is to not go to places where the CEO calls themself a "Founder". I am also available to talk about this stuff.

Have a lovely weekend, don't think too much about work,

A xx.

BONUS CONTENT:

He called another two hour meeting – although you were allowed to sit down in this one – to talk about his feelings the day Steve Jobs died.