5. Week 1

Hey there,

Welcome to where I write about my journey from a stable Big Tech Software Engineering job to the wild and volatile world of Venture Capital.

I remember excitedly accepting my offer.

I’d set my start date for 2 months from then, and had to tell my manager so I could start handing things off and transitioning my projects. It was a bittersweet day, I’d enjoyed my time at BigTechCo and really liked most of my coworkers. At the same time, I was excited to start this new career adventure.

I was going to take 1 month off between jobs, and was excited to recharge before what I envisioned was going to be a fast paced and challenging environment.

… I had no idea …

1 week into my month off, the managing partner texted me and asked if I could come in and help a portfolio company.

“When?” - I naively asked.

“Tomorrow morning”

I showed up to the office at 8am the next day. It quickly became apparent to me that the team was no longer in sell mode with respect to me. People were deep in focus, headphones on, no fanfare when I walked in.

I sat in a glass encased conference room with a founder, his CTO, and the managing partner. We white-boarded a new technical architecture for their company. Lunch was delivered to the conference room and we worked until 6pm to finish up our technical plan.

As I emerged from the conference room, simultaneously haggard and wired from caffeine, there was no nice job or thanks for coming in before you’ve even started.

In fact, everyone else in the firm seemed to be still working.

“What the f*ck did I just sign up for?”

Thankfully, there weren’t any other surprises during my month off. As the days ticked by towards my first day, I found myself getting anxious:

“Will every day be like that?”

A week before my start date, I was sent a tome of onboarding materials to finish before my first day. I spent a few hours each day going through it all, and the dread continued to grow.

Then it was time to start:

Monday

• 8am start

• Sync with the Partner who’d be running product

• All firm meeting

  • What the heck does “Founder Vibes” mean?

  • So many terms, and so many unqualified first name references to people, I felt so lost.

• I was given a project that I was expected to ship by the end of the week. At BigTechCo, this would be a month long initiative.

• Onboarding with one of the partners

• 1:1 with team member A

Tuesday

• Team member A was let go. The only explanation, mentioned during a lull in a meeting, was that their initiative wasn’t producing the expected results.

• 1:1 with 2 other team members

• Got introduced to the existing “Tech Stack”… FML this is a pile of spaghetti code and SaaS platforms hot glued together by human labor.

Wednesday

• Didn’t sleep very well the night before, felt like a zombie when I stumbled into the office in the morning.

• Requirements for the project that I had to deliver on Friday changed, I spent the rest of the day furiously trying to adapt.

Thursday

• 2 hour onboarding meeting with Managing Partner

• Onboarded to company’s HR platform. Selected a more comprehensive health insurance plan in fear of what this job was going to do to my health.

• Furious coding. 💻🤖

Friday

• 6am wakeup to finish my project before the 9am demo.

• Demo went ~ ok, was surprised at the number of nit pick comments I got and the sheer lack of understanding of what it takes to build something. 5 minute demo = 32hrs of intensely focused work.

• The rest of the day was talking about all the ways we wanted to extend my project, which was a mixture of slapdash code and vaporware to get a working demo.

• When I was packing up to head home, one of the partner’s mentioned I should read the docs on the actual tech stack this weekend because we were going to “Really get started” next week. 😨

Was every week going to be like this? Everyone was so intense, and focused - did I even belong here? If I didn’t get up to speed quickly, would I be let go nonchalantly like previous team member A?

My imposter syndrome was at an all time high. It was difficult for me to relax over the weekend. I honestly did not want to go into the office on Monday.

My mental model had drastically shifted from: “How am I going to crush it at this job?” to:

“How was I going to survive this job?”

Until next time!

Signing off and signing zero checks,

SWEdonym

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