I once worked at a company exactly like this, and I agree entirely. It was awful, and I'm glad I quit. In fact, it was the only company I've ever quit (of the f

I once worked at a company exactly like this, and I agree entirely. It was awful, and I'm glad I quit. In fact, it was the only company I've ever quit (of the four companies I've worked at, I got laid off from two others, and I'm still at the fourth). It's not worth it. The company was resource-starved, management had no experience managing people whatsoever and ranged from "clueless" to "abusive", and the owner/CEO was a notorious cheapskate who underpaid us (when I left, I found out I was making 3/4 the salary I should have been), refused to provide any kind of health insurance, and was so paranoid about losing control of the company that he only sought funding from angel investors and refused to either seek VC or give employees equity. When I worked there, we were in constant demo mode. We were always prepping for a big demo for one small-time investor or another. I think we spent more time on demos for investors than we spent supporting customers. Hell, one time we came within a hair of being on Shark Tank; it ended up falling through because of bureaucratic reasons, but after it fell through I was told that the owner/CEO had no intention of ever accepting money from any of the VCs on the show and just wanted to be on the show for the media attention. Oh yeah, and when our landlord began discriminating against me for being transgender, the company just rolled over and refused to provide support. Why? Because they'd gotten a massive discount on rent because they were the very first tenants in a building that had just reopened after years of being closed, and they were afraid to do anything that might kill the deal because they wouldn't have been able to afford rent anywhere else downtown (and they insisted on being downtown because the owner/CEO's son, the CTO, lived there and wanted to be able to walk to work). Never mind that they would've had a space three times larger for the same money if they'd just set up shop in a suburban office park like every other tech startup in Dallas. I had to get the city involved myself, and the owner/CEO almost sabotaged my case during one informal mediation session (I ended up winning, by the way). When I quit at the end of 2014, we were only marginally larger than when I started in early 2012. That's two and three quarter years of my life I'll never get back. My only consolation is that I'm still friends with a few of my coworkers from that period of my life.