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If you want to play politics, covertly talk to the founders, as only they are decision makers, find a common language with them, but keep in mind that your team

by fg6hr 7y ago

If you want to play politics, covertly talk to the founders, as only they are decision makers, find a common language with them, but keep in mind that your team lead is already doing so and is trying hard to present your achievements as his, and find a way to convince the founders that it's better for the company to put you in charge. Once this is done, put yourself between the founders and the team lead to intercept all communications, leave him only secondary projects, convince the decision makers to shutdown those projects and kick the former lead out of the door. Now you're that team lead who plays politics and pretends that achievements of your team are yours. The bigger problem is that the founders are not your friends. If you follow the team lead path, you'll be seen as a useful idiot and you'll get all the awards and recognition, but none of the preferred shares or liquidation preferences. You'll be just wasting your most valuable years to make their dream come true. The safest choice is to go to the big tech, spend there 5-10 years, learn 10x more than what you'd learn in a startup (while collecting really nice paychecks), make connections, then start your own company. Then you'll find a really smart college grad who'd do most of the work and then you'll realize that you don't really want to give him 1/3 of your company. Now you're a greedy founder :) Edit. Questions I'd ask any startup these days: preferred shares and liquidation preferences, i.e. if someone buys the startup for 15M, can I choose to get 3M instead of cashing out my shares? Most founders would roll their eyes because such conditions are only for investors, as they bring real money, unlike your questionable "contributions". Don't work for those people. However if the founders start talking about cap tables and discuss nuances of such contracts, I'd consider them, as they seem to be honest and willing to recognize that your time also has value.

elteto 7y ago
I'd like to point out that basically following this strategy is how you end up being the A-Hole team lead. This could have been the path OP's team lead took at some point in his career because someone else was making his life miserable at that point. I'm not going to downvote you, since this is blunt, real talk of how politics work in the real world, and I feel like we need to be aware of it so we don't fall prey to it. But I can see why you are posting under a throwaway. As others have said, this is not the only option and one can just leave & take a break / go somewhere else.

by fg6hr 7y ago

elteto 7y ago

I'd like to point out that basically following this strategy is how you end up being the A-Hole team lead. This could have been the path OP's team lead took at some point in his career because someone else was making his life miserable at that point. I'm not going to downvote you, since this is blunt, real talk of how politics work in the real world, and I feel like we need to be aware of it so we don't fall prey to it. But I can see why you are posting under a throwaway. As others have said, this is not the only option and one can just leave & take a break / go somewhere else.