1: All interviews were group interviews with all three founders. 2: They all worked together for almost a decade, since college. 3: They never hired anyone mo

1: All interviews were group interviews with all three founders. 2: They all worked together for almost a decade, since college. 3: They never hired anyone more experienced than them. 4: My technical screening was with a consultant. In a decade they hadn't figured out how to screen. 5: Their stack was mostly "also ran" technology. (IE, they didn't know when to cut their losses and change over.) 6: Their "tech lead" didn't have the title of CTO. When I showed up, this was what I figured out: 1: The manager kept up appearances of consensus driven decisions. (Which was why interviews were never 1-1.) 2: They generally hired inexperienced people so they could control them and not have their decisions challenged. 3: They were dangerously fixed in their ways. It was like they were using Betamax, Commodore, 8-track, ect after those technologies failed, and didn't understand why it was dangerous to bet their company on it. 4: There were glaring, unprofessional, security problems. 5: The "tech lead" really flubbed a lot due to inexperience, but it wasn't obvious due to everyone else inexperience. The "tech lead" needed serious mentoring; but was too used to calling the shots.