Start ups when that VC funding kicks in

and god help you if you ever use any of them, obviously you have time to play games you don't have enough work to do. It's all for show.
I remember a Meta recruiter reached out to me. We had a couple of talks, and then on one of them I asked "So how's the work life balance"
Oh it's great! We have a 24/7 cafeteria here, so if you ever need a snack it's always available. We have sleeping pods, so you can easily sleep, and even 24/7 laundry services, so it's all around a very relaxing place.
Uhhh yeah man. I'm not some kid fresh out of college. I own a home, and I'm very aware of my work time vs my personal time. Hard pass all around. Kids, if the company sounds too good to be true, there's an ulterior motive. Those things sound super great..... but they're of course all meant to keep you working around the clock, meeting deadlines. The companies aren't "hip" or "cool", it's all to attract you, and then work you to the bone. A strict 40 hour work week is better than foosball anyday.
I know I'm preaching to the choir but for the people interviewing for their first software gig - well maybe one of them will read this.
- I agree with work life balance, but working at meta for 2-3 years for $300k might be worth the sacrifice
  
  If I were a kid right out of college, I'd honestly consider it. The key is truly knowing what you're getting into. Companies gobble up those kids out of college because they're naiive, and they want to prove themselves. MAANG knows that and take advantage of it. As long as you're aware of that going into it, and plan to use them too, then go for it. Just don't plan to be a lifer, know that they don't care about you going in.
  
  $300k might be worth the sacrifice
  Right? I realistically just need 150k/yr to be stable in my area, I could chuck the other 150k/yr into savings and quit after 3 years with 450k in the bank
  
  My soul is worth more than that, and I don't even have one.
- My office has two ping pong tables. They're literally roped off with caution tape, and nobody is allowed to use them. I wish I were kidding.
  
  Jesus, it's like a cargo cult.
  Also, happy cake day. Death to Reddit.
  
  Make a photo. Great meme potential
  
  Photo?
- The companies aren't "hip" or "cool"
  I believe the industry term is "agile".
  
  Nah that just means they can't plan for shit and are constantly fighting fires.
- Those things sound super great..... but they're of course all meant to keep you working around the clock, meeting deadlines.
  This is not going to be universally true at all big tech-companies. There are places with perfectly reasonable WLB on top of huge salaries and fantastic perks.
  These places are usually big enough that you're going to see extremes on both ends within the same company - some departments with huge deadline pressure cultures, and some with highly relaxed work settings. It can be a bit of a gamble.
- We've got free local artisan coffee, organic fruit, mineral water, and beer. We turn the kitchen table into a ping pong table with a net after lunch for however long people want to use it and people do. At 17:00 everyone's got a beer on their desk and by 18:00 the doors are locked and the lights are out. One Thursday a month the table is used for beer pong after work and we play card games like Exploding Kittens. Idk I like it here.
  Not everywhere sucks. I've never worked an hour over my full-time requirements (ever), I get unlimited sick leave and no one shames me for missing a week as long as I call in properly. 31 Vacation days and company parties are nice too, plus paid travel time and nice hotel rooms. Also I've never made more money in my life and we're all getting extra bonuses to cover the unexpected inflation.
  Oh and I can work from home four days a week if I want to. Gotta come in that one day, but it's a fifteen minute walk from my house so that's just fine for me. I come in on Tuesdays because that's when the company orders lunch for everyone (just one day a week but still cool).
  
  At 17:00 everyone’s got a beer on their desk and by 18:00 the doors are locked and the lights are out. One Thursday a month the table is used for beer pong after work and we play card games like Exploding Kittens.
  I'd rather go home at 17:00 and do all those things with my real friends, or you know, spend some quality time with my partner.
  
  I envy you a bit. On the other hand, I have conditions that are at least okay, so I probably wouldn't trade places because that'd be a lot of hassle searching for a nice place like yours and then trying to get into it
  Just a little detail, is your company in the USA, in the EU, or elsewhere?
  
  That sounds like a great gig! Great office life, and a ton of PTO (for American standards). Although I will say, I've been in small startups. The beer and alcohol is fun - but the startups grow. It's all fun until someone who doesn't drink joins, or someone develops a problem. Keep an eye on those two issues, about 3 of the 4 startups I've been at one of those has happened.
  
  Wow you're lucky. I've always wanted a job like that.
  And for a while I had something similar but unfortunately rotten. We had a ping pong table, afterwork parties, no overtime, lunch, even a swimming pool. And we could use all of it.
  However we were seriously underpaid, I got an 80% raise just by saying hello in another company. No remote work without any reason at all (most of my team was in other countries). And awful decision making by upper management.
  Made me cynical if something like it is even possible. Glad to hear it is.
  
  Exploding Kittens is boring. Secret Hitler is a much better party game
- I know I'm preaching to the choir but for the people interviewing for their first software gig
  First software gig? In this market, take whatever to get experience imo.
  But that second/third/etc job? Culture, then salary, then everything else. Last interview I went to bragged about giving everyone brand new sneakers yet pay $25k less than average.
- Company: Provides amenities and services that would (technically) allow a person to live on premises. Pays you enough to retire early if you didn't have to bother with rent or a mortgage.
  Also company: "We can't hire you without a permanent residential address."
  I also worked at multiple places that had fully decked out break-rooms: free food, game consoles, VR, and 60-inch TVs. Everyone was afraid to use them for fear of looking like they were screwing around. Except the interns. They used the hell out of that stuff.
- My wife's job has all of those amenities, too! Well, it didn't at first, but she's been 100% WFH since covid. She's got an office with a window, cats in the workplace, lunch is brought to her straight from the kitchen, and she can even take breaks to go on walks with her family during the day.
- Who does laundry at work?
  
  Implication was that you stayed there overnight, and didn't have to worry about needing clean clothes
- Would you rather spend 40h a week in a dull environment exchanging your time and mental focus for money or spend 50h in a fun and relaxed environment working on something interesting, but also having great nutrition available and with a laundry, so no more household chores for you?
  To me #1 seems like you're stuck exchanging the best of yourself for some paycheck. #2 sounds more like fun, but also gets you your paycheck.
  If you're at a point in your life where all you want from your job, office and colleagues is to see as little as possible of that and get as much money as you could, you need to make some serious changes.
  
  No, I have a home, a great family, and I cherish my hobbies and free time. I work to live, I don't live to work.
  A job will let you go the minute they need to. Your family will be with you for life, and it's much more important.
  
  I think it's a matter of taste. OP has a great home life, so maybe they'd prefer the 40 hour gig. The 50 hour gig sounds better to me personally, ASSUMING IT'S ACTUALLY INTERESTING and not in a how-do-we-crush-souls-better way.
  There's nothing wrong with doing hard, unpleasant work so you can live outside of it. Does anybody actually enjoy pulling out a leaky sewer stack?
  
  My god, #1 a million times over.
  
  In the end, I don't care what lifestyle my job can afford if I don't have the time to enjoy it.
  
  #3 spend 30-50 hours a week working on projects you find interesting working from home so you do laundry or make a sand which on a break.
  Sometimes even cook a b8gger meal during training and such
  That said, I never want to work a bullshit job, I know people who've ridden them out to retirement and I would rather just be homeless than that.

When employers can't afford pizza parties, they come up with stuff like "dogs at work"
- I'm amazed when companies can't simply afford 100% remote work. IT'S FREE!
  
  It's not always about the money. You've never had a control-freak supervisor?
- i work for a big multinational and there was this woman who walks around with a little yappy thing. she's the only one and i haven't seen any rules about it in the employee handbook. i think she just turned up with it one day.
  
  I've seen this kind of thing too many times to count. First it was in high school, then the workplace.
  Person notices there is no explicit rule for a thing, or maybe there's a loophole somewhere
  Does the thing
  Annoys someone
  Now there's a rule for the thing
  
  \ Some people just want to push the envelope. Other times, people can have a poor grasp of social norms, or they simply don't respect others. But on the other side of the coin, people get annoyed for good and bad reasons; sometimes, no reason at all.
  Bottom line: it's a mess, so we get rules. But nobody wants to spend time writing these things and enforcing them, so there's usually a reason/person/event why they're there.
- I mean I would fucking love somme puppies at work. but also pizza. pizza is good.
  my old workplace used to have free breakfast which was the shit. freshly baked bread from local bakery and all sorts of toppings too, it was so nice to go to work, do stuff maybe 30minutes and just go to coffee break and eat some super good bread. and that was every day
  
  We had that, but people knew what the delivery driver looked like or maybe reception had a secret list of buddies to notify ...whatever. When breakfast was delivered, within 10 seconds, all the vultures in the office pounced in it, leaving nothing.
  Anytime pizza was given on Fridays, same vultures would rush to be 1st in line then walk out with a plate stacked with a whole pizza.... Rest of us usually got nothing.
  
  How much weight did you put on
- Until you step on the owners dog.
  
  Then you will be stepped on by the owner probably
- It's dogs in the workplace a problem for people with allergies?
  
  yep. I self-select out of dog friendly offices. if that's a "benefit", I can't work there.
  
  If they're allergic to dogs, yes. Like wat
  
  Yes, they can indeed be a problem for people with allergies. In my case dogs (and cats unfortunately) trigger respiratory issues. I had that issue at a workplace where dogs were allowed, not fun times. And unfortunately medication like antihistamines are not an option for everybody, personally I get extremely drowsy from them, even from the latest generation meds.

I wish I hadn't needed to learn these lessons about start ups by working in start ups. I just want to be a mailman or something at this point.
- That's crazy to me because I had the exact opposite experience. I went in hoping for a certain amount, and they offered me knowing full well what I was hoping for, 20,000 more. Plus all the other benefits like video games and dogs at work. In fact I don't think I've ever had a bad experience with startups except that your job is essentially temporary cuz they will either close or sell
  
  If they offered you 20,000 more than what you expected, might be you are underselling your actual worth and could have negotiated for more.
  
  Hah I was about to say that only bad part of startups that I’ve had was that you weren’t sure if you’d have a job six months from now. I probably just got lucky and jumped on board during the “throw cash at everything phase”
- I worked at a tree farm in my teens and honestly if I could still do that making what I make now I would be all over that. Always outside, in great shape, got to run heavy machinery, it was great.
- You'll just turn into this.

I'm allergic to dogs and don't drink, bad recruiter, shoo! Shoo! spray bottle noises

Foosball
Mama says foosball is the devil!
- It's not as dangerous as stick hockey
  
  ice hockey > stick hockey
- It's either Football or the local equivalent to "Foot" and "Ball".
  The sport with the egg is "American Football". And you US citizens can call our football "European Football" and not *Soccer".
  
  Foosball specifically refers to the tabletop game in America.
  
  Foosball is just an Americanized spelling of "Fußbal" which is German for Football.
  
  Wasn't the name "soccer" originally from England?
  Edit: it was, and it was used for ~100 years in England until around 1960 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_association_football
  
  This is foosball.
  The sport with the egg is "gridiron football", we call it "football" for short for the same reason other countries call association football "football" for short, it's the most popular variant here.
  We don't call it "American football" because that's not what it's called, you lot say that because of point 2. Nobody is going to say "European football" because that's not what it's called either.
  The word "soccer" was imported from the UK (seriously that word is british as hell, you really think we came up with that shit?), and we use it for reasons outlined in points 2 and 3, and also because "european football" is inaccurate, tiresome, and stupid sounding.
  5. This is the first and only time I've ever heard of rugby union football being referred to as "ruggers", I never thought I'd read a dumber-sounding word than soccer but you're just full of surprises today. For some reason i was imagining one of the replies was the same person, this was in error.

I misread the last one as “Drugs as work, happy hours”.
- My last job offered free beer after 4pm on fridays.
  It was smart as fuck if you think about it. For the small price of a few crates of beer, you got 20+ people talking in their free time, and on the weekend, without additional pay. It was officially off-work but since most of your coworkers were there, there was a lot of work-related exchange going on.
  
  Alcohol, the strongest bonding chemical of mankind
  
  That's pretty much every office in London before the pandemic. Some even had taps with draught ales.
- No that's WFH jobs

Bean to cup coffee machines legitimately was part of the reason i took a job at my current company.
Then during covid they downsized offices and got rid of them all.
Now all we get is instant coffee.....
scumbags......
- Wouldn't you think that the coffee pays for itself when you factor in productivity?
  
  well i have my own coffee machine at home and i only go into the office like once or twice a year so i'm not THAT upset about it. i just dont get why they wouldn't just move them from the old to the new office

Did you say "Dogs at work"? Deal.
- Some of them are your coworkers though.
  
  And not all of them are house trained.
- If you WFH all work is dog at work.
- It's nice, but it comes with micromanagement. They are like fleas, though the biting is more painful.
- Do they provide the dogs?
  
  You have to bring your own. You may play with the other dogs if they approach you.

The only happy hours are the hours you don't work by going home early. About 2 hours per work day, to be exact.
- Was going to comment that 😅

How about you only have to work 28.8 hours a week?
- Smart move. I recently upgraded from 14.4 to 33.6 and regret it.
  
  Honestly sounds like a downgrade...
- Get to that point and goof off for the rest of it.

So you're saying there are no cats? That could be a problem.
- I'm glad my workplace has a cat. Although, the cat does cat like things at the most inopportune moments.
  
  Mine has a cat and a dog
- At least 6 is the standard now for IT in general.

People bring their dogs to work all the time in my office. Fortunately, all of us are dog lovers, so we all enjoy it.
The other trend that doesn't bother me, but surprises me is that I'd estimate about two thirds of the people in my office vape at their desks.
We also have bean to cup espresso, which is nice. People will go find high end beans and contribute them. It works out nicely.
We're highly educated professionals, damnit!
- Vaping indoors, at the desk ?! I would hate to work there.
  
  It's not me and I have an office. It doesn't get to me.
  But I can definitely see that it would bother a whole lot of people.
  On that, I'm old enough to have begun my working life when people smoked cigarettes at their desks. This is a much, much better alternative.
  
  Yum, plastic clouds
- Yeah, I'm allergic to dogs and I hate that trend
- Yeah fuck the vaping thing but everything else is cool lol

Hey, we're a family now, Your best friends for a perfect work - work balance!
- “Treat your friends like family- exploit them.”
  -Rules of acquisition as relayed by Quark

everything except pay me a decent wage and let me have free time.

I stayed at a shitty job for 5 years because jobs here where you can bring your dog is non-existing. Hes gone now and every shit day was so worth it to be with him.
- I bring my dog to work every day by working from home!
  Smart ass answer, I know
  
  Never had that chance before, until a couple of years ago. Hug him/her from me <3

mobbing-free Fridays!

I've run into this a few times. If the culture and benefits are good but we can't level on pay, I let them know that I can't accept the offer but I refer them to a colleague with less experience for whom the pay would be appropriate. After over a decade in leadership I've had many employees, and I'm always looking out for ways they can step up the ladder. We've gotta have each other's back in this job market.
These jobs are all pushing 6 figures tho. Not sure what kind of job would try to push 36k on a professional position.