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by deedubaya 1889 days ago
I accepted a remote lead position at a startup. Interviews had gone great. I gave my notice at my soon-to-be old employer and made the transition.

Along comes my first day and surprisingly, it’s mostly radio silence. CTO, my boss, doesn’t respond to my emails, doesn’t answer the phone. I call the CEO and he promises to sort it out.

Fast forward a week or two later, something is obviously up. Long story short, the board fires the CTO, making me the most senior engineer in the company. Yikes, but ok. The contract with some of the consultants are up a week or so later, and they choose not to renew. Weird. The only other FT engineer quits. Uh-oh. I’m now the only engineer. I had to learn a new product and code base. The support backlog was long. I was getting called into sales calls.

If I had lived in a tech hub, I would have quit. But I didn’t, I lived in a remote mountain town and finding this remote job took months.

I ended up lasting about 18 months. It was a learning experience, but horrible on my body, relationships, mental health.

4 comments

Yep - I dealt with that once. My life got considerably less stressful after I quit.
The first project I ever had to deliver I had nearly no programming experience and the boss I had who was supposed to mentor me quit right when I started. A lot of excitement.
Hope it was those leaving that were sketchy and not those left! Sounds hard as it was already.
> finding this remote job took months

It can be that hard to find remote jobs? (I never tried.)

Can I ask how much work experience (eg years) did you have at the time?

I'm glad you could get away from there eventually. (Hmm you found another remote job?)