Reddit
Discussion
·
2026 Q2
·
USA
Joined a 6-month-old startup as the sole dev. No processes, missed deadlines, internal civil war, and toxic founders. Should I run?
75 upvotes
35 replies
Discussion
Hey everyone, I need some objective advice on a situation I’ve found myself in. **Context:** I recently joined a 3-person startup team as their 4th member and the **only** programmer. The original 3 f
Full Details
Hey everyone, I need some objective advice on a situation I’ve found myself in. **Context:** I recently joined a 3-person startup team as their 4th member and the **only** programmer. The original 3 founders have zero development or project experience. I have about 2.5 years of experience (mostly full-time complex personal projects, not commercial, but I know how development cycles work). **The Red Flags (My first 2 weeks):** There was zero onboarding. About 4-5 days after joining, I was told the team is participating in a grant program that requires attending mandatory mentor meetings twice a week. The craziest part? For my first 2 weeks, I wasn't even added to a shared team group chat. I only had 1-on-1 contact with individual members. There was absolutely no centralized communication between the 4 of us. **The Mentor Meeting Incident:** I joined one of these mentor calls 10 minutes late because I literally found the link myself (No one tells me about mentor calls). The mentor had to actively pull information out of the founders because no one knew what had been done, what the next steps were, or who changed what. Deadlines were completely blown. At the end of the meeting, I gave my honest feedback. I pointed out that there is a clear management crisis, nobody knows who did what, and from my experience, this lack of structure is lethal for a project. **The Fallout:** Instead of taking the feedback, two of the founders attacked me. The most vocal one said I "talk too much," "devalue the work they’ve done," and "don't know what I'm talking about." Ironically, they couldn't provide a single concrete example of what they actually *did* accomplish in the last 6 months. Interestingly, the **mentor took my side**, stating that my points were totally valid and that the founders clearly don't know how to listen to other opinions. **The Aftermath:** * I still don't get access to their "6 months of work/code, but I get access to application design". * I found out they use Trello purely "for show" but no real task tracking happens. * **The team is completely fractured into two warring camps.** On one side is the self-proclaimed "Team Lead", and on the other side are the remaining two founders. They constantly argue. If the Team Lead says he doesn't like something and goes off to do it his own way, the other two will stubbornly do the exact opposite. Everyone is just building their own disconnected version of the project. * The most toxic founder created a passive-aggressive shared calendar event mocking me: *"Tuesday: Mentorship with \[Mentor\], Thursday: Mentorship with \[My Name\]"*. **My Dilemma:** Is this salvageable? Should I try to take over the PM role and establish hard boundaries, just shut up and write code, or run as fast as I can? Has anyone dealt with founders like this before?
Free preview — Unlock all questions →