Translation: instead of running a rapidly growing start-up, his company was constantly short of cash and manpower. He spent his days trolling for investment money and new employees to replace the ones who had defected for greener pastures. (Brilliant Media says it recently landed funding.) Last July, Harris, 37, left the company and went back to Los Angeles–and is now looking for a job in a traditional, non-techie company.
Like so many prospectors of a different epoch, workers such as Harris are discovering that “risking everything” actually involves… risk. They plunge into a Web venture with high hopes, only to find a grim reality of taxing hours, lack of support staff, greenhorn bosses and worthless stock options. Don’t get the impression that the high-tech landscape is littered with these malcontents. Most tech converts simply roll their eyes when asked about going back to what are now called “legacy” industries. But if there’s a market crash among Internet start-ups, the reverse trickle could turn into a flood. “I’ve really started to appreciate a situation where one has significant resources,” Harris says. “I think folks who are blindly jumping to start-ups are undervaluing what they have.”
Increasingly, recruiters are telling job candidates that the Web isn’t for everyone. Russell Reynolds Associates, an executive-search firm, says you should have experience launching new products, be comfortable with technology and have an ability to make decisions based on incomplete information in order to succeed at an Internet firm. Otherwise, it might be wise to stay put.
Deborah Gray would probably agree. Last September she left a personnel job at an insurance company to work for a New York-based Web community. Her favorite adjective for the experience is “hellacious.” The combination of a grueling schedule and an inexperienced supervisor resulted in a tenure that didn’t last eight months. The hours were particularly bad, Gray says. She worked New Year’s Day, most of Christmas Eve, weekends and the occasional all-nighter. Now she has a job that allows her to leave every afternoon at 5:30. “You just could not do that” at her old shop, she says. “It was, like, a no-no.”
Still, it’s the stock options that typically keep employees working long and faithfully at Internet start-ups, virtually handcuffed to their workstations. Author Bill Lessard, who co-wrote “Netslaves,” a grumpy firsthand account about the travails of working in Webville, says options are “basically used as a carrot to get people to give up their lives and work like lunatics for the promise of getting rich.” If the promise isn’t kept, the carrot looks less tasty. Gray, for example, had 20 shares of stock when she left–worth only around $250. Increasingly, new hires at Web firms are distressed to learn that the numbers of options they get are so paltry as to be insignificant. With most savvy market watchers predicting an eventual tech shakeout, such tales of frustration and disappointment could become far more common.
