The cool little startup that hired you right out of college/university, that promised your work will be recognized and well compensated?

Well, they'll end up complaining on why you don't work more than 60 hours a week on shit pay, force you to work at the "office" (read here one of the partner's basement), and retain your vacation pay from your last paycheck. That's not cool and also illegal here.

It's been 10 years and it still infuriates me when I think about it.

I sympathize with you but doing things in that way may well be the only way for some startups to survive. It may not be right but it really is difficult to compete against well established players with salary too.

Laughed at partners basement, can relate

@vertti I fully understand that. The problem was that it kept getting worse and worse although we had more contracts than our 4-people team could handle. No communication was happening between the 2 partners and the 2 employees (a tech and I), and they were trying to do a lot of stuff instead of focusing on being excellent on one single thing. They had a really nice product, in a market that was starting to develop with practically no competition. I think they are doing great for themselves now, hopefully not pulling the same tactics with their current employees.

@darkcode At least it was a nice basement. It even had A/C!