I really want to see more articles like this on HN. However, this is really "career advice for people at struggling companies." The luck part doesn't get discussed in the way I expected. To me, bad luck is things like:

- You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ex. you graduated in 2008-2010/now or your business sector got wiped out by COVID

- Despite your best efforts at networking, you simply never meet that magical person who can strap a booster rocket to your career/company

- You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net in the form of good friends/family early in your career that enables you to take risks, or you got dealt a bad hand in the form of things like dependents or health issues and simply can't afford to take risks

- Despite all your work, you get blindsided by things completely out of your control. Ex. a big company straight up rips off your product/service/side gig or an executive at your company guts your project/department

- You don't have the magic paper credentials to get you through the doors at places you want to go because you didn't know you needed them earlier in life when they were practical to get

These are the kinds of things I want to see tackled with real-world career advice since I think they apply to a lot of people. For every lucky executive or entrepreneur there are many who were unlucky.

> The company is not your family. Some of the people in the company are your friends in the current context. It’s like your dorm in college. Hopefully some of them will still be your friends after. But don’t stay because you’re comfortable.

This one hit hard. It’s amazing how many of the close work friends I had over the years were only close because of the shitty circumstances we endured together. Once that was gone, we actually had very few things in common.

Not that I don’t have any former colleagues I’m close with, but the ratio of kept/lost has to be in the 1/10 range or lower.

This seems like a good thread in which to try to solicit some advice, since it's at least tangentially related.

I was terminated from my last job. In my opinion it was due to my chronic and major depression that I have since been seeking extensive treatment (medication, several months rent in therapy) for. I say "in my opinion" because I really can't rule out that I'm just a lazy, crappy developer who is trying to use mental health as an excuse.

Either way, I've been unemployed for over half a year and am now trying to re-enter the job market. Obviously the gap is a bit of a red flag that I've been candid about to potential employers, in the sense that I speak about a medical issue, not the specifics.

If I could go back in time, I would have quit from my last job before being fired, but honestly I was beyond caring about anything, period, so the consequences of taking the career L barely phased me. There was no upside to being fired, I just didn't care.

Now, I wish I had cared, because it's an elephant in the room I don't really know how to address. Do I tackle it proactively by outright telling everyone I was canned? Do I wait until they call up my former employer to verify my work history?

If anyone else has been in a remotely similar situation I would greatly appreciate any tips or feedback. Please just refrain from telling me I messed up - I definitely know I did.

Retention offers: yeah. I've been given retention offers twice, and the second time round I explicitly said "I don't want money, I want you to change the way this team and product is managed, like the previous times we discussed this, but that's not going to happen, is it?"

I ended up getting much more money, less responsibility, a nicer less open plan office, and a less dysfunctional process.

Risk: yes, sometimes you just have to go full Light Brigade and charge the guns. Generally the worst possible consequence is you lose your job and everyone forgets it, but be aware that sometimes the consequences are worse and your chances of landing on your feet depend on your privilege level. You have no right to judge people who don't do this.

A lot of talk here that colleagues aren't friends.

What is wrong with you people? If you like your colleagues you can invite them to do stuff after you or they leave. They probably haven't invited you because they never got around to it either.

Most of the older generation people met through work is the only way to make friends.

No wonder loneliness is so rampant now.

Having worked for a dying tech startup at one point in the early 2000s - I spent time agonizing over the fact that if I quit, the company would become unviable - I was one of the key technical people and was the only person with a good understanding of our entire product. After much dithering, I did ultimately leave and the company did fold shortly thereafter. I did feel bad at the time but in retrospect, I have come to realize that it was inevitable and I should have left even sooner.

Finally, a post that isn't all hunky dory. I'm at the bottom quartile at the moment, so I'm happy to take any reasonable advice that doesn't sound like: study algorithms and get into Google.

Ok, I studied algorithms, got rejected at the paper round. Now what? The tough part isn't passing the interview, it's getting a chance in the first place.

This advice is better. Some points that really stood out to me and that I'll take to heart:

> But if you have an amazing manager at a shit company you’ll still have a shit time.

> “Take any role, at any pay, on a rocketship and everything will work out” is only sort of true.

With that said, a lot of the advice is quite US-centric. Not many Dutch startups would offer stock options as far as I know, for example.

The point made in here about how your company is not your family cannot be emphasized enough. Corporate culture, and especially tech startup culture, likes to make you believe that we're all family and best friends and love each other.

That attitude stays up right until the day they lay you off without warning.

It's great to work with great people that you enjoy being around, and we should treat each other all with human dignity and respect, and with a bit of fun. But your boss is not, and never will be, your friend.