Six months ago I wrote an article titled Why am I leaving Schibsted for joining Typeform? It’s amazing how an article could impact more than you thought. While I wrote it to only order my thoughts, the article got read by more people I expected. Some colleagues wrote me via Slack very interested about my feelings. Some manager in the company read it during an outside to find ways to improve things.
Also, I’ve received a lot of feedback via LinkedIn. This week I’ve got a message from a woman who, in her words, got inspired by the article to move to a startup and leave a big company. I felt guilty. I replied her with the truth. Telling her what happened two months after my article. She told me that I should write about it as well. So here I am, giving some explanations…
Because two months after joining Typeform, I left it to rejoin Schibsted.
Fatigue with startups?
Before working on Schibsted and Typeform, I was working for five years at a norwegian startup. I’m not going to tell you the whole story, which could fit in a series of articles, but the summary is that it didn’t end fine.
I’m sharing this with you to be completely honest. So you have a perspective about things and you might think that I’ve some kind of fatigue with startups.
At the beginning, on the norwegian startup, I got a 0.5% of options of the company. After leaving, the CEO didn’t accept quite well I was going to leave the company. He started to blame me and demanded me to return the stock options. I cannot find the words to explain you how hard I worked for that startup so, as you can imagine, I refused.
But I also refused because I felt he wasn’t going to pay me my last months. And you know what? I wasn’t wrong. That norwegian startup still owe me 5000 euros.
But that’s not an article about that story. I’m sharing this with you to be completely honest. So you have a perspective about things and you might think that I’ve some kind of fatigue with startups. I don’t think so, but could be possible.
Typeform is amazing (yes, it is)
To be bold: Typeform has nothing to do with the norwegian startup. It had a lot of differences and that’s why I don’t regret tried it. It’s an amazing company in the heart of Barcelona that offers amazing perks, a great environment and have a fantastic product to be involved as a developer.
I gave them when I said to leave my personal feedback about which things could be improved. But, to be frank, in all companies you can improve things. And Typeform has a lot of great ideas and good internal processes, so my feedback were more personal than anything.
My personal problem was, like Tom in 500 Days of Summer, intoxicated by the promises of the evening. But in this cases not evening, but interviews. And the expectations didn’t align with reality. Not Typeform problem, for sure, I did that expectations myself.
I did four interviews, a conversation with the CTO, two via phone with the CEO to finally make the decision to accept the offer. Everything was great and while Schibsted was amazing I found Typeform perfect for me. To improve my english (you maybe have noticed I need it :P), enjoy the perks and keep growing. They offered me a great project around React and decoupling an architecture.
Expectations I did myself during the hiring process were inaccurate.
I can’t give you details about what exactly happened. Thing is, after a month, expectations I did myself during the hiring process were inaccurate. Same week as I, two more entered the team. I felt some lack of planning about where put people and where to focus efforts for company needs. Also I felt sometimes an excessive democratic environment. And a undue amount of kindness for projects that needed a change of course. Now, if you ask me, none of this has to be a bad thing, to be honest, and might be a personal feeling.
What I can say to you is that I think that being a startup not necessarily mean they do all things great or cool. In some cases even that lack of experience could do some hurt. Neither being a big company with a lot of experience proves nothing. Each company is completely different. And each person will adapt distinctly to each company. Not saying Schibsted and Typeform are the cases, just don’t judge companies beforehand.
But Schibsted is even better (for me)
That’s why I think Schibsted is even better than Typeform. At least for me. It’s funny that the CEO of the beggining of the article (the one from the norwegian company) told me, some months later after leaving his company, that the bureaucracy of Schibsted would kill me. Well, that’s not happening. Quite the opposite, Schibsted is giving me a lot of confidence and supporting me in a lot of aspects.
I’ve rejoined as a Enabler Frontend, which is a cross position to help different teams and projects around the company. Right now, I’m working in London, helping in a global project. I’m still helping from here. Sometimes I return to Barcelona to impart workshops about React to share knowledge. I love this position as it offers me the opportunity to get out my comfort zone often. Also, some teams in Schibsted are betting more and more with some teleworking and that’s awesome.
And the best is yet to come, with some exciting things and projects that will see the light on the next months. I don’t regret to have tried on Typeform and I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of it. They’ve an amazing product and they only have to improve it and found new ways to grow it. I still keep some friends there and I wish them the best. But this 2017 for me it’s time to do some stuff and awesome things at Schibsted.
Hi world! I’m Miguel!
Hey, I’m Miguel Ángel Duran, and would like to thank you for reading this article. I develop things and stuff. Mostly in Javascript. I’m Enabler Frontend at Schibsted Spain and I’m founding partner of @coworkingElPrat. And I’m living in sunny #Barcelona.
You can follow me at Twitter if you like to read stuff about #Javascript and #ReactJS development: @midudev
