To all the people giving advice in my previous rant (https://devrant.com/rants/1627035/...), thanks!

I've spent a weekend running high and naked through the forest, and decided to quit my job.

Fuck PHP. Fuck Laravel. Fuck hipster startup companies. Rasmus Lerdorf, Taylor Otwell and my CEO can all go suck each other's cocks in a sloppy mess of saliva, cum and type errors.

I'm so sick of spinach smoothies and weakly typed languages. All active record ORMs are retarded, VueJS is worse than JQuery, Fatal error: Call to a member function iHatePHP() on null. WHY DOES PHP EVEN HAVE METAPROGAMMING METHODS, WHY THE FUCK DOES LARAVEL CHOOSE EASY OVER SAFE.

I'm going to use my heavily abused Macbook to surf out of this mess, on a collapsing wave of unresolved bugs.

On to the next PHP/Laravel job at a hipster startup!

@Owenvii made a post over at (https://devrant.com/rants/2359774/...) and I want to write a proper response.

The biggest thing you have to look out for as a new dev is the jobs which you accept to begin with.
This isn't minimum wage no more, this is "big league", well, maybe not apple or google big league, but it's not $9.25 an hour either.

Basically you don't want to work anywhere where 1. your labor will be treated as a highly disposable commodity. 2. where the hiring manager doesn't know how to do the job themselves.

The best thing you can do is, if you're new, and just breaking through (and even if you're not), is ask them common questions and problems/solutions that crop up doing the work. If they can answer intelligently that tells you the company values competence (maybe), enough to put someone in place who will know ability from bullshit, merit from mediocrity, and who understands the process of progressing from junior dev to a more involved role.

It also means they are incentivized to hire people who know what they're doing because the training cost of new hires is lowered when they hire people who are actually competent or capable of learning.

Remember, an interview isn't just them learning about you, it's your opportunity to interview *them* and boy, you'll be making a BIG mistake if you don't.

Ideally you want them to ask you to pair program a problem. If your solution is better than theirs then they aren't sending their best to do interviews, and it tells you the company doesn't fire incompetents. The interviewers response can tell you a lot too, if they critique your work, or suggest improvements, and especially if they explain their thinking, that is an amazing response to look for, it says the company values mentorship and *actual* teamwork (not the corporate lingo-bingo 'teamwork' that we sometimes see idolized on posters like so much common dogma).

Most importantly, get them to talk about their work and their team. If they're a professional, it'll be really difficult to pry anything negative about their co-workers out of them, but if they're loose-lipped and gossipy thats a VERY bad sign, regardless of what they have to say.

Ask to take a tour and do a meet n' greet of who you will be working with. If they say no, then it's no thank you to a job offer. You want to take every opportunity to get to know everyone there, everyone you'll be working with, as much as possible--because you'll be spending a LOT of time with these people and you want to rule out any place that employs 'unfireable' toxic assholes, sociopath executives, manipulative ladder climbing narcissists, and vicious misery-loving psychopathic coworkers as quick as possible. This isn't just one warning flag to look out for, it's the essential one. You're looking for the proper *workplace culture*, not the cheesy startup phrase of "workplace culture", but the actual attitudes of the team and the interpersonal dynamics.

Life is really short, and a heart attack at 25 from dipshit coworkers and workplace grief can and will destroy your health, if not your sanity, the older you get.

Trust and believe me when I say no paycheck is too grand to deal with some useless, smarmy, manipulative, or borderline motherfuckers at work constantly. You'll regret it if you do. Don't do it. Do you fucking do it. Just don't.

Take my words to heart and be weary of easy job offers. I'm not saying don't take a good offer that lands in your lap, I AM saying do some investigating and due diligence or the consequences are on you.

TL;DR despite 0 year professional programming I am lead of a large travel booking web-app, this is new to me and my boss, who has repeatedly ignored my advice and moved me on before finishing work. Client is not happy, project is way overdue, and yet has just sent NEW FUCKING DESIGNS.

Recap

https://devrant.com/rants/480004/...

https://devrant.com/rants/431725/...

https://devrant.com/rants/872255/...

Client has sent some redesigns of core search functionality on a project that is overdue and over budget.

DO YOU ACTUALLY *WANT* THIS PROJECT TO FAIL?

[Seeking Advice / Legal / Opinion]

Hello world, (TLDR at the bottom)
I'm the co-founder of a small startup and looking for advice from people of legal background or similar situations. (Any help making the reddit post more active will also help a lot: https://reddit.com/r/legaladvice/...)

Just as a backstory for better understanding:
a couple of years ago, me (early twenties, male) and another guy (late thirties, male) started an entrepreneurial journey, got in an accelerator program and some investment, and things always looked well.
We opened the company and started working / selling our services. Step by step we started recruiting, and getting some clients, and business is going well... ("well" as in, small revenues but not spending more than we earn).

The thing is that me and my co-founder's relationship has been degrading over time and I think it would be better for us and the company to split up and go our own way. He has the majority of the shares and I don't mind leaving it all behind for the sake of the company and mental health.

This is in US, if it helps, and we both have At-Will employment contracts.

My main question is, *if I do sign a termination contract*, from what I read, I'm obliged to remain reachable for a period of 12 months (plus all those IP related stuff, not sharing confidential info, etc).
[1] Is there anything I should be careful about and get some kind of protection or get some more information before resigning?

I'm afraid that if I leave the company it affects the business negatively, as we both work 16 / 20 hour shifts many times and my work would not be easily replaced by anyone in the current team. We are hiring more people right now, and some seniors, and I was thinking on staying one month dedicated only to training them... [2] Could this be specified in some contract that I am resigning from "today", but stay 30 days focusing on training new people, or anything similar?

I don't mind staying in touch and help whenever they could need, but I will not be available 24/7 and I will obviously need a job to pay living expenses, so I don't want to affect negatively my time in other jobs or personal life and be kind of protected against anything that he could do to make me stay continuously connected or compromised.

I'm interested in knowing any opinions and advice you guys may have, and feel free to ask some questions if you need extra details.
I just want the best for the startup but cannot hold much time in the current environment.

TLDR: Relationship between me and co-founder is getting worse, thinking on resignating but want to keep some sort of protection against anything that could make me keep compromised to the company.