Behave Like a Normal Employee

My second day in SF AI startup

Dear my weirdo friends,

This is only the second day of my SF AI startup job, and I'm feeling exhausted. Not from the stress and overworking, but from trying to fit into the role of a normal employee.

First of all, let me tell you how unstructured a startup can be. In my hacker house (powerhouse), we have a written format for the daily standup, where we check in on the work we've done and align it with the OKRs for the week. However, here at my new job, even though we still have a daily standup, I don't really know what's going on, because our daily standup looks like this:

Yes, it's just people taking turns vomiting words about what they did yesterday. There are no higher-level goals like OKRs or any progress tracking during the standup.

Though I did share my OKR with my founder yesterday, I believe I had already accomplished it by yesterday too. They asked me to make improvements today, but from my perspective, the utility of doing so is marginal.

In addition, I have to sit there like a normal employee. I cannot go exercise or do anything, simply because it's only my second day of work. Being normal is painful for me. I feel myself becoming dumber and dumber as I sit there in the afternoon, doing things without direction, like a headless chicken.

I feel really sad that after working, doing yoga, and having dinner, it is already 9:37 pm. Although I don't think I did much today, I'm still exhausted and want to go to sleep now.

Lastly, I have lots of ideas and critiques for my startup, but I didn't bring anything up. Why? Once again, because I'm trying to behave like a normal employee. Normal employees typically wouldn't criticize their second day of work.

Okay, I'm dead tired. Good night.