People who quit their jobs on the first day, what made you say, “I’m done with this”?

First few weeks- agritech startup. horrible work culture. terrible founder. Got a call at 4am, decided this isn't for me.

Not 1 day but quit in a month,

Clueless founder who was very technical but no business and marketing sense

Building out of FOMO and the next hype cycle

Good riddance

I am not very proud of it - but I did not join the company that I was placed in out of college, said no to them one week before joining.

I did this because I got an offer from my dream company. I felt terrible doing it tho

Joined as a marketing associate - job was to do 100 cold calls a day

left in an instant

While you are at it, how soon did you guys get the next job?

Quit in a few months, but I knew from Day 1 that I wanted to quit. This is one of the popular subscriber-only longform business news websites in India Reason - Toxic boss who is also a co-founder

Hint: Look at the number of journalists who quit in between 2022 and 2024

I remember being selected as the only person in a Bangalore based IT firm (now a listed entity) from a total of 1200 applicants. They gave me a joining date almost 5 days after the interview day.

By this time I had already attended the final interview of a more reputed MNC. These gaya had already cleared me and gave an offer letter the very next day.

Both the joining dates were on the 1st of next month ... I joined the MNC, hoping that the Indian firm must have get a better candidate by now.

My mistake was simple - I had informed the HR over SMS (ya... Old story... More than 2 decades ago... We had basic phones then).... And HR probably missed this SMS for some reason.

She called me on the joining day ... Around noon ... And blasted me like hell. I felt sorry for wasting their time and efforts. And also felt bad that these guys won't trust the candidates in future.

After I started switching and gave interviews, one thing I understood is that they never give f about us. Companies will replace anybody in heartbeat so we can replace them as well without giving a second thought.

Hostile work environment. Founders throwing tantrums at employees. One founder shouted at an employee because he was taking scrum call while sitting next to him.
Seniors shouting at juniors, threatening them to work overnight because they exceeded their lunch break by 20 minutes. All this happened on day one.

I remember joining an EdTech company (startup), it felt promising when I heard the founder's idea and his passion to execute.

When I joined and started going through the nitty gritties of their process and underlying belief ... It gave me a little doubt over its feasibility.

The core idea was to train a child to become what he aspires for. And to know what a child is capable of there were too many psychometric tests designed by our professional team. This testing thing was at the core of the entire belief around this startup. They had the money to sustain for at least a few years too.

My simple doubt was - In India how many parents are going to accept that my son should be a musician and not an engineer. How many people will take these psychometric tests so religiously and consider it as their order from God. Moreover, don't people change over the years? So will these results not change year after year? In which case wouldn't this become a matter of joke in the market pretty soon?

The founder couldn't convince me on most of the matters. And I chose to leave after a couple of days (less than 2 weeks). But the founder continued to take his passion ahead. The company lasted a few years ... But had to be shut because the idea had no buyers (not beyond a couple hundred parents across the country).

Later the founder said that this idea was difficult to market ... Probably encapsulates the fact that people won't decide their kid's career based on some tests.

So, that was it!