There was a guy in my office, who has worked in the same company ever since he started working, let’s call him Ashok. This company was a startup and has been struggling to get on its feet for around five years now. The company has seen good times when it hired employees across all functions and pretty bad times too, when employees were asked to leave. But Ashok has survived it all. Ashok has been a part of this company since its inception and at one point of time he even managed a team of more than ten people.

Since there were times when Ashok was the only employee in the company, besides the CEO , he had to perform a myriad of tasks. In this company Ashok has worked as software engineer , project manager, system administrator, marketing guy and a product manager. Ashok is really tired of constantly changing job profiles and high pressure work environment and wants to quit. Moreover, Ashok has a family to support and hence he wants a stable job even more. But he is unable to do switch jobs for the following reasons:

1. He has been associated with a failing startup and since he was one of the earliest employees potential recruiters consider him to be also responsible for the fate of the company
2. Since it was his first job and he has been working at the same company for long he has developed a personal bond with the founder CEO . Thus, he thinks that he will do a disfavor to his CEO by quitting this job.
3. He has handled varied profiles and does not have experience in one area at a stretch. Potential recruiters find it difficult to offer him middle level managerial roles because he does not have the required experience. Also, because of his age, 36 years, they cannot ofer him a fresher job, which he is open to accepting.

I do not have an answer to how Ashok can make a new start but I think that Ashok’s situation can be a good learning example for those who want to experience startups.