---
title: "Is there a big \"Escape\" button somewhere?"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/13/is-there-a-big-quotescapequot-button-somewhere.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/13/is-there-a-big-quotescapequot-button-somewhere.html"
published: "2003-03-13T08:42:00"
updated: "2003-03-13T08:42:00"
tags: []
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Working at a startup holds many wonderful benefits : 1) You create and edit powerpoint presentations - this of course takes all your day since the boss wants \"that line to be a little closer to that line\" and \"can you…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Is there a big "Escape" button somewhere?

By Roy Osherove March 13, 2003

**Historical article** · Originally published March 13, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

**Working at a startup holds many wonderful benefits :**

1) You create and edit powerpoint presentations

 - this of course takes all your day since the boss wants "that line to be a little closer to that line" and "can you make it a big circle instead?"

2) You install new and exciting hardware on the companie's old NT 4.0 box

3) You are asked to "Burn some children games CDs" for your boss's kids

4) You will never EVER get a raise

5) You might get a pay cut

6) You may not mutter a word about it because you will lose your job

7) You do every thing that is not even remotly related to programming(And forget about .Net)

8) You forget how your wife looks and need a map to find your way back home (You havnt been there in a long time!)

9) Your boss lets himself treat his employees like C\*\*P

Sorry. Did that sound bitter? Am i the only one who feels like this?

btw, anyone looking for a skilled  .Net programmer who is willing to just sit, code and learn the hard stuff  (already with an MCP in C# winforms) - drop me a line


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/