empthrowaway

Yep, I took a pay cut joining this place because I was really excited about the product -- probably another terrible idea.

I think the PM's been here for about a year or so. Which actually seems to be quite long in the context of this company.

Yes, the PM was one of the 4 interviewers who interviewed me. HR lady, PM, tech lead (of the company), and tech lead of the product.

I can't say I'm being completely objective as I am part of this situation, but he definitely did not come across with these expectations during the interview. You could say things were pretty "rosy" in the interview (well, if something seemed wrong I probably wouldn't take the offer anyways).

Thing is, this company doesn't really have a chain of command in the sense that management/executive level people don't really talk to or bother with the going-ons of the team (I guess it feels quite "big corp" in that sense). My understanding is that in our product team of 5 (1 copywriter, 1 PM, 2 devs, 1 designer/UX), the PM is pretty much management/HR.

I just remembered something else when you mentioned the PM is probably a new hire too. For whatever reason, when I got on this team, I found out that there were 2 previous devs (different timeline, they didn't work together), before me. Basically Dev-A stayed for ~5 months or so, then Dev-B came on and left after ~3 months, then Dev-C (current tech lead for our product) came. From my understanding, they all had a 1 month-ish overlap where they had 2 devs for knowledge transfer, but it's been the first time this team has had 2 devs officially. I felt a bit iffy hearing about that (it came up in some documents I read when I started, but any questions about their involvement were always avoided)...

My thoughts exactly. Whether or not I update my LinkedIn profile should be my own problem. It feels almost like someone asking for your Facebook credentials before hiring (less ridiculous, but still weird nonetheless).

I did tell him I really like the product and the work, but the whole time he just went back to "You didn't update your LinkedIn profile. That tells me you are not 100% committed." and I couldn't get an answer out of him about the expectation to constantly work overtime; this was never mentioned in the interviews, offer, or during the last 6 weeks.

Another thing I just remembered about our conversation -- I've been doing freelance work for 6 years, and have continued to do so despite full-time employment in the past 3 years. I make sure to keep them separate though, I do not work on freelance stuff (including answering emails/phone calls) during the time I am at work, and I make sure I don't leave early just because I need to do freelance work.

He seems to attribute that also towards me not "giving 100%".

I'm quite frustrated right now, and since I've never worked in a startup like this, not sure if what he's saying is really justified at all. I have made sure to speak to him civilly though, especially when he kept saying I wasn't "100%" because of the LinkedIn and lack of excessive overtime (I was pretty ticked off but I still asked him why and explained my point of view).