Look around you. If at least half the people you were hired with are mysteriously missing and no one has said a word about it, expect you won't get warning.

@AmyBlankenship:I don't agree.This could happen with e.g. 1 person and be unnoticed.That does not mean that this policy does not exist

I didn't say that not seeing it means anything specific. I'm just giving you the benefit of what I experienced, working in a startup.

@AmyBlankenship:Really?So many people fired?

They left, and it wasn't discussed. Were they all fired? Perhaps.

@AmyBlankenship:Were they new collegues/hires and left very early before getting to know them? How come you don't know about what happened to any of them?

I was the only person hired to do the job I did, so they were distributed through other teams. For example, sales people, PeopleSoft development, etc.

@AmyBlankenship:But in this case weren't any rumours?Weren't any "fears" about job security among the employees?

There wasn't much time for idle chit-chat, as we were all working 90 to nothing to meet goals some might call unrealistic. There were "indications," such as members of management emailing out links to bog posts with names such as Hire fast, Fire fast

Hey

Hire fast, fire fast?

Emailing to the employees?

you mean?

Yes

When you were hired did they tell this upfront?

in the interview?

No, of course not. But now I think I'd be very leery of any job posting with terms such as "fast-paced work environment" etc.

You know this contradicts the answer I got that firing is too costly for start ups

Isn't it?

I assume that the reasons that the people were laid off were not communicated?

In your experience is this a standard mode in startups?

I think a lot of startups have venture capital, so they are not as concerned about wasting money as you'd think. And they're caught up in a certain "start-up" mentality that conventional wisdom does not apply to them.

What they told me was "not a good fit." After thinking about it for a while, I believe that they needed someone to scapegoat when they kept adding requirements and changing the interface and, despite my best efforts, we missed the deadline by several days (though we were feature complete, the interface changes they asked for were not in).

But naturally, throughout the process I pushed back, trying to keep the requirements to something I could deliver on time. This is what I think led to the "bad fit" designation. I think that because I was much more experienced than most of their developers, they were used to developers in this situation simply saying nothing and quietly missing the deadline. Whether they survived this depends on how liked they managed to make themselves.

Honestly, I've only worked for two companies that could be called startups, and both of them had a similar mentality. I'd be hesitant to say this extends to all or most startups.