u/Interesting_Coat5177

I've been in and out of the startup tech world for the last 20 years, either working for startups or working for design firms contracted to help make products for startups. These are mostly bootstrapped and/or have small rounds of funding, or some larger companies using us as experimental R&D, not the Silicon Valley type where the whole business model is to survive to the next round of funding.

I would say that 50-60% of the things I've worked on have never made it past the prototype phase, and only ~5% have made it to production and survived being in the market for more then 2 years. Most issues stem from bad business decisions outside of the quality of the product I worked on. Either the founders never understood the customers they were selling to, had a solution looking for a problem, or mismanaged badly and ran out of funding. Early on in my career it didn't bother me because I was learning something new and adding tools to the tool belt, but now it all just feels like a waste of time.

I find myself again part of a startup that is doomed to fail. I must have lied to myself thinking I could help them out since they seemed to need my expertise, but I underestimated the Ego on one of the co-founders. I only do the minimum because I don't want to put in extra effort for the company to go under 6-12 months later. I am looking for a new job but my Jadedness has carried over to the job search where I don't even apply or sabotage interviews because it feels like I'm going to get in the same situation.

I'm too far away from retirement, how do I stop feeling negative about everything job related and feel excited about my career again? Anyone have personal experience with breaking out of a jaded funk?

Quick question, do you answer your phone when its a number you don't know?

I'm an elder Millennial and basically grew up with all these phone scams and spam, so I never answer a number I don't know. I figure if they needed something they would leave a message and I would call back. Today I got a phone call from a number twice in 20min and googled it and it came back as a recruiters linkedin profile. They never left any message or tried to contact me in other ways, so it got me wondering if I am missing opportunities because I don't answer the phone.

If you are looking for more senior positions does that change the math on if you answer strange numbers? Is there a perception that if you are a Director and up you always answer the phone if you can?