Why would you want passion? The thing you should look for is interest. Passion only means that they don't have the necessary information to tell if what they are doing is reckless or not.
Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
51–60 of 60 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#52* If you want low performance, give me low money. * If you want high performance, give me high money. * If you want loyalty/passion, give me equity/profit sharing. You can buy my performance i.e. time with money. You can buy my passion i.e. commitment with reciprocation. If you give me typical market wages without profit sharing, don't expect anything beyond typical performance without commitment.
There are some excellent studies out there that suggest this to be false. One source[1] showed that: - For highly creative jobs, respect and autonomy to function and just enough $ to cover comfortable living expenses produced the best results. - As you add more money, the performance for these jobs decreased. AND - For highly repetitive jobs, performance increased with pay almost linearly. - Offering more autonomy fo…
There are some excellent studies out there that suggest this to be false.
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#53* If you want low performance, give me low money. * If you want high performance, give me high money. * If you want loyalty/passion, give me equity/profit sharing. You can buy my performance i.e. time with money. You can buy my passion i.e. commitment with reciprocation. If you give me typical market wages without profit sharing, don't expect anything beyond typical performance without commitment.
There are some excellent studies out there that suggest this to be false. One source[1] showed that: - For highly creative jobs, respect and autonomy to function and just enough $ to cover comfortable living expenses produced the best results. - As you add more money, the performance for these jobs decreased. AND - For highly repetitive jobs, performance increased with pay almost linearly. - Offering more autonomy fo…
The "excellent studies", which engineering management uses to claim that low salaries, but enough to survive, are optimal, are a crock. Where are the top CEOs making just enough to survive?
Here is the flaw. If you are properly compensated and don't have any other options, giving you a big fat raise doesn't improve your productivity, that's true and that's what the studies measure. Hey are you a developer? Here's an extra ten bucks, will you now come up with a better algorithm? No, of course not, because money doesn't make you a better developer, just as paying existing public school teachers more doesn't make them any less severely incompetent.
However, if you want to attract more productive people in the first place, you have to pay them more money because there is a competitive environment. The "excellent studies" try to prevent readers from noticing that that's not what they looked into, and it's clear they do this intentionally.
Do you think that Google would attract the same caliber of developers by paying what McDonalds pays its line workers? You must believe that if you really believe that these studies are correct in their claims that there is no advantage to paying more than survival wages.
The simple fact is that sustenance wages are not in fact ideal for attracting the best developers, designers, writers, actors and inventors.
If you don't recognize that, but continue to insist that the opposite is true, then you are intentionally seeking to deceive people.
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some excellent studies out there that suggest this to be false. One source[1] showed that: - For highly creative jobs, respect and autonomy to function and just enough $ to cover comfortable living expenses produced the best results. - As you add more money, the performance for these jobs decreased. AND - For highly repetitive jobs, performance increased with pay almost linearly. - Offering more autonomy fo…
The "excellent studies", which engineering management uses to claim that low salaries, but enough to survive, are optimal, are a crock. Where are the top CEOs making just enough to survive? Here is the flaw. If you are properly compensated and don't have any other options, giving you a big fat raise doesn't improve your productivity, that's true and that's what the studies measure. Hey are you a developer? Here's an…
I think you're conflating wages for "comfortable living" with "sustenance" wages.
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "excellent studies", which engineering management uses to claim that low salaries, but enough to survive, are optimal, are a crock. Where are the top CEOs making just enough to survive? Here is the flaw. If you are properly compensated and don't have any other options, giving you a big fat raise doesn't improve your productivity, that's true and that's what the studies measure. Hey are you a developer? Here's an…
I think you're conflating wages for "comfortable living" with "sustenance" wages.
Mmmm, the actual amount isn't all that relevant to the argument. But as far as "comfortable living" goes, the average $90,000 salary in Silicon Valley, minus the high California tax burden, does not provide "comfortable living" when a run down 3 bedroom home costs on average $860,000, vastly above the ability of said $90,000 wage earner to afford. It barely provides sustenance living. This is why many of these average paid developers have 3-4 hour commutes from far away, and others are living packed 5 to a room, and few are able to attract a mate.
This is completely a different topic from the discussion though so I'd prefer not to continue with it, if you would like to, it would be best to start a new thread.
Developers in many other parts of the country can live comfortably with an average wage. But watch out if you get sick. Sickness is for the rich. As we found out last month, if you are a long term employee at Microsoft and you get brain cancer, they give you a bad review and then declare you ineligible for disability benefits. Shouldn't have gotten cancer!
My idea of comfortable living is you can afford a house, to marry, and to afford health care. Others may disagree, but I don't consider that to be even worth debating.
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#56Why would you want passion? The thing you should look for is interest. Passion only means that they don't have the necessary information to tell if what they are doing is reckless or not.
Interesting.let me clarify my case. What I have seen so far is that most developers around want to ship 3 products a year for 3 different industries. They are all over the place. Cannot commit to solving a specific problem for a specific industry for an extended period of time.
So my thinking is maybe if the guys are passionate about the problem/ industry and not just interested in learning to do a lot of stuff, we would have a better shot at succeeding.
Correct me if there is a flaw in my understanding.
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#57I was passionate for a previous employer, but they burned it out of me. Their inability to make decisions and leaps necessary to really be successful ate away at me. Those things affected me personally, and as an employee, that just can't happen. It's not worth it.
I can emapathize with that. I do believe that could be the case with my team. Some of the guys came from another startup where they were not equity holders.
Does this happen a lot in the industry. If it does happen frequently then it makes more sense for a honest founder to always recruit/ collaborate with younger programmers.
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#58I suspect you might be from India, so let me tell about a few things that bugged me about life as software developer in Bangalore. I don't mind being paid below market but I definitely need something to make up for this. You could this (following in no particular order): (1) profit sharing (2) equity (3) a higher-than-market level of responsibility for a given experience level and (4) interesting work. The other thin…
Yes. We are based out of Mumbai. And the thing is we are offering everything mentioned on your list. I find the Indian developer to be more concerned about the salary.
The other issues you mentioned could be true in our case. We did give more responsibility to an inexperienced developer who has shown great initiative.
A good developer with commitment or a better developer who is all over the place?
Honestly development as a career is very hard, I have seen a lot of developers who cannot switch off, or focus on solving a specific problem. I think passion to solve a problem sometimes makes it easy for a developer to work on something for a decent amount of time and not try hacking the nxt shiny thing around.
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#59This might fit in with Dan Pink's talk on 'Drive': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc Passion can be driven by incentives outside of salary.
I haven't watched all of those RSA videos but I've seen quite a few. It's amazing how every one I have seen is outlandish propaganda that it seems no one would fall for, yet I stand completely alone in this viewpoint.
Re: Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're conflating wages for "comfortable living" with "sustenance" wages.
Mmmm, the actual amount isn't all that relevant to the argument. But as far as "comfortable living" goes, the average $90,000 salary in Silicon Valley, minus the high California tax burden, does not provide "comfortable living" when a run down 3 bedroom home costs on average $860,000, vastly above the ability of said $90,000 wage earner to afford. It barely provides sustenance living. This is why many of these averag…
I'm not disagreeing with anything you said but my understanding of the studies that rkalla is talking about is that the extra $$$ won't make your life significantly better so you'd be willing to forgo that money for "better" (I'm being intentionally vague here) work. Obviously, in the situation you're referring to the extra money makes a big difference in quality of life.
Perhaps you're suggesting that there are no cases where this is true? (i.e., one will always be happier with the extra $$$).