Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values

keyvalues.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 130 posts

Re: Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values

#51

Post by meritt »

alrehn wrote: post #10

Not sure how much you can consider Work/Life balance a key value when you expect people to work 50 hour weeks ( https://www.keyvalues.io/kite ). Not to say that 50 hours is awful, there's certainly a lot worse out there, but I'd say it's enough to disqualify that as a 'key value'.

Every time work/life balance comes up I get so damn annoyed with this uniquely tech-centric viewpoint.

You've got people bringing home $150-350k/yr plus every imaginable perk fretting over the idea of putting in more than 40 hours a week. Even high-skilled high-pay workers (medicine, legal, and finance come to mind) put in lots of hours without whimpering about finding a balance, much less the vast percentage of the population who hold blue-collar jobs and clamor for overtime pay.

If someone doesn't feel they should work more than 40 hours, then by all means don't take that job, but please drop the damn sense of entitlement. This bubble will not last forever and one's ability to crank out an Uber-for-X clone in NodeJS won't always pay the bills.

Re: Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values

#53

Post by Domenic_S »

javajosh wrote: post #19
lynnetye wrote: post #7

Hello! Lynne here, the creator of Key Values. I’m an indie hacker, and I've spent the last few months putting this together. I interviewed dozens of engineers to come up with a list of values: things we care about most when evaluating new opportunities. I then worked with engineering teams (which you see listed on Key Values) to identify the 8 values that best describe their engineering team and culture. I’m working…

I like the idea, but there are some important values missing from the list: 1. Principle over loyalty. 2. Empower individuals over institutions. 3. Self-restraint over greed. 4. Decisions based on reason, not ego. 5. Give back to Open Source. Thanks.

These don't fit well into what OP's doing. What company in their right mind would say "We base our decisions on ego over reason"? Even though that might be true....

Re: Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values

#54

Post by alrehn »

meritt wrote: post #51
alrehn wrote: post #10

Not sure how much you can consider Work/Life balance a key value when you expect people to work 50 hour weeks ( https://www.keyvalues.io/kite ). Not to say that 50 hours is awful, there's certainly a lot worse out there, but I'd say it's enough to disqualify that as a 'key value'.

Every time work/life balance comes up I get so damn annoyed with this uniquely tech-centric viewpoint. You've got people bringing home $150-350k/yr plus every imaginable perk fretting over the idea of putting in more than 40 hours a week. Even high-skilled high-pay workers (medicine, legal, and finance come to mind) put in lots of hours without whimpering about finding a balance, much less the vast percentage of the…

Like I said, I don't think working more than 40 hours is the end of the world, I just don't think a company that expects that can list work/life balance as a core value. It's ok to sacrifice that for high salaries or other perks, but that's what a site like this is for, to help match your priorities with a companies'. If you put down work/life balance as one of the things you value most then you probably don't want to work for a place that expects you to work until 8pm.

Re: Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values

#55

Post by bonsai80 »

mbesto wrote: post #42
lynnetye wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams self-select their values! I've worked closely with each team and they write their own profiles.

Wouldn't every company say they just do everything? I mean, heck, I would...

Nah, people will just quit soon after. Then the company is faced with all the costs involved in hiring replacements. This idea works both ways, and ideally gets the right people into the right places for the benefit of the employees and employers.

Re: Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values

#57

Post by lynnetye »

shimon wrote: post #39

What are you trying to accomplish here? It looks like a nicely structured rigorous filtering tool based on values. But when you view the details for any company, it's not really rigorous. It's a narrative from the company with a clearly positive bias. Now, getting more narrative content about companies is great (most companies don't do much of this) but the value you're creating here is a better "what's it like to wo…

You make a lot of great points!

Finding a job is a lot like dating. People typically don't share their worst qualities upfront, and I decided early on that I didn't want to force them to. Instead, I've become more of a coach/cheerleader for both companies and job-seekers.

When I work with teams to write their profiles, it's my job to say, "prove it" when we discuss each value, and suggest that they choose another when they can't. I encourage teams to use strong language, talk about disqualifiers, include concrete examples, incorporate quantitative data, and/or provide links to contact current team members wherever possible. But, for now, I won't make anyone to do or say anything that they aren't comfortable with.

I hope job-seekers are critical when comparing different teams. Some profiles deserve an A+ while others are perhaps a B- (though I won't say which). If you interview 20 different teams, it'd probably be similar. Those that speak your language would resonate with you and those that fail to answer authentically to you would lose you. That's okay.

Ultimately, I'm providing structure for teams to talk about what is inherently subjective and messy. There is no black or white when it comes to culture or compatibility (maybe you've tried setting up two great individuals who just didn't hit it off?) but at least we now have some information to guide our decision making.

Re: Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values

#58

Post by lynnetye »

mbesto wrote: post #42
lynnetye wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams self-select their values! I've worked closely with each team and they write their own profiles.

Wouldn't every company say they just do everything? I mean, heck, I would...

Yes, this is why companies are limited to 8 values and are then asked to qualify their selections in their profiles. At the end of the day, teams are implicitly saying what they are not when they don't put it in their top 8.
Post reply on HN