So people get 1 month performance plans after positive or neutral reviews? Or are these places that don't do regular reviews? I've honestly never heard of that. Want to name names?
Out of four full-time jobs I've had in my career, I have had a performance review (three, actually--every six months!) at one of them. That was the one with a NASDAQ ticker. The gong-show "unicorn" startup, the technically impressive startup that was acquired to bolster a bigco's portfolio, and the medical startup where I managed three people and reported to the CEO. No performance reviews. Couldn't even pin down a m…
That sucks. It's absurdly short-sighted to skimp on giving feedback to employees.
Look startups aren't perfect. You will most certainly work harder than at a large established firm. Your life balance will be no where near as good as at a large firm. But why are you electing to work at a startup? 1) You are getting some options and have the possibility of a big upside which does not exist at a large firm. 2) You want more responsibility and you will certainly get it in the form of wearing many hats…
Agreed, a startup has many tradeoffs. For instance, we want to attract key players/talent that we can barely afford. I've been a large contributor to my startup culture over the past 3 years, and while we created an envious work environment, we can only keep the right people that fit the need of the moment. Work hard + play hard really applies to our company and yes it creates some hard times. We live with a constant executive + management pressure to run a lean company and generate profits in our niche market. To me, this is only a mark of respect to the investors that were crazy enough in the first place to believe in our project.
I think that it's hard to understand that chaos unless you've been part of an early startup yourself. I can also understand that 25 years in journalism is a hard fit, it totally goes against the entrepreneurship skills you might need to survive and appreciate the ride in a startup.
Can someone tell me why in the first paragraph age was brought up? The author initiates the argument by bringing up the age of the manager, as if there was an age requirement. If you are going to make a compelling argument, it's probably best that you don't begin by belittling others.
I have a hard time thinking of people making 6 figure salaries as being an instance of capital exploiting labor. Part of why the average length of employment is only around a year is probably that employees are choosing to go elsewhere for higher pay because the demand for good engineers is so high.
This is correct. However, it's still strane to mention ages in this context. Just replace age descriptions with race descriptions to see how weird and out of place that is. > She was white, had been with the company for four years, and was told without explanation by her latino manager that she had two weeks to get out.
>> "Just replace age descriptions with race descriptions to see how weird and out of place that is." How is that in any way a sound analogy? Your age likely has an impact on your experience. More experience doesn't necessarily mean you're better at your job but it's a decent possibility. Race has no impact on performance at all.
Race does not impact perfomance, but there's a correlation between race and education, for example (because ages of institutial discrimination, of course). Do you think people should take this correlation into consideration when talking about others?
Does anyone have more context on Dan Lyons? After reading this article, and the one from Fortune[0], and his post on LinkedIn[1], it feels like he's out there scraping together blatant PR for his new book. And it makes me honestly wonder whether he went to work for HubSpot looking for a story to write in the first place... and being a writer for the "Silicon Valley" TV series doesn't really help his credibility in th…
Out of four full-time jobs I've had in my career, I have had a performance review (three, actually--every six months!) at one of them. That was the one with a NASDAQ ticker. The gong-show "unicorn" startup, the technically impressive startup that was acquired to bolster a bigco's portfolio, and the medical startup where I managed three people and reported to the CEO. No performance reviews. Couldn't even pin down a m…
That sucks. It's absurdly short-sighted to skimp on giving feedback to employees.
I agree, as it happens! Even at the company where I was managing people, I had regular sit-downs with my guys (and I was intentionally not really "a manager", I was primus inter pares and I made sure that showed). Never had one going upwards, even when we got reorg'd under the guy who thought Six Sigma was a good idea. ;)
Issues raised in the article aside, I am here to argue semantics. The article used the word start-up 3 times, plus one more in the title of his book. The company he worked for however, HubSpot is 10 years old and public and thus by definition is not a startup. Other two companies mentioned, Amazon and Netflix are both over a decade old and public and thus are not start-ups by any stretch of the imagination. Startups…
Indeed. I've also noticed that we (as engineers and designers) have a better lifestyle in terms of treatment, job security and pay at these startups/tech companies - compared to the marketing teams which consist of the people who typically write these negative articles.
Countless of these articles critiquing the tech work culture pop on HN and it's rarely ever written by devs/management. The tone always comes off as criticism from 'outsiders' who worked within the company, who treat the pride taken in creating eccentric workplaces as somewhat alien to them. Maybe because they aren't truly insiders to the culture... especially in the sense that they aren't ever the creators/leaders or long term members. Only temporarily working within the environment before going back to more typical corporate environments from where they write their analysis with a certain level of cynicism.
Does anyone have more context on Dan Lyons? After reading this article, and the one from Fortune[0], and his post on LinkedIn[1], it feels like he's out there scraping together blatant PR for his new book. And it makes me honestly wonder whether he went to work for HubSpot looking for a story to write in the first place... and being a writer for the "Silicon Valley" TV series doesn't really help his credibility in th…
How do I get into the business of reputation management? I assume they pay you well?