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Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

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Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#121

Post by justin_vanw »

supercanuck wrote: post #82
justin_vanw wrote: post #66

So does the author think that everyone is great at their job? What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they won't improve? Pointing out the age difference in the manager and the employee, and their sexes, is just baiting. Unless he wants to make the case that there was sexism or agism from the manager, or that the company engaged in sexism or agism, it is just a red h…

I came away with the impression that HubSpot's management was purposely divorced from reality, and so it is hard to take them at face value that she was unable to perform her job. The issue appears that she was too costly to the company due to biological reasons(1. being old and 2. being a woman). The other issue from the article was that there didn't seem to be an objective way of measuring performance so "graduatio…

Too young? I wish!

I went through your comments and figured out who you are in real life, and I found that I basically agree with most of the things you say, so I won't give you a hard time. I think Kirkland Signature makes good stuff too!

Edit: That sounded really stalker-ish, I did it to see if you are actually even older than I am.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#122

Post by jessriedel »

aleyan wrote: post #80

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…

> using them interchangeably is harmful to our discourse. If we can't agree on what words mean, how can we agree on deeper issues?

Well, I agree this sorts of equivocation can completely confuse important issues. But worth noting that you will always be able to ignore an opposing viewpoint if they have to agree with you on the definition of every term. Better to simply say in this case that the terminology confusion invalidates parts of his argument, and then when replying to bend over backwards to state your thesis unambiguously (in both languages if necessary).

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#123

Post by sleepychu »

themodelplumber wrote: post #89
fleitz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's like those people who have been working with J2EE for 25 years at Big Company X that is now bankrupt, and constantly complain about the lack of GANNT charts, or whatever the hammer and chisel tools they use to make J2EE apps.

Gantt charts helped me and a group of subcontractors compete against some huge corporate teams. It's legit to complain about a lack of gantt charts.

The format is pretty unfriendly to the user though and rigid time planning is pretty pointless for problem solving exercises, IMO. What do you think makes gantt charts great?

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#124

Post by superswordfish »

luckydata wrote: post #120
superswordfish wrote: post #109

Doing cold calls in a boiler-room is a shitty job. News at 11. > Tech workers have no job security. The bad ones have none. The decent ones might, it depends on circumstance. The good ones almost always have plenty. But don't call yourself a "tech worker" when you're making sales calls.

Classism much? They definitely are tech workers, what they are not is developers or engineers.

Would you consider somebody who sells cars an auto worker? I sure wouldn't. It has nothing to do with "class" (as if engineers constituted such a thing).

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#125

Post by chrisyeh »

For the record, I'm one of the co-authors of "The Alliance," which Dan Lyons refers to in his op ed. Dan refers to our book and quotes a single sentence fragment: "Your company is not your family." Everything else he writes in that section of the piece has nothing to do with the content of the book.

1) "You’re serving a “tour of duty” that might last a year or two" Actually, the book makes it clear that the duration of a tour of duty depends on the mission the employee has agreed to tackle--tours of duty can be 6 months long, but then can also last for a decade (think of NASA scientists working on a deep space probe).

2) "Companies burn you out and churn you out when someone better, or cheaper, becomes available." This is purely Dan Lyons; the point we make in the book is that few employees expect or want lifetime employment at a single company; what people really want is lifetime employability and career progress. We would consider companies that behaved like Lyons described as "breaking the Alliance," which would harm their reputation as an employer.

3) "In this new model of work, employees are expected to feel complete devotion and loyalty to their companies, even while the boss feels no such obligation in return." Once again, this is the exact opposite of what our book says. We believe that employers and employees need to recognize that employment is a voluntary, mutually beneficial alliance, and that managers should be explicit about how an employee's job assignment is going to help develop his or her career.

Dan Lyons certainly has right to his opinions, but he shouldn't have a right to misrepresent our ideas.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#126

Post by pj_mukh »

Unpopular opinion but current SV workplace culture is not the final refined product in the evolution of the workplace. It is a stepping stone. I consider it to be better than the drudgery of blue-chip, 9-5 (especially for the current generation).

Most of these workers at the large firms (Amazon, Google etc.) are empowered enough to leave their jobs if they don't believe in the founders' mission. They remain long enough for the companies' viability.

As for compensation (or "sharing of the riches") at all levels, most of SV's leadership have identified issues [1][2], as the culture evolves this will certainly get better.

P.S: This is the first time I've heard of Hubspot's problems, but don't doubt them, rotten eggs abound.

[1] http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity [2] http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/does-yelp-pay-at-market.htm...

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#127

Post by rhizome »

golergka wrote: post #105
k-mcgrady wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "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?

I highly recommend double-checking your work on this line of thinking.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#128

Post by TheGrassyKnoll »

xzi wrote: post #46
ThomPete wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can but it's extremely, extremely rare for the very simple fact that your primary skills as a manager is people skills and the ability to relate to other peoples situation. Something you normally won't be as developed at that point. At 28 you have more experience than a 18 year old, but not much and def not enough to be able to relate to a 35 year old person in most cases. So not sure I find it ironic. Rather I c…

I agree with everything you say. However, in my personal experience, the best manager I've had was 25 when I was 30. This manager realized he didn't really know much. So he stayed out of my way and let me make the technical decisions while he ran interference with the directors and VPs. Never had a more smooth working environment before or since.

Best thing a manager can do is block pressure from the upper levels.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#129

Post by hifier »

dmix wrote: post #108
aleyan wrote: post #80

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…

While I agree that the author and others in the same role clearly do not feel apart of the culture, could you really expect them to? They don't have any equity, they don't make very much, they are monitored and evaluated like telemarketers, yet the management expects them to buy into the "change the world" mantra. I think you have to admit that it's demeaning. Why would they feel anything besides anger or jealousy?

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#130

Post by draw_down »

aleyan wrote: post #80

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…

If you want to nitpick about this then fine, but I think it would be really great if the top comment in the discussion did not begin by explicitly disclaiming that it's off-topic.
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