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Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

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Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#151

Post by jbapple »

chrisyeh wrote: post #125

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…

> the point we make in the book is that few employees expect or want lifetime employment at a single company

This might be a function of broken promotion processes. Perhaps, in a world in which employees believed that they could advance their careers by either staying at one company or moving around, we would see a significant fraction of workers who would want to have long tenures.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#152

Post by Gigablah »

timr wrote: post #87
ianstormtaylor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I'm not. I'm looking for more information, because I don't want to buy into outlandish-sounding PR articles on their basis alone. While you were writing this comment, I was editing my comment with insights from the interview that @CPLX linked to ;) and I agree with him.

I read it that way, too. Why does it matter that the guy is writing a book? Why does it matter that the article is marketing for the book? Is it true? Sounds like it is. I read your comment after the edits were applied, and I still thought it was one of those sneaky sorts of "homeopathic ad hominem" attacks where you don't make the attack directly, but instead allude to the "questions" that invoke the attack when con…

I guess the term you're looking for is "concern trolling".

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#154

Post by jdale27 »

pythonistic wrote: post #139
deanCommie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's back off with the Amazon hate. Right below it on the same list is Google with an average tenure at 1.1 years. Nobody tries to use that as an argument that Google burns through workers who quit in dissatisfaction.

They're up to 1.1 years now? Wow! They were at six months for developers for most of the time I was working there (2006-2010). At three years, I was in the top 25% of seniority ("old farts"). By comparison, Overstock.com averaged five years for developers between 2010-2013.

I find that incredibly hard to believe, given Google's reputation. Also, if the average was six months, that suggests that a significant number of exits were happening even sooner than six months. Did you personally observe that to be occurring frequently?

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#155

Post by seansmccullough »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #143
deanCommie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's back off with the Amazon hate. Right below it on the same list is Google with an average tenure at 1.1 years. Nobody tries to use that as an argument that Google burns through workers who quit in dissatisfaction.

Does that 1.1 year average tenure reflect the fact that these companies are growing and have many new still-employed employees?

This is a big part of it. Amazon hired tens of thousands of people last year, and it really pulls down the average tenure.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#156

Post by eclipxe »

luckydata wrote: post #86
ianstormtaylor wrote: post #5

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…

I worked in tech for a while and nothing he says sounds implausible or strange. Most jobs in tech are bad, all the perks are there just to confuse young suckers about who's taking advantage of who, and the libertarian streak of tech worker is carefully cultivated to make us weaker as a category. The only glimmer of hope is that personally I'm noticing my peers and friends working all over the Bay Area are starting to…

>Most jobs in tech are bad

I'm not sure I can even understand how your arrive at this conclusion? Looking over the entire set of available jobs, tech is clearly one of the best fields to be in. From pay to autonomy to working conditions, etc etc. You want to see a bad job? Coal mining is a bad job.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#157

Post by sremani »

ryanSrich wrote: post #150
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…

> What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they won't improve? Be an adult and make a tough decision without masking it as a great "thing" (aka: graduation)?

Yes putting the lipstick on the pig, and ritualizing it, makes this an emotionally sadistic exercise.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#158

Post by andyzweb »

vacri wrote: post #14

> Tech workers have no job security. To generalise in the same manner as the article, they also have no loyalty - job-hopping is more common in tech than any other industry I've seen, excluding perhaps hospitality. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.

it's been that way since Noyce left Beckman/Shockley in the late 50's and formed Fairchild

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#159

Post by TarpitCarnivore »

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…

Is that not part of the problem then? Discounting a critique of a company because of the persons role is just as demeaning.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#160

Post by ljw1001 »

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…

I'm a dev and I found the article to be spot on. HubSpot's impact on the world beyond is vanishingly small, to pretend otherwise is either naive or cynical. And anyone who calls being fired "graduating" is an ass.
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