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

Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

mobile.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 445 posts

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#171

Post by andyidsinga »

ljw1001 wrote: post #160
dmix wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had the a similar reaction to the article ..and the same reaction to the interview on Fresh Air : http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473097951/laid-off-tech-journa...

The part in the fresh air interview that talks about jargon is especially interesting.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#173

Post by bigiain »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #145
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…

managers should be explicit about how an employee's job assignment is going to help develop his or her career That's interesting. I've had a number of managers in my career and never, not even once, has one of them espoused anything resembling such a position. It's always what can the employee do for the company, not what's mutually beneficial.

I try to do it a lot. I often have conversations that go something like "Thisis me taking my $companyName hat off and speaking with my 'friend of $employeeName' hat on, but as much as this will cause me problems I realy suggest you consider $significantCareerEnhancement even though it will cause me $problemsIfYouMoveOrLeave as a result."

(I'm also surprised/disappointed at how rarely that advice is taken - there's a _very_ strong tendency for people to "stay put" in a sub optimal career position instead of taking the risk of jumping into the unknown and possiby scarey "next level up". So many devs tell me "I'm not ready for a mid level role yet" or equivalent, even when thay _clearly_ are...)

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#174

Post by jdminhbg »

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…

> the libertarian streak of tech worker is carefully cultivated to make us weaker as a category

Wow, that must take a whole lot of careful coordination.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#175

Post by bigiain »

andyidsinga wrote: post #169
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

managers should be explicit about how an employee's job assignment is going to help develop his or her career That's interesting. I've had a number of managers in my career and never, not even once, has one of them espoused anything resembling such a position. It's always what can the employee do for the company, not what's mutually beneficial.

I've had several managers and mentors at Intel that we're sincerely interested in helping me develop my career. I'm not saying its universal, but I've seen some.

It occurs to me looking at this and the other responses so far in this subthread - that it's quite likely more common in larger organizations (Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Intel) where career advancement is not quite so directly correlated to "leaving for a better position in a different company". If you can get your best employees promoted into roles where they are likely to become your reports again when you yourself get promoted, there's more benefit for the manager in advancing people they want to keep "on their team" as they themselves climb the career ladder. There is, I guess, less opportunity for that sort of mutually beneficial career development in startups or SMEs (with the exception of the occasional "freelance teams" that you sometimes see all jump ship from one project/startup to another together - I've seen that both in tiny hardware startups as well as in 9 figure projects in major corporations.)

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#177

Post by rev_null »

wierdaaron wrote: post #29
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…

Dan Lyons was Fake Steve Jobs, then was a gadget writer where he was a frequent doomsayer of Apple and complained endlessly about the lack of access and review units Apple gave him. When he left that job and went to an advertising startup it was assumed that he'd just burned all of his tech writing bridges and had to resort to writing ad copy, but looking back I'd say it's a fair shot that he wanted an angle to write…

Don't forget that he was also a shill for SCO.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#178

Post by vonklaus »

esbranson wrote: post #167
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…

> Dan Lyons certainly has right to his opinions, but he shouldn't have a right to misrepresent our ideas. That's nonsense. A right to opinions that don't "misrepresent others' ideas" is essentially no right at all.

i don't want to misrepresent the parent, but my take was:

Don't cite my work in a narrow, out of contex way, that entirely misrepresents the body of thought I put together which ia almost entirely at odds with your message.

sure, the people should be allowed to say whatever they want, but if you incorrectly attribute qoutes or ideology to someone, in my mind, you lose credibility. so sure you have a right to mistepresent others ideas but unless you have wholly original thought, if you do that, you call into question the validity of your process, all your sources, and ultimately all of your nessage that relies on non primary research/information

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#179

Post by blazespin »

T2_t2 wrote: post #168
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…

I don't think Dan Lyons misrepresents your ideas, but rather I think more fundamentally he doesn't share your vocabulary, worldview nor expectations. The reverse is also true, and your arguments in return don't use worldview or definitions he would understand nor recognise. The modern world seems to be a constant case of vocabulary misunderstanding, where we all say "widget", and I mean thing and you mean "an element…

Pretty simple.. Improved productivity from this new era of employment at will should lead to wealth which provides guaranteed basic incomes.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#180

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #147
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

managers should be explicit about how an employee's job assignment is going to help develop his or her career That's interesting. I've had a number of managers in my career and never, not even once, has one of them espoused anything resembling such a position. It's always what can the employee do for the company, not what's mutually beneficial.

I felt like most of my managers at Google tried pretty hard at this. We certainly did have conversations about what I wanted long-term within my career and how that might best be accomplished within the organization. Ultimately, I ended up deciding that what I wanted couldn't be achieved inside Google, but they certainly made the effort.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN