Congratulations You’ve Been Fired • Hacker News Board

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#231

Post by incepted » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:00 AM UTC

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

Any citation about this claim? Because in my experience, it's completely incorrect.

Outside of the US, lifetime employment is a heavily coveted goal, because economies outside of the US are in a terrible shape overall with unemployment rate routinely above 10%.

Inside the US, except for white collar workers in major cities, long time employment remains the holy grail of most of the workforce, even though the US economy is in a pretty good shape overall.

Interestingly, even though Dan Lyons technically belongs to the white collar community that is probably not interested in lifetime employment, it's pretty obvious to me that when he joined that semi-startup, his goal was a lot more to write a book about it than embracing the party line and planning a long career there.

I mean... you're hiring Fake Steve Jobs and when he's out of the company, your executives try to illegally get a copy of the book with the futile hope that it won't get published... Seriously? What did you expect?

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#232

Post by bb88 » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:02 AM UTC

luckydata wrote: post #96

hartator wrote: post #4

> She was 35, had been with the company for four years, and was told without explanation by her 28-year-old manager that she had two weeks to get out. I think that's a bit funny that the author implies you can't be good as a manager at 28. Specially when you are writing an article about bias.

I'm not much older than that, but the average maturity of 28 year olds is not great. Putting lives in the hands of people that should still be learning the ropes is reckless and cruel. Young managers (and I used to be one too) are the worst part of the startup culture, people with no training, inclination or predisposition for people management making others unproductive and ruining careers. As a sector we should thi…

I, for one, would like to know if you screwed people over as a young manager. That would make rather a good blog post.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#233

Post by bb88 » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:02 AM UTC

luckydata wrote: post #96

hartator wrote: post #4

> She was 35, had been with the company for four years, and was told without explanation by her 28-year-old manager that she had two weeks to get out. I think that's a bit funny that the author implies you can't be good as a manager at 28. Specially when you are writing an article about bias.

I'm not much older than that, but the average maturity of 28 year olds is not great. Putting lives in the hands of people that should still be learning the ropes is reckless and cruel. Young managers (and I used to be one too) are the worst part of the startup culture, people with no training, inclination or predisposition for people management making others unproductive and ruining careers. As a sector we should thi…

I, for one, would like to know if you screwed people over as a young manager. That would make rather a good blog post.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#234

Post by capote » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:04 AM UTC

ma2rten wrote: post #229

capote wrote: post #182

Though I do understand most of the criticism this piece is getting in this thread, can we at least agree that all that bullshit about being a star and "graduating" is total bullshit? What a total slap in the face. Culture aside, crying at your desk aside, spare me the extra layer of fake, pointless language to disguise what is happening. I expect professionalism and respect from an employer, and that involves being s…

> can we at least agree that all that bullshit about being a star and "graduating" is total bullshit? What a total slap in the face. Yes, but it's just a creepy thing practiced at one company. The author somehow wants to generalize their experience to all startups.

I get the sense that the reality is somewhere in between. It's definitely not everywhere, but I do see a significant amount of philosophy and meta-work happening in technology (and possibly other industries). People like to present their ideas of what makes a workplace "better" or what makes people work harder or stay happier, and many times they forget the simplicity and professionalism that has been working in workplaces for a long time now—simply treating people professionally!

I'll be honest, I'm on my first job out of college, and in the finance industry there's very little philosophy and novelty (mostly dinosaurs), but even I have seen, here and there, redefinitions of terms, like "they're not customers, they're guests" or "he's not an employee, he's a teammate" and, well, I'm not too impressed even with this simple stuff. I'd imagine a good amount of places take it too far.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#235

Post by argonaut » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #220

free2rhyme214 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chris you're right Dan misconstrues your ideas and that's disappointing. The real issue with his article is that he was lying to himself before he even joined Hubspot. I'm really surprised how shocked people are when they join startups and aren't happy. What did you expect? Hubspot is not Salesforce. Uber is not Google. DoorDash is not Groupon. The maturity of companies at different stages varies significantly. I rea…

> he was lying to himself > delude themselves about how awesome startups are > people continue to write articles about this nonsense every month You seem to be unrelentingly "blaming the victims." Obviously, it is to people's benefit to have the most realistic expectations possible about companies they join. But does that in any way absolve employers of making realistic representations of what employees can expect? D…

This is Dan Lyons we're talking about. Not some naive fresh-out-of-school CS grad. Dan Lyons spent more than a decade and a half as a journalist and editor covering tech, business, and startups.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#236

Post by jdmichal » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:14 AM UTC

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…

Here, I read "start-up" as "company with a culture typically attributed to start-ups." And in that reading, the author is not necessarily incorrect.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#237

Post by linkmotif » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:17 AM UTC

to me it's not that you get fired willy nilly. that's fine imo.

what's scary, though, is the doublespeak you find in these environments. people act like you're part of a family. which is weird, because you're just working for a company.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#238

Post by lsc » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:19 AM UTC

so, what I find weird is that everyone seems to complain that companies treat them like mercenaries, while I have the opposite complaint. Whenever I interview, I feel like I have to pretend like I want to be there forever, or else I'm not dedicated enough.

I mean, yes, of course they are going to let me go when they are done with me, and I'm okay with that. My problem is that they seem to expect me to pretend like this is the job I want or the company I want forever. They want me to pretend like we're family, rather than business associates.

Hell, even as a contractor, half the time you have to pretend like you really want a full-time long-term job to get in.

I find it pretty irritating.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#239

Post by kenko » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:25 AM UTC

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;"

Expect? Of course not, anymore; you'd be a fool to expect that.

Want? Well, more complicated: if it's a matter of wanting lifetime employment in the presently existing field of options, as employment and firms are presently constituted (and as firms presently look at employees), maybe not. If it's a matter of wanting to be working in the kind of regime in which lifetime employment really was more common, the answer might change.

Your response to 3 is a non sequitur. And employment as a condition is certainly not a voluntary matter: think of what that would mean! (Hint: it would mean that anyone who wanted to could quit their job and not seek employment elsewhere and things would be fine. We don't live in that world.)

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#240

Post by hitekker » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 4:29 AM UTC

justin_vanw wrote: post #121

supercanuck wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

It does.