261–270 of 445 posts
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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.
I'm genuinely curious how this is relevant.
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…
When I say "lifetime employment at a single company," I refer to spending one's entire career at a single firm.
When I say that employment is a voluntary relationship, I mean that the employer cannot compel an employee to accept a job offer, and that an employee cannot compel an employer to extend one.
Programmers are still operating under the delusion that they are so much better (or worse) than the guy working next to them. It is this kind of egotistical thinking that probably gets in the way of them unionizing. You want to give a large caliber a-hole like Bezos the finger while working in his own company? It takes balls to do that - stage a walk out and strike. It takes camaraderie, intimacy and loyalty to a cau…
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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.
At five years there, I have yet to have that conversation. 1:1s are either what I'm working on or more promises about "this will make a really strong promotion case." Namely motivation for working on whatever shit work needs doing next.
How to do that? That is the hard part, net work and move on when you work for a bad one.
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Yes putting the lipstick on the pig, and ritualizing it, makes this an emotionally sadistic exercise.
Oh, I get it, like when you go to a funeral and people try to focus on the the memories that make them happy, or find comfort in religious fairy tales about 'living forever'. Or when people who are fired are allowed to 'resign' to save face. I think this isn't as nefarious as the internet hive mind seems to think: Imagine that someone quits to go onto better things, more money, etc. Of course you throw them a going a…
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.
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Do you address the power imbalance between employees and employers? Do you address that an employee in such a culture is viewed as a disposable resource and no loyalty towards them is necessary, no matter what they do? Or do you address that corporations are run by people, who each have lives and that those who are older, female or who gave young families they must support and who they want to spend time with don't f…
1) We do specifically address the power imbalance between employers and employees. Because managers typically have more power in the relationship, it is critical that managers take the initiative to prove themselves trustworthy. Now that talent mobility has increased so much, employers who continue to treat employees as disposable are going to have a hard time attracting the best talent. This doesn't mean that all co…
True, top talent has less to worry about since any setback in employment is easily reversible. Many (most) don't have that luxury. These are the ones for whom the new economy is angst inducing and a bit intimidating and who look back with fondness and melancholy at the old less tumultuous economy before the new management style took over.
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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…
>Dan Lyons idealises a world in which people worked their whole career for one company, had a slow progression of minor promotions and pay rises & retired to a gold watch they took to Florida. That reality makes me personally want to buy a chair, some rope and to Google how to tie a noose, but my view is certainly NOT universal, and I need to accept and recognise that. I think the angle you're missing on this sort of…
On a side note: public service is the last place I want somebody who doesn't care about their job.
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> If she couldn't do the job then there is no reason to be discussing this The creepy thought processes that go into calling it "graduation" (and throwing a party...) don't rely on any judgement about that employee's performance.
Who would even attend a party that their boss threw for them after firing them?