Congratulations You’ve Been Fired • Hacker News Board

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#291

Post by openfuture » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:00 AM UTC

incepted wrote: post #231

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…

Have you ever left the US?

There is no way not wanting lifetime employment is something unique to the US, it seems far more likely that it would be connected to status than nationality (and that has been my experience for what it's worth)

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#292

Post by riveracct » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:04 AM UTC

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.

This is fake drivel. The only ones having good job prospects are people managers, networkers and rote learners.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#293

Post by riveracct » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:09 AM UTC

tobbyb wrote: post #164

This is an interesting perspective based on real life experience. The author also has decades of experience around the tech scene in general. I don't understand why he is being put on trial for sharing his experiences in a book or seeking to promote it via interviews. That's the way books are normally promoted. Reading this thread one would think its illegal. Hubspot is a campaign management and lead management tool…

Getting fired sucks. I really hate corp doublespeak, but it's a little commendable that this corp is trying to soften the impact by calling it a graduation - which it is in a way because you get some time off to reskill and seek out other prospective jobs rather than doing the same thing everyday in your current job.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#294

Post by chris_wot » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:11 AM UTC

chrisyeh wrote: post #262

kenko wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Two clarifications: 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.

You are basically saying that all employment is for contractors with fixed start and end dates and that must be extended!

That's not how permanent employment works in many parts of the world, nor is it even desirable.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#295

Post by riveracct » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:15 AM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #100

It seems to me that the author was generalizing from one specific experience he had, plus some anecdotal experiences he has gathered from others, to impugn the entire start-up community. There may be some validity to what he says; I'm inclined to agree that there's disproportionate age-ism and sexism and probably several other kinds of -ism's in the start-up community, perhaps because their founders tend to be younge…

Really I have to say, are you that naive? Apple and Amazon absolutely treat their employees like crap. Actually the employees behave with each other like crap because these companies are publicly traded and everyone is a stakeholder. The good work comes out of the employees being in competition with one another. You might like this approach, but at this rate we will be left with an Earth full of impressive monuments but no people to view them.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#296

Post by sjg007 » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:27 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #286

mc32 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking beyond the best or the top ten percent should change some of the perspective. Not all workers will be of "the best". Most will be middlings. It's the middlings who need to worry about power imbalances and who take jobs with lousy bosses and put up with lousy coworkers. 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…

Exactly - thank you. You wrote this more succinctly and clearly than I did! That is precisely my concern. I guess I'll read the book now if it isn't too expensive (or even available in my region!), but I think many of these ideas about mutually beneficial employment only really works where power is relatively well balanced - in other words the employer can't get rid of you or treat you badly because you are irreplace…

The whole point of software engineering is to automate yourself out of a job.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#297

Post by chrisyeh » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:27 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #286

mc32 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking beyond the best or the top ten percent should change some of the perspective. Not all workers will be of "the best". Most will be middlings. It's the middlings who need to worry about power imbalances and who take jobs with lousy bosses and put up with lousy coworkers. 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…

Exactly - thank you. You wrote this more succinctly and clearly than I did! That is precisely my concern. I guess I'll read the book now if it isn't too expensive (or even available in my region!), but I think many of these ideas about mutually beneficial employment only really works where power is relatively well balanced - in other words the employer can't get rid of you or treat you badly because you are irreplace…

The hope is that as talent mobility increases, the power imbalance will ebb. But it is rare for the power to be perfectly balanced.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#298

Post by chrisyeh » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:27 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #286

mc32 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking beyond the best or the top ten percent should change some of the perspective. Not all workers will be of "the best". Most will be middlings. It's the middlings who need to worry about power imbalances and who take jobs with lousy bosses and put up with lousy coworkers. 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…

Exactly - thank you. You wrote this more succinctly and clearly than I did! That is precisely my concern. I guess I'll read the book now if it isn't too expensive (or even available in my region!), but I think many of these ideas about mutually beneficial employment only really works where power is relatively well balanced - in other words the employer can't get rid of you or treat you badly because you are irreplace…

The hope is that as talent mobility increases, the power imbalance will ebb. But it is rare for the power to be perfectly balanced.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#299

Post by mark_l_watson » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:33 AM UTC

I like the spirit of the article, but I think that Douglas Rushkoff makes these ideas more clear in his book "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus" in which he nails workers vs. employers issues, growth of corporations, etc. That said, I also enjoyed the article.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#300

Post by chrisyeh » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 6:36 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #279

chrisyeh wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I appreciate you taking the time to respond. If I may also respond: 1. That doesn't necessarily follow. In any economy there will always be talent, but the issue here is that you refer to the "best" talent - surely such a scenario you give also implies that once you are no longer the best talent, although you were so at one point, you can be perceived as no longer so and this you can be replaced? There will also alwa…

I'd love for you to read the book and provide an Australian perspective. I do think it's interesting that preventing employees from being fired resulted in an uptick in bullying. I've read about similar things happening in Japan. One senior employee was forced to work on an assembly line in an attempt to convince him to quit. It sounds like the anti-bullying legislation has been helpful in this regard.

The one major point in your latest comment I'd disagree with is that companies will never have a problem recruiting new talent regardless of what they did to previous employees. Here in the US, most employees check services like Glassdoor where employees and former employees rate company behavior; the companies with bad reputations suffer certain consequences. (Of course, some companies offer so much potential wealth that employees ignore the poor working conditions, but that doesn't mean people are unaware of those working conditions.) How do people in Australia learn more about what it's like to work at a potential employer?