"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper on the Future of Particle Physics, Prestigious Discoveries at CERN 2003.
Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
321–330 of 445 posts
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#322> Given the choice, I think I’d rather make furniture. So go start making furniture.
Likewise, > Companies sell shares to the public while still losing money. Wealth is generated, but most of the loot goes to a handful of people at the top, the founders and venture capital investors. Then become a founder if it's such an easy way to generate wealth.
Wealth is generated by the employees. The founders channel that wealth to them.
The challenge with being a founder is to find the right business plan at the moment then hire and maintain the right team to achieve it. It's a challenge indeed but this challenge does not deserve nor does it morally justify taking most of the wealth generated by the employees away from them.
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#323Issues 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…
You can only revel in your "culture" from the comfy bubble you inhabit where everyone values your input, you come and go almost as you please, and you know you will have secure income for as long as you want it. Step out of that bubble and see if the world looks the same now.
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likewise, > Companies sell shares to the public while still losing money. Wealth is generated, but most of the loot goes to a handful of people at the top, the founders and venture capital investors. Then become a founder if it's such an easy way to generate wealth.
Wealth is generated by the employees. The founders channel that wealth to them. The challenge with being a founder is to find the right business plan at the moment then hire and maintain the right team to achieve it. It's a challenge indeed but this challenge does not deserve nor does it morally justify taking most of the wealth generated by the employees away from them.
The difficulty with that theory is explaining why competitors don't spring up, copy the business plan, and entice the team away with higher pay.
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"But it is rare for the power to be perfectly balanced."
That's the difference between the powerful and the powerless. The powerful thinks the imbalance is a fact that will never change; the powerless thinks that must change.
The problem in corporate world nowadays is that the powerful people disguise this difference all the time. For example : "hey, you can negotiate your salary and if you disagree, you have total freedom to go somewhere else. How powerful you are !"
I'll sure read your book, but I'm under the impression I'll see another, maybe very sophisticated disguise...
(yes you can call me a "socialist" (in the European sense) :-) because all of this is super political in fact)
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#326Interesting article, but this has nothing to do with startups. This is simply the new equilibrium in the job market. Employees have lost power. Unless you guys unionize or something, it'll only get worse from here...
I've noted as employee power has collapsed over the last 30-40 years that workers who still had some sort of market power would look down on those that had lost theirs and used such as a status marker. And then that became an impediment to action. Why would I work to give losers the same status as I have?
You can also see this with doctors. For decades they thought their position was secure. Unlike nurses they never unionized, as such was beneath them. Now they find themselves being treated badly. And they are angry and confused.
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#327For 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
You'd be surprised.
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#328For 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…
That sounds 100% like my job, but I'm a self-employed contractor. I see my clients as peers and we can speak openly about whether they even need me anymore. Sure as hell my clients are not my family (I hate office social dynamics).
So is your book basically saying that regular employment will/should become more like self-employment?
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#329For 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…
I think it's overwhelmingly a generational thing, not a "white collar" thing. Older white collar workers still want/expect lifetime employment, while young workers of all kinds are more comfortable with labor fluidity.
The vast majority of my young friends are uninterested in jobs which would provide lifetime employment. (As am I.)
Honestly, it was incredibly risky for HubSpot to hire Lyons and the outcome seems predestined. He came in with completely mismatched expectations and an ax to grind.
This is also a huge contributory factor to ageism in tech. Of course you won't hire older people when they expect lifetime employment at a startup which might not even exist in a few years.
Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either that or proactive lawyers. California is a no-cause state. Only when you state a cause, can it be used against you for bias. [Edit] Don't know about other states.
To provide an outside US perspective, it's not that easy to fire someone in Germany, the UK or Australia. Once you're past the probation period, you'd probably have to get one or multiple sorts of negative reviews and written warnings from HR or your superiors before being let go, otherwise you'd have ground to sue for unfair dismissal. That, or you'd be given a redundancy package.
There's no such thing as probation period in law. It's a company specific thing. The laws the same if your own a probation period or not.