51–60 of 134 posts
"If you’re 30 and have had 6 jobs since college you’re 98% likely to be a job hopper." If you have had lots of employees leave your company during a recession, you’re 98% likely to be an ineffective employer.
Fucking asshole. Almost no one wants to change jobs every 12 months. Looking for work is a pain in the ass and changing jobs is inherently risky. Everyone goes into a job hoping they will work out so well at the company as to have no incentive to leave... at least for 5-10 years. All this is even more true for the best employees, because the number of desirable employers drops off faster than the number of talented p…
This is very true. Good job pointing out how the author rambles about "generations" and what's wrong with them, trying to explain why an employee leaving a job he doesn't like is somehow evil and sinful. The article at part reads like the vague "get off my lawn" ramblings of a bitter elderly man. Good luck attracting top young talent with this attitude. Another important point is that most startups aren't a good plac…
Startups have some dreadful lows, so I can understand not wanting to hire people who will leave at the first painful moment, especially because one departure can trigger a fatal exodus. There are also people who just collapse during painful periods and a startup can't afford to have them... but the ones who collapse tend to have a certain passivity about them that makes them incapable of being voluntary job hoppers.
However, we're talking about entirely different sets of motivations when we compare the "stay-or-go" decision at a big company vs. at a startup. Someone who leaves a mediocre corporate job after 6 months because he isn't learning anything and because it's obvious that no one with any power cares about him is, in my opinion, savvy and ambitious. This sort of person could easily be a great startup employee-- knows what he wants (and is therefore less likely to job-hop out of ignorance and confusion) and seasoned enough to cut through bullshit and avoid the wasting of time.
My favorite thing he attributes to a supposedly bad employee is that "they are only in it for the money." Yeah, and he's not. Heck, if you're not in it for the money, don't take equity, don't take a paycheck, and heck, don't even charge for your products or services. After all, desiring money is bad. Just stay home, eat popcorn and watch TV and -- hey wait a minute: all of that costs money!
The good news is that these clever entrepreneurs tend to get what they pay for. But then they have more time than successful ones to wax poetic about this "generation" and its many misgivings.
"You’re probably disloyal. You don’t have staying power. You’re in it more for yourself than your company." You mean, the company that would cut you loose in about three seconds flat if you became unproductive? Employment is an economic transaction. If you pay me, I will do high-quality, honest work for you. That's fair. If I don't produce, you can stop paying me. That's fair. But if you don't pay me well, or mistrea…
Sounds like you are a contractor, not an early startup employee.
If you are an early startup employee, you normally get compensated primarily with equity. Hence, you are the company; hurting the company will just hurt you. There's a big difference between an economic transaction between you and a big company, and an economic transaction which is largely between you and yourself.
So this essay is an expansion of http://twitter.com/Jason/status/12621363849 which is almost certainly a response to http://pastebin.com/PSY4iYZ0 If you can't keep your talent as an employer, that's your fault. Berating them for taking care of themselves is immature. Welcome to capitalism, you make money off them and they're free to take the best offer on the table. As an employer, I prefer have people with many job…
"Mary Poppins was the ultimate flake; she also offered no value during her stay."
This is the 21 st century. People don't get to get married to their jobs, think of it just as casual dating. As long as both of us are having good time, it is all good. People have been loyal, but they have been paid back with lay offs, either the company goes belly up, or people/projects get cut. Once it happens to you once, you don't do that mistake again. If you see the 'shitty times' ahead sign, some people will…
Fair, but I wouldn't advise anyone, under any circumstances, to badmouth an ex-boss at any stage of the job search process. It's one of the most common interview fuckups.
I'm an independent recruiter, and I see resumes all the time of people who probably look like "flakes", but here's how you differentiate a flake from a person who hasn't found their niche: Flakes lack accolades. They leave jobs at the sign of trouble, or they get fired. It really is that cut and dry. On the other hand, you have individuals (like me, prior to striking out on my own) who consistently find jobs they exc…
I like the idea that tenure and accomplishment are like quantity and quality. But I disagree about how you measure accomplishment. At least for developers I want to see evidence in working code. What have you built? What open source projects have you contributed to? It's not just about making 'a good resume'. In fact the best candidates spend 0 time on the resume. Mark Suster implicitly is thinking about sifting thro…
On top of this, you have to consider that hiring managers and recruiters are just the first barrier to defense when it comes to the process of making hiring decisions. Often, they have to place individuals in departments that aren't development, thus, expecting them to look at any code you've produced or software you've written is almost moot. They don't know what the code means, if it's good or bad code and whether or not it's a fair indicator of how your contributions and work ethic can impact the department needing a vacancy filled. At the same time, they have no idea if the software you've provided a download link to is software you wrote over a weekend by copy and pasting tutorial code, without actually learning how to employ critical thinking skills as a developer.
In my work process, when screening clients, a resume entails everything from candidate discovery to candidate placement, it's entirely in the candidates ability to sell to me that they are the candidate for the job vacancy. The physical resume is just the bridge I use to connect that candidate to the hiring manager.
Sifting through resumes is admittedly tiring, but the moment I come across one that has actual accomplishments and enables me with a feeling that this person did more than clock in, crunch away at an IDE, and clocked out, that's when I set that resume to the side and make a mental note that "John Doe deserves a phone call".
You're doing it wrong!
BTW I don't want to employee someone who doesn't want to be there. If he wants to leave, he's doing us both a favor.
It's important to explore why the candidate wasn't happy or had leave the company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is very true. Good job pointing out how the author rambles about "generations" and what's wrong with them, trying to explain why an employee leaving a job he doesn't like is somehow evil and sinful. The article at part reads like the vague "get off my lawn" ramblings of a bitter elderly man. Good luck attracting top young talent with this attitude. Another important point is that most startups aren't a good plac…
Another important point is that most startups aren't a good place to stay long term, simply because (duh!) most of them do not succeed. Startups have some dreadful lows, so I can understand not wanting to hire people who will leave at the first painful moment, especially because one departure can trigger a fatal exodus. There are also people who just collapse during painful periods and a startup can't afford to have…
The cruel truth is that this business is so competitive, that if you make too many mistakes you're going to lose to those 1 or 2 among your hundreds of competitors that were lucky and competent enough never to have these kinds of failures.
In any case, I agree about the failure to distinguish fundamental (and very different) motivations here. Certainly you don't want someone crumbling under stress, but these kinds of people are easy to identify. Did that person had a very long vacation after leaving (for whatever reason) a startup? Does he seem to shy away from risk, stress, and high pressure positions?
If so, and you're hiring for such a position, it probably shows obliviousness and lack of self recognition and maturity for him to even apply.