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Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

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Re: Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

#11
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, "passion" is a huge red flag word for me. In the same realm as "ninja" or "rockstar."

What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are? Generally, I've never worried about that being called passion.

Passion and having a problem with 3 days is probably the red flag

Re: Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

#12
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, "passion" is a huge red flag word for me. In the same realm as "ninja" or "rockstar."

What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are? Generally, I've never worried about that being called passion.

Personal dating ad: "person wanted for passionate relationship." What's wrong with this ad is that passion is a byproduct of chemistry, so you can't "bring" it to a work environment, but sometimes you+work+team click and it happens. You could have an inherent passion for a cause, but you would still be subject to chemistry.

Re: Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

#14
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, "passion" is a huge red flag word for me. In the same realm as "ninja" or "rockstar."

What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are? Generally, I've never worried about that being called passion.

I'd call it passion! But it's like mindcrime said, mostly a case of word inflation in this particular context.

So for me it's not what word I'd use instead of "passionate," but what word they're using "passionate" instead of. The most likely candidates I'd put forth: Naive, positivist, perfectionist, agreeable, friendly, excitable.

I think teams with too many "passionate" (in their use) people run into serious problems.

Re: Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

#16
Get over yourself and hire them.

I've worked part time for several companies and I'd argue strongly against the idea that part timers can't be committed and have an impact on the company.

In my last job, I worked part time and lead a project to migrate the whole company to Git and Ansible for deploys. I then lead another whole project to migrate all the developers from an old dev server with issues to a new shiny dev server using Docker. Actually, that project we took slowly, we migrated a handful of developers and let them try it first, work out any teething problems. Then I was away for a long weekend, I came back, turned out the old dev server had spectacularly fallen over and rather than try and fix it, they had just migrated all the developers straight away without me. It was fine.

With that in mind, another point: having part time workers is great for making sure things are well documented and you don't develop dependencies on key employees.

And I'd agree fully that "passion" is often a red flag. I'd think carefully before joining a company that went on about that. Employees will have a different relation to your company than founders will. You have to acknowledge that.

Also, have you ever complained that's it hard to find good talent? A lot of companies do. They complain bitterly that they can't find the tech staff they need, yet when asked what they do to try and solve this they basically have no answer. Don't be like them.

Start thinking about how you can attract talent now - and supporting those that for whatever reason need flexible and part time work is a great way to attract people. Your current hires reasons are personal projects, but that won't always be the reason. At my current company we have several great workers who are part time - because they have child care needs. They are fantastic workers and contribute a lot. Do you really want to cut all those people out?

Re: Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

#17
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, "passion" is a huge red flag word for me. In the same realm as "ninja" or "rockstar."

What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are? Generally, I've never worried about that being called passion.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

#18
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, "passion" is a huge red flag word for me. In the same realm as "ninja" or "rockstar."

What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are? Generally, I've never worried about that being called passion.

There is a big difference between an employee feeling passionate about their work because of things like the team, etc and a boss telling an employee "YOU MUST BE PASSIONATE!"

Re: Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

#19
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, "passion" is a huge red flag word for me. In the same realm as "ninja" or "rockstar."

What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are? Generally, I've never worried about that being called passion.

> feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are?

I guess that when you state that, you assume relevant compensation.

But often companies put that in job description when they search for „people who want to do high quality work wherever they are”, literally.

In worst cases they end up exploiting more naive or less experienced workers.

Re: Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

#20
post #19
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are? Generally, I've never worried about that being called passion.

> feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are? I guess that when you state that, you assume relevant compensation. But often companies put that in job description when they search for „people who want to do high quality work wherever they are”, literally. In worst cases they end up exploiting more naive or less experienced workers.

True, but you don't know which type of company it is until you talk to them or do some research right? I wouldn't want to just assume that when so many good companies use that word as well.
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