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No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

sahillavingia.com

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Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#31

Post by caymanjim »

jennyyang wrote: post #18

Very interesting proposition, I hope the company flourishes! I'm not HR but I'm pretty sure the anti-overtime provision is completely illegal at least in countries like the US and Canada. I would outlaw overtime instead of pay people less for overtime.

> I'm pretty sure the anti-overtime provision is completely illegal at least in countries like the US

This is incorrect. The tldr is that US employees are either "exempt" or "non-exempt". Without getting into pedantic details, employees can be categorized as exempt if they make over about $23k/year. Exempt employees are not entitled to overtime at all, and the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't prohibit reducing someone's hourly pay for overtime in the unusual way that Gumroad does.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#32

Post by sokoloff »

hycaria wrote: post #26
thesausageking wrote: post #19

Let me understand this. Gumroad raises $8m from VCs, isn't able to grow fast enough, so the VCs agree to give up any claim on the company. Sahil fires all of the employees, hires a cheap contracting firm and some of the employees back as part-time contractors. The company now does $11m in revenue, most of which is profit and Sahil keeps. That's amazing. For Sahil. Not so great if you were one of his investors or form…

I think it’s $11M for the creators that’s going through gumroad. It’s not profit.

Above the fold in the article is "our creators earn over $175 million a year, and we generate $11 million in annualized revenue"

I take that to mean Gumroad's revenue (not gross services sales) is $11M/yr.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#35

Post by dkroy »

staunch wrote: post #13

I'm genuinely curious what Gumroad Creators are selling. Is it 95% porn revenue, with a veneer of ebooks and videos? Or is there actually a sizable market for other digital goods?

Such an odd way to ask this question from my perspective. Though this could be because I am missing something. Is this product popular in that industry? Is there a reason you lead with porn?

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#36

Post by _underfl0w_ »

kortilla wrote: post #17
tosh wrote: post #2

anti-overtime, interesting! > We also have an “anti-overtime” rate: past twenty hours a week, people can continue to work at an hourly rate of 50 percent. This allows us to have a high hourly rate for the highest leverage work and also allows people to work more per week if they wish.

This sounds ripe for a lawsuit or some really bad PR. Wait until the labor groups find out you punish the people desperate for more hours to make ends meet. It’s better to implement an hour cap or require approval for any overtime.

It seems you didn't read TFA.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#37

Post by ska »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #22
philipkiely wrote: post #15

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

I’d love something like this: I loathe the bullshit factory process has become.

Process is one of those things you have whether you think about it or not. It's up to you collectively to decide if it is BS or not, too heavy, too light, etc. I'm not suggesting everyone has the influence to change process much at the place they work, but they idea that there is a single "thing" called process and some places have it and some don't is just dangerously misleading.

It is true that process tends to naturally scale with org size and longevity because communication becomes more complicated with this scaling - but that only gives you a bit of a lower bound (i.e. if you go below this, you start shooting yourselves in the feet)

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#38

Post by darth_avocado »

CydeWeys wrote: post #12
Pulcinella wrote: post #8

TL;DR The founder of Gumroad fired all his employees and replaced some with and rehired some on contract. Gumroad does not provide benefits like healthcare. Your hourly rate gets cut cut in half after you work more than 20 hours a week. The article is a nice way of saying that the founder largely just collects rent while putting minimal resources into the business.

Yeah, hard pass. If I'm gonna be a 1099 contractor my rate will need to be very high (roughly $500/hr). Otherwise I'm sticking with my FTE job. And I'd need to be able to pick up more than the 20 hours per week than this guy will give me too, so I'd need multiple clients.

I've had some contracting experience as a freelance dev. In my experience even smaller companies (not Google, FB etc.) tend to have high budgets. I ended up with gigs anywhere between $200-300/hr, but that was 40 hrs week. Of course you have to pay for insurance, get your own retirement plan and a bunch of other logistics stuff, but it can make you a lot of money.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#39

Post by paxys »

I work for a large SaaS company with hundreds of engineers and a very healthy revenue. It's widely acknowledged that the company would continue to function exactly as it is now for a very long time if they fired 95% of the staff. Heck stability and uptime would probably improve due to fewer deployments/no new feature adds. So the graph with declining expenses and increasing revenue isn't at all surprising.

The problem with this model is that you are coasting on the work done by your full time staff in the initial few years, whom you fired and replaced with part time contractors who get no benefits. Even putting the ethical issues with this aside, if a competitor takes interest in your space and has a large war chest, you'd be powerless to compete with them. And when your tech is dated and current/new customers want innovation, your low-price contracting firms working a few hours per week certainly aren't going to be able to offer that.

So while I'm happy things are working in this case, no new company that starts with the environment you are describing is going to be successful.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#40

Post by [deleted] »

DVassallo wrote: post #28
draw_down wrote: post #3

This is maybe the only “how we work” I’ve ever read that is actually appealing. It really does sound wonderful. My only question is around health insurance for the US based folks (I’m guessing the answer is “take the money we pay you and go buy some” which is unfortunately not a good solution) but otherwise yes, sounds ideal.

I work quarter-time at Gumroad, and I pay for my own health insurance ($950/mo for a family of 4). If Gumroad offered it, I would almost certainly still keep my own (unless it was at >50% discount). I prefer not having my health insurance tied to one source of income.

[deleted]
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