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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

#121

Post by poorman »

_2d30 wrote: post #66
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…

Are you willing to provide any additional clarity on "very competitive rates as contractors"? I understand if not but would be useful to help some of us externally think about this model.

People don't realize that as a contractor, you can write off the room you're using for your office. As a remote employee you cannot. For people living in high rent areas, that's significant.

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

#122

Post by simpixelated »

quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #47
sahillavingia wrote: post #20

Hey, #1 on Hacker News! I don't think that's happened since...I wrote Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company back in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105733 Thanks HN for being a part of my journey!

How do you stay competitive with similar products without instituting deadlines?

I work for a small company (less than 10 employees) that follows a very similar working process. No deadlines, one (very short) weekly meeting. We don't try to stay competitive with similar products. That's impossible with VC funding flooding the market. What we do instead is focus on making our current customers happy. Everyone is involved in support. We follow up with customers when we do launch features they requested, even if that's years later. It seems to be working well. It's not going to be hockey stick growth, but "freedom" for us (the employees) is well preserved.

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

#123

Post by kaftoy »

dcolkitt wrote: post #97
philmcp wrote: post #44

In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? I'd be more than happy to work a job for 80% salary for 4 days per week... So much so, I'm about to launch a website lis…

The bigger issue to me is that there's no diversification of risk. If your company goes under, you lose 100% of your income all at once. From that perspective, it'd be a lot more rational to work say ten jobs at a single time. You're never at serious risk of losing more than 30% of your paycheck in any short period. You could even get smart and balance your portfolio of jobs between pro and counter-cyclical industrie…

For your example's sake, if the work for one job is just a tenth, then it means that for a 5 men job, a manager would need to hire 50 people. The manager would be overwhelmed and add cost to the company by asking for a colleague. It's not easy to manage 50 people. But maybe the manager wants to diversify himself, so instead of 2 manager for 50 people, you'll have... 20 managers for 50 people. You need a managers' manager. Where does it end? :)

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

#124

Post by exoque »

ativzzz wrote: post #112
shafyy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, in Europe (at least in Switzerland and Germany) it's much more common for people to work 80% than it is in the US.

Curious how being laid back in regards to work opens up opportunity from countries such as China that have some companies working 996 schedules (9-am - 9pm, 6 days a week) to overtake and make obsolete European global companies. I guess the only way EU can compete is protectionism, no?

For the Swiss it doesn't matter what China does, anywhere else is cheaper anyway.

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

#125

Post by bitdotdash »

xyzelement wrote: post #74

I feel about this company the same way as I feel about driving Uber. If you already have someone in your family who's making money and has benefits, driving it could be a fun way to make a few extra bucks and talk to a few people. So if you're a housewife with a few free hours while the kids are at school, or a bored retiree, by all means drive Uber/work for this place. If you're someone in their prime and have to be…

Point out the Uber drivers making $10K/mo for quarter time work. Otherwise this argument falls flat.

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

#126

Post by yarcob »

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 that most overtime regulations apply only when the employer instructs you to work overtime. You get a higher rate because you have to work more hours than you agreed in your contract.

You can't just voluntarily work more hours than your contract states and expect to get paid more.

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

#127

Post by kaftoy »

jfengel wrote: post #83
philmcp wrote: post #44

In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? I'd be more than happy to work a job for 80% salary for 4 days per week... So much so, I'm about to launch a website lis…

Some of it is a quirk of the American health care system. Your health care costs the same regardless of your work hours, and it's a significant fraction of compensation. If you were working 80% as much, they would probably only be able to pay 70% of your salary. (Assuming you were linearly productive, which it's not, but it's the same assumption you were making and is good enough for this illustration.) There are oth…

And more importantly above all, in my opinion, is the profit. A portion of the revenue generate by an employee becomes profit. Lower the revenue (since lower hours) means lower net profit. Giving up net profit is not somthing a business owner thinks about lightly.

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

#129

Post by DVassallo »

mywittyname wrote: post #115
DVassallo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m making $10K/mo for a quarter-time PM role at Gumroad (so about $250/hr).

Is Gumroad your only gig?

No, I own a SaaS business and also sell my own products on Gumroad itself. In fact, the latter was my biggest income source in 2020 — $282K sales last year: https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1333888186762678274

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

#130

Post by tw04 »

jfengel wrote: post #83
philmcp wrote: post #44

In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? I'd be more than happy to work a job for 80% salary for 4 days per week... So much so, I'm about to launch a website lis…

Some of it is a quirk of the American health care system. Your health care costs the same regardless of your work hours, and it's a significant fraction of compensation. If you were working 80% as much, they would probably only be able to pay 70% of your salary. (Assuming you were linearly productive, which it's not, but it's the same assumption you were making and is good enough for this illustration.) There are oth…

>If you were working 80% as much, they would probably only be able to pay 70% of your salary.

...why? Unless there's an implication that they'd need to hire more people, why would they need to pay you less? If you're generating the same amount of revenue, just working fewer hours, their fixed profit should be able to cover your fixed healthcare whether you work 80% of the time or 10% of the time. As long as they aren't incurring additional expense by hiring multiple people to do the same job to facilitate fewer hours.

A shorter work week obviously can't work for all businesses, but there are plenty that have tried it and found that workers spend more time working and less time socializing with a shorter work week (which would seem to be a win for everyone).

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