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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

#151

Post by Rapzid »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #132
treis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their revenue is a bit misleading since most of it goes to CC processing fees. This tweet says net profit was 214k in 2019: https://twitter.com/shl/status/1215673023472140289 Probably triple that this year with the Covid bounce. So obviously doing well for himself, but not quite as good as you think.

From the Tweet, from Sahil (CEO) himself: Gumroad, Inc in 2019: Revenue: $5M (up 46% YOY) Gross profit: $1.7M (up 68% YOY) Net profit: $214K I not familiar enough with the Gumroad model to understand why how the creators made $73M in 2019, but Gumroad revenue was only $5M.

Sounds like it's a market place, so that's the money the sellers(creators) received.

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

#152

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

etskinner wrote: post #79
caymanjim wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 someon…

It's not the wage that dictates that a worker is exempt from FLSA overtime. Rather, being under $23,600/yr means you cannot be considered exempt. Being paid over that, by itself, doesn't necessarily mean that you're exempt. https://www.fws.gov/policy/225fw6.html https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/screen75.asp

correct.

If you are a contractor you should be clear to do whatever you want with regards to overtime (because it doesn't exist.) Only employees are regulated by overtime laws. However as many know the definition of contractor can be rebutted by an aggressive state DOL.

Then it comes down to control: Who sets the schedule. Who pays the expenses. Who decides what is worked on. Who decides how long someone is working, etc.

Remote can only help Gum's case, and the way the founder describes the arrangement, it would seem to pass muster.

Be warned that passing muster does not mean that legally he would not need to fight it. Founder may mean expensive lawyer fees to defend Gum. So word of advice for Gum - document your processes for task management and scheduling internally , just as you document your code!

Be clear that it is the professionals (not you) who are dictating what gets done, and when. That should be enough.

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

#153

Post by feydaykyn »

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!

I'm really interested in reducing meetings by writing more, can you give some insights on how you do it ? Thanks !

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

#154

Post by nemothekid »

mperham wrote: post #150
alex_c wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I often feel like the success of a business is set at the beginning. There is certain trajectory created by initial starting conditions (founding team, vision, talent, timing), market fit, and external forces and events, and it is very hard to escape that. As CEOs and founders we like to think we have a lot more control than we actually do. The point of VC is to inject money to achieve hypergrowth. But how…

Exactly. If you have good growth at the beginning (not hyper), you can afford to bootstrap without any VC at all. To me, VC money pays for marketing spend, most of which is ineffectual. Be hyper-focused on putting out the best possible product and let it sell itself.

How do you pay engineers? This only makes sense if you have the talent to bootstrap by building everything yourself.

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

#155

Post by rokalakt »

ska wrote: post #37
dkdk8283 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nat…

Spoken like a true worker. Please your boss now with a new policy to follow. Obey a few rules to show how you should be promoted and maybe approved time off this Friday.

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

#156

Post by jedberg »

paxys wrote: post #92
jedberg wrote: post #61

In regards to the health insurance thing, there is a good middle option. I'm not affiliated but I use Savvy ( https://www.gosavvy.com/ ). They take advantage of a law that just started in 2020 that lets a company owner offer tax free insurance payments without having a health plan. Basically you set a budget, and then the employee chooses any health plan they want from any provider and pays with tax free money. If th…

If you are self employed and itemize your deductions (like everyone working for this company I assume), your health insurance premiums are already tax free. Don't need an external service for that.

It wasn't clear to me whether they are 1099 or W2 employees. If they're 1099 then yes, it doesn't matter.

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

#157

Post by olah_1 »

> There is another downside to this system: people have to track their hours. Some people solve this by billing 20 hours a week, even though they may work a bit more or a bit less. Others track it diligently, in 15-minute increments, and send a detailed invoice every week.

I cannot stand tracking hours. No thanks.

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

#158

Post by GoatOfAplomb »

tomnipotent wrote: post #108
tartoran wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends how that process is adopted. If it's organically in-house grown and it does makes sense then it becomes a synergic glue. If it's imposed top down from the outside because "that company does it, lets follow suit" then it can become a pain and cause more harm than good. I liken that to goo.

> "that company does it, lets follow suit" This is always a red flag I'm dealing with someone inexperienced, or desperate. Processes can be very unique to each company, especially the problems that they're facing, and trying to shoehorn someone else's process into your own business without understanding the problems that process is solving is a recipe for failure.

Cargo cults: not just for code!

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

#159

Post by shafyy »

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?

Your underlying assumption is that companies where employees work more hours are more successful on the market place. I would say this is a deeply flawed assumption.

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

#160

Post by mrandish »

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…

> You're going to be down the road with no benefits, no growth, no title, and nothing to build the rest of your career on.

"Benefits" aren't free. Every company budgets the cost for everything an employee receives as "Total Compensation" from health plan to gym to educational credits to free food to stock options.

I used to think "free stuff" was great until I started understanding how the money really works in this situation. Now I would much prefer the freedom to choose the benefits I value at the level I choose instead of having them chosen for me in a "one size fits all" plan. Just give me ALL the money in that Total Comp number and let me choose what to keep in my pocket and what I wish to buy.

Comparing a low-skill job like driving an Uber with higher skill, more specialized work is apples vs oranges. In a free employment market, being an independent contractor tends to the most beneficial arrangement for most workers - it's just harder to see the full picture when the costs of "benefits" are hidden and the true "Total Comp" of an FTE vs IC isn't disclosed transparently.

I prefer more transparency (information), more choice, more flexibility and more control being in my hands.

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