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No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

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

#161

Post by brabel »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #102
jfengel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Some of it is a quirk of the American health care system. Probably more to do with Britain’s Factory Act of 1833 and follow up Act of 1844.

No country is in a vacuum... popular movements spread across borders and as the population of one country achieves something, their neighbours start demanding the same and so on... according to Wikipedia, the huge decline in working hours seen in the 20th century was mostly due to unionisation and legislation in response to popular demand.

Today, the US and the UK seem to be pretty typical compared to other countries, which is to be expected:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#/media/File:Heure...

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

#162

Post by gricardo99 » 

  But we can compete–and win–on flexibility.
And then the following part describes:

  In 2020, Sid left Gumroad to start his own creator economy 
  company, Circle, together with former Gumroad coworker Rudy 
  Santino
I fail to see this as any competitive advantage since Gumroad's "employment" approach literally incubated a competitor.

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

#163

Post by _hyn3 »

Grimm1 wrote: post #141
paxys wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies are mostly looking for rapid growth and/or talent when they consider acquisitions, and this one has neither. Single-digit millions in revenue is inconsequential in the industry today.

You're missing IP acquisition which is the third well considered type of acquisition consideration. Not saying you're wrong here just wanted to add that.

As well as pre-built customer base, loyal community, etc.

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

#164

Post by s1artibartfast »

tw04 wrote: post #130
jfengel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Unless there's an implication that they'd need to hire more people

I think you hit the nail on the head. IF the company needs a someone M-F for 40 hours of Bug-fixed/widgets/ect, they will have to hire to fill the gap.

If the last 20% of the worker's time is truly non-productive, then the company is already over paying and the worker is wasting their time.

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

#165

Post by yawnxyz »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #21
CydeWeys wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

20 hrs a week @ 500 is 520k/y. you only need one client.

at that rate they're probably the top of the field? I'm a UX engineer for ten years and the highest rates I've seen are "only" 200ish...

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

#166

Post by namdnay »

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…

> 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 part time? This is pretty normal in nearly every company I’ve worked in, lots of people take it to spend more time with young kids

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

#167

Post by rgbrgb »

This is a really interesting conception of a company structure that leans towards maximum flexibility.

The thing I don't see talked about here or in the post is equity ownership stakes. Distributing equity to give employees real money incentive to improve company performance has been a hallmark of tech companies at least since Fairchild Semiconductor and the traitorous eight. On the other hand, I've seen small companies in other industries thrive with very concentrated ownership and no employee equity system.

Do Gumroad employees get equity? Who owns Gumroad and would profit from a change of ownership? Are there ramifications there in terms of work output and team dynamic?

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

#168

Post by root-z »

BoysenberryPi wrote: post #4

I've been a Gumroad user(consumer not creator) for a long time and remember the whole VC situation. At the time, I feared it might be the end of the service. I'm glad it wasn't. A lot of people want companies like Google or Tesla, however, my honest goal in life is to have a company like Gumroad.

Exactly. It can take decades and all the time you have to build the next Google or Tesla and that's in the case that it all works out. There are other things to pursue in life and with a smaller company you get a lot more control in both the company and your own lifestyle.

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

#169

Post by namdnay »

exoque wrote: post #107
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…

I worked 80% for one and a half years on a decent salary. In the end I decided it wasn't worth the cost.

Yeah the trap with 80% is it often ends up being 100% compressed to 4 days :(

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

#170

Post by root-z »

coldcode wrote: post #62

I worked for a very large company you would all know, not tech, where deadlines are the start of any project, even before the details are more than vague ideas, meetings happen every day on multiple projects the same team has to work on overlapping, and full time is a dream (hint its a lot more). Living the dream.

FANG employee here. Same.
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