Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

sahillavingia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 543 posts

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

#181

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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…

> 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

VCs don't simply give up claims to companies that look like the might be profitable. The writing on the wall was that Gumroad wouldn't survive without additional infusions of cash from investors. If they couldn't find any investors willing to put money into the company, it would have gone bankrupt.

In other words, those employees wouldn't have had jobs anyway. Their equity would be worthless while the company went through bankruptcy.

Normally these companies are sent through arduous bankruptcy proceedings, the assets sold, and the investors recoup pennies on the dollar. The VCs could have gone this route and Sahil could have bought the assets at some nominal amount, but the VCs decided that ceremony wasn't worth their time and just gave it to him. Or at least that's how I read this.

It might have been more fair if the VCs had given the company to the employee equity holders as well, but I assume Sahil would have simply bought out their <1-2% holdings for pennies on the dollar.

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

#182

Post by philmcp »

pc86 wrote: post #87
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…

A B2B business has two choices if they want to institute a 4-day week. They can be closed 20% of the week, when their competition is likely open, or they can be open 5 days and spread 4 days of work out among their staff. So now if your coworker takes off Tuesdays, and you take off Wednesdays, you better not have a question for him on Tuesday morning. And isn't 28 hours 3.5 days?

I think if managed correctly the second option is more than achievable for a software development team. I agree it doesn't work for all industries / jobs (e.g. support staff etc), but for the majority of technical positions, I think the gain in productivity and saving in salary will more than make up for these inconveniences. I also think it will make the recruitment of developers easier as you'll be offering a benefit rarely seen.

And ye, a few people have mentioned the point about 28hrs - I'm going to rebrand it as "4 day week".

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

#183

Post by philmcp »

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.

Fair enough, it's not for everyone. After 10 years of being a developer in a country which is relatively cheap to live in, however, I'd be more than happy to take the financial hit.

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

#184

Post by matsemann »

poorman wrote: post #121
_2d30 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where I live that office has to be a "proper office" in a sense, where you could have clients stopping by. Not just working from a room next to your exercise bike and laundry. Here the tax law is mostly written with hair stylists and others in mind, using a room for customers with its own entrance.

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

#185

Post by juskrey »

On the wave of fashionable gig economy, many forget that full time employee is not exactly a workforce, but a company's insurance which guarantees that chosen workforce will be guaranteed at any given point of time and will do nothing else (taxing for working abilities) at any other point.

Also, from the worker's standpoint, having two half jobs does not equal one full job. It is either much less (with less compensation) or much more of what can be comfortable for healthy human.

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

#186

Post by philmcp »

shafyy wrote: post #84
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…

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.

Ye, I've also heard that in the Netherlands there are laws which say a company must accept an employees request to work part time if they have been there for 1+ years.

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

#187

Post by philmcp »

TeaDrunk wrote: post #139
dcolkitt wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We'd need to radically change the system with which education happens to make this real, otherwise teachers and the infrastructure of teachers (administrators, social workers, counselors, janitors, IT people, etc) would still need that workweek + parents who have to follow that workweek.

It doesn't mean that some companies shouldn't exist to fill the demand from people who want 4 day work weeks though. Not everyone has kids, plus, not everyone in the company needs to be employed on the same terms imo.

Also, given how difficult it is to recruit developers, offering roles on a 4 day week will ease this process as it's a "USP" that few other companies offer.

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

#188

Post by that_guy_iain »

jvns wrote: post #175

One thing I find a bit strange about this (as a Gumroad user) is that Gumroad employees don't seem to be granted @gumroad.com email addresses -- when I've needed to email their engineering staff or marketing staff I often get replies from someone's personal email address. The fact that employees are using their personal email address to do Gumroad business makes me feel a bit uncertain about how securely my informati…

> The fact that employees are using their personal email address to do Gumroad business makes me feel a bit uncertain about how securely my information / my customers' information is being stored.

I know there is a legal thing in some countries where ext contractors must have a different email. Normally this is done by creating a new domain for the contractors or a sub-domain but Gumroad could be that new they haven't encountered this yet.

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

#189

Post by eldavido »

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…

This is a really thoughtful comment.

"Process weight" is a good concept I wished more people understand. Building released-to-web software without hardware, big teams, long-term API support, etc. should really have almost no process, except for maybe high-level prioritization of features/functional areas (which a small-company CEO or PM can do). Reflecting on my own experience, it's the micro-management of most development processes that kills me -- 45 minute stand-ups where I'm arguing over whether something will take 2 or 4 hours. I honestly don't know and the powers that be just can't accept that. "How do you not know how long doing that will take!?!"

I think most teams would be capable of this, it's just that the people signing the checks get really, really uncomfortable with the apparent lack of accountability.

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

#190

Post by asd9900 »

DVassallo wrote: post #129
mywittyname wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And you are not even 26? Congrats man, you made it :) That's more than I ever made in my life (close to 40).
Post reply on HN