No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by didibus » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

> Instead of setting quarterly goals or using OKRs, we move towards a single north star: maximizing how much money creators earn

I like this. I've always wanted internal metrics to be this (or something similar). Like just measure company revenue and target increasing it. Goals and OKRs seem like distraction sometimes. Relying on people intuition of just how to make the product better, not with a specific targeted goal, just overall. It's that kind of intangible thing, that's hard to reduce sometimes to an OKR or a goal. Which means you can meet all OKRs and Goals and yet fail to have made the product better. I think it's because OKR and Goals miss on the little details that add up, by having you focus exclusively on the big obvious things. Yes this is good in some way, get that 80% done, and initially it'll mean success, but once competition shows up, it'll be the little details and that extra 20% that you couldn't capture in a goal or OKR that'll make the difference.

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

#252

Post by codemac » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

boo-ga-ga wrote: post #217

I think the critics who complain about money, pensions and healthcare didn't do proper calculations. Gumroad pays from $50 to $250 per hour. Let's say you get $100 (below average) and work 60 hours per month (one-week vacation every month). This is $6000 per month, which is basically more than enough for a comfortable living in 95% places on the planet. They pay equal money regardless of location, so the proposition…

And as a contractor there are significant tax advantages, along with personal growth advantages.

I think the big draw back is actually long term total earnings - the big companies in SV still pay order of magnitudes more than that.

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

#253

Post by simonebrunozzi » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

I just want to say that I really loved this blog post.

Of course it isn't for everyone. But I bet that most "online" companies should learn a thing or two from Gumroad.

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

#254

Post by draw_down » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

meowster wrote: post #220

meowster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a better solution that tying health insurance with a job. Doing so seems to make it harder (more expensive) for people without jobs to get health insurance. But otherwise, what they're doing seems interesting. FYI, I had to vouch for your comment. Looking at your comment history to see why, maybe try staying away from one or two word replies. Edit: I see HN as a place for people to improve. If it seems li…

Edit 2: Well then, I see now why that user is shadowbanned. My mistake.

Hi, please refrain from making short, low-content comments on HN that are intended to deride other commenters. Thanks!

<3

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

#255

Post by coffee » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #250

coffee wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a competitor takes interest in your space and has a large war chest, you'd be powerless to compete with them If that were true, every single company that had more money to spend would always win. But that's not what's observable. There seem to be other factors at play that don't always center around money. > no new company that starts with the environment you are describing is going to be successful. That would…

Seems to be the case with Facebook that just acquired all their competitors once they became a threat.

Not all companies desire to be acquired, even when offered. Not all deals go through, even when desired. We often hear of those that do get acquired, more rarely those that don't - Facebook has notably failed making attempts. Those companies are still going strong. Facebook didn't kill them.

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

#256

Post by ilovegumroad » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

I wish I had $8M dollars and a bunch of really dedicated people to build a company to >$1M ARR and then get rid of all of them. At that price you are looking at a company at roughly $X0M value already.

Most companies end up having to work tirelessly to grow because they have baggage of money that needs return. If you can get rid of that baggage it's relatively easy to just slow down and reap the rewards. FANG could all probably afford to pay 10x what you do for 1 hour of work a month if they stopped trying to grow.

If this post is saying "Hey I got this $X0M company for free come hang out with me and I'll give you some of the insane money we are making. You don't even need to work much, the people before you already did most of work but I'm not giving them anything. By writing stuff like this we will get people to buy our coolaid and more of our content, by telling them they can also get the same life. More money for us." Then that's amazing and more power to you. It really is a pretty good deal for the 25 people at gumroad.

Genuinely curious if gumroad was started again from scratch with no investment if it could get to any kind of scale with the kind of work and pay structure referred to in the post.

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

#257

Post by colonwqbang » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #250

coffee wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a competitor takes interest in your space and has a large war chest, you'd be powerless to compete with them If that were true, every single company that had more money to spend would always win. But that's not what's observable. There seem to be other factors at play that don't always center around money. > no new company that starts with the environment you are describing is going to be successful. That would…

Seems to be the case with Facebook that just acquired all their competitors once they became a threat.

Maybe it's not what you would prefer but the owners of those companies probably saw themselves as winners. Unless Zuckerberg forced them to sell at gunpoint?

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

#258

Post by nradov » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #42

ska wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

There are two sides to that. Some processes grow organically in house in ways that ignore industry best practices. Everyone likes to think that their organization is special but few really are. They could often benefit from an improved process imposed top down by someone with broader experience and an ability to see the big picture. Of course changing processes always involves some short term pain.

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

#259

Post by sayrer » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

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 thought that plan sounded pretty good, except for the health insurance part. Where do you get your health insurance?

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

#260

Post by andrekandre » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

musingsole wrote: post #196

juskrey wrote: post #185

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 compensat…

Agreed. I will argue that a benefit of the gig economy is the average person has more masters (and so is beholden to any one master less). I'm open to other models, but that's a feature we need to keep in whatever comes next.

> benefit of the gig economy is the average person has more masters

how about no masters?

> (and so is beholden to any one master less) that does not necessarily follow...

if i still need say 3 jobs to make ends-meet, then im on the street if i get fired from one of them... now i need to juggle the demands of 3 masters, all with different demands on my time, energy and concentration...