611–620 of 684 posts
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Medical error is apparently the third-leading cause of death in the United States (see https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading... ). It certainly seems plausible that our culture of overworking doctors contributes to that significantly.
Not just doctors. EMTs will regularly work, 24, 36, 48 hours straight. I know EMTs whose timecards will regularly show 350 hours worked a month.
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Couldn't disagree more. Want to see employees work hard and be motivated? Give them equity that is a meaningful amount. I know it works for me... I work 10x harder for my current job where I have equity and stock bonuses than at previous jobs that were all salary.
Why would you prefer equity/stock over cash? I would take cold hard cash over the same amount in stock any day of the week.
You are right - there is no reason to prefer equity over cash. Cash is better, if the company could afford it. But many employers cannot afford it now, and they offer equity instead.
This reminds me of a story back around that time about a guy who was, like, employee 200 at Amazon. He goes to the can, and sees a vestment sheet for the early employees, and realizes that he’s been hired just after people were getting stock grants. Just just prior to him are shortly to become millionaires, and he’s sitting there with a regular job. He quit because of the inequity, and did a tour with this story as a…
It's actually become an interview question for me of "is there a bonus scheme" where I'm hoping the answer is actually no. I've yet to work in a company that has a structured bonus scheme that hasn't resulted in a worse culture for it. The worst was in a company where your max bonus was depending on getting a "5 out of 5" performance review - however the whole business unit needed to average out to a particular numbe…
This is bad budget allocation.
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Bonuses also mess up tax withholdings.
How? Company should withhold just as they would any other pay. Even if you get dumped on and it bumps you up a bracket it likely won’t have a huge impact as you’ll likely not have a ton of pay in that bracket.
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Have Special Teams & Product Teams. Special Teams don't get ownership of anything, can't veto anything. They're there to answer any and all questions from the product team and to set the stage for how the product team may solve a challenge (i.e. present a menu of relevant approaches with expert commentary on the applicability to the problem, but implementation is the product team's job). This limbo position helps tam…
So how do you measure the value and contribution of the product and special teams including compared to each other. Somehow promotions, head count, budget and so on needs to allocated. Without ownership or the ability to veto it's not fair to measure the Special Teams on any product related metrics. But if you can't measure them on product related metrics then what do you measure them on? Feedback by other teams whic…
Give them a veto if you want, but it paints a target on their back. No veto and only able to use soft influence is probably a mercy to the position.
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It's not. That is an independent contractor relationship. Employment means you play ball for the stability of the paycheck. If you want to throw a tantrum every time you feel slighted, you shouldn't commit to a full-time permanent job. Employees are not the top of the totem pole, there are always other factors that people making these decisions have to consider. They don't always have to share that with you. It's a n…
I allow my boss to be very demanding. Want me to take an important customer call during holidays? Sure, I can convince my wife to allow that. Want me to work a week in a different timezone? Let me check first, but should be doable. But. Do. Not. Ever. Touch. My. Compensation! Being promised 100% but arbitrarily receiving 30% would be a no-go for me.
That's a really hot take. That shows that the company is very fickle and very bad about planning.
And frankly, I'm not going to shed a tear if they badly planned a business meeting on my vacation and then expect me to attend.
Now, given my position, I specialize in "accidents" or the recovery of. I get paid well for that. And I can decide when and what my schedule looks like. Outside of that and the appropriate pay for that skill, I expect my hours to be stable and consistent. In exchange, I will deliver consistently and stably and get money for that.
Tl;dr. Touching my hours (aside real unplanned disasters) IS touching my compensation, and you will not do this without appropriate offsets.
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Have Special Teams & Product Teams. Special Teams don't get ownership of anything, can't veto anything. They're there to answer any and all questions from the product team and to set the stage for how the product team may solve a challenge (i.e. present a menu of relevant approaches with expert commentary on the applicability to the problem, but implementation is the product team's job). This limbo position helps tam…
Issue with this approach at some companies though is when Special X Team is measured by the quality of X, but has little authority over Product teams, who have no incentive to do X well.
So don't measure the special X team by the quality of X, but the quality of service they provide to the product team in pursuit of X.
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Startup I work for was acquired within the past year; came through as a "key employee". Don't like the new environment. Huge management hierarchy and management culture, command/control, siloed decision making, and etc. Unfortunately my reward, as such, is tied up in retention based compensation. Not phoning it in yet, but struggling to reach the 1 year cliff. Honestly coming around to the idea..
I've heard some places can make out of band offers to match unvested equity if they really want you.
I'm likely headed back to a more "lifestyle" business working directly for the founders though. Lifestyle in the sense that the company is aggressively focused on the work culture and including the engineering staff in the entire process of building the product/business. Worked at a place like that once and didn't appreciate it enough at the time. That's not the typical definition of a lifestyle biz..
Making it through the year is going to provide a significant boost to my retirement savings/investments and put compensation cut on the table so I can focus more heavily on work environment. Why am I saying all this? I guess I need to get it out and maybe it gives some further insight into how retention based compensation incentivizes people, and how acquisitions can cause a lot of stress to those who aren't getting the life altering payouts.