Employees Suck • Hacker News Board

Re: Employees Suck

#11

Post by gaius » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 2:14 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #3

The real title of this should be "The traditional employment model sucks", and I agree with that statement. I spend 60+ hours a week on the clock as a Japanese salaryman. It kills me. It kills everyone else even more than me because a) I'm the slacker American who actually leaves after a mere 60 hours and b) I don't have a wife and kids. And looking at my paystub, oh boy, the incentives at the margin make me weep. Mo…

ho ho ho, I will be happy to introduce them to service providers who are more appropriate to their needs.

So polite, the Japanese ;-)

Re: Employees Suck

#12

Post by matt1 » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 3:15 PM UTC

henryl wrote: post #7

I like the high level information. Unfortunately, that's all there is. I'd love to hear the actual presentation.

Yeah, the comments indicate he spoke at the Le Web conference. Are there any videos or was that banned like everything else?

Re: Employees Suck

#13

Post by dgabriel » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 3:48 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #8

swombat wrote: post #5

A bit self-contradictory and misleading. 1) It's more about "being an employee sucks" than "employees suck" 2) It gives the very dangerous advice that "you don't need more PR/marketing" and the follows that up with the saner "you need to get people blogging about you". Oh, so now, getting people blogging about you isn't a marketing exercise? Really? What is it then?

I think what he means is that you need geurilla, viral marketing that's driven by genuine interest from real people about the product. As oppose to a slick ad copy written by (very expensive) professionals. The gist of it is that if your product isn't cool enough to the target audience that they want to tell all their friends about it, then it's probably not good enough to make serious money.

It very strongly depends on what kind of product you're developing, and who your target market is. For a Web2.0 social app, skip the salespeople.

For an app that capitalizes on your MS in material sciences and love of python, and targets big manufacturing companies, an experienced sales team is worth quite a lot. Viral won't cut it.

Re: Employees Suck

#14

Post by danielh » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 3:54 PM UTC

matt1 wrote: post #12

henryl wrote: post #7

I like the high level information. Unfortunately, that's all there is. I'd love to hear the actual presentation.

Yeah, the comments indicate he spoke at the Le Web conference. Are there any videos or was that banned like everything else?

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/961379

Re: Employees Suck

#15

Post by unalone » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 4:15 PM UTC

sobriquet wrote: post #10

Does slideshare offer a printable version that just extracts all the text into paragraph form? While I was interested in the topic, about 30 slides in I got tired of clicking through the "presentation" and gave up. I'm getting tired of slides with huge text and no design. Makes me almost miss bullet point monotony!

Why do people use SlideShare? It's such an incredibly ugly site. Just browsing slides on it makes me shudder.

Nobody uses Google Presentations? Nobody? Or 280Slides? Sites that don't feel like absolute crud?

Re: Employees Suck

#16

Post by patio11 » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 4:46 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #11

patio11 wrote: post #3

The real title of this should be "The traditional employment model sucks", and I agree with that statement. I spend 60+ hours a week on the clock as a Japanese salaryman. It kills me. It kills everyone else even more than me because a) I'm the slacker American who actually leaves after a mere 60 hours and b) I don't have a wife and kids. And looking at my paystub, oh boy, the incentives at the margin make me weep. Mo…

ho ho ho, I will be happy to introduce them to service providers who are more appropriate to their needs. So polite, the Japanese ;-)

OK, so this is sort of a pet peeve of mine: Japan is a polite country. It isn't a uniquely polite country. My post is a bog-standard American businessman pleasant refusal for a request without saying "Your business is unprofitable so #"$& off and die."

Relatedly: Americans have been known to say one thing but believe another. Gasp! I actually had a Japanese coworker who was flummoxed when that happened to him -- he said, in as many words, "What is the world coming to?! We invented [the Japanese word for the distinction between what one says and what one actually believes] and now even the Yankees are doing it?!"

Re: Employees Suck

#17

Post by jbarciauskas » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 5:17 PM UTC

I think this underestimates the degree to which even the most talented programmers are creatures of habit. Most are able to find a job that is reasonably satisfying and very secure, and so long as they make enough to buy all the Diet Coke and Subarus they need, plus some equity upside, they do not go out looking for new jobs just to increase their pay.

I also think an overwhelming majority are downright allergic to the notion of becoming a contractor. Having to sell yourself every 6 months to 2 years, with all the uncertainty in between gigs? No thanks! The proposal to quit and sell "intellectual goods" just doesn't appeal at all to people who place the value of an extra dollar far below the value of extra stability.

Re: Employees Suck

#18

Post by xiaoma » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 6:38 PM UTC

sobriquet wrote: post #10

Does slideshare offer a printable version that just extracts all the text into paragraph form? While I was interested in the topic, about 30 slides in I got tired of clicking through the "presentation" and gave up. I'm getting tired of slides with huge text and no design. Makes me almost miss bullet point monotony!

I couldn't agree more. That's a terrible interface.

If he had just put his thoughts on a web page I would have read them. By putting the onus on me to waste my time clicking over a hundred times and only feeding me a sentence or two per click, he just drove me off. Unless people who like clicking a lot while reading slowly are his target audience, this is a bad thing.

Re: Employees Suck

#19

Post by sielskr » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 7:16 PM UTC

sobriquet wrote: post #10

Does slideshare offer a printable version that just extracts all the text into paragraph form? While I was interested in the topic, about 30 slides in I got tired of clicking through the "presentation" and gave up. I'm getting tired of slides with huge text and no design. Makes me almost miss bullet point monotony!

On a related point, I'd like some warning that the linked page relies on Flash. Relying on Flash is a very good predictor that the page is not worth dealing with.

Re: Employees Suck

#20

Post by donw » Thu, Dec 11, 2008, 8:12 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #6

kqr2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, given the long hours and low wages, why do you choose to work in Japan as a "slacker American"?

I choose, for the moment, to live here, in a little town I rather like, close to friends I rather like, attending a little church I rather like, etc. For better or worse, choosing to live here (or really, anywhere) generally means you get to work nearby as a package deal. I'm working on making that more of an a la carte selection. (Edit: Incidentally, I don't dislike my job. Parts of it are actually quite fun -- it h…

I'm curious as well as to where you live... and also, about your experiences doing software over in Japan. I've never really had the chance to live there for an extended period of time, but I'd like to give things a go in a year or two... just to get that nagging monkey off my back, and to do something different.

Hopefully, the stack traces don't just read 'エラーが起きました。たいへん申し訳あります。' grin