Live data from Hacker News

Hire People Who Care (2020)

alexw.substack.com

31–40 of 86 posts

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#31
A lot of the criticism in this thread sounds like it’s coming from people who don’t give a shit and just want a paycheck

Some people are motivated by what they produce at work, not their compensation

The benefit of this being from 2020 is we can see he was right, he built a colossal company at breakneck speed

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#33
It’s hard to find people with talent period let alone people willing to take ownership without reciprocal financial incentives. In my 20s, I was this guy. I worked hard and just assumed it will work out in the end. Boy oh boy was I wrong.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#34
Then maybe build a cooperative, where all employees are effectively co-owning the company? Then you can expect everyone to care as much as you do. Otherwise it doesn't seem to be a fair thing to expect.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#35
post #5

It would be nice if the employer also cared in return, however in my experience, this is exceptionally rare. I think more than a fair share of us here learned our lessons in investing ourselves rather sharply. It rarely, if ever, pays off for the worker.

Yeah they're literally paying you money so they don't have to.

No. They are profiting from your labour, and returning a smaller portion of that profit to you.

Your work creates the profit that your salary comes from, the employer takes a cut of that and gives you what they deem they can get away with.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#36
post #5

It would be nice if the employer also cared in return, however in my experience, this is exceptionally rare. I think more than a fair share of us here learned our lessons in investing ourselves rather sharply. It rarely, if ever, pays off for the worker.

Yeah they're literally paying you money so they don't have to.

I missed this clause in

checks notes

Literally my entire career.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#37
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice what would an employer caring look like to you?

What risk/return are they expecting employees to accept? What risk/return are they willing to accept? Any advantage they give themselves over the employee, to me, means they don't care.

I don’t understand what you’re talking about; could you please give some sort of example, or perhaps further elaborate?

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#38
post #5

It would be nice if the employer also cared in return, however in my experience, this is exceptionally rare. I think more than a fair share of us here learned our lessons in investing ourselves rather sharply. It rarely, if ever, pays off for the worker.

This is my experience as well.

As a former freelancer the standards I hold myself to are exceptionally high. Then I got employed and carried that standard with me (still do). The problem is that this means work will be pushed my way, because I am sometimes literally the only person who can do it within a day instead making it a month long project.

This led then to such an amount of work that I could mo longer hold that quality level, which made me unhappy. Of course I complained all the way, with no real change.

The only thing that worked was a strategic leaking of the fact that I was looking for positions elsewhere, suddenly a whole lot of concessions were made, and since then it has gotten better and I got much better at rejecting work.

Care too much and you burn out and get replaced.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#39
post #5

It would be nice if the employer also cared in return, however in my experience, this is exceptionally rare. I think more than a fair share of us here learned our lessons in investing ourselves rather sharply. It rarely, if ever, pays off for the worker.

In practice what would an employer caring look like to you?

You know what caring looks like. You experience it in your personal relationships every day. The disconnect isn't knowledge, it's incentives. The practical answer is straightforward: predictable schedules that people can plan around, living wages that are indexed to the COL, transparent paths for advancement, respect for work-life boundaries, investment in employee development beyond immediate productivity needs (i.e. good healthcare for the worker and their dependents), genuine sick leave without retaliation, respect for physical and cognitive limitations, and protection from arbitrary termination.

But you're asking the wrong question. The real question is why, despite decades of evidence showing these practices improve retention and performance, they remain exceptional rather than standard. The system isn't broken; it's working exactly as designed. It is optimized for wealth extraction, not value creation.

Public companies are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value. Every dollar spent on employee wellbeing that doesn't directly boost quarterly metrics is arguably a breach of fiduciary duty. Middle managers who genuinely care get promoted out or pushed out. The few companies that do care either have unusual ownership structures (co-ops, private ownership with values-driven founders) or are temporarily buying talent in hot markets. Once conditions change, watch how quickly that 'caring' evaporates.

So yes, we all know what caring looks like. The question is why we keep pretending the current system has any mechanism to deliver it at scale.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#40
I rather have the impression that many bosses/companies actively avoid people who do care: this kind of people is often rather inconvenient to manage, since because of the fact that they do care, they are very willing to fight (also or even particular to superiors) for their vision.

Thus, hiring people who do care requires very particular kinds of bosses who can accept/handle people who care. Companies who do not have those are in my opinion often better served with people who don't give a fuck, but hardly ever (because they don't really consider it to be worth their time) actively disagree with orders from above. If the description of such people sounds passive-aggressive to you, I don't disagree: such people sometimes are this way. So, it might actually (surprisingly) make sense for companies to scout for passive-aggressive people. :-)

Post reply on HN