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Hire People Who Care (2020)

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Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#61

Post by aleph_minus_one »

atoav wrote: post #38
ZunarJ5 wrote: 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 th…

> Care too much and you burn out and get replaced

... or you become a menace to your boss. :-)

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#62

Post by latchkey »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #56
latchkey wrote: post #48

I read through all the comments and it is amazing that nobody is mentioning the fact that the reason why this 2020 post is coming up now is because of this: Scale recently laid off 200 full-time employees and terminated 500 contractor positions. The CEO, author of the post, went to work for Meta. https://scale.com/blog/scale-ai-announces-next-phase-of-comp...

I agree that this information is highly interesting and relevant considering the content of the article. On the other hand, I can easily imagine why nobody mentioned this fact befor you did: only few people read startup gossip.

> only few people read startup gossip

Numbers disagree: 485 comments, 470 points.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268197

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#63

Post by aeve890 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #49
MrDarcy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, he says in TFA he wants to recruit like a cult. I don’t know many cult leaders who care about their followers, so at least he’s honest if not psychopathic in the way he says he’s going to abuse you before he does so.

> I don’t know many cult leaders who care about their followers My impression is that cult leaders often do care about their followers. The problems rather start when the cult member becomes disobedient - this is when matters become very dirty.

>My impression is that cult leaders often do care about their followers.

Cult leaders care about their followers insofar as they stay submissive ass-kissing sycophants. It's not like they care about the follower's actual well-being.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#64

Post by atoav »

robocat wrote: post #6

Odd that the article doesn't address the most obvious criticism: is the CEO just matching the cliche of trying to select for people that overwork for underpay? Wanting to work hard is positively correlated with perseverance and work which inspires. Hard working is good when it's good.

A absolute rookie mistake is thinking your exhaustion-level has a linear correlation with the quality of the results. I know people who get suspicious if they haven't exhausted themselves, how can they have done a good job if they are not drained?

The truth is that the level of your craft has probably the biggest impact. A beginner can tear themselves apart with stressfull allnighters while doing a job and deliver the result a seasoned pro would have delivered in an afternoon.

And if all your employees are doing is stressfull allnighters and damage control they have no time to learn how to do properly and fast. But I get it, the goal is to extract money from their labour, not be their friends or produce quality products.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#65

Post by BobbyJo »

nickff wrote: post #37
BobbyJo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For larger companies, "You have to move to X place and work 1 day a week in-office, but also we just laid some people off and will give you no guarantee that you won't be laid off after moving" is a good example that's common right now. You know none of the leadership is getting that kind of deal, but they expect a % of their employees to deal with it.

For smaller companies, bad equity splits, or a lack of transparency around equity or company performance is probably most common. It's pretty common for startups to avoid telling the whole story to the rank and file to keep them unaware of the actual risk/reward they are taking, which then allows founders/leadership to pad the risk/reward they themselves get.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#66

Post by MengerSponge »

mr90210 wrote: post #14

Hire professionals. My care is reserved to me, my family and my friends.

Professionals care about the quality of their work. They care about what they're mastering and making. Life's too short to not care.

It's not the same caring that is reserved for family and friends, though.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#68

Post by hinkley »

cyberax wrote: post #67
hinkley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they're preferred stock options, that's not caring. It's misdirection.

Uhm... No? Founders typically also have common stock. Preferred stock is for investors.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case, but I've never heard of a early or even founding engineers getting preferred stock.

Which is just a roundabout way then of saying that they want to appear like they care, but they don't actually. You will become math to them at the point where they get rewarded and find out your reward is more work.

Re: Hire People Who Care (2020)

#70

Post by awesome_dude »

tome wrote: post #44
ZunarJ5 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The system isn't broken; it's working exactly as designed. I don't follow this bit. It's worse for employees, it's worse for employers, and it's exactly as designed?

One of the weirdest things I am seeing is the pushback from employers on "Remote"

We have actual studies showing that remote workers are more productive, have higher morale, and save themselves and their company money (no commute, no office rent)

And yet employers are still doggedly determined that employees sit in their toxic offices being miserable.

Employers are worse off (lower productivity), employees are worse off (lower morale).

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