Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A culture of beer and overtime

jayhuang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 212 posts

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#31

Post by jmspring »

There are startups like this. I left one before a pivotal point that might have resulted in me making some money for some of the very same reasons:

1) Commitment was questioned -- in my case, I disappeared for a rainy weekend for my wife's birthday and wasn't online over the weekend.

2) Attitude was questioned -- regular beat the staff meetings in the morning after pulling an all nighter, I tossed the pen to the next guy (a friend) and miss threw and it hit the ceiling. "Why are you being an asshole?" It took a bit to realize that was what was being asked.

3) After a great showing at Demo we launched with no ops/support and engineers with the knowledge (me) were expected to be on call after 80 hour weeks. I got grumbled at due to a support issue as I was returning from a morning at the Legion of Honor and heading down Highway 1 (no signal, peace). Oh, the wife wasn't happy either -- "why are they bugging you on a Saturday morning?"

That said, the overall product we built was one of the more fun and diverse I was involved in. It was very hard to make the decision, but sometimes you know it is just right to walk away.

There are startups that are like that. Sometimes, like the post above, the signs are there early. Sometimes, they don't show themselves until much later.

A couple of years later when the company had an exit, of the 35+ people that were there when I left, only four that I new (including the two founders) actually remained.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#32

Post by bigiain »

coffeemug wrote: post #17

Wow. I'm a founder of a tech company, and the thought of checking someone's LinkedIn profile or old website to verify degree of commitment would never even occur to me. The fact that someone would not only think of it, but actually act on it is absolutely mind-boggling. I've seen new managers do silly things, but this is seriously new.

Serious question, or at least food for thought:

How are you instilling that attitude in your company? How big would your company need to grow before misguided middle management might be appointed who _does_ think this is an appropriate management technique, resulting in this happening on your watch with you later described as a "detached executive"?

Having stuff like this "never even occur to you" leaves you in the possible danger of not being aware if it starts happening around you. (Though, in this instance, the revolving door developer role should have brought some scrutiny on the manager in question…)

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#33

Post by pcrh »

dfrey wrote: post #4

The project manager sounds like a dick, but the author also sounds like a push-over. The author had a chance to out the manager as a huge asshole, but based on the post, it seems like he just left silently.

I doubt "outing" the manager would have made the slightest bit of difference.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#34

Post by pcurve »

jmspring wrote: post #31

There are startups like this. I left one before a pivotal point that might have resulted in me making some money for some of the very same reasons: 1) Commitment was questioned -- in my case, I disappeared for a rainy weekend for my wife's birthday and wasn't online over the weekend. 2) Attitude was questioned -- regular beat the staff meetings in the morning after pulling an all nighter, I tossed the pen to the next…

"A couple of years later when the company had an exit, of the 35+ people that were there when I left, only four that I new (including the two founders) actually remained."

Assuming it was a good exit, those 2 are some shrewd (and despicable) founders.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#35

Post by jarrett »

smileysteve wrote: post #6

You Were Fired. When you have contractor status, are brought into a meeting where they say you are underperforming, not committed, and turn deaf ears on however you try to justify yourself... and you end up leaving the company... you may have been fired. The biggest mistakes you made was a) still being a contractor b) not asking for severance if you would opt of of claiming unemployment on them.

> You Were Fired.

I don't think you can fairly say a person was fired simply because s/he quit following a dispute with the boss. Maybe the person would have eventually been fired, had s/he not quit. But that's pure speculation.

There's the cliched "you can't quit, you're fired"/"you can't fire me, I quit" scenario. I think the question of who terminated the relationship is less clear there. But that doesn't seem to apply to the story the author tells.

Why quibble over this? Because the distinction between being fired and quitting matters for the employee's future prospects.

> The biggest mistakes you made was a) still being a contractor

How do you know the author was in fact a contractor? The author didn't post his offer letter, tax forms, or other similar documents. So we can't know for sure. But he says he understood himself to be a full-time employee. Some of what he describes, e.g. the boss's comments about hours, seem to support this view.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#36

Post by pcrh »

cbryan wrote: post #11

What are good questions to ask during an interview to avoid situations like these? How are other people weeding out employers like this one? This sounds like a bad situation that I'm sure we'd all like to avoid.

It's probably a bit tough when it comes to a small outfit like the one described. In this case the main red flag was the mysterious previous developers. So to avoid situations like this one would have to find people who previously worked at the candidate employer and have them give references for their former boss.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#38

Post by pcrh »

ztnewman wrote: post #25

I don't understand what beer culture has to do with the majority of the post

It's mainly a reference to a "party" that was held at the employers premises where beer was consumed, OP doesn't drink alcohol.

In any case, while this was apparently a pretty "lame" party, it appears to have been an important part of the culture of the firm, and OP didn't jibe with it very well.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#39

Post by jholman »

patio11 wrote: post #5

n.b. It was time to leave, and the HR lady came to me and said I would have to sign a release letter and send it back within 2 work days (the following Monday was a holiday), otherwise I would not get any of the remaining pay I'm not familiar with the law in Canada, but I rather suspect that it's similar to America, so a bit of advice for the young and impressionable: virtually no threat to not pay an employee wages…

Oh, the employment law is a lot employee-friendlier in Canada than in the US. In particular, BC employment law (relevant to this post) is a lot friendlier than California employment law. And when you go to take them to court, the government will, under some circumstances, provide free legal services to the employee (you can look up the BC gov's Employment Standards Branch).

That said, IIRC, even BC is pretty employer-friendly for the first 3 months, in terms of notice and so on. And it appears the author thought he was entitled to stock options after 9 weeks, which is.... not typical, in my limited experience. And they company sounds like they were dicks about it, but basically, terminating the relationship and paying out your salary (but not bonuses or unvested equity) is usually legit.

If he had made it through 3 months, he'd have a right to some severance pay, and if they tried to terminate-with-cause he'd be able to sue for wrongful dismissal. Because of this, even in borderline cases, most (many?) companies go for termination-without-cause.

All the bits about reclassifying a full-timer as a contractor, though? Hells yes, that's a world of hurt for the company if they try that. Not only work direction and taxes (both huge issues), but also consider the pay consequences of trying to get 70-hour weeks out of a contractor. But I doubt that they were actually trying that; it seems so unnecessary.

The spin of the article is weird, though. He's having trouble justifying his 9 weeks? "I tried an experiment because there were some very attractive aspects about the opportunity, but it turned out that management had no experience and very unrealistic expectations, and it didn't work out." What could be simpler?

SHORT VERSION: as patio11 said: don't hurry to sign anything, and spend at least an hour reading about your legal rights, and as patio11 suggested, drop hints that you're interested in your legal rights

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#40

Post by ryan-allen »

To me this is less about 'beer and overtime' and more about conformity to pre-existing culture.

It doesn't matter if it's beer or if it's Star Trek or if it's an religious-like attitude to Cucumber Testing or even if it's a tech company or not, the fact is that some potential asshole who's on a slightly higher salary than you can decide to fuck with your livelihood if you don't tow some intangible line that matters to them.

I see it as a byproduct of capitalism, bosses will be bosses, and I've seen people trashed with 'fairness' as often as I have seen them trashed with non-conformity to whatever the ones in charge (or even the ones in the middle) care about.

As long as you have a list of conditions attached to your paycheck, this isn't going to change. It sucks, but it is how it is. You either have to play the game or find some place to work where the game is tolerable to you and your values. It doesn't matter how you cast it, but there's always a game to be played, some will seem more virtuous than others, and that will change from person to person.

Post reply on HN