Hire people who give a shit

“I started a company and I’m totally wild about it. It is my life. If it is not your life too then you don’t belong here.”

Founders are supposed to be obsessed with their company. (Though I question that too.) But demanding everyone else at the company be just as obsessed is doomed to hire children and sycophants and drive off professionals who have seen this movie before.

It’s extremely hard to give a shit about Yet Another Middleware CRUD CRM Layer Corp.

There’s a fine balancing point between working a bullshit job (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) and recognizing that no, the B-Ark (https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_... ) is a bad idea, we really do need telephone handset sanitizers.

Don’t fall for the trap that says that only the sexiest sounding jobs are OK—for one, what that means varies by the talents and interests and skills of the workforce. For another, it’s going to bias you towards treating, e.g., janitors as subhuman, and that way is the path to a very bad place.

What makes work satisfying is, to a large but not total extent, a function of the mutual respect the employer and employee have for the humanity of the employee. Some jobs are just bullshit. Some aren’t. All jobs have a certain amount of toil.

You’ll get people who give a shit about the work when your work isn’t bullshit, and about the job when the culture at work respects them.

These Googlers that work 11-4 probably either used to give a shit, or still give a shit, but when you care deeply about your work and the company gets in your way or doesn't share your passion, it's an awful and demoralizing place to be.

So quit, you say. But you can't because you give a shit and you really, really want the company to succeed and do great things.