111–120 of 342 posts
Sounds like someone full of himself. I’m never going to work more than 8 hours a day for a company, preferably less even. I still get more stuff done in those hours that I do work.
I care a lot about what I do, but I’m not going to destroy myself or my life for someone else’s company. Already did that for the military, never again.
Yikes. I would never work for that person after reading that article. “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 hav…
Proper incentives entice employee engagement.
This is how employers see the world: - giving a shit doesn't matter - creativity doesn't matter - how hard you work doesn't matter - self educating doesn't matter - energy and enthusiasm don't matter - having built stuff on your own doesn't matter What matters: - can you implement bubble sort? - can you implement a red/black tree? - can you do this coding test? Look, employees don't need to be obsessed workaholics, b…
I strongly disagree with this post for my company. But that is great, it means there is a company for everyone. At my company one of our most important values is "live the life you love". For each person we try to understand how the company can help them achieve their personal goals. If someone wants to work a ton of hours to get promoted as fast as possible, we support that. But if they want a balanced life we suppo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One way to have a business worth giving a shit about is to care about what your customers do. To you, the programmers, it's Yet Another Middleware CRUD CRM Layer, but to your users, it's how they make their living or enjoy themselves in their time off. They care about what your software does for them. We programmers tend to prize the code that we write for other programmers: the compilers, the kernels, the libraries.…
this is a tangent, but every single time i have ever watched an end user use "my" code i have learned an incredible amount. Often, related to how to make a CRUD app that isn't horrible to use! Decoupling devs from exposure to these sorts of experiences is a huge disservice. Just sitting and watching someone use your product for a few hours is incredibly illuminating.
I posted it on HN as I liked the points in the article. The points in the post are reasonable provided there's fair equity for the employees (which I believe is disclosed prior to joining - I have no knowledge about dilution, preference etc). I also agree with the commenters on HN that it doesn't make much sense when there's no equity.
But there are too many comments making the same/similar point.
I personally find what Alex is doing is inspiring, running a 200 person company (ref: article) at 23 is remarkable. I also applaud his courage to publicly share what he thought was best advice.
I might get downvoted for this but I couldn't not say this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those reading this article who might be tempted to a company like this: stay away! You’ll not get any meaningful equity, what you have will be quickly diluted, and as the company either starts its death spiral or “March towards profitability” you’ll be asked to work inappropriate hours and your commitment to the company will be questioned. Go for an early stage startup with meaningful equity or just go for a more…
I would strongly recommend the latter. The former is playing the lottery. Even if you win, stock appreciation in big tech over 10 years beats the startup stock. Not to mention, you won't be at a no name startup for years to find out whether you won the lottery.
I'd state it more like: Go to an early stage startup only if you'll still be happy with the experience if the equity evaporates.
Sad to see this kind of shit from a YC funded CEO.
The comments here at HN are quite harsh imho and I feel bad for possibly ruining someone's day. Is there a way for me to delete the submission? I posted it on HN as I liked the points in the article. The points in the post are reasonable provided there's fair equity for the employees (which I believe is disclosed prior to joining - I have no knowledge about dilution, preference etc). I also agree with the commenters…
While I do see amazing merit in that statement, from an experiential and rational standpoint I disagree with it. Though, believing this won't harm the company too much as it is a very action-oriented statement and leads to a bias of action. That doesn't make it true though.
I've seen plenty of people doing good work when they don't give a shit. It's more rare than doing bad work, which is more common.
Really, the only thing I haven't seen is that people become so desperate or passionate (or both) that they become very lateral/creative in their solutions. That's the only thing I haven't seen "not giving a shit" people do. I've seen this time and time again. And it's quite simple why: people that don't give a shit don't become desperate or passionate about the things they don't give a shit about. So they never go into that lateral/creative mode. Perhaps the only exception is highly lateral/creative people that do it by default.
The thing is, creative/lateral problem-solving is not always needed and sometimes even counter productive. At my current job, I've noticed that me giving a shit is actually putting me into harms way, because I become creative and want to meddle with too many things. Whereas, when I shut up and not give a shit, do what I told and think a bit with them for the future, that seems to work a lot better for them.
Obviously, that's just anecdata and companies are diverse. But the author mentions this like it is a rule and as a rule (heh!) the majority of things are most likely never to exist as a rule! You make a general sweeping statement, it takes one counter example to shaken it.