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Hire people who give a shit

alexw.substack.com

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Re: Hire people who give a shit

#171

Post by kgin »

ragona wrote: post #12

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…

> “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.”

I assume he's diluting his own equity to make sure everyone has as equal of a stake in the company? That's the only way I'll accept this statement.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#172

Post by icedchai »

andreilys wrote: post #164
icedchai wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside is also much bigger for founders. The board will cut the founder pay when times are tough, long before they touch rank-and-file employees, because they know you value your equity. The other folks can walk.

Nothing stops a founder from walking away. Plenty of founders sell their shares to investors/cofounders in order to cash out. Boards are typically stacked in the founders favor, so any reduction in pay would be the founders own decision. Which makes sense, because they want to keep the company that they have significant equity in alive.

I think you're talking about a company where things are going well. I'm talking about one where they've gone badly, and the founder has lost most control.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#173

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

"Time spent working" is a terrible metric for "gives a shit" and shows me that I wouldn't want to work at this place, but I agree with the general idea that people who give a shit are worth a lot of money.

Even more important than hiring people who give a shit is not breaking them. Throw enough bullshit hurdles in their way, treat them unfairly, or show that you don't care for long enough, and they will stop giving a shit, and you just reduced the value of that worker at least by a factor of 2, if not more. Even if they still put in the same number of hours.

It's the difference between doing what's right vs. doing what's rewarded. If you have people who just do what's right, you don't need a strict reward system. Once you push them towards only going after your rewards, your reward system better be 100% aligned with what's good for the company (spoiler: it isn't anywhere near that), or you're screwed.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#176

Post by sgillen »

pmoriarty wrote: post #156
wbronitsky wrote: post #121

This article is megalomaniacal. Insisting that your company with 200+ employees will only hire people who will work themselves to the bone without any mention of how those people will be properly compensated is wild corporate propaganda. I honestly don’t know why the tech industry continues to capitulate to leaders like this who obviously, and loudly, mistreat and dehumanize their employees by insisting that if you a…

This is not confined to SV nor to tech. It's very common in the finance industry as well, but the worst is arguably in health care, where patients can literally die due to mistakes or lack of enough attention by overworked doctors and nurses running on an extreme lack of sleep. This doesn't even begin to address the casualties from burnout, which can lead to depression, stress-related health issues, and suicide. How…

>> I never understood why they didn't just hire more people and instead preferred to work the talented people they attract half to death.

I think that a small number of talented people that will work themselves to death will be much more effective than a large group willing to work reasonable hours.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#178

Post by torgian »

codethief wrote: post #149
ditonal wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale AI is an embarrassment to YC in general, as the founders embody every negative trope we’ve come to associate with the worst of the scene. The Youtuber Joma Tech has an excellent takedown on the sheer arrogance of their founder. https://youtu.be/HTXTVfBCeSY The fetishization of a youthful founder, the ridiculous interview questions, and as I personally made the mistake of doing a phone screen with them before le…

Love the video but I'm not sure I would consider this a takedown. His comment below the video reads: > Guys I’m not salty, I’m sweet :3 > But for real, I think this company is super promising. Most FANG company have their own in-house system for hiring labelers, and I know that it’s extremely valuable for any ML team. Getting trusted, reliable and cost effective labeled data is not easy for smaller companies. I actua…

Cost effective, but most likely at the expense of paying low wages to super smart people

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#180

Post by ZephyrBlu »

mettamage wrote: post #132

> For example, it’s absolutely shocking that the common paradigm for engineers at Google is to come in at 11am and leave at 4pm. In no world can you be working 5 hours a day and be giving a shit, and so the conclusion is that very little meaningful work gets done at Google. When I was a poker player, I learned that playing less meant earning more (per hour). Focus can only be sustained on the top-level for so long. W…

I agree with what you're saying, but not everything needs top quality focus. There are a lot of menial tasks you can do which don't require you to be super focused.
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