Hire people who give a shit • Hacker News Board

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#201

Post by compiler-guy » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:43 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #20

Do people at google actually work 11-4 like it says in the article?

[also posted above]

Google is a giant company, so surely somewhere there are some people who behave this way—-among a hundred thousand employees and hundreds of groups you will find at little bit of everything. But in the groups I have worked for, solid full days are the norm, and somewhat rarely you have to really dig in and work a bit more, and even more rarely, you have so much slack that you can go hone early. But generally people nearly always put in full days.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#202

Post by wonnage » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

The thing you're expected to "give a shit" about is whatever it takes to make Alexandr rich. Unless someone finds particular life meaning in building a specialized mechanical turk? Of course there's grifting from the military-industrial complex involved too: https://www.govconwire.com/2020/09/scale-ai-gets-potential-9...

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#203

Post by xivzgrev » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

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…

He’s building a “generational” company for his heirs and inve-erhem sorry, “society”. Aren’t you motivated by that alone? If not, when was the last time you worked obscene hours for something? Because if you haven’t, you clearly don’t give a shit about anything (except ya know, work life balance, family, hobbies that have nothing to do with tech, etc)

If we don’t want toxic cultures, then we all need to prioritize that when job searching.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#204

Post by mdorazio » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #153

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…

I'm curious. How many misogynistic clients actually scream at 22 year old analysts in MBB? I'd assume business norms would ensure some form of civility in meetings. I haven't heard from any of my MBB friends (who are mostly in India btw), of being yelled at. When I was in PE, I was the 25 year old shouting at some 45 year old CEO (with the license of my firm's MD) for BSing around. Fun times, but that was a very exce…

Consultant for well over a decade now. I've worked with quite a few MBB kids over the years as well as with clients who previously hired them. I'd say it's fairly uncommon for clients to actually yell at the analysts on the ground, but it does happen. It's more likely that the MBB associate or engagement manager gets yelled at for various reasons. But it's a lot more common for the analysts to be told "do whatever the client wants" and end up working absolutely stupid hours to cover client demands that should have been pushed back on, on top of internal commitments to stay on the right side of the "up or out" funnel.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#205

Post by the_only_law » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

oriolid wrote: post #113

andrewstuart wrote: post #106

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…

Creativity is reserved to founders and designers, they don't like competition. If you give a shit, you're going to quit over artistic differences. Working hard usually does more damage than working smarter. And finally, we wouldn't need coding tests if there was a reasonable standard for bare minimum programming skills.

> Creativity is reserved to founders and designers

Sadly for some of us, our creativity never manifests in a profitable way. If I had an idea worth anything and I found as engaging as most of my side projects, I’d probably try the founder route.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#206

Post by xivzgrev » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:56 AM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #153

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…

I'm curious. How many misogynistic clients actually scream at 22 year old analysts in MBB? I'd assume business norms would ensure some form of civility in meetings. I haven't heard from any of my MBB friends (who are mostly in India btw), of being yelled at. When I was in PE, I was the 25 year old shouting at some 45 year old CEO (with the license of my firm's MD) for BSing around. Fun times, but that was a very exce…

I never got yelled at in consulting, and honestly if the client is upset that’s the partner’s fault. Most of the time there wasn’t a lot of pushback because the partner knew what the client cared about. The exception was PE firms who would push back on certain assumptions.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#207

Post by xupybd » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

Ihatelife2020 wrote: post #159

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…

From my experience, the people who get hired are people who complain about corporate propaganda and don't work hard while what I considered hard working individuals are the ones who struggle to find work. Companies hire for mediocrity, not skill. If skill mattered, I would dedicate my life to a company. But it doesn't I so won't ever care.

Life can get better. Don't give up don't give into the bitterness.

What ever you're doing isn't working for you but you can change your situation. There is hope.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#208

Post by Orou » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

sgillen wrote: post #176

pmoriarty wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Over what time frame? A year? Sure. But three years? Five? Ten? It's simply not sustainable for 95% of people. And it's unrealistic to hold everyone else to the standard of that 5% who are 1) naturally hyper-productive or 2) have little else going on in their lives.

The cynic in me wonders if the attempt to turn overwork into a virtue is just to keep people busy enough that they don't stop to wonder what it's all for in the end. Somehow everyone seems to have forgotten that the economy should exist to serve people, not people serving the economy.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#209

Post by arp242 » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

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…

I think the way the author expands on it isn't too great, with questions like "How many hours were you working a week?" and "obsessed person". However, I do think there's sense in the general premise of "hire people who care about what they do", but this doesn't need to translate to "work your ass off".

A lot of the time when I see people produce really crap code it's because they just don't care. They show up for work and anything that meets the minimal standards is fine with them. There's no passion or interest in doing more than absolutely needed. This isn't about "hours worked", but about passion and trying to make whatever you're working on the best it can be. You can do that perfectly fine in just 40 hours/week.

But yeah, some people seem to conflate "passion" with "work your ass off for 60+ hours/week", and that's just silly.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#210

Post by tjpnz » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

Having mentored interns in the past the idea that certain academic institutions signal intelligence over others is flawed at best. This is anecdotal but one summer we got two - one from Harvard and the other from a US college I'd never heard of. One we went on to offer a job, the other struggled with basic coding and had to be taught multiple times how to open a PR.