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At this company, we are family

pboyd.io

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Re: At this company, we are family

#251

Post by don-code »

Aurornis wrote: post #224

When I was young I worked at a company that said things like "we are family" and kind of meant it. It wasn't really a good thing unless you were a low performer. We had some people who were hired into jobs they couldn't do well, but they got to keep those jobs because it was like their role in the family. People basically never got fired, including the couple guys in the corner who barely did any work but had been th…

When I was young, I worked at a company that said things like "we are family" - and knew exactly how to manipulate with it.

I'd had a pretty rough year, my last year there - a recent breakup, a deteriorating domestic situation, and a death march at work. Management was aware of all three. In the end, I decided to leave the company. The attempt to retain me was not more money, or really anything around comp - it was something along the lines of (a rough quote): "You really shouldn't leave. We're your family. In times like yours, people can push the people closest to them away, to their own self detriment." And I was shared some links to psychology sites, talking about how folks in crisis can push close loved ones away from them.

Being young and naive, I gave some profuse thanks for enlightening me, promised to stay, reneged on the offer with the other employer... and a few days later, thought, "what on earth did they just do?!"

Needless to say, I put my notice back in, took the other job, and never looked back. The silver lining is that I now have a pretty good radar for management using the "family" argument in manipulative ways.

Re: At this company, we are family

#252

Post by jedberg »

majormajor wrote: post #232
kirse wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the sports team concept in terms of being a sieve for performance. Similar to HS->College->NFL athletes, elite military SOF groups, etc. You get binned and sometimes that's hard to accept, but that's the point of the filter. It's interesting that despite the high-performance culture though, Netflix is still slowly degrading. This past year I finally realized I could cancel Netflix and not feel like I lost anyt…

Netflix was unlikely to ever be able to forever remain an aggregator of content from other distribution shops. They would've gotten squeezed to death from all sides. So now they have tons of content and tons of viewership (and tons of profits the last several years) but they've changed from being "the biggest streaming hub for all your favorites" to "one of many producers and distributors." They might on the whole ha…

The music industry set up a way for anyone who wanted their content to get it without their permission, as long as they paid for it, and they did that back in the 50s when radio was their main method of distribution. It was too hard to make deals with every radio station, especially since they were mostly independent.

So the music streamers were able to leverage that and extend the deal.

If movies had a similar licensing model, you'd see a ton of "Netflix"'s who were all licensing the same content and competing on user experience. Like the music streamers.

Although it should be noted that the music streamers are now moving towards the exclusivity model, where the big ones are making exclusive deals to keep that music off of any other platform.

Re: At this company, we are family

#253

Post by chinchilla2020 »

jedberg wrote: post #156

This is why I always liked Netflix's outlook (both stated and practiced): We are a sports team, not a family. Perform well and you will be paid well, perform poorly and you will get a nice check to go elsewhere. And sometimes you might perform really well but we just don't need someone with your skills anymore, so we'll still give you nice check to go elsewhere, and that isn't a reflection on your abilities.

Netflix can do that because they pay as well as sports teams do.

If you offer me a typical tech job at 1/20th of what a netflix engineer makes, don't expect me to perform like Michael Jordan.

Sports team dedicate their entire life to performance. 80 hour weeks are nothing to them. Their diet, sleep, and personal lives are part of their jobs. I don't want a typical tech shop to have that sort of control over me unless they are paying me serious money.

------

All that aside, modern Netflix is not what Reed Hastings describes. There are tons of tenured benchwarmers lounging around.

It reminds me of Amazon's "bar raiser" requirement. That a new hire has to be better than 50% of the interviewers. The idea that Amazon engineers are the top is laughable to anyone in the space these days. Only the desperate work for Amazon.

Re: At this company, we are family

#254

Post by FredPret »

halostatue wrote: post #250
yCombLinks wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay less tax, but pay for health insurance rather than having taxes pay for healthcare.

It’s often not even true that Americans pay a lower tax amount or rate, unless you’re at the richest ends of the scale. (~25 years ago, my wife and I both made about $50–55k; she ended up paying a lower total amount of tax in Canada than I did in the US, and I had the shitty American healthcare system with $15 copays. Needless to say, I emigrated.) There are regressive taxes (e.g., sales taxes / VAT) which are certai…

Canada is more in line with US for taxes. In Europe, even middle class people pay 40-50% tax.

Re: At this company, we are family

#255

Post by skrebbel »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #220
skrebbel wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? GP goes into a burnout at job #1 and your takeaway is “you should’ve worked harder”?

Where did I say they should work harder? In fact, I said I had no issue with them not providing notice. But I did point out that sometimes in life we need to force ourselves to work. Why? Because we need an income. Some people live a life where they don't need to work but most of us don't. Plenty of us had to go to work in scenarios where we didn't want to. Other half is long-term sick, kid is on school holiday, it's…

I don’t think you appreciate how completely a proper burnout can stop you in your tracks.

It’s like telling a tennis player to keep playing a few more matches after breaking an arm in an accident. Tough up kid! It’s a hard world out there.

Re: At this company, we are family

#256

Post by chinchilla2020 »

xyzelement wrote: post #59

This is well written and I agree that family is a very imperfect analogy for a working relationship. At the same time, some work situations are more or less family-like and it still pays to look for the "more." I've been lucky that 4 companies I've worked at in my life so far have been very "employee forward" - creating scenarios of employee growth and engagement (vs putting employees in the seat of powerless cogs).…

"family" is going to mean something different to everyone. It could be positive or negative.

The hackernews galaxy brains trying to define a company based on one word in a mission statement is every bit as foolish as the recruiter who describes their culture as 'family'.

Re: At this company, we are family

#257

Post by anon291 »

epups wrote: post #227
anon291 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's not even get into the details of your "100% free medical". My 100% free medical is enshrined by the law in my state, which sets the eligibility guidelines for medicaid. Please stop parroting misinformation and discouraging people from using the available welfare programs. So many people I've spoken with thought I was crazy for applying to medicaid and didn't do so themselves because they thought they wouldn't…

The thread is a comparison between the US and Europe. You are the one pushing an extreme anecdote - your own personal experience, valid in one US state -, when in reality we know for a fact that on average you can expect much better benefits in Europe, regardless of your employer. There is a price for that, of course, but to try to claim that the US is better in this particular area is a weak argument. When you use a…

> There is a price for that, of course, but to try to claim that the US is better in this particular area is a weak argument. When you use a personal anecdote, it becomes ridiculous.

Given that my anecdote is not about particular policies (although in my state, the public medical is protected as much as any European state), but rather the big picture, and given that American software are typically richer than their European counterparts, I think it's pretty clear that we can make that claim.

Re: At this company, we are family

#258

Post by m463 »

don-code wrote: post #251
Aurornis wrote: post #224

When I was young I worked at a company that said things like "we are family" and kind of meant it. It wasn't really a good thing unless you were a low performer. We had some people who were hired into jobs they couldn't do well, but they got to keep those jobs because it was like their role in the family. People basically never got fired, including the couple guys in the corner who barely did any work but had been th…

When I was young, I worked at a company that said things like "we are family" - and knew exactly how to manipulate with it. I'd had a pretty rough year, my last year there - a recent breakup, a deteriorating domestic situation, and a death march at work. Management was aware of all three. In the end, I decided to leave the company. The attempt to retain me was not more money, or really anything around comp - it was s…

sounds like a cult

Take vulnerable people (insecure people who need jobs), add authoritarian influence, have them work for the good of the group, etc

Honestly, I wonder how many (normal?) companies align with cult techniques? Don't most companies create an us-vs-them culture? Didn't steve jobs want all the employees to wear the same uniform at one point? Doesn't Elon Musk talk about the mission to save mankind?

Maybe it is all just part of competing, cooperating and how we create prosperity, but I wonder sometimes.

Re: At this company, we are family

#259

Post by that_guy_iain »

skrebbel wrote: post #255
that_guy_iain wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did I say they should work harder? In fact, I said I had no issue with them not providing notice. But I did point out that sometimes in life we need to force ourselves to work. Why? Because we need an income. Some people live a life where they don't need to work but most of us don't. Plenty of us had to go to work in scenarios where we didn't want to. Other half is long-term sick, kid is on school holiday, it's…

I don’t think you appreciate how completely a proper burnout can stop you in your tracks. It’s like telling a tennis player to keep playing a few more matches after breaking an arm in an accident. Tough up kid! It’s a hard world out there.

People seem to be focusing on this case specifically when the skill to force yourself to work applies in many scenarios and is a required skill to be successful in any profession.

No pro tennis player hasn't played a game injured. No professional athlete has gone through their career without playing injured. Every off-season we hear the list of injuries players have been playing through.

To be successful you must force yourself to do things you don't want to do. And not telling someone who just flaked out of their first job that is a diservice.

Re: At this company, we are family

#260

Post by chinchilla2020 »

hdivider wrote: post #70
systemvoltage wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, my father ran a small business (physical goods) and the people in his company were almost like a family. They felt as such, we treated them as such, it was amazing...brings a tear. I cannot emphasize this enough: It was far better relationship than resentful people on HN who are constantly complaining about work. They were happier as a whole.

Yes, sadly HN does seem to have a high proportion of folks who don't seem to understand the value of human connection. Everything is about technology. But not all mission statements are meaningless, and not all attempts by executives to create a family-like culture come from a bad place. Much of it comes from a good place, and it often works. But people who experience this I think are less likely to write on HN.

HN is also violently against social events at a company and the idea of social interaction.

Hate to break it to HN, but the most successful engineers I've met in the biz are also very empathetic and enjoyable to be around. This HN stereotype that you have to be an low-EQ, frustrated incel to work on software is incorrect in my reality. Just look at the top coders who are living (Linus, Guido, Hashimoto) and you will notice that they are very teamwork oriented people.

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