Hire people who give a shit • Hacker News Board

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#281

Post by robtherobber » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #75

>Ultimately, you’re searching for people you’d be willing to spend every waking moment with, since if things go right, there will be many long nights. Lots of hours at this place eh? >What’s the hardest you’ve ever worked on something? What happened to work smart not hard? Also what exactly does it mean to work hard as a developer? >How many hours were you working a week? Hours again eh? Sounds like this place has ab…

Exactly my thoughts. This person glorifies toil for the sake of toil (and his profits).

Then he concludes that the "uncomfortable truth is that most people don’t give a shit" but companies should still hire people who do give a shit, leading one ask how would this reality work.

I suppose the good part in this case is that this cult-like mentality is public and would help some people to avoid Mr. Wang's company and look for something else instead.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#282

Post by TomSwirly » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 11:54 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…

Hear, hear!

I want to add only that the people who are good at pretending to give a shit in interviews are sometimes low-level sociopaths who are good at faking things, whereas people who actually give a shit often come off as stiff because they take the interview more seriously.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#283

Post by xwdv » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 11:57 AM UTC

preordained wrote: post #244

xwdv wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been shitting all over people like this for a long time and trying to get people to see the light that a job is a job and nothing more, but then I get blamed for having a “mercenary mentality” and “not a team player”. You are renting your skills to an entity that needs your skills for an agreed upon rate for a certain amount of time. If another employer offers you a better situation and your current employer d…

This seems logical, but I've yet to experience a software shop of any complexity where you can just plug people in and out with this mercenary approach. A year or two is when I notice people actually start adding significant value, and the really high value work when you get in tune with an organization's DNA maybe still years later. Companies need veterans. If it seems like someone can't even pretend to get invested…

Pay your veterans.

It’s not their responsibility to swear life long loyalty just because you need them. Especially when the second they are no longer needed a company wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of them.

Most software shops can’t have mercs because they aren’t built for it, they just assume people will stick around. If you want to run efficiently and confidently with mercenaries, get knowledge out of people’s heads and into robust documentation and architectural design records.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#284

Post by darkhorse13 » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 12:04 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #199

Imagine a 20-something thinking he's seen or experienced enough of the world--any of it--to go on like this. He essentially lucked into VC funding by exploiting sweatshop labor while riding a hyped ML/AI market. It's a testament to how messed up this industry is.

Humility is a lost virtue.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#285

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 12:08 PM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #276

rleigh wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be that workaholic who worked crazy hours and had "passion" for the job. Thing is, it's not sustainable in the long run no matter how much you love it. It might be OK in your twenties. But you're not going to be doing that for four decades. You need to live a life outside work as well. Otherwise you'll be a burned out wreck with crippling RSI. For the record, I did get crippling RSI in my early thirties and…

> but it's Tuesday now, why didn't you review it in the cold light of day and fix all of these obvious defects? Did someone react like that for real after 2am Saturday work? (sounds a bit callous to me also when 2am was a bad idea)

That's probably not the best way to frame it, but it's important to make people aware that they can't work 60 hours at the same quality of the first 30.

Even if they could, they'll either burnout, get promoted or leave within 24 months and then you'll need to backfill with multiple people.

Even as an evil manager, you're still better off stopping people from overworking, as you'll get more work overall from them at a sustainable pace.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#286

Post by xwdv » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 12:08 PM 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.

If you think a company would swear life long loyalty in return to you just because you happen to have some skills, wait till you see what happens when they no longer have use for your “skills”. Never swear loyalty, it’s business, not the military.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#287

Post by darkhorse13 » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 12:35 PM UTC

bayeslaw wrote: post #161

how do these children like idiots get funded and be in charge of 200 ppl? this mindset is criminally short sighted..

I think you are a bit too harsh by calling him an idiot. To answer your question though, a lot of it probably came down to timing - the guy founded an "AI" company in 2016, so yeah.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#288

Post by ingvul » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

achenatx wrote: post #65

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…

> We monitor people's hours...

Here I stop reading.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#289

Post by justinclift » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #143

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 have been shitting all over people like this for a long time and trying to get people to see the light that a job is a job and nothing more, but then I get blamed for having a “mercenary mentality” and “not a team player”. You are renting your skills to an entity that needs your skills for an agreed upon rate for a certain amount of time. If another employer offers you a better situation and your current employer d…

> Getting a job is not like joining a gang or a fraternity where you are first promised a community and good life and then the money is just a formality ...

On that note, there seem to be many tech companies which try to portray working for them as joining a community + good life + money (etc).

To see examples of this, look at almost any tech company's "Careers" page, before it shows open positions. ;)

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#290

Post by mensetmanusman » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

“For example, it’s absolutely shocking that the common paradigm for engineers at Google is to come in at 11am and leave at 4pm.“

Ahaha, sounds like the writer is young. What we are actually doing is playing the long game. We do care, but we are optimizing for not burning out, so we can have a larger ‘area under the curve’ of giving a shit.