"if things go right, there will be many long nights"
Ya, that isn't things going "right". That's things going wrong. Or a failure of planning.
Hire people who give a shit
301–310 of 342 posts
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#302Yikes.
So many things wrong with this.
Firstly, hours in != output. At my last job, we had several guys working 60+ hours / week whose output was miserable. I put in 5-6 hrs / day and was easily 2-10x as productive as them.
Secondly, work/life balance is real. As a lead, I tell my team they should absolutely not be working over 40 hours, and I won't do so myself unless I've fucked something up that's mission-critical. I'd advocate for a shorter workweek but my boss is very old school.
Thirdly, I don't think you can put in long workweeks and be productive long term. Most people just waste time when they work longer, and their productivity goes down, not up, and their mistakes go up. In dev, especially at startups, a single mistake can cost you your business. Do you really want exhausted workers in your codebase?
The truth it you should work however much you feel comfortable for the money you're getting. That's different for everyone. But if I can provide several million in revenue growth with a few hours of effort per day, then I figure I'm more than paying for myself. If you're willing to work 80 hours while getting paid the same as if you work 40 and being as productive as working 20, that makes you stupid and servile imo, not dedicated.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#303Here's a CRAZIER!!! plan. Pay people enough to give a $hit.
Real life has taught me one thing about losers that talk like this. 99% of the time it means they expect more work than they are willing to pay for. Bonus points if they can have some sort of legal (read slavery) leverage over you.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#304This 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 wo…
Exactly. Passion may be indicated by that time you stepped up for a 60 hour week in a given situation, but I'm not seeing anything where the author expects such strict dedication at all times. I simply read it as a plea to reduce the job-hopping culture of tech (and perhaps of other industries that are following suit because of tech).
I don't know what it's like to work at Google but can guess there is a preponderance of disengaged paycheck-grabbers. You want to avoid hiring people that are just in it for the money and will jump ship when something better comes up.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#305This 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…
Healthcare is dysfunctional. But there's a guaranteed demand for it so it's not allowed to fail.
There's lobbying by the AMA to keep a cap on residency spots to create artificial scarcity too. That partly explains the overworked schedule: it's either that or share the pie with a lot more professionals and earn less/have less bargaining power. So residency has turned into a kind of hazing ritual that selects for individuals that are more functional when sleep deprived.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
I nearly got whiplash when the author moved the threshold from "giving a shit" to "deeply obsessed".
Yes! I completely agree with the need to hire people who “give a shit”, but to me this means e.g. - Dogfooding - Fixing a bug even if your manager doesn’t notice - Proactively noticing strange system behavior and investigating - Actively contributing to strategic discussions; showing genuine interest in the problem space - Jumping in to help when the server mysteriously starts crash looping, even if you’re not oncall…
You described a senior engineer.
The last one is especially telling, especially if the debugging ends up documented somewhere/explained to the junior on-call.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#307This 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 wo…
There's a weird cargo culting of hours worked vs productivity. Reminds me of Asian business practices (especially in Japan). Yet that should be a warning, not a model to imitate (remember how Japanese tech took over American one? I don't either).
He's right that a company should hire folks that care about their work and the company. The way to do that is with a stock comp. I still see tier 2 markets complaining they are getting tier 2 devs that don't care. But when I ask about stock comp they suddenly get defensive.
I wouldn't brag too much about "working harder than Google". Because that invites the comparison between the two companies at an equal stage in their respective growth (time, number of employee or funding rounds) and that doesn't really make Scale look good. He's really bragging that what Google can get out of an engineer in 5 hours, he has to do in 10+.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I nearly got whiplash when the author moved the threshold from "giving a shit" to "deeply obsessed".
Yes! I completely agree with the need to hire people who “give a shit”, but to me this means e.g. - Dogfooding - Fixing a bug even if your manager doesn’t notice - Proactively noticing strange system behavior and investigating - Actively contributing to strategic discussions; showing genuine interest in the problem space - Jumping in to help when the server mysteriously starts crash looping, even if you’re not oncall…
This is what I was exactly thinking by reading the first two paragraphs. But then he jumped on "Just must need to work 80 hours per week to do something meaningful" bandwagon.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#309This 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 agree with most of what’s being said but I don’t think that it’s just that it’s a bad bargain. It looks like he’s saying, “will you work harder for the same money” and people are saying, “yes”. It makes him a jerk but he’s being fairly transparent about it. What’s really evil about it is it’s a Ponzi scheme of being crappy to other people. I think what’s really going on is he’s saying, “ I’m going to be crappy to you and in return I’m going to allow and expect you to be crappy to others.” As long as you can find more people to be crappy to you’re going to come out ahead.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Not to mention expecting people to work 60+ hours a week is direct discrimination against people who give a shit about their {mental health, diet, cardiovascular health, family, friends}.
A further problem for those of us who are adults with at least a decade or more of experience in this industry is that Wang is practically a child, and that means 100% certainty that he does not have the leadership experience to either convincingly swagger or lead a company. He needs to dial down the attitude on posts like this and learn from startup leaders who understand what success and healthy work/life balance l…
That article is a big red flag. Do not work for this man. He doesn't respect you only the perceived effort you put in.