41–50 of 54 posts
"The constant pitching, the t-shirt wardrobe peppered with company logos and talking about the business at every holiday, lunch with friends or phone call with Mom really adds up. It’s what you live and breathe as a startup founder and I wouldn’t have had it any other way." These should be huge red flags. The author describes thinking about nothing but work for three years, then reproaches himself for... not having s…
"The constant pitching, the t-shirt wardrobe peppered with company logos and talking about the business at every holiday, lunch with friends or phone call with Mom really adds up. It’s what you live and breathe as a startup founder and I wouldn’t have had it any other way." These should be huge red flags. The author describes thinking about nothing but work for three years, then reproaches himself for... not having s…
Guy? From the name (Kelly) I'll wager this was written by a gal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four." Or, 90% of the time, you run out of money at the end of year four and get to keep doing this nonsense in four-year chunks until you die at your desk.
Exactly. The cited essay is advice from a casino operator to spend all your time playing the slots, so you can cash out and enjoy your life on easy street. It's great advice if you can follow it.
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Paul Graham is a very smart dude, and I love his essays a lot, but the way you talk about him "Recall what Paul Graham wrote:" sounds like you are quoting the bible. Believe it our not, Paul Graham is not always right, and it is entirely possible to be too intense.
Man, I just read that entire essay, and it is terrible. I actually love Paul Graham a little less after reading it. It is as though he had literally never heard of the concept of scarcity and simply thought all wealth was just a form of converted effort. A child's understanding of economy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Recall what Paul Graham wrote: "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast... Remember what a startup is, economically: a way of saying, I want to work faster. Instead of acc…
Paul Graham's essays contain much wisdom and truth, but even Homer nods, and let's be honest, the paragraph you quoted is bullshit. Even if you care about nothing whatsoever except your job (which probably isn't - and certainly shouldn't be - the case) there is an optimal level of effort that delivers peak sustainable output, and for tasks with a significant intellectual component, the available data says that optima…
Let's see some of that research. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter" Goldin, NBER working paper suggests that there are superlinear returns to hours worked for differentiated labour. Where workers are basically substitutable pay has an almos 1:1 relationship with hours worked. Where people can have unique knowledge and relationships and combinations of same working more hours makes your total output greater and makes you less substitutable, which makes your bargaining position better, if you're an employee.
I don't understand this blog post at all. It seems to only show the very tip of the situation because, based on the text alone, the story/situation doesn't add up. Especially the part where he says he was doing everything perfectly for the week, yet everyone still wanted him gone. It seems like there was a much deeper personality conflict or something we aren't seeing. Maybe this is my fault, but unfortunately, it al…
I think he basically got fired and then wrote a blog post about it to make it sound like it was his decision.
Seems like some post-facto rationalization. What exactly is the lesson here? Don't be a jerk to your teammates and make sure they know what you're doing? Why not just say that instead of publicly apologizing like this?
Context helps ground the lessons in reality. People would be less likely to take "don't be a jerk to your teammates" to heart if that's all the post was saying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The cited essay is advice from a casino operator to spend all your time playing the slots, so you can cash out and enjoy your life on easy street. It's great advice if you can follow it.
Quite. NEVER take career advice from a VC, he will gladly sacrifice your health, relationships, long term career prospects and anything else he can get his hands on, for his own interests. Which sounds harsh but it is how it is.
Did the cofounder really not receive any performance feedback until "It might be time for you to go"? Did his team members not feel comfortable talking to him about it, or perhaps even the other cofounders, until the situation reached a boiling point? Did other team members know they had an open communication channel to provide feedback about a cofounder?
Unless the issues he describes are intrinsic personality quirks -- in which case he probably needs to understand his tendencies and find an environment where he can thrive -- this whole situation seems avoidable. All employees, but especially managers, should create time and space to have candid, mostly unstructured one-on-one conversations with a handful of direct reports / superiors / peers. Leaders should invite criticism from the very beginning and make sure everyone knows it's safe to challenge ideas and decisions. And ideally, this starts during the hiring process. Let potential employees know that you value productive dissent and do your best to evaluate them on that axis.
If you don't have people within the company that can effectively evaluate you, find someone outside of the company that can provide advice. This seems more common at the (co)founder level, although could apply e.g. to a technical person at a highly non-technical company as well.
EDIT: As a cofounder, he had the power to engineer some of these support structures himself. This isn't "mean company ruins struggling cofounder," but rather a reminder to spend time on soft skills and the human element of running a business.
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Quite. NEVER take career advice from a VC, he will gladly sacrifice your health, relationships, long term career prospects and anything else he can get his hands on, for his own interests. Which sounds harsh but it is how it is.
This
And then downvote this reply as well? I got karma to burn. Thanks in advance.