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Hire people who give a shit

alexw.substack.com

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Re: Hire people who give a shit

#61

Post by yoz-y »

j3th9n wrote: post #27

> The uncomfortable truth is that most people don’t give a shit. For example, it’s absolutely shocking that the common paradigm for engineers at Google is to come in at 11am and leave at 4pm. In no world can you be working 5 hours a day and be giving a shit, and so the conclusion is that very little meaningful work gets done at Google. Maybe a bit of a hyperbole, but not far from the truth. That culture is broken. Ma…

Never saw anybody do this. There might be some people who can get their part done quickly and are no longer interested in climbing the ladder, but that must be quite rare. People are not evaluated on the amount of time they spend in their chairs.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#62

Post by cleansy »

After reading the comments: I wouldn't grill the author too much about his idealistic views on things. He's 23 and got some media attention for exactly that attribute.

From crunchbase: "Scale, which accelerates its customers' AI development by democratizing access to intelligent data [...] After dropping out of M.I.T. to become a teenage tech lead at Quora, Alexandr founded Scale in 2016 and became the youngest entrepreneur ever... [etc.]"

So nothing that is revolutionary, new or (IMHO) interesting so I imagine this post was written after having maybe hundreds of interviews with senior engineers, really not being too psyched about the companies offering.

Funny enough, when I apply for contracts instead of employment I never got asked the question what makes me passionate about the business. In many ways, recruiters seem to be more professional with freelancers than when interviewing potential employees, even though the cost of a freelancer is usually higher.

My advice when you want generally interested people is: hire juniors and hire for seniors as shepherds, figuratively speaking. Unless you have something that people care about (which is usually outside the B2B market) that's a better bet than to assume that anyone senior really would give a shit about your business model.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#63

Post by high_derivative »

macNchz wrote: post #55
high_derivative wrote: post #8

Oh my, what drivel. Another startup CEO who thinks late-stage employees with essentially zero upside in the company need to put in founder hours.

I got a kick out of the sample interview questions...if I were asked them, my answers make clear the worst part about this kind of culture: >>> What’s the hardest you’ve ever worked on something? Lead-up to the holiday season as an employee of an ecommerce startup. >>> How many hours were you working a week? Way, way, way too many. >>> When were you the most unmotivated in your life? The entire following year!

It could almost be satire on tone-deaf founder blogging.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#64

Post by ritchiea »

I generally like this advice but also worry that unsaid number 3 is “only hire people without boundaries who will fully devote themselves to your company until they burn out.”

I’d love to see more companies that give you a reasonable work life balance so that they can continue to benefit from you giving a shit long term. Let me be clear I know nothing about Scale in particular but I have seen other places where the insidious version of the advice here becomes a hiring funnel that churns through passionate workers burning them out.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#65

Post by achenatx »

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 support that too. We have people that are close to retirement that want to work half time. We support that. If people want to work remotely, we support that. Some people really want to work in an office. We support that. One person wanted to buy a ranch, another wanted to write a book, many people want to start their own companies.

We are running a marathon, not a sprint. We monitor people's hours and have a discussion if their hours are regularly at too high a rate (some people like it). We know that they will eventually burn out, will start to make bad decisions etc.

I don't want to be party to a cult where people's every waking moment revolves around the company. I dont want people to be obsessed with what we do, though I do want people to have fun. I dont need to wring every ounce of profitability out of the company at the expense of the people.

I mountain bike before work, sometimes leave work to kitesurf if the wind is up, work on another startup on the side, go to most of my kids' presentations, take them to afterschool activities where I stay and watch etc. I want all of my employees to be able to do those things too if they want.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#66

Post by paulgb »

war1025 wrote: post #20

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

I wouldn't be surprised if some people get away with it, especially if they reach a certain specialization in a core codebase and are okay letting their career coast. It is not "the common paradigm" as stated in the article (at least, it wasn't in the NYC office 2014-2016).

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#67

Post by cvhashim »

paultopia wrote: post #51
high_derivative wrote: post #8

Oh my, what drivel. Another startup CEO who thinks late-stage employees with essentially zero upside in the company need to put in founder hours.

Thank you! The ideology of this post is so harmful. "Hire workers who care more about your interests than their own!"

Hire workers who’ll work to the bone, have no life outside of work and make the founders rich :D

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#68

Post by gcatalfamo »

> Do you think it was worth it? For an obsessed person, it’s always worth it.

No, just no. It's not absolutely always worth it. Especially when you "give a shit about it" and then find it really wasn't worth it. That's really bad.

Also, giving a shit is not a dichotomy. I don't just give a shit about either everything or nothing at all.

Give me a reason to give a shit about what you do in particular. Unless you are measuring one's capability to give a shit in absolute terms, which is very hard to assess in terms of productivity gains.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#69

Post by anonymouse008 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #21

I have a genuine question and I'm not trying to be snarky -- do people actually think this way in real life, or is it an elaborate social game of pretending to be more "passionate" than the next guy? Scale seems like a cool company with an interesting product, but let's be honest, rational people here - they aren't curing cancer, creating art, or landing on Normandy Beach. This seems obvious to any self-aware person.…

> "I have a genuine question and I'm not trying to be snarky -- do people actually think this way in real life, or is it an elaborate social game of pretending to be more "passionate" than the next guy?"

We have a slight issue with 'identity' in the US. I need to read more Tocqueville before I really start espousing any diagnostic on the psyche of the US but...

This type of mindset is what occurs when someone searches for their identity and meaning then places that whole 'life's worth' in the form of businesses or enterprising endeavors.

It can be broadly characterized as externalizing one's identity, which is painfully likely to fail or let you down in some way. In its most extreme forms, it's really a mental disorder (bordering the wildly high-functioning creative schizophrenic) that the Startup Zeitgeist has hailed as 'how to innovate' and find your 'life's work.' The disorders become evident once one sacrifices all of self at the alter of this 'give a shit' goal - burn out is not the goal of human life.

I'll say I'm recovering from this mindset and have a fonder appreciation for what it means to foster a community (be that business, HOA, religious group, friend group, etc) that allows you to have a 'life's work' that gives you resources to flourish in ways you never thought you could.

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