Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hire people who give a shit

alexw.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 342 posts

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#81

Post by whateveracct »

ragona wrote: post #12

Yikes. I would never work for that person after reading that article. “I started a company and I’m totally wild about it. It is my life. If it is not your life too then you don’t belong here.” Founders are supposed to be obsessed with their company. (Though I question that too.) But demanding everyone else at the company be just as obsessed is doomed to hire children and sycophants and drive off professionals who hav…

> Founders are supposed to be obsessed with their company. (Though I question that too.)

I question it too. As a cofounder, I strive to destroy this sort of attitude. Doing my part by example to establish that culture.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#82

Post by kritiko »

perlgeek wrote: post #50
ragona wrote: post #12

Yikes. I would never work for that person after reading that article. “I started a company and I’m totally wild about it. It is my life. If it is not your life too then you don’t belong here.” Founders are supposed to be obsessed with their company. (Though I question that too.) But demanding everyone else at the company be just as obsessed is doomed to hire children and sycophants and drive off professionals who hav…

Also not good for the business. It means you attract people who pretend to care about it. So, people who can tell a good story, not those who will talk honestly to you.

it's not obvious to me that hiring good storytellers is a negative.

I think you can make the case that that's not the sole criteria or highest criteria you should seek, but I've seen remarkable longevity in companies where people are willing to fake it til they make it. (Longevity defined here as keeping people employed and keep raising money when needed. Not changing the world or anything.)

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#83

Post by gravypod »

The way I prefer to look at this is: hire people who you are comfortable giving a sizable stake of your company to. If properly motivated an employee can then decide what is "enough" and "too much" work.

Good decision making, forethought, and acceptable risk taking are much more valued by me than "ok with working 80hr weeks".

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#84

Post by sys_64738 »

He's full of it. I work for the paycheck and nothing more. My free time is mine and not for your company which I won't ever see a dime on. Founders are the only people who make money at startups if even that. I can get more RSUs at an established company that actually vest than a fancy notion that they might if I work like crazy.

There are some studies that say working 5 hours a day is more productive than working 8 or 10 or 16 like this idiot is suggesting.

As you get older you realize a mission statement is a means to cajole the more inexperienced to buy into your widget or service. Those who have seen it all before know it's bogus BS to try to burn people out. I come in, do my job, then clock out. It's not about 'giving a it', it's about living life and work isn't life.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#85

Post by aoeusnth1 »

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 you can exploit and have no self-worth”

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#87

Post by enra »

ragona wrote: post #12

Yikes. I would never work for that person after reading that article. “I started a company and I’m totally wild about it. It is my life. If it is not your life too then you don’t belong here.” Founders are supposed to be obsessed with their company. (Though I question that too.) But demanding everyone else at the company be just as obsessed is doomed to hire children and sycophants and drive off professionals who hav…

He is 22 or something. It’s a common thing in founders in their early 20s, just out of college, to be overly obsessed about their work/companies.

Eventually he might grow or has to grow out of it.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#88

Post by shiftpgdn »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #85
paultopia wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

“Hire workers you can exploit and have no self-worth”

Sounds like the H1B program.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#89

Post by fullshark »

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.…

When I first joined the industry I think I did, or convinced myself I did. Then I grew up.

Re: Hire people who give a shit

#90

Post by jfengel »

hprotagonist wrote: post #16

And the inverse: have a business which is worthy of shit-giving. It’s extremely hard to give a shit about Yet Another Middleware CRUD CRM Layer Corp. There’s a fine balancing point between working a bullshit job ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs ) and recognizing that no, the B-Ark ( https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_... ) is a bad idea, we really do need telephone handset saniti…

One way to have a business worth giving a shit about is to care about what your customers do. To you, the programmers, it's Yet Another Middleware CRUD CRM Layer, but to your users, it's how they make their living or enjoy themselves in their time off. They care about what your software does for them.

We programmers tend to prize the code that we write for other programmers: the compilers, the kernels, the libraries. But most of us will work for customers who do real-world things, whether that's watching a movie or checking in patients at the dentist office or tuning their guitar. So our software is usually incredibly dull to us as programmers, but of crucial interest to our users.

This doesn't have to be management consultant BS. You can't just fake caring about customers. Be sincerely interested in making their lives better, even though what they do isn't what you as a programmer have devoted your life to.

Post reply on HN