He actually thinks and says that Google engineers only work 5 hours a day and says "so the conclusion is that very little meaningful work gets done at Google...Google is broken." This article reflects terribly on Scale and he should delete it.
Hire people who give a shit
91–100 of 342 posts
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#92a YC company (S16)
Given the founders naivety and pig-headedness, i could have guessed.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#93And 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.…
this is a tangent, but every single time i have ever watched an end user use "my" code i have learned an incredible amount. Often, related to how to make a CRUD app that isn't horrible to use!
Decoupling devs from exposure to these sorts of experiences is a huge disservice. Just sitting and watching someone use your product for a few hours is incredibly illuminating.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#94Lol! How many hours did you work a week? I would be pretty scared if someone asked this. To me, scale seems like a sweatshop.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#95a YC company (S16) Given the founders naivety and pig-headedness, i could have guessed.
Seeing the types of companies coming out of YC in the last few years, I can’t help but think their best years are behind them. Or maybe I am just older and don’t buy into their koolaid anymore.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#96Just to provide a bit of the opposite perspective from what I’m seeing in most of the comments here, I appreciated the post. I know what it’s like to work with people who _care_ about what they’re doing, and what it’s like to work with people who don’t, and I (personally) would pick the former over the latter even if it meant more hours, less money, whatever.
At the end of the day, what makes me feel good is leaving the workday feeling like I got good work done with a good team, and we all tried our best because we care about what we’re doing, instead of just punching the clock. I’m not crazy or indoctrinated, that’s just what makes me feel satisfied by my work. But people are different and value very different things, so I’m glad there are companies that work well for each type of person.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "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 searche…
The real irony is that often the best work is only possible when you balance it with rest, family, and community. Writing for 12 hours a day probably isn't going to produce the next great American novel, so I'm skeptical that it will produce the next "great" startup either.
Agreed. I love Jason Fried of Basecamp thoughts about the meaning of doing good work while balancing that with a normal life.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#98Yikes. 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…
As a founder, there is nothing I hate more than other founders expecting their employees to work 996 for them. It shows they don’t respect their employees time and abuse it for their will. Unfortunately, this seems common in the startup world. I also think that’s why VCs love young founders as well.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#99I don’t want to be too harsh but no where in the article does it mention why anyone should give a “shit” about his company.
Re: Hire people who give a shit
#100I don’t want to be too harsh but no where in the article does it mention why anyone should give a “shit” about his company.
And that is the problem.
People do not say "that's a job I won't give a shit about, so I should apply!"
People do very often say they left their jobs because of their managers. That means at best they felt like unappreciated employees.