The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
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The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
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Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#2[deleted]
Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#3Hm...
# We work long hours. We believe great things are accomplished 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration.
Translation: We can't plan, so we make up for it with burnout.
# We believe the perfect is the enemy of the good. This means we focus on getting things done, not on building the most perfect system. We strongly believe in rapid iteration."
Translation: Don't try to get it right, just get it done again and again.
It's a recipe for generating technical debt, not developing software. Unless, that is, the goal is software that's just as buggy and unmaintainable as most corporate software.
Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#4So they're cheap, offer low pay AND long hours? Wow, where do I sign up?!
Honestly, unless they do some incredible work and/or have great prospects and generous options, I can't see why anyone would want to work there. And based on their product, none of those seem to be true.
Apart from this, the article itself doesn't say much - the problem being that no matter how honest you want to be, listing a few things like in his example won't be enough to give a candidate anything more than a vague idea of what the place will be like and offering below-market rates is always wrong.
This company seems to have a much better idea: http://thisisremarkable.blogspot.com/2008/05/zappos-remarkab...
Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#5Hm... # We work long hours. We believe great things are accomplished 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. Translation: We can't plan, so we make up for it with burnout. # We believe the perfect is the enemy of the good. This means we focus on getting things done, not on building the most perfect system. We strongly believe in rapid iteration." Translation: Don't try to get it right, just get it done again and again.…
The truth lies somewhere in between those two extremes!
Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#6Most companies think they're good at hiring. I'm guessing the ones that deliberately offer below-market salary in exchange for illiquid private company options aren't.
Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#7Nonsense. Anyone who knows his talent and worth, and has an ounce of pride wouldn't stand being jockeyed or lowballed. If I figure at any interview that it's being played like the article says, I'd walk right out. It's the company's freaking loss. Any guy worth his salt should do it.
Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#8I wish I still had the links handy, but there's over a century's worth of research out there showing that it's a bad idea to go over 40 hours in a workweek for any extended period of time.
Of course, everyone's different, but I've noticed I have 4-6 hours of productive time in me per day for knowledge work (e.g. programming). I'm guessing I could get multiples of 4 provided there were long breaks in between, enjoyed what I was doing, and wasn't constantly being interrupted.
Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#9"We believe great things are accomplished 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration."
Sounds like one of those banalities you might see on the back of a T-shirt.
I'd have a real hard time working for anyone who really thinks that programming has that kind of ratio. It smells too much like the construction-worker metaphor.
Re: The Art of the Job Offer: Encourage Candidates to Turn You Down
#10Hm... # We work long hours. We believe great things are accomplished 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. Translation: We can't plan, so we make up for it with burnout. # We believe the perfect is the enemy of the good. This means we focus on getting things done, not on building the most perfect system. We strongly believe in rapid iteration." Translation: Don't try to get it right, just get it done again and again.…
I think many great startup successes finance much of their initial development via 'technical debt'.
If you go bust, it's free! (You can default.)
If you win big, you pay it off out of your winnings.
Perhaps it should be treated like any other possible source of financing... does the advantage (speed out of the gate) justify the cost (fixing it later, in only the positive outcomes)?