In Canada, employers can't fire as easily as the US, (just-cause vs. at-will employment) they actually have to document a nonperforming employee's performance to a much higher standard than necessary in the US.
So even though they don't have ready access to guns, the employment system is much fairer in Canada than the US, and therefore this also contributes to less workplace violence.
As Dr. Phil might say, how's that working out for you? I'm sure Mr. Sandhu believes he's the most benevolent high-tech-sweatshop manager ever, but what are the results? How productive are those 80-hour weeks? What's the attrition rate? Health outcomes? Divorce rate? How about diversity, especially when it comes to hiring and retaining older workers? How do alumni feel once they've gained some distance?
It's easy to get a few kids to drink some Kool Aid. Whether they keep drinking it, get any benefit out of it, or remember the experience fondly, are all very different questions.
> There's a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch mode over 75 years ago:
> It's the single most expensive way there is to get the work done.
Wow this guy is fucking delusional. I can't believe he seriously thinks his employees are smiling every day, and that they aren't burnt out because they "believe in the mission"
People criticize 80 hours and then I wonder about all the financial analysts in investment banking... aren't they putting in 100+ hour work weeks, at least for the first year or two?
Yes, they often are, but it's for a promise of money that would make even a Googler feel like a pauper. There's also less chance of the company disappearing out from under you, and there's a mostly-known end point. It's a very different risk/reward scenario, in which "paying dues" for a few years might make a lot more sense.
The answer is by being a complete and utter asshole. Any employer who expects that much is not someone who should be managing the night shift at a Denny's, let alone a whole company.
Doing something you believe in is really fantastic but it's higher on the hierarchy of needs than "put food on my table" and "keep my spouse from resenting me for never being around". If you're working 80 hours a week, then you should be compensated for that. Financially.
A few months ago, a USAF Colonel came and gave an address to the employees at my job site. "I know you all do this for patriotism and love of your country," he said. Sure, those are reasons...#9 or #10 on my list, maybe, for dealing with the insanity of flight test. #1, as the great Randy Moss would have said, is "Straight cash, homie."
I wonder how highly Mr. Sandhu's employees would rate the mission to "truly reinvent banking" on their list of reasons for coming to work?
> I'd love to know how much he pays his employees.
I guess the answer is "not too much", from the article:
> We work long hours, we are not paid much, and even after raising over $10-million within our first year of operations, we still have a mountain to climb in our efforts to expand this company.
> Team members having a piece of the pie [equity] is the surest way to align everyone’s interests around the long-term objectives and vision of the business.
The problem with equity is that if the startup fail it's worthless, and there are many horror stories were the business use some technical trick "steal" the employees equity.
This. Be very careful here. Unless you know how the company's shares are structured AND have a say in all the different discussions about future splits and multi-class offerings don't put your head in the sand.
It's idiotic how companies always want people who are "insanely passionatiate" about their mission. It makes (slightly) more sense when you have 1-2 employees, but good luck finding 20+ people who have the skills you need AND are insanely passionate about empowering X to do Y through [buzzwords].
Actually it's not idiotic, it's dishonest. The reason they do it is so they can later frame everything in moral terms around the mission. Only working 60 hours? Not happy making 50% of market with .35% equity? You must not really believe in the mission!
"Only working 60 hours? Not happy making 50% of market with .35% equity? You must not really believe in the mission!"
Exactly. Now, there might be more money to make the goal happen and better if only the founders and VC's were similarly passionate rather than profit-motivated. ;)
That's the hippocracy of it. You can't have the "money is so unimportant to us, we're changing the world!" attitude while simultaneously screwing over your employees and taking the vast majority of the rewards
I entertained a business minor while I was in school by taking a few intro courses. I ultimately chose against it because of a general ethos I felt that was also present in this article:
Given a large lecture hall of ~500 students, how many would agree that working your employees 80/hrs a week in an underpaid fashion is a stroke of genius that proves you to be a successful businessman/businesswomen?
I don't think their is a difference in character or morality between majors, passions, or what have you. I believe we teach a brand of capitalism in regards to business that is highly detrimental to society.
Furthermore I think this methodology is inferior to that of other models, models where workers are fairly compensated, maintain work balance, and ultimately are significantly more productive per/yr.
FWIW, I have one of those business minors, and I never got that feeling in them. But I went to a school that's fairly left-wing in general, even in the business department.
How do you get your employees to work 80 hours a week? Obviously you pay them now.
Wait, you are paying then less? Then the title should be "how to take advantage of people."
Wow. That is insane. Hopefully his employees find a better place and he is never given a position of power again. How the hell does someone get away with not only doing this but advertising it?
I've worked at startups doing 80 hours a week, and currently keep myself strictly under 50 and I really haven't seen much of a difference in the amount of code I am able to ship.
Something about the feeling of having all the time in the world made me less focused I guess. When I have a deadline, and know that I won't be working through the weekend, I tend to still get it done on time.
Also, in my experience. The teams that work 40-50 hours/week seem to be more stable and of a higher caliber than the 70-80 hours per week crowd, but that's just from the 3-4 teams I've been a part of. I wouldn't say it's anything conclusive.
I've never seen a 60+ programmer workweek schedule that didn't start generating negative productivity through reduced quality, technical debt and poor design choices. In part, this is because high workloads are symptomatic of poor project planning, but it's also because overworked programmers make poor choices. Conversely, I've worked with companies that produced amazing, very high profile work under ridiculous deadlines and still got everyone out of the office by six. Obviously, limited crunch periods are unavoidable, but if your project plan assumes more than six to seven hours of productivity a day you're probably creating an unsustainable workload.
Here's a challenge to the entrepreneurs. Make your employees work 4h/6h per day.
Reduce distractions, reduce meetings, make communication asynchronous, optimise tasks.
Some people would be happier to work from 1pm to 6pm. Some others from 6am to Noon. Emails (or preferably something smarter) can be dealt with at other times
Make decisions depend on the least amount of people possible.
> Make decisions depend on the least amount of people possible.
I would suggest an alternative: make decisions depend on the right people, regardless of their number, and make the necessary information easily available and communication channels not require being face-to-face in all cases, but only the ones where it makes sense. (Which is not to embrace the techno-fetishistic idea that asynchronous communication is the be-all and end-all, but to use it appropriately. Meetings are not an inherent negative.)
For me it is not about the number of hours. You can be burnt working 10am to 5pm at a corporation and you can be extremely happy working on your own thing and doubling the hours. Ben Horowitz says that the difference between working for a good company and the rest relies on how you feel when you wake up in the morning. In a good company, you know that if you put good work, it is going to make a difference for you, for the company and hopefully for society in general. As long as there is a shared destiny (equity is split reasonably) and people believe in the mission, the work should be fulfilling.
Keeping everyone on mission is incredibly valuable, but there is a finite amount of work you can and should extract from your employees.
Employers have a disproportionate amount of influence over the lives of the people under their employ. This should carry with it a sense of duty, or responsibility, to the well-being of their fellow human.
Translation for those who aren't used to the distorted language of arrogant assholes:
> "...it’s not about work-life balance. Rather, it’s about optimizing work-life imbalance"
Translation: If I use the word "optimizing" in this sentence, the crushing work load I'm about to give you will seem like a rational choice rather than bare exploitation.
> "Long nights and weekends spent away from families are the norm in the startup world. We often chuckle at glamorized notions of the startup lifestyle: table tennis games, fully stocked kitchens and generous stock options."
Translation: We know what it's really like to work in a startup - having families and fair pay are luxuries we know don't really exist. Anyone who expects otherwise is lazy and doesn't fit with our "culture".
> "We work long hours, we are not paid much, and even after raising over $10-million within our first year of operations, we still have a mountain to climb in our efforts to expand this company."
Translation: While you might not be paid much, I hold a majority stake in the company and will be handsomely rewarded for your hard work when the company gets bought. And just because we raised $10 million doesn't mean any of you are getting a raise.
> "We have also ensured that each employee has an unyielding belief in the company’s mission. If anyone in the office doesn’t believe they’re a part of something incredibly meaningful that will truly reinvent banking, they’ll likely struggle to relate to their co-workers and eventually “burn out.”
Translation: I mean... they're going to burn out anyway after working 80 hours every week, but forced belief in the "mission" of the company allows us to squeeze a couple more months of hard work out of them before they finally quit, feeling guilty and ashamed of their perceived failure.
> "Our husbands and wives help pick up the slack on our long days, and our kids put a smile on our faces after stressful meetings. Many of our team members have young families, and we do our best to respect their needs through flexible hours and by encouraging the ability to work from home when needed."
Translation: I mean, I'm not a monster - if someone wants to spend a portion of their 14 hour work day at home, using their own computer and resources, of course we'll accommodate them. Far be it from me to prevent my employees from bringing all the stress of their work lives into their homes.
> "While the work can be challenging, the rewards are endless."
Translation: The rewards for me, that is. For you, the rewards are very much finite.
> "Having said that, it takes a special kind of personality to seek out (and succeed in) such an uncertain and risky environment. At the end of the day, I guess you still need to be a little nuts to succeed in a startup."
Translation: Young, well-off techies without families or hobbies who can afford to live on breadcrumbs and are healthy enough to keep our insurance costs minimal to the front of the line.
Am I correct in understanding that all this startup does is personal loans?
That's it?
That's going to "change the face of an entire industry"? I'm quite certain the bankers at your local Wells Fargo/Citi/Chase branch work 9-5 and underwrite personal loans all day long without working 80 hours a week. What on earth could these guys be working on that requires such an absurd work schedule?
I've done the 12 hour days as an early employee of a startup (and one significantly more interesting than this). I will never do it again. The math just doesn't make sense—I make substantially more money working at a big tech company and going home at 5 every day than I likely ever would at a startup. Why should I give up my personal life and make less money?
The entire concept of 12 hour days working in front of a computer screen is a joke - the vast majority of people are going to spend 40-50% of that not working, and the remainder are going to be so unproductive from fatigue that they may as well have only worked 6 hours
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] threadAt first I laughed, then I went back to look for a punch line, then I felt sorry for everyone at this company.
So even though they don't have ready access to guns, the employment system is much fairer in Canada than the US, and therefore this also contributes to less workplace violence.
Please someone do some journalism and go ask the employees what they think of this policy...
It's easy to get a few kids to drink some Kool Aid. Whether they keep drinking it, get any benefit out of it, or remember the experience fondly, are all very different questions.
http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons
> There's a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch mode over 75 years ago: > It's the single most expensive way there is to get the work done.
working over 21 hours continuously is equivalent to being legally drunk
Specific to the realm of programming, I wonder if the conclusion factors in Ballmer peak performance gains ;)
Percentage loss of productivity where n is the number of hours over 8 per day, for a 5 day week.
e.g. for prolonged use of an 11 hour day :
0.2 + 4.5 x 3 + 0.3 x 9 = 16% loss of productivity over the whole week.
According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics - Bulletin No. 917 [1]
for more info see this research : http://www.weblem.org/upload/OT1.pdf
[1] https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/scribd/?title_id=4359&filepath...
> driven by passion above all else
Doing something you believe in is really fantastic but it's higher on the hierarchy of needs than "put food on my table" and "keep my spouse from resenting me for never being around". If you're working 80 hours a week, then you should be compensated for that. Financially.
A few months ago, a USAF Colonel came and gave an address to the employees at my job site. "I know you all do this for patriotism and love of your country," he said. Sure, those are reasons...#9 or #10 on my list, maybe, for dealing with the insanity of flight test. #1, as the great Randy Moss would have said, is "Straight cash, homie."
I wonder how highly Mr. Sandhu's employees would rate the mission to "truly reinvent banking" on their list of reasons for coming to work?
I guess the answer is "not too much", from the article:
> We work long hours, we are not paid much, and even after raising over $10-million within our first year of operations, we still have a mountain to climb in our efforts to expand this company.
> Team members having a piece of the pie [equity] is the surest way to align everyone’s interests around the long-term objectives and vision of the business.
The problem with equity is that if the startup fail it's worthless, and there are many horror stories were the business use some technical trick "steal" the employees equity.
Actually it's not idiotic, it's dishonest. The reason they do it is so they can later frame everything in moral terms around the mission. Only working 60 hours? Not happy making 50% of market with .35% equity? You must not really believe in the mission!
Exactly. Now, there might be more money to make the goal happen and better if only the founders and VC's were similarly passionate rather than profit-motivated. ;)
Given a large lecture hall of ~500 students, how many would agree that working your employees 80/hrs a week in an underpaid fashion is a stroke of genius that proves you to be a successful businessman/businesswomen?
I don't think their is a difference in character or morality between majors, passions, or what have you. I believe we teach a brand of capitalism in regards to business that is highly detrimental to society.
Furthermore I think this methodology is inferior to that of other models, models where workers are fairly compensated, maintain work balance, and ultimately are significantly more productive per/yr.
Something about the feeling of having all the time in the world made me less focused I guess. When I have a deadline, and know that I won't be working through the weekend, I tend to still get it done on time.
Also, in my experience. The teams that work 40-50 hours/week seem to be more stable and of a higher caliber than the 70-80 hours per week crowd, but that's just from the 3-4 teams I've been a part of. I wouldn't say it's anything conclusive.
Reduce distractions, reduce meetings, make communication asynchronous, optimise tasks.
Some people would be happier to work from 1pm to 6pm. Some others from 6am to Noon. Emails (or preferably something smarter) can be dealt with at other times
Make decisions depend on the least amount of people possible.
I would suggest an alternative: make decisions depend on the right people, regardless of their number, and make the necessary information easily available and communication channels not require being face-to-face in all cases, but only the ones where it makes sense. (Which is not to embrace the techno-fetishistic idea that asynchronous communication is the be-all and end-all, but to use it appropriately. Meetings are not an inherent negative.)
The rewards are entirely endful for the people actually doing the work. What a tool.
Employers have a disproportionate amount of influence over the lives of the people under their employ. This should carry with it a sense of duty, or responsibility, to the well-being of their fellow human.
> "...it’s not about work-life balance. Rather, it’s about optimizing work-life imbalance"
Translation: If I use the word "optimizing" in this sentence, the crushing work load I'm about to give you will seem like a rational choice rather than bare exploitation.
> "Long nights and weekends spent away from families are the norm in the startup world. We often chuckle at glamorized notions of the startup lifestyle: table tennis games, fully stocked kitchens and generous stock options."
Translation: We know what it's really like to work in a startup - having families and fair pay are luxuries we know don't really exist. Anyone who expects otherwise is lazy and doesn't fit with our "culture".
> "We work long hours, we are not paid much, and even after raising over $10-million within our first year of operations, we still have a mountain to climb in our efforts to expand this company."
Translation: While you might not be paid much, I hold a majority stake in the company and will be handsomely rewarded for your hard work when the company gets bought. And just because we raised $10 million doesn't mean any of you are getting a raise.
> "We have also ensured that each employee has an unyielding belief in the company’s mission. If anyone in the office doesn’t believe they’re a part of something incredibly meaningful that will truly reinvent banking, they’ll likely struggle to relate to their co-workers and eventually “burn out.”
Translation: I mean... they're going to burn out anyway after working 80 hours every week, but forced belief in the "mission" of the company allows us to squeeze a couple more months of hard work out of them before they finally quit, feeling guilty and ashamed of their perceived failure.
> "Our husbands and wives help pick up the slack on our long days, and our kids put a smile on our faces after stressful meetings. Many of our team members have young families, and we do our best to respect their needs through flexible hours and by encouraging the ability to work from home when needed."
Translation: I mean, I'm not a monster - if someone wants to spend a portion of their 14 hour work day at home, using their own computer and resources, of course we'll accommodate them. Far be it from me to prevent my employees from bringing all the stress of their work lives into their homes.
> "While the work can be challenging, the rewards are endless."
Translation: The rewards for me, that is. For you, the rewards are very much finite.
> "Having said that, it takes a special kind of personality to seek out (and succeed in) such an uncertain and risky environment. At the end of the day, I guess you still need to be a little nuts to succeed in a startup."
Translation: Young, well-off techies without families or hobbies who can afford to live on breadcrumbs and are healthy enough to keep our insurance costs minimal to the front of the line.
That's it?
That's going to "change the face of an entire industry"? I'm quite certain the bankers at your local Wells Fargo/Citi/Chase branch work 9-5 and underwrite personal loans all day long without working 80 hours a week. What on earth could these guys be working on that requires such an absurd work schedule?
I've done the 12 hour days as an early employee of a startup (and one significantly more interesting than this). I will never do it again. The math just doesn't make sense—I make substantially more money working at a big tech company and going home at 5 every day than I likely ever would at a startup. Why should I give up my personal life and make less money?