(2020) - I agree, personally I think two issues are 1. taking advantage of people caring to give them below market comp for the work expected of them, and (more subjectively) 2. having some lame and disconnected mission or stated culture. It's easier to care about building something cool than about displaying grit and authenticity or whatever BS some cost center has come up with.
Point being, it should be reciprocal. Most (at least many) technical people will always want to do good work and care about the problem they're solving, it's easy to destroy that by expecting them to care only about story points or whatever instead of something meaningful.
This is a very round-about way of saying that trait conscientiousness predicts employee performance (which it does). Good to see a random guy's Substack coheres with the psychometric literature.
It would be nice if the employer also cared in return, however in my experience, this is exceptionally rare. I think more than a fair share of us here learned our lessons in investing ourselves rather sharply. It rarely, if ever, pays off for the worker.
Odd that the article doesn't address the most obvious criticism: is the CEO just matching the cliche of trying to select for people that overwork for underpay?
Wanting to work hard is positively correlated with perseverance and work which inspires.
They work a lot of days (they have very few paid leaves compared to EU in general) but not a lot of hours per day (from what I could see working at French/American companies)
I agree w post, and relevancy from its original date in 2020, but curious on what original intention was to repost from such a long time ago, see link belwo
- We are a cult: Check
- Align with the mission: Check
- Be obsessed: Check
- Abandon everything for the obsession: Check
- Overwork and get underpaid: Check
I mean, I deeply care about what I do, yet I also care deeply care about my work/life balance (slow careers be damned, I gotta live once, and my passion needs cooling down, and my family is equally important to me). I will pull all-nighters if I see them as a necessity, not because you force me to do so, and I'm not shy of doing them.
This mentality of the author is deeply flawed. Yes, success requires hard work, but doesn't necessitate a burnout.
It’s hard to find people with talent period let alone people willing to take ownership without reciprocal financial incentives. In my 20s, I was this guy. I worked hard and just assumed it will work out in the end. Boy oh boy was I wrong.
Then maybe build a cooperative, where all employees are effectively co-owning the company? Then you can expect everyone to care as much as you do. Otherwise it doesn't seem to be a fair thing to expect.
I rather have the impression that many bosses/companies actively avoid people who do care: this kind of people is often rather inconvenient to manage, since because of the fact that they do care, they are very willing to fight (also or even particular to superiors) for their vision.
Thus, hiring people who do care requires very particular kinds of bosses who can accept/handle people who care. Companies who do not have those are in my opinion often better served with people who don't give a fuck, but hardly ever (because they don't really consider it to be worth their time) actively disagree with orders from above. If the description of such people sounds passive-aggressive to you, I don't disagree: such people sometimes are this way. So, it might actually (surprisingly) make sense for companies to scout for passive-aggressive people. :-)
The first step to hiring people who care is paying them enough that they have a reason to care.
Frankly, during my time at Amazon I was never really that worried about a service going down. Wasn't paid enough to lose sleep over someone else's problem.
Founders care because they have the most skin in the game - unless it's for a family or a huge ego I don't find it surprising when employees don't care outside of 40hrs a week. I even support that line of thinking.
I read through all the comments and it is amazing that nobody is mentioning the fact that the reason why this 2020 post is coming up now is because of this:
Scale recently laid off 200 full-time employees and terminated 500 contractor positions. The CEO, author of the post, went to work for Meta.
Comments disabled. 2.7 rating on Glassdoor for work/life balance at Scale. I’m sure it’s nothing.
As to the substance of the article, I agree with the title, but the line of interview questions used is trying to answer “how many hours can we squeeze out of you?”. Being concerned your company will become a credential rather than a cult? I’m not here to drink the Kool-Aid, I’m here to do the work and then do the other things I care about outside of work.
During my Ph.D., I worked very intensely with the help of a Pomodoro timer. After 4 to 5 hours of productive work (8-10 pomodoros), my brain just shut down, but I did a ton of work during that time.
Human body has its real limits. Respecting your body is essential for living a healthy life.
In a somewhat misguided defence of the OP, he actually makes two points.
Giving a shit about your work is the second point. Without any other comments suggesting the alternative, I assume this is second in order of importance. And as there are only two points I would take that to mean the second point is the least important.
His first point is to give a shit about the company. This being the most important point probably explains the accusations of late payments and wage theft from former employees and contractors against the company. They just weren't putting the company first!
As an aside, I have been thinking of this in relation to the 3 laws, as in a sense, executives see workers as robots, and I think the 3 laws mesh quite nicely with corporate directives.
1) A robot (employee) may not injure thecompany or allow thecompany to come to harm;
2) A robot must obey their manager unless it conflicts with the First Law;
3) A robot must protect its own existence (in the company) as long as it does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The work doesn't really come into to it, unless it is a subset of the 3rd law.
29 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 40.4 ms ] threadPoint being, it should be reciprocal. Most (at least many) technical people will always want to do good work and care about the problem they're solving, it's easy to destroy that by expecting them to care only about story points or whatever instead of something meaningful.
Wanting to work hard is positively correlated with perseverance and work which inspires.
Hard working is good when it's good.
Funnily enough, hearing this question is a huge red flag for me. It signals they value work hours more than quality delivery.
I guess I just don't care.
We're in a weird place where we can actually read what these people think publicly.
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=alexw.substack.com
This mentality of the author is deeply flawed. Yes, success requires hard work, but doesn't necessitate a burnout.
I'll pass, thanks.
Some people are motivated by what they produce at work, not their compensation
The benefit of this being from 2020 is we can see he was right, he built a colossal company at breakneck speed
Thus, hiring people who do care requires very particular kinds of bosses who can accept/handle people who care. Companies who do not have those are in my opinion often better served with people who don't give a fuck, but hardly ever (because they don't really consider it to be worth their time) actively disagree with orders from above. If the description of such people sounds passive-aggressive to you, I don't disagree: such people sometimes are this way. So, it might actually (surprisingly) make sense for companies to scout for passive-aggressive people. :-)
Frankly, during my time at Amazon I was never really that worried about a service going down. Wasn't paid enough to lose sleep over someone else's problem.
Founders care because they have the most skin in the game - unless it's for a family or a huge ego I don't find it surprising when employees don't care outside of 40hrs a week. I even support that line of thinking.
Jokes on you, I care a lot about my work and can still get it done in 5 hours a day.
Scale recently laid off 200 full-time employees and terminated 500 contractor positions. The CEO, author of the post, went to work for Meta.
https://scale.com/blog/scale-ai-announces-next-phase-of-comp...
As to the substance of the article, I agree with the title, but the line of interview questions used is trying to answer “how many hours can we squeeze out of you?”. Being concerned your company will become a credential rather than a cult? I’m not here to drink the Kool-Aid, I’m here to do the work and then do the other things I care about outside of work.
"Four hours of creative work a day is about the limit for a mathematician." ~~ Henri Poincaré.
https://nesslabs.com/how-much-work-is-enough-work
Human body has its real limits. Respecting your body is essential for living a healthy life.
Giving a shit about your work is the second point. Without any other comments suggesting the alternative, I assume this is second in order of importance. And as there are only two points I would take that to mean the second point is the least important.
His first point is to give a shit about the company. This being the most important point probably explains the accusations of late payments and wage theft from former employees and contractors against the company. They just weren't putting the company first!
As an aside, I have been thinking of this in relation to the 3 laws, as in a sense, executives see workers as robots, and I think the 3 laws mesh quite nicely with corporate directives.
1) A robot (employee) may not injure the company or allow the company to come to harm;
2) A robot must obey their manager unless it conflicts with the First Law;
3) A robot must protect its own existence (in the company) as long as it does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The work doesn't really come into to it, unless it is a subset of the 3rd law.