While this is a great thing, make sure you support these valuable team members by ensuring the rest of your team also care just as much.
I've had the pleasure to be a part of a team where I was given pretty much free license to do as I saw fit simply because I cared as much about the product as the founders.
But hiring just one or two champions and filling in the gaps with mere enthusiasm or brute force is going to put an enormous strain on your champions.
I agree with a lot of stuff said here - caring, or intrinsic motivation, is one of the most powerful attributes you can hire for. There are, however, a plethora of other attributes out there, and restricting your potential hires to the tiny subset of people that are as insanely motivated as yourself seems like a recipe for never hiring anyone and paradoxically never actually solving any problems.
Specifically I don't think points 3 and 4 are quite on the money - how much you care is often based on how much you perceive people care about you, and equity can be a pretty big signal of that. Additionally, I think people who care can be quite contentious.
Still, a good enough point to talk about. Apparent enthusiasm is one of the best things you can select for, when you see it, and it can make up for a lot of other things that might be lacking.
> Additionally, I think people who care can be quite contentious.
People who care will challenge the status quo. This is often deeply unpopular, especially in larger orgs. If you don't empower the people who care to make positive changes to the status quo, then those people will give up and stop caring. And then probably leave.
I'd like this to be true, but I think it's a very utopian ideal. If people care as much as the founders do about the company, they're going to get very disillusioned when the founders head in a different direction to the one they'd take the company and they get no say in it. Because although they're as invested in the company as the founders, they don't have the power.
I also wonder why (apart from the charity sector) employees would be that invested. They don't get the financial rewards or the kudos that the founders do, so why invest their soul in someone else's problem?
> why invest their soul in someone else's problem?
Depending on their age, they might not know better. Young developers are sold the ideal of changing the world through passion, but still end up as just employees. I still remember the first time a company offered me options instead of an annual raise, and a more experienced coworker quietly informed me why they did that. My enthusiasm was quickly brought down to earth.
Wait, why did they offer you options instead of a raise? I just want to hear why that reason tempered your enthusiasm. (I don't get excited about options since I have to buy them, but they can be more incentivizing, at least for me, than salary in the rare case that they are given on fair terms.)
Make employees co-owners. Then they have more incentive to care, and their voice counts in the direction of the company. It's not just someone else's problem anymore.
Actually in the UK one of the large department store/supermarket chains works this way, and it seems to work pretty well for them. Sure, the reward and input isn't huge, but they look after their staff very well, and they get a share of the profits each year.
There's one big chain in the U.S. that's something like that too. Their claim is that they're "employee owned" and from talking to a checker yesterday, employees value that greatly. That said, this checker was carrying on about how Winco employees "retire as millionaires" so I wonder if they're all being sold a bill of goods by management? Apart from that I guess they're paid comparatively well (versus, say, Walmart) and have good health insurance.
http://www.wincofoods.com/about/careers/
This is why I find it incredibly creepy and insulting when founders of small companies try the 'true sense of ownership' or 'we hope you are as excited to work on this as we are' lines. If you want me to be as excited as you are, give me the same stake in the outcome of my work that you have in the outcome of yours.
If you're young enough, the compensation that you are receiving in terms of experience can be quite valuable.
It is measurable in difference between the salary you would have received if you took a job before you worked for X startup and the salary you would have received if you leave and get a job after having worked for X startup.
You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.
I used to hate campaigns that would just "Raise Awareness" because I thought that raising awareness never fixed anything. After a while I realized it was the first step to getting people to care. Presenting a solution before anyone cares doesn't fix anything either. I'd put "Do what it takes to solve the problem" instead of a blurb about IQ, but otherwise I agree.
This is well good. There is just one thing that can be an issue with people who care. Are they caring about the right things at the right time? Suppose that's the manager's role to help focus the team.
21 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 62.7 ms ] threadI've had the pleasure to be a part of a team where I was given pretty much free license to do as I saw fit simply because I cared as much about the product as the founders.
But hiring just one or two champions and filling in the gaps with mere enthusiasm or brute force is going to put an enormous strain on your champions.
Specifically I don't think points 3 and 4 are quite on the money - how much you care is often based on how much you perceive people care about you, and equity can be a pretty big signal of that. Additionally, I think people who care can be quite contentious.
Still, a good enough point to talk about. Apparent enthusiasm is one of the best things you can select for, when you see it, and it can make up for a lot of other things that might be lacking.
People who care will challenge the status quo. This is often deeply unpopular, especially in larger orgs. If you don't empower the people who care to make positive changes to the status quo, then those people will give up and stop caring. And then probably leave.
I also wonder why (apart from the charity sector) employees would be that invested. They don't get the financial rewards or the kudos that the founders do, so why invest their soul in someone else's problem?
Depending on their age, they might not know better. Young developers are sold the ideal of changing the world through passion, but still end up as just employees. I still remember the first time a company offered me options instead of an annual raise, and a more experienced coworker quietly informed me why they did that. My enthusiasm was quickly brought down to earth.
http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/csr/our-employees/empl...
It is measurable in difference between the salary you would have received if you took a job before you worked for X startup and the salary you would have received if you leave and get a job after having worked for X startup.