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I literally just finished reading an article on Hubspot by Dan Lyons: My Year In Startup Hell " Another reason to hire young people is that they’re cheap. HubS

I literally just finished reading an article on Hubspot by Dan Lyons: My Year In Startup Hell " Another reason to hire young people is that they’re cheap. HubSpot runs at a loss, but it is labor-intensive. How can you get hundreds of people to work in sales and marketing for the lowest possible wages? One way is to hire people who are right out of college and make work seem fun. You give them free beer and foosball tables. You decorate the place like a cross between a kindergarten and a frat house. You throw parties. Do that, and you can find an endless supply of bros who will toil away in the spider monkey room for $35,000 a year. " http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyons/ http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyo...

jlebar 10y ago
You and I may choose not to work at such a place, but is it morally wrong? Is designing your business in this way equivalent to racism, as the author explicitly claims?
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Yes, its morally wrong to take advantage of young workers (arguably in violation of labor law).
  - jlebar 10y ago
    If you think "making work fun" so you can pay people less is "taking advantage" of workers, I encourage you to hang out with some food-service workers, or retail workers, or migrant farm workers, or...basically anyone who makes minimum wage (or less).
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Don't get me wrong; I'm an advocate for all labor, not just underpaid office workers.
  - trav4225 10y ago
    No offense intended at all, but personally I am unable to see how an employer can take advantage of an employee when employment contracts involve voluntary free-will agreement by both parties. Now, misrepresenting the situation to an employee as to disadvantage them is something I can easily see as morally wrong (although not necessarily illegal). Just my 2¢... :)
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      You can't sign away your rights. If your employer's contract or environment violates labor law, it violates labor law.
      - lsc 10y ago
        yes, of course, and explicitly targeting workers under 45 over workers over 45 does violate labor law in many jurisdictions. However, to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing illegal about offering people $35,000 a year for full time work. I mean, you are delusional if you think you are getting any but the programmers nobody else wants at that rate, and right now, there's not a lot of those, but there's nothing illegal about hiring people who don't have a lot of other options, and from experience, when you underpay, people will use you as a stepping stone to get to a job that pays well, but none of that is illegal, or I think even unethical. One could argue that you are giving people who otherwise wouldn't have a chance a chance, and once they have a programming job, even if it's a job that pays shit, it's way easier to get a programming job that pays okay. (at $35,000 you are going to have a hard time arguing that they are exempt, of course, which could be a problem... but you could legally pay them a lower hourly wage and time and a half overtime, if you wanted; that's just an accounting/planning "compliance issue." And there's a lot to be said for just working eight hours, which is more common in my experience than it is in conversation.) To me, this whole conversation is weird... my experience interviewing at startups is that yes, they expect me to be younger and cooler than I am... but they also pay way less and expect more work than big companies do. I kinda think that the "young and cool" thing might just be a cover for the "not willing to pay very much" thing. It's more socially acceptable to be openly discriminatory than it is to just openly say "Hey, I'm cheap"
    - 10y ago
Floegipoky 10y ago
I used to work at HubSpot. The company isn't perfect, for instance the lack of diversity is a huge problem. Taken in isolation, there's nothing in the article that's wrong, but the overall picture he paints here is wildly inaccurate. HubSpot is full of incredibly intelligent and capable people, including some of the most talented engineers I've ever worked with. I had the opportunity to meet and speak with every executive during my time there, I've even been to Halligan's apartment. The fact that he managed to find something negative to say about Dave, one of the most genuine people I've ever met, tells me all I need to know- the reason Lyons didn't fit in at HubSpot has nothing to do with his age, it's because he's an asshole.
- DavidHm 10y ago
  Valuable input...but if you say that there is nothing written in the article that is wrong, I am not sure how you can say that the article is wrong.
  - itsame 10y ago
    Maybe the author wasn't wrong in the facts presented. But maybe he wasn't giving the another perspective that would alter your perception or understanding of whatever picture he was trying to paint. If you aren't given the full context, then you haven't fully understood the situation. If partial truths always lead to the correct conclusion, we would never have wrong convictions in courts caused by incomplete evidence. Or to bring the analogy closer to home, if we know only some (but not all) of the use cases, we can't know if our solution truly and completely solves whatever problem we're trying to solve. Maybe Floegipoky knows of another "use case" (insight) here that Dan Lyons happened to leave out.

jlebar 10y ago

You and I may choose not to work at such a place, but is it morally wrong? Is designing your business in this way equivalent to racism, as the author explicitly claims?

toomuchtodo 10y ago
Yes, its morally wrong to take advantage of young workers (arguably in violation of labor law).
- jlebar 10y ago
  If you think "making work fun" so you can pay people less is "taking advantage" of workers, I encourage you to hang out with some food-service workers, or retail workers, or migrant farm workers, or...basically anyone who makes minimum wage (or less).
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Don't get me wrong; I'm an advocate for all labor, not just underpaid office workers.
- trav4225 10y ago
  No offense intended at all, but personally I am unable to see how an employer can take advantage of an employee when employment contracts involve voluntary free-will agreement by both parties. Now, misrepresenting the situation to an employee as to disadvantage them is something I can easily see as morally wrong (although not necessarily illegal). Just my 2¢... :)
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    You can't sign away your rights. If your employer's contract or environment violates labor law, it violates labor law.
    - lsc 10y ago
      yes, of course, and explicitly targeting workers under 45 over workers over 45 does violate labor law in many jurisdictions. However, to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing illegal about offering people $35,000 a year for full time work. I mean, you are delusional if you think you are getting any but the programmers nobody else wants at that rate, and right now, there's not a lot of those, but there's nothing illegal about hiring people who don't have a lot of other options, and from experience, when you underpay, people will use you as a stepping stone to get to a job that pays well, but none of that is illegal, or I think even unethical. One could argue that you are giving people who otherwise wouldn't have a chance a chance, and once they have a programming job, even if it's a job that pays shit, it's way easier to get a programming job that pays okay. (at $35,000 you are going to have a hard time arguing that they are exempt, of course, which could be a problem... but you could legally pay them a lower hourly wage and time and a half overtime, if you wanted; that's just an accounting/planning "compliance issue." And there's a lot to be said for just working eight hours, which is more common in my experience than it is in conversation.) To me, this whole conversation is weird... my experience interviewing at startups is that yes, they expect me to be younger and cooler than I am... but they also pay way less and expect more work than big companies do. I kinda think that the "young and cool" thing might just be a cover for the "not willing to pay very much" thing. It's more socially acceptable to be openly discriminatory than it is to just openly say "Hey, I'm cheap"
  - 10y ago

Floegipoky 10y ago

I used to work at HubSpot. The company isn't perfect, for instance the lack of diversity is a huge problem. Taken in isolation, there's nothing in the article that's wrong, but the overall picture he paints here is wildly inaccurate. HubSpot is full of incredibly intelligent and capable people, including some of the most talented engineers I've ever worked with. I had the opportunity to meet and speak with every executive during my time there, I've even been to Halligan's apartment. The fact that he managed to find something negative to say about Dave, one of the most genuine people I've ever met, tells me all I need to know- the reason Lyons didn't fit in at HubSpot has nothing to do with his age, it's because he's an asshole.

DavidHm 10y ago
Valuable input...but if you say that there is nothing written in the article that is wrong, I am not sure how you can say that the article is wrong.
- itsame 10y ago
  Maybe the author wasn't wrong in the facts presented. But maybe he wasn't giving the another perspective that would alter your perception or understanding of whatever picture he was trying to paint. If you aren't given the full context, then you haven't fully understood the situation. If partial truths always lead to the correct conclusion, we would never have wrong convictions in courts caused by incomplete evidence. Or to bring the analogy closer to home, if we know only some (but not all) of the use cases, we can't know if our solution truly and completely solves whatever problem we're trying to solve. Maybe Floegipoky knows of another "use case" (insight) here that Dan Lyons happened to leave out.