5 ms·

Here's what she's rebelling against: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pd.

by rectang 11y ago

Here's what she's rebelling against: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pd... RULE 1: You don’t recruit and retain male engineers you recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends * If the wife or GF is unhappy the engineer is gone * If the relationship breaks down the engineer is gone * The paycheck goes to HER * Why does SHE want her husband or BF to work for you?

sgift 11y ago
And it just gets better and better from there in later slides .. so much information about the character of one person so readily available. Or would that be an ad hominem? Decisions ..
protomyth 11y ago
That's painfully not exactly wrong by itself. Its been good advice to make sure the significant other is very happy with the company, and it is often missed. If children are involved, making "family" life easier will make things better. // I have no real idea of the history here, I'm just commenting on one rule that can be personally costly not to heed
- HillRat 11y ago
  Obviously the gender assumption is pretty cringeworthy in and of itself, but what I find particularly strange is how he advocates this but then turns around and complains that developers don't want to do 80-hour weeks as a regular requirement of employment. These are not mutually-reconcilable recommendations.
  - gilleain 11y ago
    Maybe the reasoning is : "get his partner to agree to the idea of him doing 80 hour weeks"...
gryphonshafer 11y ago
So this is somewhat OT, but in reading the slides, I noticed this gem: > Potential money is worth more than actual money. In very, very rare circumstances, that is true. In the vast majority of cases, it's total B$. It's what company founders tell employees to exploit them, to get them to work overtime as a norm for crap normal-time pay. It's what the founders genuinely hope is true because they own so much of the company, but it rarely turns out that your shares are worth as much as the net-present-value of the delta to an average salary. At least in my experience.
- GrumpyYoungMan 11y ago
  >It's what company founders tell employees to exploit them, to get them to work overtime as a norm for crap normal-time pay. Um, that's precisely his point since he's writing it from the POV of a employer.
  - st3v3r 11y ago
    Which is exactly why Alex St. John can go fornicate himself with a pointy stick.
    - colinplamondon 11y ago
      There's lots of great compensation negotiation guides for engineers. This one just happens to be for employers.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  In so many ways, Alex St. John is just like Silicon Valley's Russ Hanneman [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo
wtbob 11y ago
Is this one of those true things we all agree not to talk about? Because I sure don't see anything wrong with it: if a guy's wife is unhappy with his job, then he'll get a new one.
- douche 11y ago
  Wife, or job?
  - RyanZAG 11y ago
    Difficult to say, I've seen it go both ways. Depends on how much he likes the wife.
    - DonHopkins 11y ago
      Well in Alex St. John's case, his messy divorce led to him getting fired from Microsoft by performing a George Costanza [1]: >But perhaps the most telling element of all of this is St. John’s own experience. In an interview by Christopher Redner [2], St. John himself suffered burn out at Microsoft to the point where he “got himself fired”. “He would pass out at his keyboard and straggle into morning meetings with key marks on his face. Worked sucked everything out of him; his marriage disintegrated.” >According to a Shacknews interview from 2007 [3], St. John was going through a “messy divorce” at the time. He wanted to get fired rather than quit, because that ensured he’d retain his stock options for Microsoft. [1] http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/04/alex-st-johns-ideas-about-game-development-are-terrifying/ http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/04/alex-st-johns-ideas-about-g... [2] http://www.informationtechnologyleaders.com/stvid.html http://www.informationtechnologyleaders.com/stvid.html [3] http://www.shacknews.com/article/46338/alex-st-john-interview http://www.shacknews.com/article/46338/alex-st-john-intervie...
- untothebreach 11y ago
  The problem here is not that an unhappy spouse will cause the employee to leave, but rather that the author makes the assumption that the employee will be male, and that the male will have a female SO.
stephengillie 11y ago
I've seen someone put this into action, and open communications with his subordinates' wives. Instead of getting mad at her husband for being paged in the middle of the night, or having to work weird hours, she can angrily text the boss directly.
- sridca 11y ago
  That's interesting. But how does it help the wife to directly interact with her husband's boss?
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Wouldn't the benefit be for the employee whose spouse can direct anger not at the employee but their manager? The benefit would thus be employees being less likely to have to choose between their relation or their job.
    - st3v3r 11y ago
      Only if the boss getting a bunch of angry texts has any impact. If things continue on the same way, then it's only postponing that choice.
    - sridca 11y ago
      If I was the husband, I'd rather prioritize being able to swiftly handle my wife's aggressions over brushing off such an intimate challenge for the sake of an employer (who instead gets to do the said challenge). Anyhow - the purported direct benefit, according to Alex St. John, is for "the wife or GF" as the whole point is to make her happy (from the linked presentation: "If the wife or GF is unhappy the engineer is gone"). Hence, my question: how does it help the wife to directly interact with her husband's boss? Put differently, what is it about directly interacting with her husband's boss that makes her happier than directly interacting with her husband?
jauer 11y ago
Yeah, I don't know. The whole thing is a cringe-fest but a good part of that was recognizing myself, wife, parents, and co-workers in there. His VentureBeat article was pretty horrific but that pdf seems to reflect a certain ground truth. Not saying it reflects a reality anyone should be happy with, but if I was paying him to consult on recruiting and sat through that presentation I wouldn't be asking for my money back..
- takno 11y ago
  I'd at least want a discount for the ugly slide template and terrible use of apostrophes
nicolas_t 11y ago
Well, to be fair, it's true (except for the part about the paycheck) but it's also equally with gender role reversed, so with a female employee and an husband. If the partner of the employee is unhappy with the job, it will make the employee much more likely to find another job and so as a manager, it's smart to take into account the girlfriends, wives, husbands and boyfriends of your employees.
takno 11y ago
It's bizarre to even write this slide. Everything in it (the slide, not the presentation) becomes fairly much a reasonable insight if you just say family instead of wife or girlfriend. Hell, even partner would do.
ryandrake 11y ago
Pretty ugly.. As this article [1] put it, that slide deck is a how-to guide on picking the best potential employees purely for exploitation potential. Real engineers should not demand money, instead work 80 hours a week because passion. Otherwise you have the dreaded "wage slave mentality". Jeez.. 1: http://www.geek.com/news/developer-bro-alex-st-john-want-a-great-coder-hire-someone-autistic-1652730/ http://www.geek.com/news/developer-bro-alex-st-john-want-a-g...
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  I work 80 hour weeks about 50 - 55 for my employer and the rest on my side projects. It's all about passion (I have to keep my job to be able to work on side projects that I'm passionate about), but I don't think I'd be a good candidate to work for this guy.
seivan 11y ago
I kinda agree with a lot. Not everything, but a lot. However it only works when you actually have faith in the leadership and a fan of the product you're building making the whole thing unrealistic. It's unfortunate.

by rectang 11y ago

sgift 11y ago

And it just gets better and better from there in later slides .. so much information about the character of one person so readily available. Or would that be an ad hominem? Decisions ..

protomyth 11y ago

That's painfully not exactly wrong by itself. Its been good advice to make sure the significant other is very happy with the company, and it is often missed. If children are involved, making "family" life easier will make things better. // I have no real idea of the history here, I'm just commenting on one rule that can be personally costly not to heed

HillRat 11y ago
Obviously the gender assumption is pretty cringeworthy in and of itself, but what I find particularly strange is how he advocates this but then turns around and complains that developers don't want to do 80-hour weeks as a regular requirement of employment. These are not mutually-reconcilable recommendations.
- gilleain 11y ago
  Maybe the reasoning is : "get his partner to agree to the idea of him doing 80 hour weeks"...

gryphonshafer 11y ago

So this is somewhat OT, but in reading the slides, I noticed this gem: > Potential money is worth more than actual money. In very, very rare circumstances, that is true. In the vast majority of cases, it's total B$. It's what company founders tell employees to exploit them, to get them to work overtime as a norm for crap normal-time pay. It's what the founders genuinely hope is true because they own so much of the company, but it rarely turns out that your shares are worth as much as the net-present-value of the delta to an average salary. At least in my experience.

GrumpyYoungMan 11y ago
>It's what company founders tell employees to exploit them, to get them to work overtime as a norm for crap normal-time pay. Um, that's precisely his point since he's writing it from the POV of a employer.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  Which is exactly why Alex St. John can go fornicate himself with a pointy stick.
  - colinplamondon 11y ago
    There's lots of great compensation negotiation guides for engineers. This one just happens to be for employers.
DonHopkins 11y ago
In so many ways, Alex St. John is just like Silicon Valley's Russ Hanneman [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo

wtbob 11y ago

Is this one of those true things we all agree not to talk about? Because I sure don't see anything wrong with it: if a guy's wife is unhappy with his job, then he'll get a new one.

douche 11y ago
Wife, or job?
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  Difficult to say, I've seen it go both ways. Depends on how much he likes the wife.
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    Well in Alex St. John's case, his messy divorce led to him getting fired from Microsoft by performing a George Costanza [1]: >But perhaps the most telling element of all of this is St. John’s own experience. In an interview by Christopher Redner [2], St. John himself suffered burn out at Microsoft to the point where he “got himself fired”. “He would pass out at his keyboard and straggle into morning meetings with key marks on his face. Worked sucked everything out of him; his marriage disintegrated.” >According to a Shacknews interview from 2007 [3], St. John was going through a “messy divorce” at the time. He wanted to get fired rather than quit, because that ensured he’d retain his stock options for Microsoft. [1] http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/04/alex-st-johns-ideas-about-game-development-are-terrifying/ http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/04/alex-st-johns-ideas-about-g... [2] http://www.informationtechnologyleaders.com/stvid.html http://www.informationtechnologyleaders.com/stvid.html [3] http://www.shacknews.com/article/46338/alex-st-john-interview http://www.shacknews.com/article/46338/alex-st-john-intervie...
untothebreach 11y ago
The problem here is not that an unhappy spouse will cause the employee to leave, but rather that the author makes the assumption that the employee will be male, and that the male will have a female SO.

stephengillie 11y ago

I've seen someone put this into action, and open communications with his subordinates' wives. Instead of getting mad at her husband for being paged in the middle of the night, or having to work weird hours, she can angrily text the boss directly.

sridca 11y ago
That's interesting. But how does it help the wife to directly interact with her husband's boss?
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Wouldn't the benefit be for the employee whose spouse can direct anger not at the employee but their manager? The benefit would thus be employees being less likely to have to choose between their relation or their job.
  - st3v3r 11y ago
    Only if the boss getting a bunch of angry texts has any impact. If things continue on the same way, then it's only postponing that choice.
  - sridca 11y ago
    If I was the husband, I'd rather prioritize being able to swiftly handle my wife's aggressions over brushing off such an intimate challenge for the sake of an employer (who instead gets to do the said challenge). Anyhow - the purported direct benefit, according to Alex St. John, is for "the wife or GF" as the whole point is to make her happy (from the linked presentation: "If the wife or GF is unhappy the engineer is gone"). Hence, my question: how does it help the wife to directly interact with her husband's boss? Put differently, what is it about directly interacting with her husband's boss that makes her happier than directly interacting with her husband?

jauer 11y ago

Yeah, I don't know. The whole thing is a cringe-fest but a good part of that was recognizing myself, wife, parents, and co-workers in there. His VentureBeat article was pretty horrific but that pdf seems to reflect a certain ground truth. Not saying it reflects a reality anyone should be happy with, but if I was paying him to consult on recruiting and sat through that presentation I wouldn't be asking for my money back..

takno 11y ago
I'd at least want a discount for the ugly slide template and terrible use of apostrophes

nicolas_t 11y ago

Well, to be fair, it's true (except for the part about the paycheck) but it's also equally with gender role reversed, so with a female employee and an husband. If the partner of the employee is unhappy with the job, it will make the employee much more likely to find another job and so as a manager, it's smart to take into account the girlfriends, wives, husbands and boyfriends of your employees.

takno 11y ago

It's bizarre to even write this slide. Everything in it (the slide, not the presentation) becomes fairly much a reasonable insight if you just say family instead of wife or girlfriend. Hell, even partner would do.

ryandrake 11y ago

Pretty ugly.. As this article [1] put it, that slide deck is a how-to guide on picking the best potential employees purely for exploitation potential. Real engineers should not demand money, instead work 80 hours a week because passion. Otherwise you have the dreaded "wage slave mentality". Jeez.. 1: http://www.geek.com/news/developer-bro-alex-st-john-want-a-great-coder-hire-someone-autistic-1652730/ http://www.geek.com/news/developer-bro-alex-st-john-want-a-g...

cmdrfred 11y ago
I work 80 hour weeks about 50 - 55 for my employer and the rest on my side projects. It's all about passion (I have to keep my job to be able to work on side projects that I'm passionate about), but I don't think I'd be a good candidate to work for this guy.

seivan 11y ago

I kinda agree with a lot. Not everything, but a lot. However it only works when you actually have faith in the leadership and a fan of the product you're building making the whole thing unrealistic. It's unfortunate.