4 ms·

> Its only a problem if you assume a supportive employer, one that is looking out for your productivity and success. When you find out your company is only in i

> Its only a problem if you assume a supportive employer, one that is looking out for your productivity and success. When you find out your company is only in it for the money, it can be a shock. You know what really would be a shocker to me? A company that isn't in it for the money or a company that isn't trying hard to have employees that are highly productive.

ufmace 10y ago
Eh, you could make the argument that the company makes more money in the long run by keeping the most productive employees with the most institutional knowledge around long-term, which requires really paying attention to what they want before they start looking elsewhere, keeping up with what market rates are and giving raises and bonuses appropriately, etc. As a rational business owner, would you rather pay out an extra $25k or whatever a year to keep your team intact, or let people leave and suffer months of lost productivity potentially worth many times more, paying recruiter fees of up to $20-30k for the replacement, a few more months of degraded productivity while the new guy ramps up, and still be paying that extra $25k on their salary anyways, because you wouldn't be able to hire anyone otherwise? It's essentially a cultural thing. Many employers and employees only want to get/keep as much money as possible in the short term, and don't care about anything else. Others care about long-term relationships, stability, and realistic plans, and are willing to sacrifice a little short-term money for it. I'm not here to say either one is better, but do know which one you want, watch out for signs that anyone you do business with doesn't have the same values, and treat them accordingly.
- corecoder 10y ago
  When it comes to business owners, rationality is overrated. I've seen a lot of companies that are perfectly happy hiring a less competent dev that accepts 20% less, and takes more than twice the time to do the work.
  - ufmace 10y ago
    There certainly are plenty of companies out there like that. I tend to think that generalizing like that is dicey, though. The good, well-managed companies out there tend to keep the same developers for a long time, and any that leave tend to not have many complaints. The poorly managed companies tend to churn through lots and lots of developers, many of whom will go on to write blog and forum posts on how irrational and cutthroat business is. Thus the noise about poor management is louder than the reality.
    - corecoder 10y ago
      Everything you say is correct; I wonder if there's a way to tell how many well managed companies are there and how many poorly managed ones.
  - gvb 10y ago
    To the accounting department it is perfectly rational. In the accounting department everybody is an identical square in the spreadsheet. In the spreadsheet, if square "A23" takes n hours to accomplish a task, the spreadsheet tells them they saved n x 0.2. This means that the longer it takes square "A23" to accomplish a task, the more the company appears to "save" in the spreadsheet.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
There was an article a while back about how tech guys tend toward the tragically naive assumption that, because they're doing a great job for the company, the company will naturally take care of them to the best of its ability, so demanding more would be greedy and ungrateful. I'm sure you can imagine what the author had to say about that attitude. I am totally one of those saps who assumes that if I'm good to people then they'll be good to me, so I found it useful if depressing.

ufmace 10y ago

Eh, you could make the argument that the company makes more money in the long run by keeping the most productive employees with the most institutional knowledge around long-term, which requires really paying attention to what they want before they start looking elsewhere, keeping up with what market rates are and giving raises and bonuses appropriately, etc. As a rational business owner, would you rather pay out an extra $25k or whatever a year to keep your team intact, or let people leave and suffer months of lost productivity potentially worth many times more, paying recruiter fees of up to $20-30k for the replacement, a few more months of degraded productivity while the new guy ramps up, and still be paying that extra $25k on their salary anyways, because you wouldn't be able to hire anyone otherwise? It's essentially a cultural thing. Many employers and employees only want to get/keep as much money as possible in the short term, and don't care about anything else. Others care about long-term relationships, stability, and realistic plans, and are willing to sacrifice a little short-term money for it. I'm not here to say either one is better, but do know which one you want, watch out for signs that anyone you do business with doesn't have the same values, and treat them accordingly.

corecoder 10y ago
When it comes to business owners, rationality is overrated. I've seen a lot of companies that are perfectly happy hiring a less competent dev that accepts 20% less, and takes more than twice the time to do the work.
- ufmace 10y ago
  There certainly are plenty of companies out there like that. I tend to think that generalizing like that is dicey, though. The good, well-managed companies out there tend to keep the same developers for a long time, and any that leave tend to not have many complaints. The poorly managed companies tend to churn through lots and lots of developers, many of whom will go on to write blog and forum posts on how irrational and cutthroat business is. Thus the noise about poor management is louder than the reality.
  - corecoder 10y ago
    Everything you say is correct; I wonder if there's a way to tell how many well managed companies are there and how many poorly managed ones.
- gvb 10y ago
  To the accounting department it is perfectly rational. In the accounting department everybody is an identical square in the spreadsheet. In the spreadsheet, if square "A23" takes n hours to accomplish a task, the spreadsheet tells them they saved n x 0.2. This means that the longer it takes square "A23" to accomplish a task, the more the company appears to "save" in the spreadsheet.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

There was an article a while back about how tech guys tend toward the tragically naive assumption that, because they're doing a great job for the company, the company will naturally take care of them to the best of its ability, so demanding more would be greedy and ungrateful. I'm sure you can imagine what the author had to say about that attitude. I am totally one of those saps who assumes that if I'm good to people then they'll be good to me, so I found it useful if depressing.