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"You’re probably disloyal. You don’t have staying power. You’re in it more for yourself than your company." You mean, the company that would cut you loose in

"You’re probably disloyal. You don’t have staying power. You’re in it more for yourself than your company." You mean, the company that would cut you loose in about three seconds flat if you became unproductive? Employment is an economic transaction. If you pay me, I will do high-quality, honest work for you. That's fair. If I don't produce, you can stop paying me. That's fair. But if you don't pay me well, or mistreat me, I'm going to leave. That's also fair.

_delirium 17y ago
Particularly since this seems to be precipitated by a Calacanis tweet, the guy who fires people for any or no reason. Not exactly an example of loyalty. I'm guessing the reason for the entire post is actually that while Calacanis is okay firing someone, he gets angry if anyone leaves his company for a better position. There was a kerfluffle over that yesterday in various parts of the net (someone from his company sent a 2-weeks notice, and he blew up, firing them and telling them they had their last day and never set foot in the office or email his staff again). I'm guessing his tweet of 23 hours ago is due to him still being pissed at someone jumping ship from Mahalo. Edit: It came to mind that there's a perfectly capitalist way of solving the problem, for companies that really do hate the idea of someone leaving: sign an employment contract with time terms, rather than hiring at-will employees. :)
- jerf 17y ago
  I doubt there's many employers willing to spend the money it would take to lock someone in. (Because you certainly didn't expect me to agree to that clause for free, did you? No, you're going to pay. And the sooner you lock me in, the more you'd better pay if I can't even evaluate the job before the lockin starts.)
  - _delirium 17y ago
    There might be some people who'd take it, since it also means guaranteed employment for the same period: an employer couldn't fire you without documented good cause that'd stand up in court. But I agree that it'd probably make hiring in a startup/tech sort of culture harder, since this isn't a culture where there's that much value put on the can't-be-fired aspect (the job market is good, so you'll just get another job).
    - jey 17y ago
      I think you just described Germany.
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    Well, what they do in (at least parts of) Europe is have a written contract with a 2 month notice period. That goes for you and the employer. If they fire you they still have to keep you employed until the end of the notice period. And it doesn't make changing jobs worse because everyone has this and works it into their hiring process.
- japherwocky 17y ago
  anecdotally, ironically, I interviewed with mahalo.com (Calacanis' company), while I was working for a startup in an office about 2 blocks away in Santa Monica. They offered me a job, but I declined, as it was a 15% pay cut or so from my current position.
  - anthonyb 17y ago
    Exactly. Nobody wants to work for a) peanuts or b) evil spammers. Life's too short. I suspect it's probably happened to Calcanis before, which is why he's going nutso on Twitter. Solution: If you want people to stay at your company, then pay them reasonable amounts and don't be a dickhead.
    - _delirium 17y ago
      Yeah, anecdotally, I've found that if your company is doing things that the general public (or at least, the peers of your employees) considers vaguely sketchy, it's best to counter it by getting a reputation as a great place to work. Zynga is a decent example: there is plenty of negative press about it, but none of the negative press is about working there, since by all accounts they treat their employees very well.
      - anthonyb 17y ago
        I had a think about this on the train on the way home, and here's the formula that I've come up with. Assuming that your employees aren't clueless (ie. know their market rate) and are free to leave (eg. not family members or H1-Bs), then you'll see significant employee churn if: asshattery $ < $market x ------------- cool factor It seems to hold for most of the cases that I can think of. Apple, for example, has a high asshattery factor (Steve Jobs) and market rate (they want awesome people) but also has a huge cool factor to balance it out somewhat (I heard they pay ~1.5x market). Banks, Traders, Insurance companies, etc. have low cool factor, so they have to make it up with large salaries and perks and not be too toxic to work at. In the case of Mahalo, it seems like they have a large asshattery factor (Calcanis is an overbearing idiot who will post nasty things about you on Twitter), and cool factor < 1 (spammers) and (it seems) they pay below market rates, so it's not suprising that they're seeing lots of "job hoppers".
makmanalp 17y ago
And if I feel like I'm getting bored here, I'll leave and we both win. I'm no longer bored, you don't have an unproductive worker. I don't see what's taboo about this. While leaving at the first sign of boring work or bad situations / pay / etc is a little iffy, if this is becoming the trend I'm going to leave. Loyalty doesn't come from nothing. It can't be expected by default, it's won. Besides, 2 years is a lot of time when you're a twenty-something.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  Loyalty shouldn't be in the conversation at all. How much loyalty does the company have for you when they need to make cuts? That's how much you owe them.
evgen 17y ago
Sounds like you are a contractor, not an early startup employee.
- apsec112 17y ago
  That's a remarkably wrong statement, given that I am an early startup employee. If you are an early startup employee, you normally get compensated primarily with equity. Hence, you are the company; hurting the company will just hurt you. There's a big difference between an economic transaction between you and a big company, and an economic transaction which is largely between you and yourself.
CoreDumpling 17y ago
I don't think the author is interested in making a fair transaction. It sounds a lot more like he's trying to frame the situation so that he holds all the cards, leaving the employee with the short end of the stick. "That awesome gal you hired in engineering has job options and she knows it." I can totally imagine him lobbying for more H1-B visas so he can get "captive" employees who are stuck without options to leave.
abrown28 17y ago
Loyalty is a one way street for most companies. If the company has problems they expect me to suck it up and help keep them alive however the reverse never happens.
- boucher 17y ago
  There are absolutely loyal companies. It's just not the norm.
  - mendriacus 17y ago
    They're definitely not startups. If I need to launch a complex product in 6 months or die, I don't care whether my senior developer had his entire family die from serial dysentery. You're either working as hard as you can getting us to the milestone, or you're not a developer here. The truth is that being "loyal" will kill a startup.
    - gruseom 17y ago
      I realize you probably didn't mean this, but the thought that went through my mind reading it is "What kind of psychopath would take such a position?" Actually, I know what kind of psychopath: the kind who ran the only startup I ever joined. He once told me, "I am at war, and if one of my men can't keep up, I will shoot him." A remarkably similar sentiment to yours! He also used to phone people up and yell at them if they didn't stay till midnight or come in on weekends. Needless to say (or so I would have hoped), this is an algorithm to produce not a "complex product" but a fiasco, and that is exactly what happened. I was long gone before then, though. What kind of leader shoots his own men? What kind of people want to work for a leader who shoots his own men, or doesn't care if their families die? I know what kind: scared, servile placators. And since such a team hardly makes for startup success, there really isn't an argument here, only a form of hypnosis.
      - mendriacus 17y ago
        If you read my other comments in this discussion, you will surely see that I am in fact very pro-employee. I also am, however, very pro truth. Anyone who tells you he can have employees with low or zero productivity, for whatever reason, as select members of a small, highly leveraged startup - is either lying to you, or will fail unless he's extremely lucky not to have such employees. If your team consists of 3 senior developers, and one of them stops producing, your project will likely be pushed back a third or more over schedule. This can easily kill a startup, since if your idea has any merit at all (which is your only chance of success anyway), then you have ten other teams competing against you to launch first. I totally agree that employees should be respected and cared for, and that a key employee leaving a startup is generally the startup's fault. However, if someone doesn't work out, he will be let go. Not just by the employer - his co-workers will call for his head, since his problems (whether he's to blame for them, or not) endanger the entire team.

_delirium 17y ago

Particularly since this seems to be precipitated by a Calacanis tweet, the guy who fires people for any or no reason. Not exactly an example of loyalty. I'm guessing the reason for the entire post is actually that while Calacanis is okay firing someone, he gets angry if anyone leaves his company for a better position. There was a kerfluffle over that yesterday in various parts of the net (someone from his company sent a 2-weeks notice, and he blew up, firing them and telling them they had their last day and never set foot in the office or email his staff again). I'm guessing his tweet of 23 hours ago is due to him still being pissed at someone jumping ship from Mahalo. Edit: It came to mind that there's a perfectly capitalist way of solving the problem, for companies that really do hate the idea of someone leaving: sign an employment contract with time terms, rather than hiring at-will employees. :)

jerf 17y ago
I doubt there's many employers willing to spend the money it would take to lock someone in. (Because you certainly didn't expect me to agree to that clause for free, did you? No, you're going to pay. And the sooner you lock me in, the more you'd better pay if I can't even evaluate the job before the lockin starts.)
- _delirium 17y ago
  There might be some people who'd take it, since it also means guaranteed employment for the same period: an employer couldn't fire you without documented good cause that'd stand up in court. But I agree that it'd probably make hiring in a startup/tech sort of culture harder, since this isn't a culture where there's that much value put on the can't-be-fired aspect (the job market is good, so you'll just get another job).
  - jey 17y ago
    I think you just described Germany.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  Well, what they do in (at least parts of) Europe is have a written contract with a 2 month notice period. That goes for you and the employer. If they fire you they still have to keep you employed until the end of the notice period. And it doesn't make changing jobs worse because everyone has this and works it into their hiring process.
japherwocky 17y ago
anecdotally, ironically, I interviewed with mahalo.com (Calacanis' company), while I was working for a startup in an office about 2 blocks away in Santa Monica. They offered me a job, but I declined, as it was a 15% pay cut or so from my current position.
- anthonyb 17y ago
  Exactly. Nobody wants to work for a) peanuts or b) evil spammers. Life's too short. I suspect it's probably happened to Calcanis before, which is why he's going nutso on Twitter. Solution: If you want people to stay at your company, then pay them reasonable amounts and don't be a dickhead.
  - _delirium 17y ago
    Yeah, anecdotally, I've found that if your company is doing things that the general public (or at least, the peers of your employees) considers vaguely sketchy, it's best to counter it by getting a reputation as a great place to work. Zynga is a decent example: there is plenty of negative press about it, but none of the negative press is about working there, since by all accounts they treat their employees very well.
    - anthonyb 17y ago
      I had a think about this on the train on the way home, and here's the formula that I've come up with. Assuming that your employees aren't clueless (ie. know their market rate) and are free to leave (eg. not family members or H1-Bs), then you'll see significant employee churn if: asshattery $ < $market x ------------- cool factor It seems to hold for most of the cases that I can think of. Apple, for example, has a high asshattery factor (Steve Jobs) and market rate (they want awesome people) but also has a huge cool factor to balance it out somewhat (I heard they pay ~1.5x market). Banks, Traders, Insurance companies, etc. have low cool factor, so they have to make it up with large salaries and perks and not be too toxic to work at. In the case of Mahalo, it seems like they have a large asshattery factor (Calcanis is an overbearing idiot who will post nasty things about you on Twitter), and cool factor < 1 (spammers) and (it seems) they pay below market rates, so it's not suprising that they're seeing lots of "job hoppers".

makmanalp 17y ago

And if I feel like I'm getting bored here, I'll leave and we both win. I'm no longer bored, you don't have an unproductive worker. I don't see what's taboo about this. While leaving at the first sign of boring work or bad situations / pay / etc is a little iffy, if this is becoming the trend I'm going to leave. Loyalty doesn't come from nothing. It can't be expected by default, it's won. Besides, 2 years is a lot of time when you're a twenty-something.

loewenskind 16y ago
Loyalty shouldn't be in the conversation at all. How much loyalty does the company have for you when they need to make cuts? That's how much you owe them.

evgen 17y ago

Sounds like you are a contractor, not an early startup employee.

apsec112 17y ago
That's a remarkably wrong statement, given that I am an early startup employee. If you are an early startup employee, you normally get compensated primarily with equity. Hence, you are the company; hurting the company will just hurt you. There's a big difference between an economic transaction between you and a big company, and an economic transaction which is largely between you and yourself.

CoreDumpling 17y ago

I don't think the author is interested in making a fair transaction. It sounds a lot more like he's trying to frame the situation so that he holds all the cards, leaving the employee with the short end of the stick. "That awesome gal you hired in engineering has job options and she knows it." I can totally imagine him lobbying for more H1-B visas so he can get "captive" employees who are stuck without options to leave.

abrown28 17y ago

Loyalty is a one way street for most companies. If the company has problems they expect me to suck it up and help keep them alive however the reverse never happens.

boucher 17y ago
There are absolutely loyal companies. It's just not the norm.
- mendriacus 17y ago
  They're definitely not startups. If I need to launch a complex product in 6 months or die, I don't care whether my senior developer had his entire family die from serial dysentery. You're either working as hard as you can getting us to the milestone, or you're not a developer here. The truth is that being "loyal" will kill a startup.
  - gruseom 17y ago
    I realize you probably didn't mean this, but the thought that went through my mind reading it is "What kind of psychopath would take such a position?" Actually, I know what kind of psychopath: the kind who ran the only startup I ever joined. He once told me, "I am at war, and if one of my men can't keep up, I will shoot him." A remarkably similar sentiment to yours! He also used to phone people up and yell at them if they didn't stay till midnight or come in on weekends. Needless to say (or so I would have hoped), this is an algorithm to produce not a "complex product" but a fiasco, and that is exactly what happened. I was long gone before then, though. What kind of leader shoots his own men? What kind of people want to work for a leader who shoots his own men, or doesn't care if their families die? I know what kind: scared, servile placators. And since such a team hardly makes for startup success, there really isn't an argument here, only a form of hypnosis.
    - mendriacus 17y ago
      If you read my other comments in this discussion, you will surely see that I am in fact very pro-employee. I also am, however, very pro truth. Anyone who tells you he can have employees with low or zero productivity, for whatever reason, as select members of a small, highly leveraged startup - is either lying to you, or will fail unless he's extremely lucky not to have such employees. If your team consists of 3 senior developers, and one of them stops producing, your project will likely be pushed back a third or more over schedule. This can easily kill a startup, since if your idea has any merit at all (which is your only chance of success anyway), then you have ten other teams competing against you to launch first. I totally agree that employees should be respected and cared for, and that a key employee leaving a startup is generally the startup's fault. However, if someone doesn't work out, he will be let go. Not just by the employer - his co-workers will call for his head, since his problems (whether he's to blame for them, or not) endanger the entire team.