6 ms·

A part of me does not understand how start-ups find so many different ways to burn the inventors money. Another part of me wonders how these people have so litt

by korzun 9y ago

A part of me does not understand how start-ups find so many different ways to burn the inventors money. Another part of me wonders how these people have so little workload that they can afford to sit in a 2.5-hour class every week and take projects home / do them at work? I worked with companies that tried to do something similar, and besides a nice PR piece for the blog, these types of things are nothing more than a nice 2.5-hour break for people who can't schedule enough meetings to make their day go by faster. Wait until individuals who came there to work get fed up with carrying the rest of their team and start looking elsewhere.

throwaway2016a 9y ago
The average employee is lucky to be productive 70% of the time. 2.5 hours a week is only 6% of a 40 hour week. I think it is a great use of time. The change of pace between day job and learning can help people be more productive than they would if they were doing the same type of thing all day. People are not machines.
- korzun 9y ago
  > The average employee is lucky to be productive 70% of the time. 2.5 hours a week is only 6% of a 40 hour week. I think it is a great use of time. I don't know where you are pulling those numbers from, but you are assuming that 6% magically comes out from the 'unproductive' time without factoring in the take home homework and other things that blow up the 2.5-hour mark. It's not a static number and can't be used to make those claims. The 2.5 hours will also scale up with the number of participants, 20 employees who are committing 2.5 each week (at very, very minimum) is a loss of 50 hours per week. I can go even further and add people who did not attend the workshop but felt like they are now entitled to a 2.5-hour break of some sort (and rightfully so). If the company can cut more than 50+ hours a week and still function, more power to them. Usually, that only lasts until the finance guys need to start cutting costs to improve the bottom line.
  - parennoob 9y ago
    > take home homework and other things that blow up the 2.5-hour mark I would think "take home" implies you take it home, i.e. do it in your own time. I don't know what your undefined "other things" are. > The 2.5 hours will also scale up with the number of participants, 20 employees who are committing 2.5 each week (at very, very minimum) is a loss of 50 hours per week. It is this sort of thinking that is super counterproductive. Even if one of those employees learns something simple, like how to programmatically create CSV files and import them into Excel, they will have saved thousands of man-hours. You can't nickel-and-dime people's time like this. Philosophies like yours tend to end up with timing people's bathroom breaks and scathing articles in the newspaper; rarely successful companies.
    - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
      Also, I have a very simple policy: I'm as strict about work hours as my employer is. You want 40 hours, butts-in-seats, timed breaks? Fine, I'm circular filing that idea that's going to save you multiples of my salary each year because I thought of it at home during off-hours, and you weren't paying me for that time.
      - aisofteng 9y ago
        You sound awful to work with. It makes me appreciate how lucky I am to work someplace where everyone has good attitudes towards each other and their workplace.
        SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
        I'm sorry, that's based on what? If you honestly think me responding to a terrible work environment by refusing to do work outside of work hours or go above and beyond for the company makes me a bad coworker, I think you have a very distorted view of workplace relationships.
        tomelders 9y ago
        Gotta side with SomeStupidPoint here. If an employer is going to whine about any deviation from the standard working hours on my part, then all extracurricular activity stops. You get the hours exactly and nothing more. It doesn't matter when someone does their work. It matters that they did it, and did it well. Poisoning the water because someone is consitebtly 10 minutes late every morning is a signal to me that it's time to move on.
tedsanders 9y ago
When I joined a management consulting firm, they started us off with three straight weeks of pure training. And I heard it used to be four weeks long in years prior. Some companies see value in investing their workforce. Ben Horowitz has written on the importance of training: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-crucial-to-train-your-employees-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-crucial-to-train-your...
- mipmap04 9y ago
  I work at a management consulting firm and I'm building a two week course to get anyone who is interested some basic programming skills. If you don't mind me asking, how big were classes and what was the general course about?
  - tedsanders 9y ago
    The first week was for all new entry-level hires. There were ~35 of us and it was taught by internal folks. The subjects taught were general consulting skills. The next two weeks were business bootcamp for PhDs and other advanced degree holders. There, we numbered around ~65 and were taught by a mixture of internal experts and external business school professors. The subjects there were traditional business subjects like accounting, economics, operations, marketing, valuation, etc.
raspasov 9y ago
I disagree with all of your statements.
tentakull 9y ago
Lol you sound miserable.
- supernovae 9y ago
  That's my take on it.. I'd say the comments are borderline burnout and projecting your pain/suffering on others. I go completely the opposite of this dude, if you're not learning and not sharing, you're not working. Good employers know its better to have happy employees who grow than to have disgruntled employees who have far less productivity and enthusiasm to delivering anything of value
  - tentakull 9y ago
    Glib response for a stupid comment, but I'll take some time to respond to yours. I also wholeheartedly agree with this, especially for a creative/knowledge intensive field. It is impossible to be nose to the grindstone 8 hours a day doing anything of value that can't be automated. I've listened to artists talk about this as well: a really good workflow for me is really hard thinking for an hour or two with the rest of the day refining/helping/sharing/learning/interacting/reviewing. This sort of garbage mindset leads to shit code, reviewers that only comment on variable names because they only care to focus on their work, inter-specialty prejudice, etc. And I mean the biggest joke here is that we're talking about Stripe ... hugely successful with an awesome engineering culture. K bro.
xenadu02 9y ago
When I worked at PlanGrid, spending an hour talking to a couple of sales people might have seemed like a waste of my time and their time but in reality it was a great way to share and increase collaboration. Every single time I visited a construction site I came away with new ideas and a better appreciation of what affected the users. When you work at a startup you should strive to understand every aspect of the business. That applies to Engineers and non-Engineers alike. Teaching everyone about the tech stack and some basic coding skills isn't the #1 priority by any means, but it surely ranks in the top 10 things you can do to improve productivity.
HappyTypist 9y ago
No offence, but it sounds like you are perhaps jealous of companies trying out innovative programs like Stripe.
valw 9y ago
_investing_ money in teaching to improve employee happiness and foster cooperation between teams seems like a legit way to spend investor money, with positive financial outcomes such as increased productivity, employee loyalty and hiring attractiveness. Companies such as Stripe stay ahead of the competition because they get the best _people_, in every sense of the term, and their investors know it well.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by korzun 9y ago

throwaway2016a 9y ago

The average employee is lucky to be productive 70% of the time. 2.5 hours a week is only 6% of a 40 hour week. I think it is a great use of time. The change of pace between day job and learning can help people be more productive than they would if they were doing the same type of thing all day. People are not machines.

korzun 9y ago
> The average employee is lucky to be productive 70% of the time. 2.5 hours a week is only 6% of a 40 hour week. I think it is a great use of time. I don't know where you are pulling those numbers from, but you are assuming that 6% magically comes out from the 'unproductive' time without factoring in the take home homework and other things that blow up the 2.5-hour mark. It's not a static number and can't be used to make those claims. The 2.5 hours will also scale up with the number of participants, 20 employees who are committing 2.5 each week (at very, very minimum) is a loss of 50 hours per week. I can go even further and add people who did not attend the workshop but felt like they are now entitled to a 2.5-hour break of some sort (and rightfully so). If the company can cut more than 50+ hours a week and still function, more power to them. Usually, that only lasts until the finance guys need to start cutting costs to improve the bottom line.
- parennoob 9y ago
  > take home homework and other things that blow up the 2.5-hour mark I would think "take home" implies you take it home, i.e. do it in your own time. I don't know what your undefined "other things" are. > The 2.5 hours will also scale up with the number of participants, 20 employees who are committing 2.5 each week (at very, very minimum) is a loss of 50 hours per week. It is this sort of thinking that is super counterproductive. Even if one of those employees learns something simple, like how to programmatically create CSV files and import them into Excel, they will have saved thousands of man-hours. You can't nickel-and-dime people's time like this. Philosophies like yours tend to end up with timing people's bathroom breaks and scathing articles in the newspaper; rarely successful companies.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    Also, I have a very simple policy: I'm as strict about work hours as my employer is. You want 40 hours, butts-in-seats, timed breaks? Fine, I'm circular filing that idea that's going to save you multiples of my salary each year because I thought of it at home during off-hours, and you weren't paying me for that time.
    - aisofteng 9y ago
      You sound awful to work with. It makes me appreciate how lucky I am to work someplace where everyone has good attitudes towards each other and their workplace.
      - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
        I'm sorry, that's based on what? If you honestly think me responding to a terrible work environment by refusing to do work outside of work hours or go above and beyond for the company makes me a bad coworker, I think you have a very distorted view of workplace relationships.
      - tomelders 9y ago
        Gotta side with SomeStupidPoint here. If an employer is going to whine about any deviation from the standard working hours on my part, then all extracurricular activity stops. You get the hours exactly and nothing more. It doesn't matter when someone does their work. It matters that they did it, and did it well. Poisoning the water because someone is consitebtly 10 minutes late every morning is a signal to me that it's time to move on.

tedsanders 9y ago

When I joined a management consulting firm, they started us off with three straight weeks of pure training. And I heard it used to be four weeks long in years prior. Some companies see value in investing their workforce. Ben Horowitz has written on the importance of training: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-crucial-to-train-your-employees-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-crucial-to-train-your...

mipmap04 9y ago
I work at a management consulting firm and I'm building a two week course to get anyone who is interested some basic programming skills. If you don't mind me asking, how big were classes and what was the general course about?
- tedsanders 9y ago
  The first week was for all new entry-level hires. There were ~35 of us and it was taught by internal folks. The subjects taught were general consulting skills. The next two weeks were business bootcamp for PhDs and other advanced degree holders. There, we numbered around ~65 and were taught by a mixture of internal experts and external business school professors. The subjects there were traditional business subjects like accounting, economics, operations, marketing, valuation, etc.

raspasov 9y ago

I disagree with all of your statements.

tentakull 9y ago

Lol you sound miserable.

supernovae 9y ago
That's my take on it.. I'd say the comments are borderline burnout and projecting your pain/suffering on others. I go completely the opposite of this dude, if you're not learning and not sharing, you're not working. Good employers know its better to have happy employees who grow than to have disgruntled employees who have far less productivity and enthusiasm to delivering anything of value
- tentakull 9y ago
  Glib response for a stupid comment, but I'll take some time to respond to yours. I also wholeheartedly agree with this, especially for a creative/knowledge intensive field. It is impossible to be nose to the grindstone 8 hours a day doing anything of value that can't be automated. I've listened to artists talk about this as well: a really good workflow for me is really hard thinking for an hour or two with the rest of the day refining/helping/sharing/learning/interacting/reviewing. This sort of garbage mindset leads to shit code, reviewers that only comment on variable names because they only care to focus on their work, inter-specialty prejudice, etc. And I mean the biggest joke here is that we're talking about Stripe ... hugely successful with an awesome engineering culture. K bro.

xenadu02 9y ago

When I worked at PlanGrid, spending an hour talking to a couple of sales people might have seemed like a waste of my time and their time but in reality it was a great way to share and increase collaboration. Every single time I visited a construction site I came away with new ideas and a better appreciation of what affected the users. When you work at a startup you should strive to understand every aspect of the business. That applies to Engineers and non-Engineers alike. Teaching everyone about the tech stack and some basic coding skills isn't the #1 priority by any means, but it surely ranks in the top 10 things you can do to improve productivity.

HappyTypist 9y ago

No offence, but it sounds like you are perhaps jealous of companies trying out innovative programs like Stripe.

valw 9y ago

_investing_ money in teaching to improve employee happiness and foster cooperation between teams seems like a legit way to spend investor money, with positive financial outcomes such as increased productivity, employee loyalty and hiring attractiveness. Companies such as Stripe stay ahead of the competition because they get the best _people_, in every sense of the term, and their investors know it well.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]