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"There was a point when I was over in Cambridge with Nathan and the other developer, and I noticed that the developer wasn’t working on a Sunday... If your firs
by dannyr 16y ago
"There was a point when I was over in Cambridge with Nathan and the other developer, and I noticed that the developer wasn’t working on a Sunday... If your first employee doesn’t love what you do, doesn’t wake up each morning dying to work on HIS product, you have likely chosen poorly, and that’s exactly what we did."
I left a company before because I was being pressured to work at least 12 hours a day plus weekends. (I was averaging about 10 hours a day & worked about 4-6 hours on weekends).
I asked the CEO that he should motivate me. He said that I didn't need to since I was already getting paid a lot of money. I gave my two-weeks notice the next day.
It's possible that you hired the person you want for your company but you were not motivating him enough to work long hours.
- rick888 16y ago"It's possible that you hired the person you want for your company but you were not motivating him enough to work long hours." I don't know what would motivate anyone to give up their personal lives and most of their free time for a company that wasn't even theirs. Motivation to me would be a large stake in the company. Anyone not getting this for giving up their lives to a company is a fool.
- robryan 16y agoEven then, in a product with very little traction you would have to really believe in what you were doing. Had that guy took equity and continued to work his ass off it would have most likely been a waste of time. Interestingly I wonder if the extra hours were really making a difference on the technical side, it sounds like the majority of issues, bar the domain and facebook stuff, were not technical ones.
- greendestiny 16y agoYeah that didn't really sit well. Especially considering he mentions elsewhere someone else working for free, not to mention the journalists who worked for free, or the investors as well. I start to see why the other founder might have been really pissed when in the middle of it all this guy went on his honeymoon. Also this guy is a programmer but was too busy CEO'ing to do any of the technical stuff - especially when the idea could have been implemented by customizing wordpress. I think there is a lot more soul searching to be done here about from the magical ability of the 'right' idea to motivate you. But I do absolutely concede my limited understanding of what went on comes from a couple of blog posts.
- Swizec 16y agoMaybe I'm just too European. But everybody deserves a day off once a week. Developers (anyone really) that are too tired to think are useless to a company. Let people get their rest and their time spent working will be much more productive. Isn't there a book about this? Myth of the man month or something like that?
- dennisgorelik 16y agoThe book title is "Mythical man-month", but it's that much about overworking. The book is more about making [in]accurate forecasts.
- pbiggar 16y agoIt's not that you demand every working moment of your employees time, it's that you need it. One of the things you're quickly taught is that you do everything you can to ensure the success of your startup. You need employees with the same priorities and intrinsic motivation as you have, or else you're less likely to succeed.
- Swizec 16y agoEvery WORKING moment. Not every moment. Big and very important difference. Hell, I'm a founder and if all I spent my time on was my startup I"d go insane, stop having good ideas and so on. It would ruin everything.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
- brandnewlow 16y agoIf your company can only succeed if people work on weekends or work for free, you don't really have a real company.
- pbiggar 16y agoBear in mind we had just launched and had completely failed to build everything our customers needed. I'm aware that your startup is going much better than mine, but there are no tech startups where people don't work evenings and weekends at the start. Free was because someone offered to work for free, and we didn't have the resources to pay her. We were going to pay her when we raised money, and we had agreed a rate. In the end, we paid her based on her estimated number of hours worked.
- brandnewlow 16y agoI should have added on there that my comment was based on my own experience with Windy Citizen where we at one point had 4 "editors" writing content for the site and managing bloggers...all unpaid. I was able to talk myself into thinking that was going to work until we had a harsh deadline (Obama's victory rally) pop up and all of sudden everyone was too busy to pitch in. That's when I realized these people really didn't work for the company in any real way and we didn't really have a company or business in any real way. I did not intend it as a slight, but as something I learned in a painful, embarassing way. (The day after Barack Obama wins the presidency, we didn't have a single photo or story from the victory rally!)
- jselzer 16y agoExactly... I also wonder about calling it "HIS product" in reference to the employee. If he is only an employee, it is not HIS product, it is the company's product (and the OP's, as a founder/owner). In my opinion, intrinsic motivation for a project isn't something that you either have or don't have by nature. It is something that is built and nurtured by a variety of external forces (team members, education, working conditions, etc) until the act of performing a task is rewarding in and of itself. Expecting early-stage employees to be intrinsically motivated while ignoring environmental factors that may be eroding that motivation is unrealistic.
- pbiggar 16y agoYour first employee is almost closer to a founder than to an employee. It wasn't "HIS" product, which was precisely the problem.