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Hire Family People
- veritas 18y agoI'm not complaining but is it 37signals week?
- sanj 18y agoI believe that David came away from Startup School with a heap of new ideas that he's been talking about back in Chicago.
- falsestprophet 18y agoI think a lot of people came away form Startup School with the idea they want to hear more from dhh.
- jimbokun 18y agoI believe he has decided to take the opposite position to pg on every point about how to start a business and see how well he can argue it. Which is a healthy thing for Hacker News, I think, getting other perspectives.
- pg 18y agoActually there wasn't anything in DHH's talk that I really disagreed with, except the use of the word "startup" for the kind of company he was describing. There's already a word for companies like Italian restaurants: businesses. A startup is a very specific kind of business: one that starts small but could grow very large. Only a fraction of the 30 million businesses in the US are startups. I think what made people think DHH's advice was relevant to startups was that he was talking about starting a business to write software, which is also what most startups do. But structurally the kind of small business he was talking about was more like a landscaping company or a shoe store or a restaurant. Which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do; it's just not a startup.
- dhh 18y agoI think that's a pretty narrow definition of a startup. Also, there are plenty of businesses that start out small and then grow very large over time. Actually, most large businesses took a long time to get there. Say like foot locker or Zappos for a "shoe store" (both big business) and say McDonald's or Olive Garden for a restaurant. By the same measure, we're building 37signals to grow as well. Grow revenues, grow customers, grow influence. We're just not that hooked on growing head count or office space (which are often the most visible indicators of growth for a private company and thus often mistaken as the only indicators). To me a startup simply means a new business that's getting off the ground. That business may well end up big one day and it may not, which is okay too. I generally don't think that you can become a star by trying to be a star. I think you just try to be the best at what you do and if you are, hopefully the star part will take care of itself.
- thaumaturgy 18y agopg has been specifically keeping the definition of "startup" narrow, to describe only the businesses that go through the two-guys-plus-vc-plus-sleepless-nights-equals-fast-megabucks pattern that we saw in 2000. I think that's the model he's most interested in, that he sees as the most dynamic and rewarding. Shiny. That said, the things you describe closely match what I've wanted to pursue. For me, and many others, it's the more rewarding, long-term way of doing things. Your talk at SS08 was a huge breath of fresh air. But, I don't think it's all that fair to dilute someone else's definition of a startup with your own idea of what a startup is. It might be time to come up with a different term, and let startup mean the thing that pg and the vc guys and others want it to mean.
- pg 18y agopg has been specifically keeping the definition of "startup" narrow Argh. I haven't been doing anything to the definition of the word. I'm just using it as everyone does. Think about newspaper headlines, for example. Wouldn't you be surprised if a company described in a headline as a "startup" turned out to be a shoe repair shop, or Exxon?
- dhh 18y agoYou're exactly right. Startup School was a great way to collect some thoughts that had been scattered for a while. A real energy boost.
- run4yourlives 18y agoHoly geeze you even joined HN! Just want to say that was a great talk (watched the video) last week. Also, I saw you in Vancouver (Fuck You!) a while back and was impressed with your speaking ability then as well. Keep up the good work man.
- rms 18y agoFuck You?
- plinkplonk 18y agoI think he was referring to one of dhh's slides at the meeting where he saw his presentation.
- run4yourlives 18y agohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/planetargon/127984254/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetargon/127984254/
- azsromej 18y agoThat original comment is hilarious in this context
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- vlad 18y agoMy notes of DHH's speech were on the front page for a couple of days so maybe users were inspired as well as inspired to post more themselves. ;)
- slapshot 18y agoI'm just going to point out that this sets a troubling precedent. If one firm thinks it's legitimate to discriminate in favor of mothers with children, that suggests that being a parent is an acceptable basis on which to discriminate. It opens the door to people thinking about whether somebody is a mother in making hiring decisions. That's troubling on a lot of levels, and in some states illegal. EDIT: apparently the source has been revised to make it clear that the point is just to look evenly at parents and non-parents; that's OK, but I'll leave the comment above in reference to the earlier version.
- breily 18y agoHe did post a revised version shortly after I submitted it - http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/996-why-i-love-working-with-family-people http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/996-why-i-love-working-wi... - Deals more with 'why working with family people is awesome' instead of just 'you should hire family people.' "Update: Removed potential confusion around labor discrimination."
- comatose_kid 18y agoHe's not advocating that you should only hire people with families. He's just saying that people with families shouldn't be discriminated against in a startup world that seems to value youth, because they can be as productive.
- DaniFong 18y agoLaws or not, in the startup world there's a lot of discrimination when it comes to hiring decisions.
- jrockway 18y agoAnd the laws are kind of weird. If you say you discriminate, but don't, you've committed a crime. If you say you don't discriminate, but do, it's not a crime. (I think the reality is that everyone discriminates in favor of "people they like" anyway. It is somewhat scary that we have so many thought crimes now.)
- aston 18y agoI assumed based on the title he meant "hire people from your family." Was totally expecting an essay about the McAskill's at SmugMug.
- pg 18y agoEven if people with kids were more productive per hour, that's not enough in a real startup. The empirical evidence is pretty clear on that. I can't think of a successful startup whose founders didn't, in addition to being smart and determined etc, also work long hours.
- dhh 18y agoI think the reason for that is more one of risk. Starting a new company is a lot more risky than being an employee of one. And if you have a family to support, you're less likely to be willing to take on big risk. So I absolutely agree that it's easier to start a company when you're single and have no obligations because you can tolerate much more risk. Update: Seems that the original argument changed from "if kids are so great, why aren't more founders parents when they start their business" to "kids might make you more productive during regular working hours, but you need more than just regular working hours to start a business". I'm happy to offer my thoughts on the second argument as well. I think people working on startups generally work way too much and the ones that succeed don't do so because they put in 14-hour days. At 37signals, our "startup" (Basecamp) got off the ground on a 10 hour/week programming budget and designers who were busy doing client projects. For the first year, it wasn't the sole focus for the company. We believe those constraints were instrumental in their way they shaped Basecamp and thus part of the success of the company. Doesn't mean that there might not be other businesses out there where working lots and lots of hours can be beneficial somehow, but I think that it's a fallacy that you need to work crazy hours to succeed. I do believe that others believe this, though, I just don't think it's healthy or beneficial. All of this is somewhat tangential to the original argument, though, which is that you shouldn't be afraid of hiring family people. Who should start a company is a great debate as well, though.
- pg 18y ago(If this exchange is confusing to anyone, it's because dhh was replying to my comment while I was still editing it.) But in reply to the second half: while 37Signals may be a counterexample to the rule that startup founders need to work long hours to succeed, there seem to be a lot more startups that did than didn't. Different people presumably have different points at which spending more time on something makes the result come out worse. Probably this also varies with the type of work. So it could be that when person = dhh and work = product design, 10 hours per week is a reasonable limit, and when it's someone else and the work = writing database software, the limit might be 70 hours per week. In the absence of any other evidence, you have to assume that successful startup founders knew what they were doing, and that if they worked long hours it was because it paid off for them.
- alex_c 18y agoAfter a contractor decided on a radical life change and moved to a different country, leaving us without anyone with his skill set, my old manager used to joke that he should only hire people who have a mortgage, because they'll never leave on their own. Funny as a joke, but a bit chilling when it's given as real advice.
- marvin 18y agoI'm pretty sure that a lot of managers actually follow this advice consciously.
- mosburger 18y agoThank you so much, 37signals guys. I've always found pg's essays to be motivational and inspring, but there are two things that always turn me off; 1.) I don't live in San Fransisco, and probably never will, and 2.) I have a family. I often feel dismissed by PG and his disciples. DHH's stuff gives me hope that there's still a chance for "fogeys" (cripes, I'm only 33!) like me. I have a feeling that, if I ever applied to YCombinator, my application would end up in the wastebasket the moment they caught a whiff of the fact that I have a wife and kids. Is that fair? I stay up late into the night hacking after the kids go to bed, and I'm in the office hours before other people are there so I can do some extra hacking. Am I not motivated enough? Can I not be passionate? Perhaps DHH is onto something. Perhaps balancing the challenges of work and family five you a healthy dosage of time management and prioritization skills. There are some interesting comments on DHH's site - several presumably young, single kids are crabby and crying "discrimination!" (e.g., "Wow, that’s actually offensive. And illegal in BC, Canada and I hope other enlightened jurisdictions.", or the more eloquent "I’m single and you can kiss my ..."). I wonder if these people have ever noticed that the discrimination often goes the other way, against the thirty-something parent crowd, too.
- attack 18y agoI bet that I'll be in that exact same position in 10 years. All of us will.
- wanorris 18y ago> Perhaps balancing the challenges of work and family five you a healthy dosage of time management and prioritization skills. Plus, I don't know about you, but I have real world experience about a boatload of pitfalls that I know to avoid that I wasn't aware of 10 years ago. That is a potential source of significant efficiency.
- pkrumins 18y agoThose 37signals people are very, very arrogant. I don't like it. I disagree on every post they have just by reading the title.
- dhh 18y agoSo someone is arrogant when you don't agree with them? And you don't even have to know what they're saying to make that call, you just have to read a three-word summary? What a unique path to expanding your horizon.
- aditya 18y agoheh -- you did leave an open invitation for the trolls :)
- abstractwater 18y agoUnfortunately, trolls are able to find invitations where there are none.
- Trolls 18y ago'Scuse me, is this the kegger?
- sabat 18y agoNo, man. Someone is arrogant because his attitude seems to say "I know better than you, pretty much all of the time."
- cellis 18y agoI'll admit, DHH coming into Hacker News is a breath of fresh air, even if a few of the 20-somethings here (including myself) can sniff out the psuedo-defeatist , "statistically its not possible" scent it is tinged with. I think, on the whole of things, pg isn't out to attract the type of people that want to start the types of business DHH is talking about. I think pg is set out to do the same thing VC's do (invest in outlandish, maybe crazy ideas), albeit with a focus on extremely good hackers and with a fraction of the budget. What DHH seems to be implying is that you should focus on building something that you can get paid for, right away, and throw away the big dreams. Which is pretty much the opposite of pg.
- kirubakaran 18y ago> throw away the big dreams AFAIK all he meant was: don't throw away your easily achievable dreams. That is not the opposite of pg's thoughts.
- tptacek 18y agoDHH is saying that your dreams should have to do with the merits of your offering, not the strength of your cap table. You're caricaturing him.
- sabat 18y agoMaybe I'm in the minority. I think DHH's arrival here is a big gust of foul air. Suddenly the arguments are getting out of control, and pg's participating. Nitpicky, negative, petty debates. I've read every DHH post that's appeared here in the past days, and every one of them comes off like the work of a sophomoric contrarian who believes that the minor success he's had entitles him to tell the world how to think. I like this place better when positive, hopeful people are having conversations. This air just stinks.
- davidw 18y agopg and dhh have been very civil in their exchanges, even though perhaps they're not exactly arguing over profound ideas. It appears that you are the one who has introduced personal attacks on dhh. Would you say those things to him in person?
- menloparkbum 18y agoIn the startups I've worked for, the best systems administrators were guys with 5-10 year old kids. Experience actually counts for more in systems administration, so being older isn't a disadvantage. Surviving the infant-toddler years hones one's skills at managing interrupt-driven tasks and strange working hours.
- torpor 18y agoI've been a programmer since I was 12 years old, and have over 30 years experience with technology companies - and yes, startups too .. I helped get a few major 90's-era dotcoms up and running and many of them are still at it today. My experience is this: either you waste a lot of time futzing around with computers, or you make them do the work they need to do and get on with your life. It has nothing to do with how old or young you are, or how many kids you have. I am a very happy Father now - in fact, this is the greatest startup, with the most rewards, I've ever been involved in - and I'm still applying the same fundamental policy to myself as a programmer: get things done, don't futz around with computers, make them actually do the work they're supposed to do. It doesn't matter what "kind" of person you are, it matters only what kind of things you make. I know 50-year old grandfathers who can kick royal Assembler ass and still leave early at the end of the day, and I know 18 year old kids who put the keyboard down after 8 hours and go do something else instead, as well. IMHO, this over-generalization about 'types of people' is a real curse. I would say, don't do it. There are no 'types' of people in the computer world, no matter how the ycombinator cultists want to pitch it to the world: there are people who get things done, and people who don't. Get things done. Get your code written, working, tested, and in the hands of people who will actually use it. If you can't do this, then you will fail. If you can, then rock on .. may your kids, now and in the future, always appreciate this aspect of you as a person.
- thomasfl 18y agoThis is music to my ear as a father of three, 40 yo hacker.
- wensing 18y agoNot to dredge up the past, but this refreshingly contrasts with Zuckerberg's encouragement at Startup School 2007: 'If you want to found a successful company, you should only hire young people with technical expertise'. http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/03/27/facebook-class-action-suit/ http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/03/27/facebook-class-ac...
- sanj 18y agoI wonder if this would have been better accepted if the title was: "Why it doesn't make sense to discriminate against family people"