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I strongly disagree with this post for my company. But that is great, it means there is a company for everyone. At my company one of our most important values
by achenatx 6y ago
I strongly disagree with this post for my company. But that is great, it means there is a company for everyone.
At my company one of our most important values is "live the life you love". For each person we try to understand how the company can help them achieve their personal goals.
If someone wants to work a ton of hours to get promoted as fast as possible, we support that. But if they want a balanced life we support that too. We have people that are close to retirement that want to work half time. We support that. If people want to work remotely, we support that. Some people really want to work in an office. We support that. One person wanted to buy a ranch, another wanted to write a book, many people want to start their own companies.
We are running a marathon, not a sprint. We monitor people's hours and have a discussion if their hours are regularly at too high a rate (some people like it). We know that they will eventually burn out, will start to make bad decisions etc.
I don't want to be party to a cult where people's every waking moment revolves around the company. I dont want people to be obsessed with what we do, though I do want people to have fun. I dont need to wring every ounce of profitability out of the company at the expense of the people.
I mountain bike before work, sometimes leave work to kitesurf if the wind is up, work on another startup on the side, go to most of my kids' presentations, take them to afterschool activities where I stay and watch etc. I want all of my employees to be able to do those things too if they want.
- lxe 6y agoThat's refreshingly honest and thoughtful. What company?
- sodapopcan 6y agoWe call working long hours “heroics” at my company, it’s possibly a common term? I’m unsure. In any event, Heroics are strongly discouraged. There are people who do it, of course, but they get no special accolades for it and in turn they don’t do any kind of boasting about it.
- justin_oaks 6y agoI've also heard of "heroes" as referring to software developers that are seen as great by management because they're always working hard to put out fires (usually that they caused). Meanwhile those who write stable software and work normal hours are not praised because stability is not noticed. Now that I think about it, I guess we're talking about the same thing.
- sodapopcan 6y agoHa, yes! Same thing :)
- codenesium 6y agoHeroes are like firefighters. In my experience the firefighters are often the arsonists.
- ingvul 6y ago> We monitor people's hours... Here I stop reading.
- achenatx 6y agowe are a professional services company, so we monitor hours by default.