5 ms·

I’ve been on the receiving end of similar requests before. “I’ll work for free or nothing if you let me do what I love under the umbrella of your organization

by blentz 5y ago

I’ve been on the receiving end of similar requests before. “I’ll work for free or nothing if you let me do what I love under the umbrella of your organization because I love it so much.” I did one or two agreements like this and then stopped altogether. The individual would start their work, others would start to depend on its existence and the individual would leave in a matter or weeks or months because something else better came along for them. There was no incentive to keep the relationship going over a longer term. My organization just wasn’t setup to see any upside to short lived but high quality team members. Is there anyone out there who does work agreements like this currently and benefits from them? Would love to hear more details. Perhaps that feedback could help Franceso with his pitch. Franceso please come back in a week and let us know what kinds of offers you received. Will be very interested to see where this goes.

wsc981 5y ago
Seems like a weird idea to me anyways, to offer to work for very little money or even nothing, as long as the work is interesting. To me it seems that time is much better spent on a fun personal (side) project. And who knows ... maybe the side project will earn some income in time.
- splistud 5y ago
  But that's not the idea is it? The idea is to define the terms, and see what the bids are. Perhaps, if the bids are too low, the decision would be to 'pay oneself' (spend from savings) while working on said side project. But the point is simple - an attempt to find a union of two interests at a price that makes sense.
- splonk 5y ago
  I did something sort of similar. There are limits to what you can do with a side project, and joining a company gets you access to other people with different skill sets from yours. In my particular case after finding a good fit with a small startup I told the CEO to just pay me as little as he could reasonably justify and make up the rest in equity (which I was fully aware would likely be worthless). In a different framing, I was "spending" my missing salary by "hiring" some people to do the work I wouldn't want to do - pitching deals, forming business relationships, and negotiating contracts to get me the data that I actually wanted to work on.
christophergs 5y ago
Same, sometimes people volunteer to help me code https://coursemaker.org https://coursemaker.org for free because they like the idea. In one case this has worked out well. But in a couple of others the engineers have vanished quite fast. Sometimes I wonder if I made a much more serious effort to onboard/document/give ownership then would they stick with it. What do you reckon - how was the onboarding in your case?
farhadhf 5y ago
I have some similar experiences. Especially with people saying "let me do what I love" or "give me a position where I can learn new things". People like variety - the initial love doesn't last long. After a few weeks/months it gets boring and repetitive. Learning the shiny new tech is only fun until you you've figured out how it works, but the project doesn't end there and you have to deliver a product in the end. But for most people who exclusively want the "position where they can learn new things" fixing the bugs and doing the finishing touches is no longer fun once they've figured out how the underlying tech works - they leave for the next position where they can learn another shiny new tech and you're left with a half-finished project (usually with subpar code quality because this was the first project they did using the new tech).
- christophergs 5y ago
  Well said. This is why engineers who know how to finish the last 10% are truly valued by good colleagues and managers.
  - plutonorm 5y ago
    And those who aren't like that by nature are much less useful I suppose?
  - username90 5y ago
    I don't think so, most teams never do the last 10% on any project ever. They pick the low hanging fruit with the first 80% and if they are thorough they might bring it up to 90%, but 100%? I've never seen such a software project.
    - ivanche 5y ago
      I'd say that Total Commander is very close to 100%.
      - jfim 5y ago
        TeX82 as well. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#TeX82 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#TeX82: > Since version 3, TeX has used an idiosyncratic version numbering system, where updates have been indicated by adding an extra digit at the end of the decimal, so that the version number asymptotically approaches π. This is a reflection of the fact that TeX is now very stable, and only minor updates are anticipated. The current version of TeX is 3.141592653; it was last updated in 2021.
gbear0 5y ago
I'd also suggest people making these requests to try and expand their interests to make themselves more rounded and valuable. For example I'm totally the kind of person that likes to jump from one thing to another cause I like the challenge and I get bored quick otherwise. But instead of jumping ship cause the challenge is gone I try to find a different closely related challenge. Here's a couple of techniques for anyone looking to do the same: 1. Look at the 'supply chain' of inputs and outputs from your problem area. Are there new inefficiencies somewhere in the stack that you can dig into and solve, and leverage your new knowledge. This could mean a whole new area of things to learn in order to investigate or solve those problems. 2. Never accept the status quo. Every time you're asked to do something else, treat that as an opportunity to find one thing that you can improve in the related systems. Here you'll learn the new system, but you'll also learn how to pick worthwhile areas for improvement. 3. Be reflective and review what you found interesting and what you didn't and dig into the ones you didn't find interesting. Ask yourself why you didn't like things; was it cause it was too difficult to pick up? was it cause you don't like people problems? was it just too big a problem to tackle? Dig in more and ask why again (like the Toyota 5 Whys). Eventually you should be able to find a problem area that you can clearly define and potentially work on to improve. I realize these 3 techniques won't necessarily lead to 'cool tech problems', but that's kinda the point! If you can get yourself interested in solving related problem areas, you'll find you pick up a lot of useful knowledge and value that you can apply in many other areas you wouldn't have first thought of, all while always jumping between things and not getting bored! (edit: formatting)
- madog 5y ago
  I don't have anything to add to this, only to say thanks - that's decent advice. If you do X, you can learn about Y, and apply it to Z. If you have a broad interest there's like a million different ways to pivot and branch off to learn different things.
frontiersummit 5y ago
The obvious elephant in the room is how can someone afford food and rent while working on $1 or whatever. If I was a hiring manager I would assume one of 3 things: 1) He is independently wealthy, 2) He lives in a van, or 3) he really expects $50/hour and this is some sort of bait-and-switch strategy.

by blentz 5y ago

wsc981 5y ago

Seems like a weird idea to me anyways, to offer to work for very little money or even nothing, as long as the work is interesting. To me it seems that time is much better spent on a fun personal (side) project. And who knows ... maybe the side project will earn some income in time.

splistud 5y ago
But that's not the idea is it? The idea is to define the terms, and see what the bids are. Perhaps, if the bids are too low, the decision would be to 'pay oneself' (spend from savings) while working on said side project. But the point is simple - an attempt to find a union of two interests at a price that makes sense.
splonk 5y ago
I did something sort of similar. There are limits to what you can do with a side project, and joining a company gets you access to other people with different skill sets from yours. In my particular case after finding a good fit with a small startup I told the CEO to just pay me as little as he could reasonably justify and make up the rest in equity (which I was fully aware would likely be worthless). In a different framing, I was "spending" my missing salary by "hiring" some people to do the work I wouldn't want to do - pitching deals, forming business relationships, and negotiating contracts to get me the data that I actually wanted to work on.

christophergs 5y ago

Same, sometimes people volunteer to help me code https://coursemaker.org https://coursemaker.org for free because they like the idea. In one case this has worked out well. But in a couple of others the engineers have vanished quite fast. Sometimes I wonder if I made a much more serious effort to onboard/document/give ownership then would they stick with it. What do you reckon - how was the onboarding in your case?

farhadhf 5y ago

I have some similar experiences. Especially with people saying "let me do what I love" or "give me a position where I can learn new things". People like variety - the initial love doesn't last long. After a few weeks/months it gets boring and repetitive. Learning the shiny new tech is only fun until you you've figured out how it works, but the project doesn't end there and you have to deliver a product in the end. But for most people who exclusively want the "position where they can learn new things" fixing the bugs and doing the finishing touches is no longer fun once they've figured out how the underlying tech works - they leave for the next position where they can learn another shiny new tech and you're left with a half-finished project (usually with subpar code quality because this was the first project they did using the new tech).

christophergs 5y ago
Well said. This is why engineers who know how to finish the last 10% are truly valued by good colleagues and managers.
- plutonorm 5y ago
  And those who aren't like that by nature are much less useful I suppose?
- username90 5y ago
  I don't think so, most teams never do the last 10% on any project ever. They pick the low hanging fruit with the first 80% and if they are thorough they might bring it up to 90%, but 100%? I've never seen such a software project.
  - ivanche 5y ago
    I'd say that Total Commander is very close to 100%.
    - jfim 5y ago
      TeX82 as well. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#TeX82 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#TeX82: > Since version 3, TeX has used an idiosyncratic version numbering system, where updates have been indicated by adding an extra digit at the end of the decimal, so that the version number asymptotically approaches π. This is a reflection of the fact that TeX is now very stable, and only minor updates are anticipated. The current version of TeX is 3.141592653; it was last updated in 2021.

gbear0 5y ago

I'd also suggest people making these requests to try and expand their interests to make themselves more rounded and valuable. For example I'm totally the kind of person that likes to jump from one thing to another cause I like the challenge and I get bored quick otherwise. But instead of jumping ship cause the challenge is gone I try to find a different closely related challenge. Here's a couple of techniques for anyone looking to do the same: 1. Look at the 'supply chain' of inputs and outputs from your problem area. Are there new inefficiencies somewhere in the stack that you can dig into and solve, and leverage your new knowledge. This could mean a whole new area of things to learn in order to investigate or solve those problems. 2. Never accept the status quo. Every time you're asked to do something else, treat that as an opportunity to find one thing that you can improve in the related systems. Here you'll learn the new system, but you'll also learn how to pick worthwhile areas for improvement. 3. Be reflective and review what you found interesting and what you didn't and dig into the ones you didn't find interesting. Ask yourself why you didn't like things; was it cause it was too difficult to pick up? was it cause you don't like people problems? was it just too big a problem to tackle? Dig in more and ask why again (like the Toyota 5 Whys). Eventually you should be able to find a problem area that you can clearly define and potentially work on to improve. I realize these 3 techniques won't necessarily lead to 'cool tech problems', but that's kinda the point! If you can get yourself interested in solving related problem areas, you'll find you pick up a lot of useful knowledge and value that you can apply in many other areas you wouldn't have first thought of, all while always jumping between things and not getting bored! (edit: formatting)

madog 5y ago
I don't have anything to add to this, only to say thanks - that's decent advice. If you do X, you can learn about Y, and apply it to Z. If you have a broad interest there's like a million different ways to pivot and branch off to learn different things.

frontiersummit 5y ago

The obvious elephant in the room is how can someone afford food and rent while working on $1 or whatever. If I was a hiring manager I would assume one of 3 things: 1) He is independently wealthy, 2) He lives in a van, or 3) he really expects $50/hour and this is some sort of bait-and-switch strategy.