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We did this at my new company. One 30 minute scheduled standup. That’s the only meeting we have all week. Of course people are free to jump on a video call to w

We did this at my new company. One 30 minute scheduled standup. That’s the only meeting we have all week. Of course people are free to jump on a video call to work through stuff, but scheduled meetings are generally discouraged, and to date we only have the one. Since everyone is contract, we’re seeing an average of about 26 hours per week. It’s by far the most productive team I’ve ever been on or have built. We ship new features weekly. It’s truly an incredible pace, but doesn’t feel hectic like you might think. I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture bullshit, no “get to know people” social events, no bullshit) company setup is going to be the future. If you give people the opportunity to work on things they like working on, and don’t make work about anything other than work, you get amazing results.

throwaway1777 5y ago
Why is contract important to this?
- danielheath 5y ago
  I think it’s a confusing way to say “hourly and work as many or few hours as they feel like”.
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  At this point is mostly a filtering mechanism for me. The types of people that want contract are typically more used to (and want) an environment without the HR bullshit. Some, not all, but certainly some people use work as their only form of social life and interaction. Which leads to a lot of time not working. I’m not saying this is inherently bad. It’s just not the type of company we’re building. Filtering for contract work has taken care of this so far. Will continue to evaluate as we scale up.
- achow 5y ago
  Contract means no perf eval, no 'culture' events participation, no leadership trainings etc., what OP classified as HR bullshit (true).
mjcohen 5y ago
How about benefits such as health insurance, vacation days, sick days?
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  We offer equity comp, health stipend, and equipment stipend for anyone contracted on a 20 hour per week minimum. Sick/vacation days are harder because we pay for whatever I get an invoice for. Since we don’t track what people do on a day by day basis (I often don’t even know if someone is working that day until I reach out to them or slack, or vice versa), there’s nothing stopping them for billing me for extra hours. And to be honest I really wouldn’t care. I just care about output and quality of that output.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    > I often don’t even know if someone is working that day until I reach out to them or slack If you don't know if they're working, don't fucking slack them. How about you check their calendar or send an email. Slack is not for asynchronous communication. It's amazing how high and mighty people can be and then they ping people for non-emergencies while they're on vacation.
    - jlokier 5y ago
      > Slack is not for asynchronous communication. Depends on the organisation. Where I'm currently working, we use Discord. Discord is similar to Slack. It is explicitly for asynchronous communication. We are supposed to not expect immediate replies to questions and comments on Discord, especially as other teammates are in different timezones. Sometimes there's real time chat, but it depends who is on at the time. I posted some comments yesterday. There was one reply within a few hours, and two more this morning. Email is pretty much deprecated. Nobody uses it, except to set up calendar entries for meetings, and formal things like HR and invoices.
    - toomanybeersies 5y ago
      Why don't you just not check your Slack messages when you're on holiday?
yakireev 5y ago
> I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture bullshit, no “get to know people” social events) So, gig economy. Or, at best, hourly wage at Amazon warehouse, but for developers. I heard those warehouses are super extra no-bullshit efficient.
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  It’s certainly not perfect, but I genuinely think it’s much better than being an FTE anywhere else. Of course I’m biased. I mentioned benefits in another post, so I wouldn’t say it’s gig economy. What other environment could give a developer $100+/hr, ability to make their own schedule, and essentially all legal protections to work on side projects, work for other companies, etc. at the same time? Is it for everyone? No. But we’ve had more quality devs interested than we can employ at this point, so I’d say it’s attractive to a good portion of the market.
  - yakireev 5y ago
    I did not imply that your company is an Amazon warehouse, I'm sorry if it sounded like that. But if this "hourly wage for hourly work and nothing else" becomes a norm, that's what we'll eventually get, I'm afraid.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - emteycz 5y ago
      It's what we want. I wouldn't work any other way ever again. I don't think FTE jobs are going anywhere (companies always push to have us as FTE, not the other way around), let us be.
  - jasonzemos 5y ago
    You've forgotten the core tenet of every engineering discipline is the master-apprentice relationship. The reason why what you describe is really the gig economy is because you've turned contractors into autodidacts to cut costs. You're not only expecting engineers to work for you, you're expecting them to learn their craft without capitalizing that yourself. Someone has to pay for that too; it probably won't be your other contractors -- otherwise you'd be something like a real company again. Your success in this direction to turn software development into some kind of cattle feedlot is only a mirage. Let me make it clear in economic terms: you're up a few chips at the casino, for now, because the market allows you to be. In the long run it's not sustainable, and won't yield any major feats of engineering with any level of competence.
chadcmulligan 5y ago
So not an hourly contract? but a per deliverable contract? How do you figure out what's a deliverable in the time - if thats what you're doing.
postmeta 5y ago
do employees get equity?
felipellrocha 5y ago
> If you give people the opportunity to work on things they like working on, and don’t make work about anything other than work, you get amazing results. That line started off well, but ended off terrible. I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a replaceable machine. You do you, man.
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  > I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a replaceable machine. This seems like a leap. Where did I insinuate that anyone is a cog in a machine? Just because I said work should be about work? Why does it have to be about anything else? If you need your job to provide a social aspect to your life that’s completely fine. It’s just not a part of the business I’m building. It’s why I think having options is great. Everyone works differently.
  - dlkmp 5y ago
    You're getting a lot of negative feedback so I just want to say I can relate a lot to the model you're proposing (and practicing). I interview fairly often with potential employers, sometimes just for the experience and insights. Never once did I consider taking a job for other reasons than the type of work and its pay (commuting time and factors not directly in control of the company aside). I'm not even the type of person who hates team events and the like, at least at the companies I have been working at these usually were a lot of fun. It's just nothing that keeps me from moving on from or motivates me to take some job.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TheGigaChad 5y ago
Not everyone is an autist.
aiisjustanif 5y ago
> I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture bullshit, no “get to know people” social events, no bullshit) company setup is going to be the future. But in the US you see the opposite happening at a lot of large companies. I think what you described would be the future of a company with a homogeneous type of worker. However, we are humans we are not machines ignoring that we are humans can be detrimental. Not to mention worker equality is becoming important to be a stable work environment. It’s important to forget you have other roles and industries that simply cannot function the way you described (doctors, nurses, flight attendants, pilots, plumbers, etc.) Also, I want I’m not saying the current technology corporate environment doesn’t need optimizing. It certainly does but it seems that we are moving towards that and trying to focus on what matter in HR as well.
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
This sounds great. I don't want to have to pretend to care about my company or it's "culture". I just want to do some work and get paid for it.
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  Well the point isn’t to not care. We want devs that care about the quality of their code and genuinely want to focus on _just_ that. I get some people want more out of a job, and that’s totally fine. But I think there’s a good portion of people that just want to do work and spend the rest of their time with their family, or hobbies or whatever.

throwaway1777 5y ago

Why is contract important to this?

danielheath 5y ago
I think it’s a confusing way to say “hourly and work as many or few hours as they feel like”.
ryanSrich 5y ago
At this point is mostly a filtering mechanism for me. The types of people that want contract are typically more used to (and want) an environment without the HR bullshit. Some, not all, but certainly some people use work as their only form of social life and interaction. Which leads to a lot of time not working. I’m not saying this is inherently bad. It’s just not the type of company we’re building. Filtering for contract work has taken care of this so far. Will continue to evaluate as we scale up.
achow 5y ago
Contract means no perf eval, no 'culture' events participation, no leadership trainings etc., what OP classified as HR bullshit (true).

mjcohen 5y ago

How about benefits such as health insurance, vacation days, sick days?

ryanSrich 5y ago
We offer equity comp, health stipend, and equipment stipend for anyone contracted on a 20 hour per week minimum. Sick/vacation days are harder because we pay for whatever I get an invoice for. Since we don’t track what people do on a day by day basis (I often don’t even know if someone is working that day until I reach out to them or slack, or vice versa), there’s nothing stopping them for billing me for extra hours. And to be honest I really wouldn’t care. I just care about output and quality of that output.
- yupper32 5y ago
  > I often don’t even know if someone is working that day until I reach out to them or slack If you don't know if they're working, don't fucking slack them. How about you check their calendar or send an email. Slack is not for asynchronous communication. It's amazing how high and mighty people can be and then they ping people for non-emergencies while they're on vacation.
  - jlokier 5y ago
    > Slack is not for asynchronous communication. Depends on the organisation. Where I'm currently working, we use Discord. Discord is similar to Slack. It is explicitly for asynchronous communication. We are supposed to not expect immediate replies to questions and comments on Discord, especially as other teammates are in different timezones. Sometimes there's real time chat, but it depends who is on at the time. I posted some comments yesterday. There was one reply within a few hours, and two more this morning. Email is pretty much deprecated. Nobody uses it, except to set up calendar entries for meetings, and formal things like HR and invoices.
  - toomanybeersies 5y ago
    Why don't you just not check your Slack messages when you're on holiday?

yakireev 5y ago

> I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture bullshit, no “get to know people” social events) So, gig economy. Or, at best, hourly wage at Amazon warehouse, but for developers. I heard those warehouses are super extra no-bullshit efficient.

ryanSrich 5y ago
It’s certainly not perfect, but I genuinely think it’s much better than being an FTE anywhere else. Of course I’m biased. I mentioned benefits in another post, so I wouldn’t say it’s gig economy. What other environment could give a developer $100+/hr, ability to make their own schedule, and essentially all legal protections to work on side projects, work for other companies, etc. at the same time? Is it for everyone? No. But we’ve had more quality devs interested than we can employ at this point, so I’d say it’s attractive to a good portion of the market.
- yakireev 5y ago
  I did not imply that your company is an Amazon warehouse, I'm sorry if it sounded like that. But if this "hourly wage for hourly work and nothing else" becomes a norm, that's what we'll eventually get, I'm afraid.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - emteycz 5y ago
    It's what we want. I wouldn't work any other way ever again. I don't think FTE jobs are going anywhere (companies always push to have us as FTE, not the other way around), let us be.
- jasonzemos 5y ago
  You've forgotten the core tenet of every engineering discipline is the master-apprentice relationship. The reason why what you describe is really the gig economy is because you've turned contractors into autodidacts to cut costs. You're not only expecting engineers to work for you, you're expecting them to learn their craft without capitalizing that yourself. Someone has to pay for that too; it probably won't be your other contractors -- otherwise you'd be something like a real company again. Your success in this direction to turn software development into some kind of cattle feedlot is only a mirage. Let me make it clear in economic terms: you're up a few chips at the casino, for now, because the market allows you to be. In the long run it's not sustainable, and won't yield any major feats of engineering with any level of competence.

chadcmulligan 5y ago

So not an hourly contract? but a per deliverable contract? How do you figure out what's a deliverable in the time - if thats what you're doing.

postmeta 5y ago

do employees get equity?

felipellrocha 5y ago

> If you give people the opportunity to work on things they like working on, and don’t make work about anything other than work, you get amazing results. That line started off well, but ended off terrible. I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a replaceable machine. You do you, man.

ryanSrich 5y ago
> I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a replaceable machine. This seems like a leap. Where did I insinuate that anyone is a cog in a machine? Just because I said work should be about work? Why does it have to be about anything else? If you need your job to provide a social aspect to your life that’s completely fine. It’s just not a part of the business I’m building. It’s why I think having options is great. Everyone works differently.
- dlkmp 5y ago
  You're getting a lot of negative feedback so I just want to say I can relate a lot to the model you're proposing (and practicing). I interview fairly often with potential employers, sometimes just for the experience and insights. Never once did I consider taking a job for other reasons than the type of work and its pay (commuting time and factors not directly in control of the company aside). I'm not even the type of person who hates team events and the like, at least at the companies I have been working at these usually were a lot of fun. It's just nothing that keeps me from moving on from or motivates me to take some job.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

TheGigaChad 5y ago

Not everyone is an autist.

aiisjustanif 5y ago

> I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture bullshit, no “get to know people” social events, no bullshit) company setup is going to be the future. But in the US you see the opposite happening at a lot of large companies. I think what you described would be the future of a company with a homogeneous type of worker. However, we are humans we are not machines ignoring that we are humans can be detrimental. Not to mention worker equality is becoming important to be a stable work environment. It’s important to forget you have other roles and industries that simply cannot function the way you described (doctors, nurses, flight attendants, pilots, plumbers, etc.) Also, I want I’m not saying the current technology corporate environment doesn’t need optimizing. It certainly does but it seems that we are moving towards that and trying to focus on what matter in HR as well.

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

This sounds great. I don't want to have to pretend to care about my company or it's "culture". I just want to do some work and get paid for it.

ryanSrich 5y ago
Well the point isn’t to not care. We want devs that care about the quality of their code and genuinely want to focus on _just_ that. I get some people want more out of a job, and that’s totally fine. But I think there’s a good portion of people that just want to do work and spend the rest of their time with their family, or hobbies or whatever.