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This happened to me, as well. Not my wife and not Amazon, but actually a handful of family members dying over the last year. On one hand I completely understan

This happened to me, as well. Not my wife and not Amazon, but actually a handful of family members dying over the last year. On one hand I completely understand my employer. Unlike Amazon, they do not have Amazon-style money. They are fighting to survive. Like the author I am not sure what they should have done for me. During the conversation where I was terminated, I told my boss I understood their position. They needed performance above all else. But, combined with the company's meager retirement plan, meager health insurance, and stingy PTO that barely covers a couple of funerals each year.... I said who the fuck are you trying to hire, here? Exclusively people... without families? Are you trying to hire typical human beings or what? Or strictly obsessive coders who do nothing but code all day and don't have families and don't need PTO? "I don't think those kinds of guys exist any more," he said. "Well maybe you should build a fucking company for the other kind of person then, huh?" I said. He had no answer.

gruez 5y ago
I don't get it. Are they also having a hard time hiring people or something? As for your premise of "who the fuck are you trying to hire, here? Exclusively people... without families?", I don't see weird about that. If you're a company of a dozen or so people, it doesn't seem too hard to find a bunch of 22-30 year olds with very little commitments.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  I don't get it. Understandable. There was a lot of context I left out because it wasn't too interesting and I wanted to keep things under a billion words so I just mentioned the similarities with the linked article. As for your premise of "who the fuck are you trying to hire, here? Exclusively people... without families?", I don't see weird about that. Yes, they are having a difficult time finding and keeping people, particularly experienced ones. The product involves a large-ish amount of customer data, and our experience was that recent grads and "people that just did a 4-week 'Code Camp' style course" are particularly unsuited for that kind of work: they can write basic CRUD till the cows come home, but they know nothing about performance/scaling. (Best-case scenario: they know they know nothing. More typical scenario: they think they know...) If you're a company of a dozen or so people, it doesn't seem too hard to find a bunch of 22-30 year olds with very little commitments. Depending on your jurisdiction it's likely downright illegal to discriminate against employees or prospective employees based on them having families. But even from a pure self-interest standpoint, if you're strictly hiring people without families you're ignoring a big chunk of the talent pool and if a company's having problems hiring, perhaps that's something that should be re-evaluated. FWIW, note that I am using "family" here to mean "having any family members whatsoever" -- I'm not just talking about people with children. I don't even have children, myself. But I have family. They die, get married, etc.
kamaal 5y ago
>>Or strictly obsessive coders who do nothing but code all day and don't have families and don't need PTO? Unfortunate, but true. If you look at the life profiles of 'rockstar coders' going around FANG like companies they are mostly single(and childless) people, with minimal to no family commitments/connections. These kind of people fit in perfectly into doing the weekend long leetcode tournaments. Changing jobs every year. etc. There's a high degree of freedom, but albeit long term unfixable problems that come with this kind of a lifestyle.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Yeah. I don't think that kind of "rockstar" coder typically benefits a company in the long run. There are the true, true, true outliers: the Linus Torvalds and the John Carmacks, who truly solve problems that others can't. But then there are people who write a bunch of blog posts, make some kind of name for themselves, show up and crap out a bunch of code, impressing management, etc. I don't think they are good at building systems. They make messes others need to clean up while they've already moved on to making their next mess.

gruez 5y ago

I don't get it. Are they also having a hard time hiring people or something? As for your premise of "who the fuck are you trying to hire, here? Exclusively people... without families?", I don't see weird about that. If you're a company of a dozen or so people, it doesn't seem too hard to find a bunch of 22-30 year olds with very little commitments.

JohnBooty 5y ago
I don't get it. Understandable. There was a lot of context I left out because it wasn't too interesting and I wanted to keep things under a billion words so I just mentioned the similarities with the linked article. As for your premise of "who the fuck are you trying to hire, here? Exclusively people... without families?", I don't see weird about that. Yes, they are having a difficult time finding and keeping people, particularly experienced ones. The product involves a large-ish amount of customer data, and our experience was that recent grads and "people that just did a 4-week 'Code Camp' style course" are particularly unsuited for that kind of work: they can write basic CRUD till the cows come home, but they know nothing about performance/scaling. (Best-case scenario: they know they know nothing. More typical scenario: they think they know...) If you're a company of a dozen or so people, it doesn't seem too hard to find a bunch of 22-30 year olds with very little commitments. Depending on your jurisdiction it's likely downright illegal to discriminate against employees or prospective employees based on them having families. But even from a pure self-interest standpoint, if you're strictly hiring people without families you're ignoring a big chunk of the talent pool and if a company's having problems hiring, perhaps that's something that should be re-evaluated. FWIW, note that I am using "family" here to mean "having any family members whatsoever" -- I'm not just talking about people with children. I don't even have children, myself. But I have family. They die, get married, etc.

kamaal 5y ago

>>Or strictly obsessive coders who do nothing but code all day and don't have families and don't need PTO? Unfortunate, but true. If you look at the life profiles of 'rockstar coders' going around FANG like companies they are mostly single(and childless) people, with minimal to no family commitments/connections. These kind of people fit in perfectly into doing the weekend long leetcode tournaments. Changing jobs every year. etc. There's a high degree of freedom, but albeit long term unfixable problems that come with this kind of a lifestyle.

JohnBooty 5y ago
Yeah. I don't think that kind of "rockstar" coder typically benefits a company in the long run. There are the true, true, true outliers: the Linus Torvalds and the John Carmacks, who truly solve problems that others can't. But then there are people who write a bunch of blog posts, make some kind of name for themselves, show up and crap out a bunch of code, impressing management, etc. I don't think they are good at building systems. They make messes others need to clean up while they've already moved on to making their next mess.