9 ms·

I feel this guy 100%. The economics of employment simply don't make rational sense, and was a huge part of why I started working for myself too. You provide l

I feel this guy 100%. The economics of employment simply don't make rational sense, and was a huge part of why I started working for myself too. You provide literally nothing of value to the customer, burden the customer-focused employees with unnecessary bullshit and use all of your political capital to advocate for the hiring of more deadweight employees? 100k per year. You advocate for, build and maintain a product worth $10m/year to the business? Wow, you're pretty special. You can have 150k!

itsmemattchung 5y ago
This whole article is music to my ears. I left behind a rewarding career to test out entrepreneurship and while rocky initially, it's paying back in ways I could not have imagined. Similar to the author, I'm perfectly content with a 9-5 job but since taking the leap, I can now no longer imagine returning to my position.
NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
That reminds me of a few years ago when a director gave a presentation to the whole organization about innovation. Near the end of the presentation, he summarized that everyone needed to share ideas. Then he anticipated a few questions. If we a good idea, would we be able to work on it? Probably not, the "innovation team", which was his team, would be the ones to build the prototype. If we had a successful good idea, would we receive any compensation? No, and that's very selfish. He insinuated that we should rethink priorities or place of work if compensation was important. He also talked about how he only wanted ideas that had the potential to make billions.
- cushychicken 5y ago
  lol I've been on the receiving end of that pitch too. Felt a lot like: "Give us your best ideas, then GTFO of the room so we can implement your cool brainchild - with no credit to you!" There's practically zero reward for the folks with good ideas in that model, yet it's sort of the table stakes innovation model.
  - NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
    Exactly, at least it was easy to just not share with that team. A couple years later an engineering manager at the same level gave another presentation about how innovation and ideas have been lacking. He placed the blame on software engineers not trying hard enough. I think there's a certain type of person who thinks that the only type of success is one where all of the profit/credit goes to them. Sadly, they seem to be the leaders of many organizations.
  - ep103 5y ago
    My very first job I built a code library that, when I trained my teammates on its use (I was angling for a team lead position) we found, on average, reduced their time per project by a range of 50-90% per project by automating out tons of boilerplate, and allowing us to leverage previously created work. We're talking about things that used to take 1-2 weeks, being done by Tuesday, if it was assigned on a Monday morning. It was nuts. My immediate manager, didn't understand it. His manager sat down with me and read through the code, and was ecstatic. He brought the CEO in (it was a small shop, that was the next level), and explained out the implications. AND..... that was the last I ever heard of it. They bought me some pizza. On their own they decided that if they repackaged the library itself, they could sell it as a b2b tool (which was a pretty good idea). And they assigned devs and PMs from other teams to build it. And those devs and PMs never took a look at my code. I'm guessing they were never told about it. They did, however, build their design the exact same way they had built everything else before my library. Which meant, it made all the same mistakes they had always made. Their final product didn't really move the needle. It did not really save anyone much time. And it did not successfully sell to other businesses. Except by then, it was the new "company initiative". And the % of resources the company had put into its development was substantial. So when it failed completely to materialize real results, it was devastating for the company. They ended up laying off some ~20% of the company to recover losses in the months after I quit. So yeah: "Give me your best ideas so we can implement them with out you" doesn't work. If you could have implemented the idea, you would have had it already.
- npsimons 5y ago
  > we should rethink ... place of work if compensation was important. If that's not a glaring neon sign telling you to quit, and quit now, I don't know what is.
  - NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
    Well the compensation there is fine. It's not really correlated with results in my opinion, but that's typical in massive organizations. It probably sounds worse on paper and due to my phrasing. I'd say he was stating the reality and being a doofus (he's the excitable and friendly type). It wasn't so sinister.
    - npsimons 5y ago
      I myself might be overreacting a bit; having "noped" out of a large bureaucracy relatively recently, my "stick it to the man!" mode gets triggered easily by such things, as well as such articles as OP. Honestly, the line "had me question everything, including my self-worth, my identity, and purpose" resonated with me so deeply, not just the first time I was laid off, but even now 20 years later and having left by choice. On the flipside, to get CYA-managery, but any time someone in management says anything approaching "you should quit" that can be a bit worrisome. They might be doing you a favor, but the org is more than likely to be hurt by you leaving.
xwdv 5y ago
What is the appropriate compensation then for someone who maintains a product worth $10m/year? Suppose it’s $500k a year. Well, what if someone says they could do it for $200k a year? Or even less? Why keep the $500k employee??? That is how they arrive at $150k. It maximizes profit and keeps costs to a minimum. Good business.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Congratulations. You've just lost an employee that created a $10m/year system from scratch.
  - chasd00 5y ago
    on the other hand, if you lack the foresight to know putting your company in a position to be held ransom by a single employee is a bad idea then you deserve to go out of business.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      You were relying on the output of one person and that person leaving caused you to close that office. You were already in that boat. By your logic having someone 2x as sucessful at sales is risky and you should let that person go.
    - BizarroLand 5y ago
      True. Seems like the smart thing to do would be to "buy" the software from the employee, pay them a trivial sum in addition to their salary to train 2-3 other people to understand the software back and forwards, inside and out. That way you now have 3 people who can run the software. You made us $10m in repeating annual revenue, here's a one-time $20,000 bonus for your services (and a trophy, sure, why not?) Builds good will, makes people happy, and secures your ownership of a product that has added tremendous value to your company. That's a win all around.
      - csa 5y ago

itsmemattchung 5y ago

This whole article is music to my ears. I left behind a rewarding career to test out entrepreneurship and while rocky initially, it's paying back in ways I could not have imagined. Similar to the author, I'm perfectly content with a 9-5 job but since taking the leap, I can now no longer imagine returning to my position.

NAHWheatCracker 5y ago

That reminds me of a few years ago when a director gave a presentation to the whole organization about innovation. Near the end of the presentation, he summarized that everyone needed to share ideas. Then he anticipated a few questions. If we a good idea, would we be able to work on it? Probably not, the "innovation team", which was his team, would be the ones to build the prototype. If we had a successful good idea, would we receive any compensation? No, and that's very selfish. He insinuated that we should rethink priorities or place of work if compensation was important. He also talked about how he only wanted ideas that had the potential to make billions.

cushychicken 5y ago
lol I've been on the receiving end of that pitch too. Felt a lot like: "Give us your best ideas, then GTFO of the room so we can implement your cool brainchild - with no credit to you!" There's practically zero reward for the folks with good ideas in that model, yet it's sort of the table stakes innovation model.
- NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
  Exactly, at least it was easy to just not share with that team. A couple years later an engineering manager at the same level gave another presentation about how innovation and ideas have been lacking. He placed the blame on software engineers not trying hard enough. I think there's a certain type of person who thinks that the only type of success is one where all of the profit/credit goes to them. Sadly, they seem to be the leaders of many organizations.
- ep103 5y ago
  My very first job I built a code library that, when I trained my teammates on its use (I was angling for a team lead position) we found, on average, reduced their time per project by a range of 50-90% per project by automating out tons of boilerplate, and allowing us to leverage previously created work. We're talking about things that used to take 1-2 weeks, being done by Tuesday, if it was assigned on a Monday morning. It was nuts. My immediate manager, didn't understand it. His manager sat down with me and read through the code, and was ecstatic. He brought the CEO in (it was a small shop, that was the next level), and explained out the implications. AND..... that was the last I ever heard of it. They bought me some pizza. On their own they decided that if they repackaged the library itself, they could sell it as a b2b tool (which was a pretty good idea). And they assigned devs and PMs from other teams to build it. And those devs and PMs never took a look at my code. I'm guessing they were never told about it. They did, however, build their design the exact same way they had built everything else before my library. Which meant, it made all the same mistakes they had always made. Their final product didn't really move the needle. It did not really save anyone much time. And it did not successfully sell to other businesses. Except by then, it was the new "company initiative". And the % of resources the company had put into its development was substantial. So when it failed completely to materialize real results, it was devastating for the company. They ended up laying off some ~20% of the company to recover losses in the months after I quit. So yeah: "Give me your best ideas so we can implement them with out you" doesn't work. If you could have implemented the idea, you would have had it already.
npsimons 5y ago
> we should rethink ... place of work if compensation was important. If that's not a glaring neon sign telling you to quit, and quit now, I don't know what is.
- NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
  Well the compensation there is fine. It's not really correlated with results in my opinion, but that's typical in massive organizations. It probably sounds worse on paper and due to my phrasing. I'd say he was stating the reality and being a doofus (he's the excitable and friendly type). It wasn't so sinister.
  - npsimons 5y ago
    I myself might be overreacting a bit; having "noped" out of a large bureaucracy relatively recently, my "stick it to the man!" mode gets triggered easily by such things, as well as such articles as OP. Honestly, the line "had me question everything, including my self-worth, my identity, and purpose" resonated with me so deeply, not just the first time I was laid off, but even now 20 years later and having left by choice. On the flipside, to get CYA-managery, but any time someone in management says anything approaching "you should quit" that can be a bit worrisome. They might be doing you a favor, but the org is more than likely to be hurt by you leaving.

xwdv 5y ago

What is the appropriate compensation then for someone who maintains a product worth $10m/year? Suppose it’s $500k a year. Well, what if someone says they could do it for $200k a year? Or even less? Why keep the $500k employee??? That is how they arrive at $150k. It maximizes profit and keeps costs to a minimum. Good business.

AussieWog93 5y ago
Congratulations. You've just lost an employee that created a $10m/year system from scratch.
- chasd00 5y ago
  on the other hand, if you lack the foresight to know putting your company in a position to be held ransom by a single employee is a bad idea then you deserve to go out of business.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    You were relying on the output of one person and that person leaving caused you to close that office. You were already in that boat. By your logic having someone 2x as sucessful at sales is risky and you should let that person go.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    True. Seems like the smart thing to do would be to "buy" the software from the employee, pay them a trivial sum in addition to their salary to train 2-3 other people to understand the software back and forwards, inside and out. That way you now have 3 people who can run the software. You made us $10m in repeating annual revenue, here's a one-time $20,000 bonus for your services (and a trophy, sure, why not?) Builds good will, makes people happy, and secures your ownership of a product that has added tremendous value to your company. That's a win all around.
    - csa 5y ago