10 ms·

[flagged]

anonu 4y ago
Upvoted because I partly agree with you. And also for the liberal use of wanker throughout. Hiring is really hard. I think when this Netflix thing was written it was a different era.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure Yankee comes from the British trying to insult Americans by calling them wankers. It didn't work out too well :-)
smohare 4y ago
Sounds like you’ve worked for some pretty subpar companies?
lumost 4y ago
Personally, I like your take - however “reasonable pay” generally defaults to “median pay”. A great employee who sticks it out for “median” pay, might be selling themselves short, but this can be made up for with a reasonable boss and team you like working with. Netflix effectively pays the “max pay” for all positions. Naturally, they do not have difficulty hiring with this philosophy - but it comes with the trade off that they either need a rediculous interview gauntlet or performance management process. They do a bit of both from what I understand.
- donthellbanme 4y ago
  Liking the place you spend more time in than your own living room matters. I have stuck with subpar pay because I liked my bosses, and didn't hate comming into work. I have quit high paying jobs, with union representation. (And yes--those bastards will eventually drag us all back. I thought Jamie Diamond's demand that if you want to work here show up to the office. Even Diamond retreated. Might be the only war he ever lost? Then again Diamond might be feeling less immortal? He had his aorta replaced a year ago, and is a survivor of throat cancer. I don't know why I'm writing so much about Diamond. Maybe--because if I had a do-over, I would have gone into finance, and hopefully retire early?)
  - mjamil 4y ago
    Nit: Jamie Dimon (and not Diamond). Less of a nit: You apparently care about liking your workplace. Sample size of 1, but I know of (a) no-one who went into finance who enjoyed their tenure; and (b) plenty of folks that retired early from their tech careers and none from their finance careers. (Most have moved from i-banking to PE or VC, but they’re still slogging away.)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - astrange 4y ago
      Before they pay you a lot in finance, they probably do a better job making sure your expenses grow with it so you can’t retire on them.
  - nuclearnice3 4y ago
    > Might be the only war he ever lost? He was fired from Citigroup in 1998 by Sandy Weil, who he had worked with for 15 years. So there's that.
- thatfrenchguy 4y ago
  Netflix doesn’t pay max pay though, they pay «5-6 year of experience at a FAANG » in cash according to levels.fyi. This does not compensate for the layoff risk in any meaningful way.
  - trunnell 4y ago
    Former Netflix manager here. Netflix frequently competes for L6/L7 talent against Google, Apple, and FB -- and wins. Look at the detail view on levels.fyi and sort by compensation. They pay extremely well for the best talent. But that's not really the point. Your job safety is ultimately about whether other companies would hire you. And if you're good enough to get a role at Netflix, then you can get another job extremely quickly here in the valley. Most top recruiters know that Netflix is very selective. I have yet to see anyone who was let go at Netflix struggle to get another job. They usually get multiple offers, in fact.
    - throwaway_1928 4y ago
      But to have an axe constantly dangling over your head is no way to live. If you are competent, better to choose a more dignified existence along with high pay. And with Netflix stock down 72% in 6 months, the choice becomes even easier.
      - pedrosorio 4y ago
        > But to have an axe constantly dangling over your head is no way to live. If you are competent, better to choose a more dignified existence And yet, you often hear of Google's rest and vest culture and how bored people are in that environment. Some people might prefer an all-around high achiever culture, at certain points in their careers. > And with Netflix stock down 72% in 6 months Given Netflix's compensation structure (all cash) this is irrelevant unless you believe the market valuation indicates the company is doomed in the short term.
        throwaway_1928 4y ago
- hintymad 4y ago
  > Naturally, they do not have difficulty hiring with this philosophy - This is a common conception. Netflix's option plan is extremely generous. Per this link (https://www.teamblind.com/post/Netflix-is-a-truly-great-company-KyCWi7vU https://www.teamblind.com/post/Netflix-is-a-truly-great-comp...), a Netflix employ would lose monly only if its stock price always goes down: "Netflix is generous in giving you options. Its option plan was the best in the world. It allows you to forfeit your salary for options. The options had 5X of discount, and later 2.5 times. The company also gave you for free options that is worth 5% of your total salary. Your options vest every month. And of course, the options will not expire until 10 years later. That is, Netflix does NOT even tries to use delayed vesting schedule to retain you. "
  - hintymad 4y ago
    *misconception
smallerfish 4y ago
> I would never use the term "dream team" like that - what a wanker! A lot of American MBAs are, in fact, wankers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- boringg 4y ago
  Please remove American from that comment and the comment stands.
buggeryorkshire 4y ago
Superb. Totally agree. Think you need to write the next management book for people who can't manage to give them a clue. Good luck to Netflix with their constant recycling of staff, they'll need it.
pedrosorio 4y ago
> The "keeper test" as described is nonsense - you don't pay more to person A to entice person B to enhance your team - that's complete nonsense. Why would you "pay off" person A for being rubbish? To incentivize people to apply and work for you company, given the known higher risk of getting fired?
nullc 4y ago
It's an established practice, off the top of my head I know that amazon and cisco are rank-stackers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Overview
faeriechangling 4y ago
Netflix genuinely did break with orthodoxy on this point and paid more than “reasonable pay” (meaning median pay) and the approach seemed to work with their engineering so competent that a major AWS outage that seemingly took out a quarter of the internet didn’t take down Netflix despite its disproportionately higher needs for cloud infrastructure. I think it certainly made sense for them to do in hindsight as a high growth company, high standards and high pay likely fuelled their growth and expanded their moat. I question if the strategy still makes sense as they seem to be getting eaten alive by spendthrifts like Disney. As an aside, from an employees perspective, I think expecting much out of your employees and giving them high pay is fundamentally respecting them more than giving them “reasonable pay” and shrugging your shoulders and going “eh, I’ll make do with what I have”.
- scarface74 4y ago
  They are getting eaten alive by a content company with better content that had the money to buy their way into technology that was just as good when they acquired BamTech. Disney+ is also hosted on AWS.
  - JonChesterfield 4y ago
    Not just as good. Adequate.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      They own BamTech. The company is well known for being the technology behind MLB live and HBO Max/Live/Go
FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
It's not about paying them off imo, it's about employer brand. They don't to that for them, they do it for the next hires opinions of them. "even if your performance declines, you'll get a nice check before being let go" sounds a lot better to a candidate/employee than "not good enough? just leave. now." it's nonsense to you because you just don't have the budget. For a huge tech company, how much you pay people seems to matters a lot less than who's building the product. It's better to have a few amazing people that you pay way above market, than a bunch of crappy employees that you pay at market level or below.(for their level of "experience")
- d0mine 4y ago
  High churn rate in any dressing leads to stress. Stress often counterproductive for creativity. The expected result of the policy is a mediocre work with a lot of unproductive politicking self-selecting corresponding survivors.
  - trunnell 4y ago
    This is exactly how the opening reads to the book No Rules Rules. Erin Meyer, a business professor, has that exact analysis of what "should" happen in an environment like one Netflix describes. But she interviewed dozens of Netflix employees for the book and found that the theory you state doesn't hold. The book is about figuring out why that is the case.
mikeryan 4y ago
I’ve known quite a few people from Netflix, the dream team analogy does seem to be, at least anecdotally somewhat true. They’re somewhat legendary for competing with the same engineering talent as Google and paying accordingly. 6 figure hiring bonuses are not uncommon. With respect to the “generous severance”, if you’re engineer who’s being recruited by Netflix and know of their “Dream team” culture where they hire slow and fire fast, you’d have to have some concern about joining that team and fearing that you won’t fit in regardless of skill set. The “generous severance” is there to ease that concern and exists as a hiring tool, not a firing one.
- LeanderK 4y ago
  What if the soon to be fired-employee is just currently not able to give 100%? Maybe something in his personal life triggered a depression, maybe a death of a close friend, or he just became a dad and needs to invest a lot of energy in his child? Things happen...and life is not predictable. This philosophy strikes me as cruel. Not everything is your fault, sometimes life is just hard and work, especially for anonymous giga-corp, is not all there is.
  - chii 4y ago
    > What if the soon to be fired-employee is just currently not able to give 100%? A professional sports person (like a soccer or basketball star) would not be able to give this same excuse, so why would it not be the same in an engineering setting? Netflix wants their workplace to be like pro-sports, where elites complete for the best outcome and be rewarded like so. If you choose to apply for employment at netflix, this is what you're signing up for. There are other positions in other companies, if such an environment is not conducive to your own lifestyle - noone is forcing this onto you. The natural condition of humanity is cruel, and society and civilization hasn't proceeded to the stage where such cruelty don't exist. But right now, there's still at least choice and options for those who don't want to compete this way (with the associated decrease in salary).
    - mLuby 4y ago
      > civilization hasn't proceeded to the stage where such cruelty don't exist. It has in Europe.
trunnell 4y ago
I can't make sense of your comment. > you don't pay more to person A to entice person B to enhance your team That has nothing to do with the "dream team" idea. It's a metaphor referring to the 1992 USA Olympics basketball team [1] that included: Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Charles Barkley ... and a few other of the most famous all-star basketball players. The coach was the famous Mike Krzyzewski of Duke. This was made possible by a rule change that allowed professional basketball players to play for the first time in the Olympics. This team went to win the gold medal. The closest score in the eight olympic matches was 117-85. In other words, the "dream team" utterly dominated. Netflix does not try to make do with what they have. They try to assemble a "dream team" for each thing they do. I saw Netflix be pretty successful at it while I was there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_men%27s_Olympic_basketball_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_men%27s_Oly...
- gmichnikov 4y ago
  Mentioning Ewing but not Larry Legend... Ouch. Also Chuck Daly was the coach.
  - sanjosethrow7f2 4y ago
- throwaway_1928 4y ago
  And now the time has come for the Netflix dream team. Stock down 72% in 6 months.
  - alchemyromcom 4y ago
    You know it's kind of funny, because many former Olympic dream teams have famously fallen short from time to time. The most noteworthy is the American basketball team losing early rounds to smaller countries, but also Canadian Hockey "dream teams" being knocked out of early rounds too. Every so often there are upsets, even if you do have a "dream team". https://lebronwire.usatoday.com/lists/team-usa-basketball-every-shocking-loss-since-the-dream-team-era/ https://lebronwire.usatoday.com/lists/team-usa-basketball-ev...
imgabe 4y ago
You can have a nice, pleasant life with a rule like "don't be a wanker". You'll have friends and probably a happy family. People will like you. People always like people who are non-threatening and don't make them feel insecure by being really good at something. What you cannot do is compete in the highest level at any field while caring about things like "will people think I'm a wanker?". If you are succeeding spectacularly at anything, there are guaranteed to be thousands, if not millions, of people who think you're a wanker. Look at people at the top of anything and look at what people say about them.
- vaidhy 4y ago
  I do not seem to hear a lot of bad press about Jessie Owens, Mohamed Ali, Usain Bolt, a lot of my fav. cricketers and lot of sports people. Narayan Murthy (founder of Infosys), Ratan Tata (chairman of Tata group), Abdul Kalam (late president of India), MLK Jr. are all examples of how you can be caring and successful. Can you point out why succeeding spectacularly needs someone to be an asshole? Is it a US specific thing?
  - imgabe 4y ago
    I don’t know all of them. Mohammad Ali was incredibly controversial in his time for converting to Islam and refusing to fight in Vietnam. A lot of people then would have called him an asshole. Sure, after you’re dead people will look back and think you were great, but while you’re in the process in any competitive endeavor you necessarily are not going to be liked by the people you’re competing against, especially if you’re winning. Take the late president of India. Did every single person in India vote for him? Did everyone agree with everything he proposed? He had no opposition? I know absolutely nothing about Indian politics, but I bet there were people who didn’t like him while he was in office. “I better be nice and not do anything that anyone might object to” is not an attitude that leads to success. And MLK, really???? You think nobody thought he was an asshole? You know they murdered him right? Do you think the people who killed him said he was a great guy?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I don’t think Ali was well liked by most Americans when he condemned the draft and said “No VietCong ever called me a N#^++&”
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
hintymad 4y ago
> What a load of wank. No one who has owned a company for more than five minutes would say that load of bollocks with a straight face. Why? The founder of LinkedIn also says in his book Alliance that employees and their companies are not families. Instead, they form alliance. They work toward the same goal if they can be aligned, or they part ways. Netflix said a company is like a sports team. Similar idea, and Netflix is upfront about it. This is much better than the family utopia that companies like to promise but can never deliver.
chrisseaton 4y ago
> You do your best with what you have. I don't understand your thinking - why do your best with what you have rather than trying to find better?
dang 4y ago
It is an embarrassing bit of corpspeak, to be sure, but can you please not fulminate on HN? It makes conversations less insightful and more predictable, which is why there's a site guideline against it. You can make your substantive points without that; please do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gerdesj 4y ago
  Message received.

[flagged]

Upvoted because I partly agree with you. And also for the liberal use of wanker throughout. Hiring is really hard. I think when this Netflix thing was written it was a different era.

WalterBright 4y ago
I'm pretty sure Yankee comes from the British trying to insult Americans by calling them wankers. It didn't work out too well :-)

smohare 4y ago

Sounds like you’ve worked for some pretty subpar companies?

lumost 4y ago

Personally, I like your take - however “reasonable pay” generally defaults to “median pay”. A great employee who sticks it out for “median” pay, might be selling themselves short, but this can be made up for with a reasonable boss and team you like working with. Netflix effectively pays the “max pay” for all positions. Naturally, they do not have difficulty hiring with this philosophy - but it comes with the trade off that they either need a rediculous interview gauntlet or performance management process. They do a bit of both from what I understand.

donthellbanme 4y ago
Liking the place you spend more time in than your own living room matters. I have stuck with subpar pay because I liked my bosses, and didn't hate comming into work. I have quit high paying jobs, with union representation. (And yes--those bastards will eventually drag us all back. I thought Jamie Diamond's demand that if you want to work here show up to the office. Even Diamond retreated. Might be the only war he ever lost? Then again Diamond might be feeling less immortal? He had his aorta replaced a year ago, and is a survivor of throat cancer. I don't know why I'm writing so much about Diamond. Maybe--because if I had a do-over, I would have gone into finance, and hopefully retire early?)
- mjamil 4y ago
  Nit: Jamie Dimon (and not Diamond). Less of a nit: You apparently care about liking your workplace. Sample size of 1, but I know of (a) no-one who went into finance who enjoyed their tenure; and (b) plenty of folks that retired early from their tech careers and none from their finance careers. (Most have moved from i-banking to PE or VC, but they’re still slogging away.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrange 4y ago
    Before they pay you a lot in finance, they probably do a better job making sure your expenses grow with it so you can’t retire on them.
- nuclearnice3 4y ago
  > Might be the only war he ever lost? He was fired from Citigroup in 1998 by Sandy Weil, who he had worked with for 15 years. So there's that.
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
Netflix doesn’t pay max pay though, they pay «5-6 year of experience at a FAANG » in cash according to levels.fyi. This does not compensate for the layoff risk in any meaningful way.
- trunnell 4y ago
  Former Netflix manager here. Netflix frequently competes for L6/L7 talent against Google, Apple, and FB -- and wins. Look at the detail view on levels.fyi and sort by compensation. They pay extremely well for the best talent. But that's not really the point. Your job safety is ultimately about whether other companies would hire you. And if you're good enough to get a role at Netflix, then you can get another job extremely quickly here in the valley. Most top recruiters know that Netflix is very selective. I have yet to see anyone who was let go at Netflix struggle to get another job. They usually get multiple offers, in fact.
  - throwaway_1928 4y ago
    But to have an axe constantly dangling over your head is no way to live. If you are competent, better to choose a more dignified existence along with high pay. And with Netflix stock down 72% in 6 months, the choice becomes even easier.
    - pedrosorio 4y ago
      > But to have an axe constantly dangling over your head is no way to live. If you are competent, better to choose a more dignified existence And yet, you often hear of Google's rest and vest culture and how bored people are in that environment. Some people might prefer an all-around high achiever culture, at certain points in their careers. > And with Netflix stock down 72% in 6 months Given Netflix's compensation structure (all cash) this is irrelevant unless you believe the market valuation indicates the company is doomed in the short term.
      - throwaway_1928 4y ago
hintymad 4y ago
> Naturally, they do not have difficulty hiring with this philosophy - This is a common conception. Netflix's option plan is extremely generous. Per this link (https://www.teamblind.com/post/Netflix-is-a-truly-great-company-KyCWi7vU https://www.teamblind.com/post/Netflix-is-a-truly-great-comp...), a Netflix employ would lose monly only if its stock price always goes down: "Netflix is generous in giving you options. Its option plan was the best in the world. It allows you to forfeit your salary for options. The options had 5X of discount, and later 2.5 times. The company also gave you for free options that is worth 5% of your total salary. Your options vest every month. And of course, the options will not expire until 10 years later. That is, Netflix does NOT even tries to use delayed vesting schedule to retain you. "
- hintymad 4y ago
  *misconception

smallerfish 4y ago

> I would never use the term "dream team" like that - what a wanker! A lot of American MBAs are, in fact, wankers.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
boringg 4y ago
Please remove American from that comment and the comment stands.

buggeryorkshire 4y ago

Superb. Totally agree. Think you need to write the next management book for people who can't manage to give them a clue. Good luck to Netflix with their constant recycling of staff, they'll need it.

pedrosorio 4y ago

> The "keeper test" as described is nonsense - you don't pay more to person A to entice person B to enhance your team - that's complete nonsense. Why would you "pay off" person A for being rubbish? To incentivize people to apply and work for you company, given the known higher risk of getting fired?

nullc 4y ago

It's an established practice, off the top of my head I know that amazon and cisco are rank-stackers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Overview

faeriechangling 4y ago

Netflix genuinely did break with orthodoxy on this point and paid more than “reasonable pay” (meaning median pay) and the approach seemed to work with their engineering so competent that a major AWS outage that seemingly took out a quarter of the internet didn’t take down Netflix despite its disproportionately higher needs for cloud infrastructure. I think it certainly made sense for them to do in hindsight as a high growth company, high standards and high pay likely fuelled their growth and expanded their moat. I question if the strategy still makes sense as they seem to be getting eaten alive by spendthrifts like Disney. As an aside, from an employees perspective, I think expecting much out of your employees and giving them high pay is fundamentally respecting them more than giving them “reasonable pay” and shrugging your shoulders and going “eh, I’ll make do with what I have”.

scarface74 4y ago
They are getting eaten alive by a content company with better content that had the money to buy their way into technology that was just as good when they acquired BamTech. Disney+ is also hosted on AWS.
- JonChesterfield 4y ago
  Not just as good. Adequate.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    They own BamTech. The company is well known for being the technology behind MLB live and HBO Max/Live/Go

FrenchDevRemote 4y ago

It's not about paying them off imo, it's about employer brand. They don't to that for them, they do it for the next hires opinions of them. "even if your performance declines, you'll get a nice check before being let go" sounds a lot better to a candidate/employee than "not good enough? just leave. now." it's nonsense to you because you just don't have the budget. For a huge tech company, how much you pay people seems to matters a lot less than who's building the product. It's better to have a few amazing people that you pay way above market, than a bunch of crappy employees that you pay at market level or below.(for their level of "experience")

d0mine 4y ago
High churn rate in any dressing leads to stress. Stress often counterproductive for creativity. The expected result of the policy is a mediocre work with a lot of unproductive politicking self-selecting corresponding survivors.
- trunnell 4y ago
  This is exactly how the opening reads to the book No Rules Rules. Erin Meyer, a business professor, has that exact analysis of what "should" happen in an environment like one Netflix describes. But she interviewed dozens of Netflix employees for the book and found that the theory you state doesn't hold. The book is about figuring out why that is the case.

mikeryan 4y ago

I’ve known quite a few people from Netflix, the dream team analogy does seem to be, at least anecdotally somewhat true. They’re somewhat legendary for competing with the same engineering talent as Google and paying accordingly. 6 figure hiring bonuses are not uncommon. With respect to the “generous severance”, if you’re engineer who’s being recruited by Netflix and know of their “Dream team” culture where they hire slow and fire fast, you’d have to have some concern about joining that team and fearing that you won’t fit in regardless of skill set. The “generous severance” is there to ease that concern and exists as a hiring tool, not a firing one.

LeanderK 4y ago
What if the soon to be fired-employee is just currently not able to give 100%? Maybe something in his personal life triggered a depression, maybe a death of a close friend, or he just became a dad and needs to invest a lot of energy in his child? Things happen...and life is not predictable. This philosophy strikes me as cruel. Not everything is your fault, sometimes life is just hard and work, especially for anonymous giga-corp, is not all there is.
- chii 4y ago
  > What if the soon to be fired-employee is just currently not able to give 100%? A professional sports person (like a soccer or basketball star) would not be able to give this same excuse, so why would it not be the same in an engineering setting? Netflix wants their workplace to be like pro-sports, where elites complete for the best outcome and be rewarded like so. If you choose to apply for employment at netflix, this is what you're signing up for. There are other positions in other companies, if such an environment is not conducive to your own lifestyle - noone is forcing this onto you. The natural condition of humanity is cruel, and society and civilization hasn't proceeded to the stage where such cruelty don't exist. But right now, there's still at least choice and options for those who don't want to compete this way (with the associated decrease in salary).
  - mLuby 4y ago
    > civilization hasn't proceeded to the stage where such cruelty don't exist. It has in Europe.

trunnell 4y ago

I can't make sense of your comment. > you don't pay more to person A to entice person B to enhance your team That has nothing to do with the "dream team" idea. It's a metaphor referring to the 1992 USA Olympics basketball team [1] that included: Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Charles Barkley ... and a few other of the most famous all-star basketball players. The coach was the famous Mike Krzyzewski of Duke. This was made possible by a rule change that allowed professional basketball players to play for the first time in the Olympics. This team went to win the gold medal. The closest score in the eight olympic matches was 117-85. In other words, the "dream team" utterly dominated. Netflix does not try to make do with what they have. They try to assemble a "dream team" for each thing they do. I saw Netflix be pretty successful at it while I was there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_men%27s_Olympic_basketball_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_men%27s_Oly...

gmichnikov 4y ago
Mentioning Ewing but not Larry Legend... Ouch. Also Chuck Daly was the coach.
- sanjosethrow7f2 4y ago
throwaway_1928 4y ago
And now the time has come for the Netflix dream team. Stock down 72% in 6 months.
- alchemyromcom 4y ago
  You know it's kind of funny, because many former Olympic dream teams have famously fallen short from time to time. The most noteworthy is the American basketball team losing early rounds to smaller countries, but also Canadian Hockey "dream teams" being knocked out of early rounds too. Every so often there are upsets, even if you do have a "dream team". https://lebronwire.usatoday.com/lists/team-usa-basketball-every-shocking-loss-since-the-dream-team-era/ https://lebronwire.usatoday.com/lists/team-usa-basketball-ev...

imgabe 4y ago

You can have a nice, pleasant life with a rule like "don't be a wanker". You'll have friends and probably a happy family. People will like you. People always like people who are non-threatening and don't make them feel insecure by being really good at something. What you cannot do is compete in the highest level at any field while caring about things like "will people think I'm a wanker?". If you are succeeding spectacularly at anything, there are guaranteed to be thousands, if not millions, of people who think you're a wanker. Look at people at the top of anything and look at what people say about them.

vaidhy 4y ago
I do not seem to hear a lot of bad press about Jessie Owens, Mohamed Ali, Usain Bolt, a lot of my fav. cricketers and lot of sports people. Narayan Murthy (founder of Infosys), Ratan Tata (chairman of Tata group), Abdul Kalam (late president of India), MLK Jr. are all examples of how you can be caring and successful. Can you point out why succeeding spectacularly needs someone to be an asshole? Is it a US specific thing?
- imgabe 4y ago
  I don’t know all of them. Mohammad Ali was incredibly controversial in his time for converting to Islam and refusing to fight in Vietnam. A lot of people then would have called him an asshole. Sure, after you’re dead people will look back and think you were great, but while you’re in the process in any competitive endeavor you necessarily are not going to be liked by the people you’re competing against, especially if you’re winning. Take the late president of India. Did every single person in India vote for him? Did everyone agree with everything he proposed? He had no opposition? I know absolutely nothing about Indian politics, but I bet there were people who didn’t like him while he was in office. “I better be nice and not do anything that anyone might object to” is not an attitude that leads to success. And MLK, really???? You think nobody thought he was an asshole? You know they murdered him right? Do you think the people who killed him said he was a great guy?
- scarface74 4y ago
  I don’t think Ali was well liked by most Americans when he condemned the draft and said “No VietCong ever called me a N#^++&”

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

hintymad 4y ago

> What a load of wank. No one who has owned a company for more than five minutes would say that load of bollocks with a straight face. Why? The founder of LinkedIn also says in his book Alliance that employees and their companies are not families. Instead, they form alliance. They work toward the same goal if they can be aligned, or they part ways. Netflix said a company is like a sports team. Similar idea, and Netflix is upfront about it. This is much better than the family utopia that companies like to promise but can never deliver.

chrisseaton 4y ago

> You do your best with what you have. I don't understand your thinking - why do your best with what you have rather than trying to find better?

dang 4y ago

It is an embarrassing bit of corpspeak, to be sure, but can you please not fulminate on HN? It makes conversations less insightful and more predictable, which is why there's a site guideline against it. You can make your substantive points without that; please do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

gerdesj 4y ago
Message received.