4 ms·
Trouble Hiring? Create A Cult.
- Nate75Sanders 15y agoAwesome article. The two huge takeaways for me were: 1) Company-provided lunches aren't simply the value of the food -- it's the value of the bonding that can be created among co-workers. If people become friends then work isn't "just a job" anymore. 2) The workcation -- I'm rarely surprised by almost anything I read from startups anymore, and I've grown skeptical of founders as being psychologically manipulative of early hires in many ways, but this is truly a great and non-manipulative idea: Let's all go somewhere else and work some of the time and explore/play some of the time. It's so good because so many people in the US are physically disparate from their families/people they need to visit. Even a fairly solid (by American standards) vacation of 3 weeks turns into a mandatory visiting of divorced parents (separate physical locations). This eats up vacation days like mad. EDIT: drunken rambling
- jwallaceparker 15y agoWow. Great comment. Agree completely.
- JoachimSchipper 15y agoPlease don't post "me too" comments.
- ido 15y ago2) The workcation Do people bring their spouses/children along on these?
- michaeldhopkins 15y agoMy favorite example of the "workcation" is Andyet's month-long stay in a castle, partly because it's not pretending to be much more than an awesome idea: http://andyet.net/blog/2011/mar/3/devcastle/ http://andyet.net/blog/2011/mar/3/devcastle/ http://andyet.net/blog/2011/jul/18/devcastle-the-movie/ http://andyet.net/blog/2011/jul/18/devcastle-the-movie/
- wyclif 15y ago"There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David "Pardo" Keppel If you're having trouble hiring, it's probably because you're not paying enough. It turns out that talented people are worth paying a lot for.
- coryl 15y agoBut isn't there actually a shortage of engineers, based on the lamentations of startup CEOs?
- epicureanideal 15y agoThis doesn't really mean anything. Startups don't necessarily pay better than the corporations, and often pay less from what I'm seeing. And their stock or whatever is risky, so that is only a partial offset.
- potatolicious 15y agoI wouldn't exactly describe the comp packages flying around the Bay Area as "very little money". Honestly, this is Wall Street thinking - the belief that a person's compensation is purely a function of supply vs. demand, completely disconnected from real life. There is a cap to supply and demand - and that's the real monetary value being created by the worker. Nobody sane will pay someone more than they will in turn make for the company. This isn't to say that we've reached this point in SV, but I don't think we're that far off. IMO the supply side constraints are so extreme right now that we're seeing a rapid inflation of comp packages, and rapidly approaching that point where the compensation no longer makes any sense compared to the real value of work generated. One can have a shortage of engineers and high compensation at the same time, if the supply side is sufficiently, and desperately short. I think that's where we are right now.
- john_horton 15y agoBut isn't their ability to make money for the company exactly what determines demand for engineers (or any worker for that matter)?
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- jwallaceparker 15y agoHa ha totally. But seriously. Wow. Great article. This is big.
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