15 ms·

Giving a shit as a service

603 points by pimterry 4y ago

jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
My newest startup idea is to devise a continuous series of tests meant to gauge how much of a shit interview candidates and companies give a shit. It is like leetcode meets tinder meets GaSaaS.
- _tom_ 4y ago
  The problem with testing, is the people who optimize for testing guaranteed do not give a shit about the actual work.
  - jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
    I think I agree, you are saying that the people who devise the hazing leetcode interview process don't care about the actual day to day work at the company?
NoGravitas 4y ago
Ah, but you see, giving a shit doesn't scale. It's certainly not web-scale, anyway.
btbuildem 4y ago
Giving a shit doesn't scale. In a society obsessed with growth, it's not a sustainable thing. Draw what conclusions you will. I would gladly give up this incessant "growth" for quality.
- mooreds 4y ago
  I've often thought one of the reasons I'm drawn to software is it feels like there is, at the same time: * great pay (relative to other jobs) * good working conditions (sitting at a desk) * low barrier to entry (no credentialing) * the ability to be a craftsman (or craftsperson, I suppose) I'm trying to think of other jobs that allow you to hone your craft in modern industrial society while fulfilling the other criteria and can't think of any.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - datavirtue 4y ago
    Sitting at a desk is not a good thing. At all. If you're you are under 40 I urge you to get away from the desk ASAP.
    - mooreds 4y ago
      Personally, I like to stand at my desk. But as far as comfort, I've done manual labor (farm work, trail work) in the past. I would choose sitting at a desk in AC with bodily autonomy (to go to the restroom or take a walk when I want) over such manual labor. All. Day. Long. :) But you're correct, humans should move.
- amichal 4y ago
  I thought we were supposed to to be doing things that don’t scale[1]. I know that is why I like doing what it do. [1] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
- luxuryballs 4y ago
  Check out the chik-fil-a franchise model.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > Giving a shit doesn't scale. In a society obsessed with growth, it's not a sustainable thing. GaS comes in many forms, and can scale without issue for forms that fall within (for example) product design and development processes. I think we can agree that some companies do this better than others. Improved shit-giving at this stage actually gets cheaper per customer with scale. Per-unit/per-customer forms of GAS can scale as well, but not for free. For example, Google and YouTube could vastly improve customer/creator support, but explicitly chooses not to because they believe there's no GaS ROI there.
- jlynn 4y ago
  The phrase "giving a shit doesn't scale" makes as much sense to me as "honesty doesn't scale." It's not a question of scaling it out, its just a question of how you operate. Do you care? Are you honest? Do you have integrity? You should be able to do these things at any scale.
  - awillen 4y ago
    That's not necessarily true - you can be honest and not give a shit. Take OP's example of buying a table - the company they worked with really spent a lot of time understanding their needs and making something custom for them. An alternative would be to go to IKEA and buy a table. IKEA does not give a shit in the same way and will not spend a great deal of time learning about you and what you're going to use your table for to ensure you get something perfect. There's absolutely nothing dishonest about that. It's not even to say that they don't care about the quality of their products. It just means they're not going to go the extra mile. Of course, it also means you're going to get a table for probably an order of magnitude less money. That's a perfectly reasonable tradeoff, and it's a good thing both types of businesses exist.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  Society is not obsessed with growth. The top x% of the wealthy are.
  - Juliate 4y ago
    It's not the top % of the wealthy. They're fine and structurally fine, unless they screw it up. It's both 1) a fraction of some of those a few order of magnitude lower who WANT to get to the top, and 2) those who believe only growth can sustain the "world" system (and they are not necessarily wrong, only it's become critical to redefine growth in a radical different way, or we'll all burn).
- MattGaiser 4y ago
  As a user you might. Would you as an investor/entrepreneur?
- Twisell 4y ago
  A company you might have heard of literally survived and scaled thank to the process of giving a shit impulsed by a CEO they re-hired while the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. It was Apple. Giving a shit does scale and it's precisely when apple stop giving shit (keyboard, pro) that they enter the danger zone for theirs reputation.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  Yeah, until the very moment our economic growth doesn't outpace population growth. Perhaps our demands are the source of the pressure?
prepend 4y ago
I now think all conference room tables should be superellipses. It’s much more usable space.
giarc 4y ago
When selling my last house, I invited 3-4 local realtors for appointments. 3 showed up with some printed comps and gave me a general idea of list price right then. The last showed up, walked through the house, asked about upgrades I had made etc etc then said "Let's meet again in a few days when I've had a chance to accurately price your place." He got the sale.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  And now I see several "app" companies are trying to push realtors out of their business entirely by using "algorithms" for private equity to buy up any and all housing. And I guaran-damn-tee they don't give a shit.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Good, realtors are awful. Those companies have already failed though (Zillow is practically about to go out of business because they failed so hard), probably can never succeed because of the adverse selection effect, and "investors are buying all the housing" is a myth propagated by NIMBYs.
    - felizuno 4y ago
      Zillow is totally fine financially. Yeah they lost $10b which is bad news but they didn't bet the farm, and as they continue to invest r&d in renter/landlord oriented services they should be fine. It's the Expedia of houses, and people have to live somewhere. Can you put forward any proof at all that they are even struggling, let alone "about to go out of business"?
    - wyre 4y ago
      > "investors are buying all the housing" is a myth propagated by NIMBYs. Is it? https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2021/ https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2021/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/housing-market-investors/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/hou...
bob1029 4y ago
So far the consensus seems to be that GaSaaS doesn't scale. I would like to protest this sentiment. With technology, you can empower non-wizards to give substantially more of a shit than they otherwise would be able to. The danger lies in the specific nature of those technological implementations and the engagement models applied to their usage. Today, our models look something like "fuck your dopamine loop as hard and fast as possible without any subsequent regard for anything at all"
hahaitsfunny 4y ago
teucris 4y ago
You pay premium to get the GaS package. Most people think that’s because you’re paying them to care, but that’s not it at all. You cannot pay someone to care. You’re paying for the rare access to people who get genuine satisfaction of doing something well. The fact that it is a precious commodity saddens me. I think a lack of decent financial security keeps people from G’ing an S.
- MattGaiser 4y ago
  Also, people caring that you give a shit also requires competence. If you try and fail, you won’t be recognized.
msencenb 4y ago
Everyone saying it doesn't scale is missing the point. Scaling is a winner-take-all, venture capital mindset. The article is about service businesses, which do not need to hit web scale! We are talking about services here not your web startup. Even beyond services, giving a shit and building saas is not impossible. In fact, I wish more tech companies started small and stayed small. I absolutely want to run a digital small business and I want to give a shit, it makes the building feel purposeful instead of this product-led growth at all costs bullshit. I hope we see a software middle class grow in the next decade. Middle class tech companies are going to be coming from the bootstrapper + founder focused funds (TinySeed / Calm) and they are going to have a distinct advantage if they understand their strategy/context in their chosen verticals.
- mooreds 4y ago
  > The article is about service businesses, which do not need to hit web scale! There are many small consultancies that are humming along, making high six figures to low seven figures a year in income, with good paying jobs and work/life balance. It can be a bit of a grind for the owners (who assume a lot of risk and have to land clients) and there are some ups and downs due to the realities of consulting (okay, just lost a big client, time to tighten the belt), but I've seen this work a number of times. Having a recurring source of income (productized service, hosting) can really help. The main thing these companies do is "be excellent", aka give a shit.
  - dendrite9 4y ago
    I'm curious about how to get involved in these types of companies. They don't seem lie the easiest thing to search for, but that might just be that I don't have the exposure to know where to look.
- deleted 4y ago
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- dsaavy 4y ago
  There are a lot of people who already do this. Take a look at the MicroConf community started by Rob Walling. The middle class is growing in software, you just won't read about it (usually) on most of the social media platforms or news outlets because it's usually not a flashy story.
seanhunter 4y ago
One of the interesting aspects of giving a shit is that it will lead sometimes to you doing things which are not in your short-term selfish narrowly-defined "best interest" but because you give a shit you'll do it anyway. Some of these lead to long-term value that is very significant but you can't know at the time. I was once asked by a client (bank) to take a call with one of _their_ clients (a pretty important hedge fund). I did this as a courtesy even though I thought our product wasn't appropriate for the hedge fund. Anyhow I get on the call and it's the COO, the Chief Investment Officer, the CTO and a couple of other _very_ important people at this big fund. (ie a much more senior call than I really expected). Anyway, because I give a shit, I told them our product wouldn't really be right for them and explained why. They thanked me and I heard nothing more of it. Until a couple of years later where I offered a job out of the blue because one of the people on the call had been impressed by how I had dealt with it, and by pure coincidence his partner was a recruiter who was tasked with headhunting for a CTO role and he said "hey you should check this guy out".
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
  You were lucky in this instance, but is optimising for this lottery the best use of time and effort?
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    If this was the only time in their life they'd be implicitly taking this gamble, sure, that's a reasonable question. But if you behave "impressively" in a consistent fashion, things like this are more likely to happen.
  - _tom_ 4y ago
    Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times.
    - phkahler 4y ago
      >> Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times. I have never been one to deliberately "build my network" and even I have had several beneficial things come about via my network.
corrral 4y ago
Tangential, but IMO the super-power rich people have at achieving personal goals (this principle also applies to business goals, but let's set that aside) is largely due to being able to pay (to them) pocket change to make others do their giving-a-shit for them. How many shits do you have to give to stay fit as a poor person? Lots. Many shits must be given. You must be a shit-giving machine. 100% of shits given toward your goal must come from you. How many shits do you have to give to stay fit as a rich person? Let's see... you're paying an amount of money that's meaningless to you to have someone else give a shit about your meals, both making sure that your diet is healthy and balanced and that it's tasty and appealing to minimize the shit-giving you need to stick with it... and someone else give a shit about your work-outs... and someone else to give a shit about your schedule to make sure that stuff fits in... gee, look at that, you hardly have to give any shits at all, personally!
- nicbou 4y ago
  I feel you. There's so much shit-giving when you're poor. You can't afford to outsource maintenance. You must figure it all out yourself: car maintenance, appliance repair, taxes etc. There's always something you've gotta figure out. With a bit of money, you make a phone call and someone else is liable for any trouble that might arise.
  - corrral 4y ago
    That's part of why I think the benefits of the US moving to some kind of single-payer or similar healthcare system would be much larger than they look based on a naïve cost calculation—our healthcare system consumes a ton of largely uncompensated giving-a-shit from a very large proportion of our society (basically everyone who's not very rich). I have to think that's harming other activities (including health itself, since, as covered, eating well and exercising requires a pretty large amount of giving-a-shit) some of which might provide direct benefits to measures like GDP, if some of that time and giving-a-shit were recovered for other purposes.
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unbalancedevh 4y ago
This concept is also relevant when applying for a job. At one of my previous jobs, I asked my boss what about the interview convinced him to give me an offer. He said it was because I asked so many questions, and he hardly had a chance to ask any that he'd prepared.
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c0l0 4y ago
This - the people involved actually giving a shit - is exactly why FOSS projects' volunteer support (on IRC, for example) regularly trumps the crud experience you get from huge, established, and deep-pocketed vendors of alternative products that are astonishingly expensive. Ironically, often the most extreme in the "support" contract department.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
Some fancy words, for where "shitgiving" doesn't quite fit: Meta-cognition. Mentalisation. Intersubjectivity. When a sentient being picks up the (apparent) communications of another being, instead of taking these 'noises' on face value as signals requiring action/process, they perceive another. Another being, like them, with thoughts and feelings, that they "hold in mind". These are first steps towards empathy/sympathy. The distancing function of technology is very efficient at suppressing this. What we do in a purely protocol/process based world made only of responses, targets, KPIs is forget meta-cognition. It's not that people are being "evil" [1] but that quality frameworks based only on measuring things don't accommodate it. [1] Cold Evil: Technology and Modern Ethics - Andrew Kimbrell
- infp_arborist 4y ago
  That's a fascinating article (from 02000!) you have shared. Well worth a separate HN submission.
drdunce 4y ago
I wish there was a job board that showed only jobs worthy of giving a shit
- teucris 4y ago
  https://www.idealist.org https://www.idealist.org?
megraf 4y ago
It's a real great message, yes, they gave a shit. They gave a shit because the author likely paid >10,000 CAD. Yes, ten thousand Canadian dollars. Or $7692 USD. This is significant to me because I feel like for a table (conference room or not!) anyone asking for that type of price point _should_ give a shit. I'm all for nice furniture (in fact, I've built some) – but I'd say some of the cape-wearing folks who really care are often doing so behind the scenes, or, if you're lucky: in a position at a company (or their own company) who really has pride in what they're doing. I think the author found a company who gives a shit, but I'd also like to point to other makers who give a shit without the five-figure price point. Here's a small list: - https://woodgears.ca https://woodgears.ca (you will be making these items yourself! Plans are ~15 USD) - Dave Moore (https://www.youtube.com/user/dpmbn8 https://www.youtube.com/user/dpmbn8) – That one support agent who didn't give up :)
gumby 4y ago
We don't put our values on our web site but we do talk about them internally a lot and I have them listed on a small piece of paper glued to my laptop next to the trackpad. #1 is "Integrity". You cannot convince anyone you have integrity by telling them anything, they can only come to believe it by seeing how you act over time. And if we don't have integrity what does it matter what the other values are?
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  >And if we don't have integrity what does it matter what the other values are? Bang on. And good luck, It can be a rough road.
CoolGuySteve 4y ago
While it's important to give a shit when dealing with customers, I wonder how useful "giving a shit" is when it comes to things like picking a conference table. Was that really the best use of this CEOs time? Is the company that much better off because of their fancy table? This adventure seems incredibly decadent and pointless to me. It's just a fucking table, focus on what matters.
- dhagz 4y ago
  That was the whole point of the article - the process of <dealing with thing> was delightful because <thing needer> dealt with a <thing provider> that gave a shit.
  - CoolGuySteve 4y ago
    Yeah I know but in this case whether or not <dealing with thing> is delightful is undermined by the consideration that giving a shit about <thing> in the first place seems counterproductive for <thing needer>. Clearly there needs to be shit giving limits for both counterparties regardless of <thing>.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  I'm trying to understand your post. It seems like you're suggesting that picking out a table isn't that important, but my understanding of the post was that the person selling the table should give a shit, not the person buying the table. In which case I think it depends on if you're selling a commodity or a luxury. If you're selling a commodity focusing on one individual sale may not matter that much, you need to scale. If you're selling a luxury, it may very well be in the CEO's best interest to help sell an $8000 table to a company that is in the habit of buying $8000 tables.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  > It's just a fucking table, focus on what matters. Lol, it's the nerd equivalent of penny wise, pond foolish.
sheepybloke 4y ago
People are arguing that GaS doesn't scale, but for larger companies, you have to GaS. Take Amazon's easy and quick return policy. They GaS for this interaction, making it a huge reason why you'd want to buy from Amazon. On the other hand, take Google's different services. Because they didn't GaS about the longevity of their services, they now have a graveyard of different services they killed and a lot of people who won't invest in the Google ecosystem because of it. Other examples of not GaS: Shopify support, Google support, Amazon and warehouse workers. TLDR: You have to GaS as you scale because otherwise people will start discounting you or your product as not trustworthy or worth the frustration.
yboris 4y ago
Reminds me of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work - where the author repairs broken motorcycles, and sometimes ends up spending more time than expected (without charging extra to the client) because he cared. A lovely book that is worth a read. https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467 https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp...
civilized 4y ago
Providing a service that's actually a service... as a service.
jfengel 4y ago
Are you saying I can outsource my shit-giving activities? Sign me up. I've been unable to give a shit for quite some time. I wish I could give a shit, but the world has become a pretty ugly place, in large part because of deliberate attempts to demoralize those who give a shit. You see it all over the place on social media. People do a weak-ass form of shit-giving in the form of "raising awareness", the least conceivable level of effort for something you wish you could give a shit about, but don't actually give a shit. Of course even if somebody tried to GaSaaS, the space would promptly fill with people giving as few shits as possible for as much money as possible. Too many major charities do that: they'll take your money and spend it mostly on advertising for other people to give their money, too, and very little on the things you'd expect if they actually gave a shit. I know TFA is more about the business sense of giving a shit, but I'd love to see somebody able to give a shit in a larger sense. Unfortunately, I can't give a shit because it seems nobody gives a shit any more -- except the people who are passionately devoted to making sure other people feel miserable instead.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  IMNTBHO, it started with Google. They pioneered the idea of embedding themselves DEEPLY into our lives (email!), while absolutely not giving any shits about it at all. There NEVER was a number to call if something went wrong. Can't get your POP or IMAP settings right? Fuck you! You lost your password? Fuck you! Someone stole your account? Fuck you! There's no recourse for any problem unless you're important enough to raise a stink about it on a social media platform. Then EVERYONE saw that their businesses were no longer constrained by having to give a shit any more, and it's just been all downhill ever since.
  - drekipus 4y ago
    I think Microsoft with their entire OS, but yes you're right
    - m_mueller 4y ago
      at least they have a number to call. it may not help you much - 'did you try signing off and then signing on again' - but it's something.
10x-dev 4y ago
This is my biggest issue with working at FAANG (been at 2). Lots of people just don't give a shit. To paraphrase the Silicon Valley show: "you got your RSUs now fuck off for 4 years". I can't fault people for making the best financial decision for them, but for crying out loud, give a shit about the code. Write the unit test. Write the docs to explain the architecture. Refactor the code while you're editing that file. Think about class and method names. Give a shit.
- ThalesX 4y ago
  I've been working with startups for awhile and I never got the chance to give a shit. Not even when I was CTO. So many external pressures, deadlines, hacky releases to demo to whatever investors. Responding to A | B testing. Firefighting. And the list can go on. The only time in my life I had the possibility to give a shit was when I was working for shit money contracting for the government. I've never been in that situation again where I could spend as much time as I needed until I delivered to the quality I desired. Architecture diagrams, properly planned executions, testing etc etc. Much slower moving than startups but I trust the systems I wrote to continue saving lifes as they have done until now. Most of the code I delivered for startups, I don't even trust at release, what can I say about decades down the line...
- amzn-throw 4y ago
  For what it's worth, working at Amazon for a bunch of years now, this is the highest percentage of people that truly Give A Shit, I've ever encountered. I know it's not universal but in the parts I've worked in, it's intoxicating.
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- int_19h 4y ago
  Being one of the few people who give a shit in the middle of a corporate culture that, as a whole, does not, is a very good recipe for fast burnout.
s1k3s 4y ago
Nice anecdote. Never applies in practice, but it's good to dream about it.
duxup 4y ago
I remember my first "real" job was at a company in a niche market who had a couple competitors. We were told often by sales and the executives that they were often told that despite our product being more expensive they bought our equipment because: "When we call your tech support guys you answer, and your support team seems to actually care about fixing the problem in a way that it doesn't happen again." That tech support team would stay together as a team through a couple acquisitions (and being acquired) for nearly 20 years (of my time at least) supporting new products and so on, until finally as always happens with tech support they were eventually devalued by the company enough that one final sale of the company happened and everyone was laid off. Years later I met up with some of the product engineers (who survived the last acquisition) told me "We still talk about how that team did it the right way. The team we have now is three times as big and handles fewer tickets and is horrible at their job." I always thought that team should have been sold as a group to someone who cared but really nobody values good tech support teams ... not for long. Now I work at a small software shop where we just keep picking up customers based on word of mouth ... because someone told them "these guys can deliver and care".
- aliqot 4y ago
  This is great, I look for companies like these locally. When covid started, a lot of people in my community were out of work, or experiencing a drop in customer patronage. I decided to help these businesses best, I should make a contract with myself to always look for someone in my friend group who produces or services something first, then the wider local community, then the state, and so on. Much to my surprise I've only had to go to Amazon once, for an obscure component that isn't known to be produced in my locality. Through this, I've ended up with a lot of ancillary benefits and connections. The interaction is so much more pleasant this way, I don't think I'll go back. They're delivering a consisting product or service, and I'm predictable as a customer as a result. Here's an example: when I walk into the meat shop, they know I'm going to be there, so when something unique or special comes in, they have something set aside that they knew I'd want. They always have a recipe too or something they made to share. To me, that's service. You don't have to be my best man or fishing buddy, you just have to acknowledge the reciprocal relationship we have.
mikkergp 4y ago
It makes me think about the research[1] that suggests people pick their doctors based on empathy over competence, but it's really hard to evaluate competence if you don't think the person is listening to you. Maybe you can see by some objective measure if they rate highly, but if the communication is bad, how can you be sure if what you are buying is what they are selling, even if what they're selling is the best ev4r. [1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_empathic_doctors_seen_as_more_competent https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_empathic_d...
- infp_arborist 4y ago
  Yes, professional competence and empathy can be trained. But what enables honesty, integrity, authenticity?
dmje 4y ago
Why I work with museums. I'll never be rich but they're full of amazing people who truly give a shit about what they do. The WankerCoefficient is very low - 12 years in and the number of tosser clients I've had to deal with can be counted on one hand. As a consequence of this, we deliver good work - highly focused on client needs, bespoke, and at high quality. We've got a name for it and have never done anything apart from rely on word of mouth for new work. It's good work and I love it :-)
- ggm 4y ago
  I did a brief stint fixing some DB issues in the Museum of London (pdp11 v7) and I completely agree. To work in the minutia of the minute books of the guild of glovers in London, over a 400 year period and simultaneously be able to handle asinine requests from the public knowing that ONE in a thousand may serve a purpose, even if only to keep somebody's child alive to history in 20 years time... on a pittance. Same with staff at the V&A. The new management destroyed all the goodwill behind the scenes.
josefresco 4y ago
Sometimes "giving a shit" can talk you right out of a job. You: I'd love to work with you but I need to know X,Y,Z and we need a couple more meetings. I want to fully understand your project and your goals before committing to price. Someone else: I can do it for $ Some people pick (thoughtful & detailed) you, and some will pick (easy and vague) someone else - it really depends on their personality. Some business owners simply want to write a check. Others want to be intimately involved - the skill is determining which is sitting in front of you.
- felizuno 4y ago
  Bullet dodged IMO
t_mann 4y ago
Just wondering - I guess "giving shit" should be sufficiently well defined that we could create a training set for a GPT-3-like pre-trained language model.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> So, I suppose the moral of the story is: find yourself work you can give a shit about. And work with people who give a shit. It’ll make shit a lot more pleasant – I guarantee it. I'm doing this now. No one believes that it's worth paying for, which is a bit sad, but I'm OK with that.
tobinharris 4y ago
I run a mobile app agency like you and we do pretty well selling GaSaaS. I'm a developer but have studied sales quite a lot over the last 10 years. The most important thing I learned is to find clients that fit you really well when it comes to skills, culture and budget. To do this you have to give a shit and not be afraid to ask potentially off-putting questions. Stuff like: "Are you sure you want to build this app, your business case doesn't add up so why bother?" "Can you demonstrate you're in this for the long haul? There's no joy in building an app that fails, which is what happens if you don't budget to iterate your app." "How come you don't hire freelancers or contractors, it will cost you less?" Obviously I ask nicer questions too, but these are good "give a shit enough to risk losing the sale" kind of questions.
- felizuno 4y ago
  We once landed a $mm deal because I told a CTO to his face that most of his teams were probably incapable of accurately describing the technologies they use and how/why. 90% of the time it works every time ;-)
walrus01 4y ago
The difference in quality and customer service of a small local/regional ISP that truly does give a shit vs a giant nationwide-scale ISP can be amazing. If the small ISP has a sufficient amount of network engineering knowledge and acumen to build small-scale things at very high quality. More along the lines of the custom wood business referenced in the original post, I am familiar with a few small welding/steel fabrication and custom carbon fiber CNC cutting shops in the metro Vancouver area that also give a shit. They aren't trying to scale up to some huge size or go for economies of scale, they are perfectly content to serve a mid sized local market with not cheap, high quality products.
openfuture 4y ago
I am doing the somewhat opposite, I am starting a company where I will take shit as a service (and compost it).
fleddr 4y ago
Giving a shit has many personal benefits that go beyond the question of financial sustainability. Career-wise, if you give a shit about your work and your colleagues this does add up to a reputation. When you do things "right", don't gossip or backstab, act with integrity and honesty, people notice. You'll be seen as trustworthy, a pillar to fall back on. The thing is though, the person screwing everybody over and job hopping before the damage becomes visible may actually get more out of their career, financially. It's a rather philosophical question as to which character type you want to be. Another reward of giving a shit is the gratitude people show, because it has become a rare behavior it seems. For example, I'm running a web community (photography), non-profit, as a hobby. One particular user, an old Australian guy, is very much not tech savvy and recently I spent two nights in a row to get him onboarded again. He struggles with the simplest things but it's all good now. To a calculating mind, this is a ridiculous investment of scarce free time with virtually no gain. The last part is where that mind couldn't be more wrong. The man was almost in tears from gratitude. He's alone, struggles and nobody bothers to explain him anything, not even his family, most of which live far away. He got helped, by somebody he never met, for no particular reason but giving a shit. I will remember that gratitude a decade from now. By comparison, a stranger could now send me 10K and it would mean absolutely nothing to me. I don't need it, I have my stuff. You can't buy deep and memorable human connections and moments, they are by definition a result of giving a shit. Look at how little it takes and how giant the impact is. A company put genuine effort into a customer's table needs, and here we are.
jrd259 4y ago
This is precisely why Amazon emphasizes Customer Obsession (giving a shit about customers) and Ownership (giving shit about your problems other people in the org have). I don't love everything about Amazon, I sure do like these two.
itisme 4y ago
iandanforth 4y ago
I would also have accepted 'craftsmanship' or 'professionalism'.
IIAOPSW 4y ago
I read the headline and was ready to hand over cash, because I've been running out of my own shits to give lately.
shadycuz 4y ago
If you use Jenkins... I give a shit. https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib Hit me up. I will help with your pipelines.
Kuinox 4y ago
I don't understand,what offer your service that Facebook don't already offer for free?
gala8y 4y ago
Interestingly enough, psychotherapy can be looked at as a 'giving a s** as a service', where no one else gives a s**. Which is somehow sad state of affairs.
m_st 4y ago
Great post. It could be 'care', I call that 'Berufsstolz' in German. Like professional pride. Not everyone has it, but those that do, they sure are more successful inside and outside the company and are (in general) a pleasure to work with.
HeavyStorm 4y ago
That's called Therapy. You pay someone so he/she cares about you.

603 points by pimterry 4y ago

My newest startup idea is to devise a continuous series of tests meant to gauge how much of a shit interview candidates and companies give a shit. It is like leetcode meets tinder meets GaSaaS.

_tom_ 4y ago
The problem with testing, is the people who optimize for testing guaranteed do not give a shit about the actual work.
- jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
  I think I agree, you are saying that the people who devise the hazing leetcode interview process don't care about the actual day to day work at the company?

NoGravitas 4y ago

Ah, but you see, giving a shit doesn't scale. It's certainly not web-scale, anyway.

btbuildem 4y ago

Giving a shit doesn't scale. In a society obsessed with growth, it's not a sustainable thing. Draw what conclusions you will. I would gladly give up this incessant "growth" for quality.

mooreds 4y ago
I've often thought one of the reasons I'm drawn to software is it feels like there is, at the same time: * great pay (relative to other jobs) * good working conditions (sitting at a desk) * low barrier to entry (no credentialing) * the ability to be a craftsman (or craftsperson, I suppose) I'm trying to think of other jobs that allow you to hone your craft in modern industrial society while fulfilling the other criteria and can't think of any.
- deleted 4y ago
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- datavirtue 4y ago
  Sitting at a desk is not a good thing. At all. If you're you are under 40 I urge you to get away from the desk ASAP.
  - mooreds 4y ago
    Personally, I like to stand at my desk. But as far as comfort, I've done manual labor (farm work, trail work) in the past. I would choose sitting at a desk in AC with bodily autonomy (to go to the restroom or take a walk when I want) over such manual labor. All. Day. Long. :) But you're correct, humans should move.
amichal 4y ago
I thought we were supposed to to be doing things that don’t scale[1]. I know that is why I like doing what it do. [1] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
luxuryballs 4y ago
Check out the chik-fil-a franchise model.
CharlesW 4y ago
> Giving a shit doesn't scale. In a society obsessed with growth, it's not a sustainable thing. GaS comes in many forms, and can scale without issue for forms that fall within (for example) product design and development processes. I think we can agree that some companies do this better than others. Improved shit-giving at this stage actually gets cheaper per customer with scale. Per-unit/per-customer forms of GAS can scale as well, but not for free. For example, Google and YouTube could vastly improve customer/creator support, but explicitly chooses not to because they believe there's no GaS ROI there.
jlynn 4y ago
The phrase "giving a shit doesn't scale" makes as much sense to me as "honesty doesn't scale." It's not a question of scaling it out, its just a question of how you operate. Do you care? Are you honest? Do you have integrity? You should be able to do these things at any scale.
- awillen 4y ago
  That's not necessarily true - you can be honest and not give a shit. Take OP's example of buying a table - the company they worked with really spent a lot of time understanding their needs and making something custom for them. An alternative would be to go to IKEA and buy a table. IKEA does not give a shit in the same way and will not spend a great deal of time learning about you and what you're going to use your table for to ensure you get something perfect. There's absolutely nothing dishonest about that. It's not even to say that they don't care about the quality of their products. It just means they're not going to go the extra mile. Of course, it also means you're going to get a table for probably an order of magnitude less money. That's a perfectly reasonable tradeoff, and it's a good thing both types of businesses exist.
selfhoster11 4y ago
Society is not obsessed with growth. The top x% of the wealthy are.
- Juliate 4y ago
  It's not the top % of the wealthy. They're fine and structurally fine, unless they screw it up. It's both 1) a fraction of some of those a few order of magnitude lower who WANT to get to the top, and 2) those who believe only growth can sustain the "world" system (and they are not necessarily wrong, only it's become critical to redefine growth in a radical different way, or we'll all burn).
MattGaiser 4y ago
As a user you might. Would you as an investor/entrepreneur?
Twisell 4y ago
A company you might have heard of literally survived and scaled thank to the process of giving a shit impulsed by a CEO they re-hired while the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. It was Apple. Giving a shit does scale and it's precisely when apple stop giving shit (keyboard, pro) that they enter the danger zone for theirs reputation.
datavirtue 4y ago
Yeah, until the very moment our economic growth doesn't outpace population growth. Perhaps our demands are the source of the pressure?

prepend 4y ago

I now think all conference room tables should be superellipses. It’s much more usable space.

giarc 4y ago

When selling my last house, I invited 3-4 local realtors for appointments. 3 showed up with some printed comps and gave me a general idea of list price right then. The last showed up, walked through the house, asked about upgrades I had made etc etc then said "Let's meet again in a few days when I've had a chance to accurately price your place." He got the sale.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
And now I see several "app" companies are trying to push realtors out of their business entirely by using "algorithms" for private equity to buy up any and all housing. And I guaran-damn-tee they don't give a shit.
- astrange 4y ago
  Good, realtors are awful. Those companies have already failed though (Zillow is practically about to go out of business because they failed so hard), probably can never succeed because of the adverse selection effect, and "investors are buying all the housing" is a myth propagated by NIMBYs.
  - felizuno 4y ago
    Zillow is totally fine financially. Yeah they lost $10b which is bad news but they didn't bet the farm, and as they continue to invest r&d in renter/landlord oriented services they should be fine. It's the Expedia of houses, and people have to live somewhere. Can you put forward any proof at all that they are even struggling, let alone "about to go out of business"?
  - wyre 4y ago
    > "investors are buying all the housing" is a myth propagated by NIMBYs. Is it? https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2021/ https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2021/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/housing-market-investors/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/hou...

bob1029 4y ago

So far the consensus seems to be that GaSaaS doesn't scale. I would like to protest this sentiment. With technology, you can empower non-wizards to give substantially more of a shit than they otherwise would be able to. The danger lies in the specific nature of those technological implementations and the engagement models applied to their usage. Today, our models look something like "fuck your dopamine loop as hard and fast as possible without any subsequent regard for anything at all"

hahaitsfunny 4y ago

teucris 4y ago

You pay premium to get the GaS package. Most people think that’s because you’re paying them to care, but that’s not it at all. You cannot pay someone to care. You’re paying for the rare access to people who get genuine satisfaction of doing something well. The fact that it is a precious commodity saddens me. I think a lack of decent financial security keeps people from G’ing an S.

MattGaiser 4y ago
Also, people caring that you give a shit also requires competence. If you try and fail, you won’t be recognized.

msencenb 4y ago

Everyone saying it doesn't scale is missing the point. Scaling is a winner-take-all, venture capital mindset. The article is about service businesses, which do not need to hit web scale! We are talking about services here not your web startup. Even beyond services, giving a shit and building saas is not impossible. In fact, I wish more tech companies started small and stayed small. I absolutely want to run a digital small business and I want to give a shit, it makes the building feel purposeful instead of this product-led growth at all costs bullshit. I hope we see a software middle class grow in the next decade. Middle class tech companies are going to be coming from the bootstrapper + founder focused funds (TinySeed / Calm) and they are going to have a distinct advantage if they understand their strategy/context in their chosen verticals.

mooreds 4y ago
> The article is about service businesses, which do not need to hit web scale! There are many small consultancies that are humming along, making high six figures to low seven figures a year in income, with good paying jobs and work/life balance. It can be a bit of a grind for the owners (who assume a lot of risk and have to land clients) and there are some ups and downs due to the realities of consulting (okay, just lost a big client, time to tighten the belt), but I've seen this work a number of times. Having a recurring source of income (productized service, hosting) can really help. The main thing these companies do is "be excellent", aka give a shit.
- dendrite9 4y ago
  I'm curious about how to get involved in these types of companies. They don't seem lie the easiest thing to search for, but that might just be that I don't have the exposure to know where to look.
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dsaavy 4y ago
There are a lot of people who already do this. Take a look at the MicroConf community started by Rob Walling. The middle class is growing in software, you just won't read about it (usually) on most of the social media platforms or news outlets because it's usually not a flashy story.

seanhunter 4y ago

One of the interesting aspects of giving a shit is that it will lead sometimes to you doing things which are not in your short-term selfish narrowly-defined "best interest" but because you give a shit you'll do it anyway. Some of these lead to long-term value that is very significant but you can't know at the time. I was once asked by a client (bank) to take a call with one of _their_ clients (a pretty important hedge fund). I did this as a courtesy even though I thought our product wasn't appropriate for the hedge fund. Anyhow I get on the call and it's the COO, the Chief Investment Officer, the CTO and a couple of other _very_ important people at this big fund. (ie a much more senior call than I really expected). Anyway, because I give a shit, I told them our product wouldn't really be right for them and explained why. They thanked me and I heard nothing more of it. Until a couple of years later where I offered a job out of the blue because one of the people on the call had been impressed by how I had dealt with it, and by pure coincidence his partner was a recruiter who was tasked with headhunting for a CTO role and he said "hey you should check this guy out".

xdfgh1112 4y ago
You were lucky in this instance, but is optimising for this lottery the best use of time and effort?
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  If this was the only time in their life they'd be implicitly taking this gamble, sure, that's a reasonable question. But if you behave "impressively" in a consistent fashion, things like this are more likely to happen.
- _tom_ 4y ago
  Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    >> Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times. I have never been one to deliberately "build my network" and even I have had several beneficial things come about via my network.

corrral 4y ago

Tangential, but IMO the super-power rich people have at achieving personal goals (this principle also applies to business goals, but let's set that aside) is largely due to being able to pay (to them) pocket change to make others do their giving-a-shit for them. How many shits do you have to give to stay fit as a poor person? Lots. Many shits must be given. You must be a shit-giving machine. 100% of shits given toward your goal must come from you. How many shits do you have to give to stay fit as a rich person? Let's see... you're paying an amount of money that's meaningless to you to have someone else give a shit about your meals, both making sure that your diet is healthy and balanced and that it's tasty and appealing to minimize the shit-giving you need to stick with it... and someone else give a shit about your work-outs... and someone else to give a shit about your schedule to make sure that stuff fits in... gee, look at that, you hardly have to give any shits at all, personally!

nicbou 4y ago
I feel you. There's so much shit-giving when you're poor. You can't afford to outsource maintenance. You must figure it all out yourself: car maintenance, appliance repair, taxes etc. There's always something you've gotta figure out. With a bit of money, you make a phone call and someone else is liable for any trouble that might arise.
- corrral 4y ago
  That's part of why I think the benefits of the US moving to some kind of single-payer or similar healthcare system would be much larger than they look based on a naïve cost calculation—our healthcare system consumes a ton of largely uncompensated giving-a-shit from a very large proportion of our society (basically everyone who's not very rich). I have to think that's harming other activities (including health itself, since, as covered, eating well and exercising requires a pretty large amount of giving-a-shit) some of which might provide direct benefits to measures like GDP, if some of that time and giving-a-shit were recovered for other purposes.

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unbalancedevh 4y ago

This concept is also relevant when applying for a job. At one of my previous jobs, I asked my boss what about the interview convinced him to give me an offer. He said it was because I asked so many questions, and he hardly had a chance to ask any that he'd prepared.

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c0l0 4y ago

This - the people involved actually giving a shit - is exactly why FOSS projects' volunteer support (on IRC, for example) regularly trumps the crud experience you get from huge, established, and deep-pocketed vendors of alternative products that are astonishingly expensive. Ironically, often the most extreme in the "support" contract department.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Some fancy words, for where "shitgiving" doesn't quite fit: Meta-cognition. Mentalisation. Intersubjectivity. When a sentient being picks up the (apparent) communications of another being, instead of taking these 'noises' on face value as signals requiring action/process, they perceive another. Another being, like them, with thoughts and feelings, that they "hold in mind". These are first steps towards empathy/sympathy. The distancing function of technology is very efficient at suppressing this. What we do in a purely protocol/process based world made only of responses, targets, KPIs is forget meta-cognition. It's not that people are being "evil" [1] but that quality frameworks based only on measuring things don't accommodate it. [1] Cold Evil: Technology and Modern Ethics - Andrew Kimbrell

infp_arborist 4y ago
That's a fascinating article (from 02000!) you have shared. Well worth a separate HN submission.

drdunce 4y ago

I wish there was a job board that showed only jobs worthy of giving a shit

teucris 4y ago
https://www.idealist.org https://www.idealist.org?

megraf 4y ago

It's a real great message, yes, they gave a shit. They gave a shit because the author likely paid >10,000 CAD. Yes, ten thousand Canadian dollars. Or $7692 USD. This is significant to me because I feel like for a table (conference room or not!) anyone asking for that type of price point _should_ give a shit. I'm all for nice furniture (in fact, I've built some) – but I'd say some of the cape-wearing folks who really care are often doing so behind the scenes, or, if you're lucky: in a position at a company (or their own company) who really has pride in what they're doing. I think the author found a company who gives a shit, but I'd also like to point to other makers who give a shit without the five-figure price point. Here's a small list: - https://woodgears.ca https://woodgears.ca (you will be making these items yourself! Plans are ~15 USD) - Dave Moore (https://www.youtube.com/user/dpmbn8 https://www.youtube.com/user/dpmbn8) – That one support agent who didn't give up :)

gumby 4y ago

We don't put our values on our web site but we do talk about them internally a lot and I have them listed on a small piece of paper glued to my laptop next to the trackpad. #1 is "Integrity". You cannot convince anyone you have integrity by telling them anything, they can only come to believe it by seeing how you act over time. And if we don't have integrity what does it matter what the other values are?

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>And if we don't have integrity what does it matter what the other values are? Bang on. And good luck, It can be a rough road.

CoolGuySteve 4y ago

While it's important to give a shit when dealing with customers, I wonder how useful "giving a shit" is when it comes to things like picking a conference table. Was that really the best use of this CEOs time? Is the company that much better off because of their fancy table? This adventure seems incredibly decadent and pointless to me. It's just a fucking table, focus on what matters.

dhagz 4y ago
That was the whole point of the article - the process of <dealing with thing> was delightful because <thing needer> dealt with a <thing provider> that gave a shit.
- CoolGuySteve 4y ago
  Yeah I know but in this case whether or not <dealing with thing> is delightful is undermined by the consideration that giving a shit about <thing> in the first place seems counterproductive for <thing needer>. Clearly there needs to be shit giving limits for both counterparties regardless of <thing>.
mikkergp 4y ago
I'm trying to understand your post. It seems like you're suggesting that picking out a table isn't that important, but my understanding of the post was that the person selling the table should give a shit, not the person buying the table. In which case I think it depends on if you're selling a commodity or a luxury. If you're selling a commodity focusing on one individual sale may not matter that much, you need to scale. If you're selling a luxury, it may very well be in the CEO's best interest to help sell an $8000 table to a company that is in the habit of buying $8000 tables.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
> It's just a fucking table, focus on what matters. Lol, it's the nerd equivalent of penny wise, pond foolish.

sheepybloke 4y ago

People are arguing that GaS doesn't scale, but for larger companies, you have to GaS. Take Amazon's easy and quick return policy. They GaS for this interaction, making it a huge reason why you'd want to buy from Amazon. On the other hand, take Google's different services. Because they didn't GaS about the longevity of their services, they now have a graveyard of different services they killed and a lot of people who won't invest in the Google ecosystem because of it. Other examples of not GaS: Shopify support, Google support, Amazon and warehouse workers. TLDR: You have to GaS as you scale because otherwise people will start discounting you or your product as not trustworthy or worth the frustration.

yboris 4y ago

Reminds me of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work - where the author repairs broken motorcycles, and sometimes ends up spending more time than expected (without charging extra to the client) because he cared. A lovely book that is worth a read. https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467 https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp...

civilized 4y ago

Providing a service that's actually a service... as a service.

jfengel 4y ago

Are you saying I can outsource my shit-giving activities? Sign me up. I've been unable to give a shit for quite some time. I wish I could give a shit, but the world has become a pretty ugly place, in large part because of deliberate attempts to demoralize those who give a shit. You see it all over the place on social media. People do a weak-ass form of shit-giving in the form of "raising awareness", the least conceivable level of effort for something you wish you could give a shit about, but don't actually give a shit. Of course even if somebody tried to GaSaaS, the space would promptly fill with people giving as few shits as possible for as much money as possible. Too many major charities do that: they'll take your money and spend it mostly on advertising for other people to give their money, too, and very little on the things you'd expect if they actually gave a shit. I know TFA is more about the business sense of giving a shit, but I'd love to see somebody able to give a shit in a larger sense. Unfortunately, I can't give a shit because it seems nobody gives a shit any more -- except the people who are passionately devoted to making sure other people feel miserable instead.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
IMNTBHO, it started with Google. They pioneered the idea of embedding themselves DEEPLY into our lives (email!), while absolutely not giving any shits about it at all. There NEVER was a number to call if something went wrong. Can't get your POP or IMAP settings right? Fuck you! You lost your password? Fuck you! Someone stole your account? Fuck you! There's no recourse for any problem unless you're important enough to raise a stink about it on a social media platform. Then EVERYONE saw that their businesses were no longer constrained by having to give a shit any more, and it's just been all downhill ever since.
- drekipus 4y ago
  I think Microsoft with their entire OS, but yes you're right
  - m_mueller 4y ago
    at least they have a number to call. it may not help you much - 'did you try signing off and then signing on again' - but it's something.

10x-dev 4y ago

This is my biggest issue with working at FAANG (been at 2). Lots of people just don't give a shit. To paraphrase the Silicon Valley show: "you got your RSUs now fuck off for 4 years". I can't fault people for making the best financial decision for them, but for crying out loud, give a shit about the code. Write the unit test. Write the docs to explain the architecture. Refactor the code while you're editing that file. Think about class and method names. Give a shit.

ThalesX 4y ago
I've been working with startups for awhile and I never got the chance to give a shit. Not even when I was CTO. So many external pressures, deadlines, hacky releases to demo to whatever investors. Responding to A | B testing. Firefighting. And the list can go on. The only time in my life I had the possibility to give a shit was when I was working for shit money contracting for the government. I've never been in that situation again where I could spend as much time as I needed until I delivered to the quality I desired. Architecture diagrams, properly planned executions, testing etc etc. Much slower moving than startups but I trust the systems I wrote to continue saving lifes as they have done until now. Most of the code I delivered for startups, I don't even trust at release, what can I say about decades down the line...
amzn-throw 4y ago
For what it's worth, working at Amazon for a bunch of years now, this is the highest percentage of people that truly Give A Shit, I've ever encountered. I know it's not universal but in the parts I've worked in, it's intoxicating.
- deleted 4y ago
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int_19h 4y ago
Being one of the few people who give a shit in the middle of a corporate culture that, as a whole, does not, is a very good recipe for fast burnout.

s1k3s 4y ago

Nice anecdote. Never applies in practice, but it's good to dream about it.

duxup 4y ago

I remember my first "real" job was at a company in a niche market who had a couple competitors. We were told often by sales and the executives that they were often told that despite our product being more expensive they bought our equipment because: "When we call your tech support guys you answer, and your support team seems to actually care about fixing the problem in a way that it doesn't happen again." That tech support team would stay together as a team through a couple acquisitions (and being acquired) for nearly 20 years (of my time at least) supporting new products and so on, until finally as always happens with tech support they were eventually devalued by the company enough that one final sale of the company happened and everyone was laid off. Years later I met up with some of the product engineers (who survived the last acquisition) told me "We still talk about how that team did it the right way. The team we have now is three times as big and handles fewer tickets and is horrible at their job." I always thought that team should have been sold as a group to someone who cared but really nobody values good tech support teams ... not for long. Now I work at a small software shop where we just keep picking up customers based on word of mouth ... because someone told them "these guys can deliver and care".

aliqot 4y ago
This is great, I look for companies like these locally. When covid started, a lot of people in my community were out of work, or experiencing a drop in customer patronage. I decided to help these businesses best, I should make a contract with myself to always look for someone in my friend group who produces or services something first, then the wider local community, then the state, and so on. Much to my surprise I've only had to go to Amazon once, for an obscure component that isn't known to be produced in my locality. Through this, I've ended up with a lot of ancillary benefits and connections. The interaction is so much more pleasant this way, I don't think I'll go back. They're delivering a consisting product or service, and I'm predictable as a customer as a result. Here's an example: when I walk into the meat shop, they know I'm going to be there, so when something unique or special comes in, they have something set aside that they knew I'd want. They always have a recipe too or something they made to share. To me, that's service. You don't have to be my best man or fishing buddy, you just have to acknowledge the reciprocal relationship we have.

mikkergp 4y ago

It makes me think about the research[1] that suggests people pick their doctors based on empathy over competence, but it's really hard to evaluate competence if you don't think the person is listening to you. Maybe you can see by some objective measure if they rate highly, but if the communication is bad, how can you be sure if what you are buying is what they are selling, even if what they're selling is the best ev4r. [1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_empathic_doctors_seen_as_more_competent https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_empathic_d...

infp_arborist 4y ago
Yes, professional competence and empathy can be trained. But what enables honesty, integrity, authenticity?

dmje 4y ago

Why I work with museums. I'll never be rich but they're full of amazing people who truly give a shit about what they do. The WankerCoefficient is very low - 12 years in and the number of tosser clients I've had to deal with can be counted on one hand. As a consequence of this, we deliver good work - highly focused on client needs, bespoke, and at high quality. We've got a name for it and have never done anything apart from rely on word of mouth for new work. It's good work and I love it :-)

ggm 4y ago
I did a brief stint fixing some DB issues in the Museum of London (pdp11 v7) and I completely agree. To work in the minutia of the minute books of the guild of glovers in London, over a 400 year period and simultaneously be able to handle asinine requests from the public knowing that ONE in a thousand may serve a purpose, even if only to keep somebody's child alive to history in 20 years time... on a pittance. Same with staff at the V&A. The new management destroyed all the goodwill behind the scenes.

josefresco 4y ago

Sometimes "giving a shit" can talk you right out of a job. You: I'd love to work with you but I need to know X,Y,Z and we need a couple more meetings. I want to fully understand your project and your goals before committing to price. Someone else: I can do it for $ Some people pick (thoughtful & detailed) you, and some will pick (easy and vague) someone else - it really depends on their personality. Some business owners simply want to write a check. Others want to be intimately involved - the skill is determining which is sitting in front of you.

felizuno 4y ago
Bullet dodged IMO

t_mann 4y ago

Just wondering - I guess "giving shit" should be sufficiently well defined that we could create a training set for a GPT-3-like pre-trained language model.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

> So, I suppose the moral of the story is: find yourself work you can give a shit about. And work with people who give a shit. It’ll make shit a lot more pleasant – I guarantee it. I'm doing this now. No one believes that it's worth paying for, which is a bit sad, but I'm OK with that.

tobinharris 4y ago

I run a mobile app agency like you and we do pretty well selling GaSaaS. I'm a developer but have studied sales quite a lot over the last 10 years. The most important thing I learned is to find clients that fit you really well when it comes to skills, culture and budget. To do this you have to give a shit and not be afraid to ask potentially off-putting questions. Stuff like: "Are you sure you want to build this app, your business case doesn't add up so why bother?" "Can you demonstrate you're in this for the long haul? There's no joy in building an app that fails, which is what happens if you don't budget to iterate your app." "How come you don't hire freelancers or contractors, it will cost you less?" Obviously I ask nicer questions too, but these are good "give a shit enough to risk losing the sale" kind of questions.

felizuno 4y ago
We once landed a $mm deal because I told a CTO to his face that most of his teams were probably incapable of accurately describing the technologies they use and how/why. 90% of the time it works every time ;-)

walrus01 4y ago

The difference in quality and customer service of a small local/regional ISP that truly does give a shit vs a giant nationwide-scale ISP can be amazing. If the small ISP has a sufficient amount of network engineering knowledge and acumen to build small-scale things at very high quality. More along the lines of the custom wood business referenced in the original post, I am familiar with a few small welding/steel fabrication and custom carbon fiber CNC cutting shops in the metro Vancouver area that also give a shit. They aren't trying to scale up to some huge size or go for economies of scale, they are perfectly content to serve a mid sized local market with not cheap, high quality products.

openfuture 4y ago

I am doing the somewhat opposite, I am starting a company where I will take shit as a service (and compost it).

fleddr 4y ago

Giving a shit has many personal benefits that go beyond the question of financial sustainability. Career-wise, if you give a shit about your work and your colleagues this does add up to a reputation. When you do things "right", don't gossip or backstab, act with integrity and honesty, people notice. You'll be seen as trustworthy, a pillar to fall back on. The thing is though, the person screwing everybody over and job hopping before the damage becomes visible may actually get more out of their career, financially. It's a rather philosophical question as to which character type you want to be. Another reward of giving a shit is the gratitude people show, because it has become a rare behavior it seems. For example, I'm running a web community (photography), non-profit, as a hobby. One particular user, an old Australian guy, is very much not tech savvy and recently I spent two nights in a row to get him onboarded again. He struggles with the simplest things but it's all good now. To a calculating mind, this is a ridiculous investment of scarce free time with virtually no gain. The last part is where that mind couldn't be more wrong. The man was almost in tears from gratitude. He's alone, struggles and nobody bothers to explain him anything, not even his family, most of which live far away. He got helped, by somebody he never met, for no particular reason but giving a shit. I will remember that gratitude a decade from now. By comparison, a stranger could now send me 10K and it would mean absolutely nothing to me. I don't need it, I have my stuff. You can't buy deep and memorable human connections and moments, they are by definition a result of giving a shit. Look at how little it takes and how giant the impact is. A company put genuine effort into a customer's table needs, and here we are.

jrd259 4y ago

This is precisely why Amazon emphasizes Customer Obsession (giving a shit about customers) and Ownership (giving shit about your problems other people in the org have). I don't love everything about Amazon, I sure do like these two.

itisme 4y ago

iandanforth 4y ago

I would also have accepted 'craftsmanship' or 'professionalism'.

IIAOPSW 4y ago

I read the headline and was ready to hand over cash, because I've been running out of my own shits to give lately.

shadycuz 4y ago

If you use Jenkins... I give a shit. https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib Hit me up. I will help with your pipelines.

Kuinox 4y ago

I don't understand,what offer your service that Facebook don't already offer for free?

gala8y 4y ago

Interestingly enough, psychotherapy can be looked at as a 'giving a s** as a service', where no one else gives a s**. Which is somehow sad state of affairs.

m_st 4y ago

Great post. It could be 'care', I call that 'Berufsstolz' in German. Like professional pride. Not everyone has it, but those that do, they sure are more successful inside and outside the company and are (in general) a pleasure to work with.

HeavyStorm 4y ago

That's called Therapy. You pay someone so he/she cares about you.