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Ask HN: What do you think when companies ask for gritty people?
When I see this I immediately think the work will be the kind of grind that requires lots of Grit to survive.
- seattle_spring 4y agoI think "someone with a personality outside of being a total square; has interesting hobbies not exclusively involving looking at a computer or LARPing or anything like that."
- dt88 4y agoFeels like a meme from 2012, implies low pay on the downside but a willingness to work across teams and hustle on the upside
- demarq 4y agoClearly they want a deep husky voiced candidate, preferably with a few facial scars and a penchant for whiskey. They get into the office and before standup deliver an intense wartime story about that one time they had a pull a bullet out with their bare teeth.
- tomcam 4y agoUnpaid overtime
- tomkat0789 4y agoWork for 10 people, but they only want to hire 3. SOURCE: my current company likes me and the other 2 gritty software engineers.
- refurb 4y agoUsually it means they spend too much time on LinkedIn
- awb 4y agoBest case: they want to hire people who don’t like red tape and just want to get stuff done, people who thrive on little to no oversight Worst case: they want to hire people that will work endless hours to meet arbitrary deadlines
- lucb1e 4y agoThat's quite a wide range, but sounds about right. OP, we need you to apply and find out, for science!
- Bilal_io 4y agoI assume OP asked because of the Flexport job ad on HN (currently #19) which says "looking for gritty people". Apply and let us know :D
- theturtletalks 4y agoSomeone on the marketing team has been watching Hard Knocks
- robertn702 4y agoI think the wide range is appropriate given that the thread is trying to extrapolate an entire company's culture from a single word in a job posting title. It's up for interpretation, but I think the message the company is trying to get across is that their culture is not like that portrayed in the recent LinkedIn employee TikTok videos. https://nypost.com/2022/08/23/linkedin-employee-reignites-work-perks-debate-in-viral-tiktok/ https://nypost.com/2022/08/23/linkedin-employee-reignites-wo...
- akamaka 4y agoOne thing is for sure: they aren’t going to hire someone with potential and invest in developing them up.
- danielheath 4y agoNot everyone has the skillset required to do that, and in a small team you may not have anyone with that skillset.
- busterarm 4y agoI"m mad at myself for seeing the CEO of one of my former employers pushing the book Grit constantly, seeing the above behavior and not putting two and two together for months...
- CPLX 4y agoThey probably read this book that could have been a tweet: https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth/dp/1501111108/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=3c57e290-afc5-4b9e-9fe9-ab5fd279e83a https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duck...
- joobus 4y agoLong hours, low pay, and tolerates verbal abuse from a boss with a filthy mouth.
- jraines 4y agoI have experience with jobs that were the opposite of these (except for long hours) and definitely required grit. Which is still to say: not pleasant, but rewarding. It might be reasonable for some jobs to filter out people looking for “pleasant”, without it being a toxic work environment.
- teensydata 4y agoI did not realize that a filthy mouth was a thing until my last job. Why is that a thing? It is a very toxic environment.
- wyclif 4y agoSome people in this industry think dropping f-bombs constantly makes them edgy.
- kortilla 4y ago“Filthy mouth” is something a stuck up cunt would say. Cultures are different. Unless it turns into verbal abuse, get over it. There is a huge variety of cultures that speak English and only a subset can’t handle hearing certain words. Having a problem with people swearing is effectively classism in the US.
- fibonacc 4y agoBasically every vancouver startup
- version_five 4y agoI think in most cases it's just "talent" throwing a buzzword out there and is pointless to read into. On the other hand I agree it has the connotation that most people have brought up. If somehow the culture is really "gritty" it sounds like an excuse to coerce people into working without support and convincing them it's a good thing
- Justin_K 4y agoUnderpaid and overworked with bs promises of upside.
- noncoml 4y agoTheir ads are cringy. They remind me the "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?" meme
- Waterluvian 4y agoSame as when they ask for rockstars or ninjas or whatever: maybe they can put me in touch with someone who can actually explain the role and context.
- jraines 4y agoDo people still say those terms? I feel like they were cool (well, at least not utter cringe) for like 6 months 10+ years ago and ever since has been a signal of cluelessness. “Grit” at least implies self-awareness / honesty so long as it’s not paired with other indicators that it’s coming from the “hustle culture” idiom
- exodust 4y agoYes "ninja" is still used. I'm cringing at this jobs website in my country that lists 47 "ninja" jobs including "Mortgage Broker Ninja" and "Customer service Ninja" among others... https://www.seek.com.au/ninja-jobs https://www.seek.com.au/ninja-jobs
- dylanh 4y agohttps://twitter.com/fellowgritty/status/1052190131376087040 https://twitter.com/fellowgritty/status/1052190131376087040
- lmkg 4y agoI assume they want to hire someone who resembles the official mascot of the Philadelphia hockey team. Important skills include threatening physical violence over social media.
- jkingsman 4y agoAbsolutely. Gritty brings wisdom and danger. https://twitter.com/lennyaduncan/status/1328769408773148672 https://twitter.com/lennyaduncan/status/1328769408773148672
- selimthegrim 4y agoHuggable and potentially insurrectionary (in the pre Jan 6 sense)
- jmcgough 4y agoMy company has a lot of people based out of Philadelphia, so this immediately came to mind.
- Kapura 4y agoorange, lots of hair, plays hockey.
- molotovh 4y agoI came here to say "only Philadelphia hockey fans need apply" ... haha!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fergal 4y agoI'm less cynical than others here. They probably just wanted a job ad title that a) sticks out b) gets your attention by making you reflect on your own personality and c) entice you to click through to the ad and see what kind of jobs "gritty people" applying for.
- thuuuomas 4y agoSure, but how are you less cynical than others here?
- missedthecue 4y agoAs I write this comment almost everyone else in the thread is interpreting it to mean some variation of an abusive workplace environment. The guy you responded to is being more charitable and less cynical than that.
- lapcat 4y agoI think it's actually more cynical than the other comments, because in the case of abusive workplace environments, asking for "gritty" employees is a fairly honest thing to do, and gives a decent indication of what the company is like. Whereas the commenter here was suggesting that the term "gritty" is a nothing more than a meaningless attention getter, and thus totally insincere.
- erklik 4y agoHoping we're talking about the right "They" ... Why is "people" capitalized? Regardless, I feel like that's a little too optimistic.
- bawolff 4y agoWow, i've never seen this but talk about a red flag. Makes me think of a snyder movie. Would you want to live in a snyder movie?
- metadat 4y agoIt could be positive, a signal valuing do'ers over politicians.
- wyldfire 4y agoThis is like emails from Nigerian princes with deliberate grammatical errors. It weeds out candidates who would turn them down after an interview, leaving only those candidates desperate or gullible enough to take the position.
- avalys 4y agoI'm never going to work for a company that encourages "hustle". Uber's "always be hustlin'" was so astonishing I couldn't believe it was real when I first heard it. To me this directly implies they want to move fast and ignore ethics and morality in order to do so. Like, that's pretty much one of the accepted definitions of that word?
- metadat 4y agoDo you really think the majority of Uber engineers have forsaken all morality? A more plausible explanation is that bad patterns can emerge from systems where most of the players are still behaving [locally] ethically.
- JohnFen 4y agoIt's awfully hard to avoid being aware of all the criminal stuff Uber has engaged in.
- thebigspacefuck 4y agoThey want people that don’t mind staying up all night on a call performing a migration/upgrade or will work long hours to get a project done on time.
- Mikeb85 4y agoOptimistic view: they value people who can get the job done and don't care too much about perfection, specific tools, etc... Cynical view: they're cheap and want you to do the job of 2 or more people.
- keyle 4y agoI'm glad someone asked the question. I was brushed the wrong way by that ad as well.
- FireSparrowWeld 4y agoGrit can be defined as "Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interest" [0] so when I see an ad looking for "gritty people" I assume they're trying to find folks who tend to keep working on a problem consistently and won't want to move on until the work is completed. Kind of a boring response, but I think you're reading too much into this. It's just a word. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981570/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981570/
- samvher 4y agoFunny to see it rubbed so many people the wrong way. It actually stood out in a positive way to me, I read it as “we want people who bring projects to the finish line, including if they are challenging”. The reason I would see it as a positive is that I would expect the existing culture to reflect that, and it’s a quality I value in colleagues. As a shared culture it also seems like a good trait for a growing company.
- user_named 4y agoAre they're existing employees not doing that, so that's why they need to hire such a person?
- divbzero 4y agoIt seemed a net positive to me too. Presumably, you would join a fast growing company for a challenge and not just to coast or “quiet quit“. You would want colleagues who feel the same esp. if chunk of your compensation is locked up in equity.
- itronitron 4y ago>> “we want people who bring projects to the finish line, including if they are challenging” I think that statement would attract better candidates than wanting gritty people. One reason for that is that very capable people need less grit to succeed than others that are less capable.
- worthless-trash 4y ago"Grit" without the abrasiveness.
- JohnFen 4y ago> I read it as “we want people who bring projects to the finish line, including if they are challenging”. Which makes it content-free, because that's what every company is looking for anyway.
- PenguinCoder 4y agoThat recent post here made me think: * Why another hiring ad again on HN for this company! I'm tired of seeing them here * Looked at the job openings anyway; see openings for Sales and Interns. Why in the fi** is it on HN? They're on my shit list of employers to ignore.
- dvtrn 4y agoI have had a similar thought but brushed it off as probably just me going through recency bias, but it does feel like I see their job posts a lot more than many others?
- gnicholas 4y agoIs there a four letter word beginning with "fi" that I should know about, or is that a typo?
- PenguinCoder 4y agoTypo, but now it's got me thinking what could fit that...
- hamandcheese 4y ago> see openings for Sales and Interns. Why in the fi* is it on HN? I see dozens of SWE roles on their careers site at all levels.
- victor9000 4y agoIt makes me think I'll have to deal with unprofessional personalities while navigating piles of technical debt and legacy apps.
- qbasic_forever 4y agoYeah I think you have it right unfortunately, it sounds like they want someone who is willing to endure pain like terrible work, conditions, compensation, codebase, bosses, etc.
- themarkn 4y agoI expect they want people who are willing to be persistent in working on hard problems that might be challenging or require learning new skills. I don’t see the implication others are drawing with grinding, long hours, overwork, etc. I don’t love the term grit as it’s been popularized but still I think the ability to deal with frustration and keep moving in the right direction on hard problems is a valuable one. A person who displays this quality can be expected to do well when faced with a job that requires learning a new programming language or working in a difficult field (including non-programming things like nonprofit work or counseling). Grit is not synonymous with overwork. Grit is more about, when something is hard, not just looking for an easier task, but continuing to focus on the problem at hand. It doesn’t mean being a hero and figuring things out on nights and weekends. It might mean patiently reaching out to the people who can help you, following up when others drop the communication, taking responsibility for chasing requirements, etc. Grit can also meaning sticking to your guns when it comes to boundaries and thus preventing burnout. I guess I just would caution folks to not read too much into this word. It’s not a strong signal of anything, put it together with everything else that you see from the company. Some people just read the book Grit and want to use the term
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y agoUnfortunately, how people understand words depends on their own experiences of it, and not a few people have been made to feel bad about “not having enough grit” just so that they can exploited for longer hours and less pay. But I appreciate your healthy understanding of the word. When I was younger, that was how I understood grit, and it is still how I see it when I am working alone on the things that I am most passionate about. I guess the solution here is for the person hiring to be aware of how their own usage of words might be interpreted. If you already know that “grit” can be taken negatively but at the same time you want to attract people who are passionate about your craft, then you really need to pay attention to people’s reactions and rethink your comms strategy.
- deltasevennine 4y agoI like this definition of grit. >I guess I just would caution folks to not read too much into this word. It’s not a strong signal of anything, put it together with everything else that you see from the company. Some people just read the book Grit and want to use the term However when a company or individual within a company uses this word in conjunction with recruitment I believe they are asking for: Long hours, loyalty, the ability to overwork. There is huge corporate incentive to find people like this and people within the company are more likely to be looking for this, when they use that word "grit." A manager who does not use that word tends to have much more empathy for his employees.
- tyre 4y agoI had a similar thought with a recent job posting. As a hiring manager, I understand wanting grit, but would never list that as a top trait I am looking for. A job title should communicate role and impact. If “grit” is the role, that isn’t very compelling to me personally.
- SMAAART 4y agohttps://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_powe...
- david2ndaccount 4y agoThe ability to live off the land during the 1800s in the wild west.
- wombatpm 4y agoThat’s True Grit
- karaterobot 4y agoVP: Who's the best engineer you have? Dev manager: Bill Waters is the best scalability engineer. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. A pitiless man, double tough; fear don't enter into his thinking. I'd have to say L.T. Quinn is the most thorough, he's never introduced a regression. VP: Where would I find this Rooster?
- slavik81 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooster_Cogburn_(character) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooster_Cogburn_(character)
- jfoutz 4y agoMan, I really like that company. From what I can pick up, they're doing neat stuff. It looks like they're trying to pull apart a monolith, and I'm pretty good at that kinda work. strangle a subsystem, containerize and and such. I've got some experience integrating with bizarre old interchange systems (but not exactly what they touch). I can't figure out how they're keeping all the parts up to date - like, what's their approach to keeping all the libraries and language releases up to date, when the platform starts getting picked to pieces. Stuff like that's tricky and (I think) you really gotta think it through before you have that 1 stray unowned service that hasn't been updated in 2 years. It's weird. I'm a bit more cowboy than I'd like to admit, I'll throw code into prod that I'm not 100% sure of, but I can lay out why I'm not sure, these are the logs and metrics to watch, and this is the rollback plan. quantify the risks, show they payoff, roll the dice (or, not if it's too scary). I'm not super pro in their preferred language. I can mostly read it, I've done a little debugging in it. Open classes are scary, but I know how to grep a monorepo. Maybe I should try to interview there. I dunno, every time there's something that spooks me in the descriptions. I guess they ramp up random impostor syndrome feelings. Maybe I'm not as cowboy as I think I am.
- peteforde 4y agoMan, you should absolutely, 100% apply.
- UpstandingUser 4y agoSorry VSCoders. You just aren't griTTY enough.
- daniel_iversen 4y agoIt's ok as long as it's not; - a substitute for lack of process - a sign that the company doesn't have their shit together - because the company can't afford hiring enough people to do the work .. trying to hire people who work an honest day's work and give a damn is ok, but often I'd say "grit" is a lazy word and/or a mask for something being wrong.
- vinaypai 4y agoDisorganized, unrealistic expectations.
- swayvil 4y agoThe dudes who worked on the pyramids were gritty. And look where it got them.
- tjr225 4y agoI don’t care.
- defrost 4y agoJump out of helicopters / STOLs w/wout parachutes in PNG highlands, clear jungle, build airstrips, convoy in fuel, draft landscape @low altitude poor visibility with dangling pods for months, collecting data, looking for anomilies, iterate upgrading 100K+ SLOC aquisition codebase .. etc. That, or crawl into 30 tonne/hr gold ore processing circuits, into crushers | screens, to install robust camera systems to count rocks ... High altitude exposure climbing radio masts, .. All the usual stuff. Enjoy the outdoors? A career in exploration geophysics could be waiting for you!!
- worthless-trash 4y agoI'd like to subscribe to this newsletter.
- 6stringmerc 4y agoYou may jest! The coolest “Professor” I ever had was a geologist taking time from his career of geological exploration for precious stones, minerals, or oil and gas - a field guy. He was between contracts so decided to try teaching an Intro class - Earthquakes and Volcanoes. His life out in the world in some exotic places doing science was part Indiana Jones. Because of his class I now respect nature and want to be a good steward, but also know deep down that if the Yellowstone volcano pops off in my lifetime, well, hello handful of fentanyl! Also the most fascinating part is when I did my report on Mt St Helen’s I found out how many animals had like a few minute head start and knew something was coming and ran for it. Like they had a tip from the earths magnetic energy or something made them react. I recently wrote here about trusting my gut, and that was one of the examples that made me stand back and appreciate what I don’t know about energy and the universe. Lastly, my Dad flew a C-47 in Alaska and hauled smoke jumpers on the regular. He still has utmost respect for them. I’m trying to get him to write out a day in the life from that time before he kicks the bucket. All those guys are probably dead by now.
- jamal-kumar 4y agoSo you just keep an emergency stash of apocalypse fentanyl sitting around?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 4y agoIs this a thing that "companies" ask for? Is this referencing something I don't know about? I have never seen this, it seems like something someone not a native English speaker would write, when I see "gritty people", I think "dirty" or "unrefined", that's what the word "gritty" means to me, I don't know why a company would ask for that.
- macintux 4y agoI've never seen it before either, but there's a hiring post right now: > Flexport is hiring smart, gritty People who get stuff done I'm more concerned about the capitalization of "People".
- jrochkind1 4y agoWhen I see "gritty people", I think of, like, the movie Kids. Those were some gritty people.
- dasil003 4y agoYeah that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but what they are looking for are people who “have grit”, which is very different from “being gritty”.
- ryan-allen 4y agoYou're willing to hire Rooster Cogburn to bring Tom Chaney to justice for the cold blooded murder of your father. In all honesty, it's more of an indicator of the kind of management culture. The same goes for the word "resilience". To me, as a software developer, it's a red flag.
- SamReidHughes 4y agoI infer they want to self-select away the rest & vest crowd.
- falcolas 4y agoI think I need to raise my salary range. Snd should I accept the offer, I’ll also need to be extra vigilant against burnout.
- micro_cam 4y agoI've been in more than a few hiring discussions. Grit when discussing a candidate usually just means they did a cool side project completely on their own and maybe even made some money out of it. Or they really took ownership of their phd research project. In finance it can be code for "we want to hire this person despite the fact they went to a non ivy league school." However most of the "gritty" people i've interviewed would probably not consider themselves gritty... so putting that in a job description is pretty silly.
- wodenokoto 4y agoIs this a reference to Flexports hiring ad, also currently on the front page?
- geuis 4y agoExactly what I thought. Not exactly the kind of hiring ad we normally see from YC companies. Left a... gritty taste.
- vz8 4y agoI checked out the site and leadership out of curiosity. Mostly I'm thinking gritty => tenacious.
- Aeolun 4y agoAt the stage Flexport is at I’d really expect them to have raised above needing grit.
- barry-cotter 4y agoMy enduring impression of Flexport is of a job ad posted here years ago which made it clear they were credentialist elitists with no interest in hiring people who hadn’t graduated from the right schools.
- Dirak 4y agoWhen I worked there me and at least 2 other engineers I knew didn't have college degrees and joined at entry level. If a job listing says it requires certain credentials, I've mostly gotten by by just ignoring that and applying anyway.
- ok_dad 4y agoI think they must have a lot of trouble hiring, or maybe they’re a meat grinder, because they advertise here so often, like every week or more.
- dang 4y agoIt no doubt was. We've since changed the title though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32891461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32891461
- elil17 4y agoEither “we’re working on a challenging problem and we need to be able to try and try again despite failures” or “we have insane expectations of you but you will not be compensated accordingly.”
- mbil 4y agoMy read of the ad, as a former Flexport employee, was that they're looking for engineers who are determined and unafraid to work outside of their comfort zone. Understanding the complexities of international customs and logistics is as difficult as you might expect. In my (probably typical) experience it is not code for long hours or anything like that. I'm not sure what "gritty" might mean more generally, though.
- ksherlock 4y agoThis guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gritty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gritty
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bdcravens 4y agoIn the context of the ad, I'm thinking they want people who don't make excuses. People who power through and take responsibility for their results. I think there's an extreme where that is abusive, but the opposite end of that are those who are quick to assign blame ("It's not my fault we are late! I didn't know the dependencies would conflict!") Somewhere in the middle are those who are dependable and find solutions.
- flashgordon 4y agoWhen I read this I think they are looking for (beyond those desperate in need of a job) greater fools - the clueless under the Gervais principle, the shleppers who will take on the risk disproportionate to the reward, the Kool aid drinkers. There is an analogy in every culture for this I am sure. Edit: OK I know that sounded cynical. In all seriousness if you are not a coaster and are professional about putting in your fair amount of effort and having a delineation between work and life, what "more" is gritty supposed to signal and what is the price one is paying for it?
- zwkrt 4y agoWhen a manager asks for something that is very vague, like “grit”, it allows them to create their own little cult of personality. Because guess who gets to decide who has the “grit”/“moxie”/“chutzpah”/“X Factor”…? The manager does! It allows him to bucket his employees into favorites and sound more objective than he is being.
- flashgordon 4y agoAs a manager this could be biased (I was also cynical so hope that kinda negates the bias). Managers (especially front line ones) have to be mouth pieces of the organisation. They have very little choice in going beyond the written formulas (sorry leadership rubrics) a co expounds. Kinda the worst job. You need to enforce the rules set by the S but take on all the risk (have you noticed how there are bad managers but no bad "leaders"?). Why do they then become managers? We actually want to learn how to run a business in its entirety (beyond just tech) and the HR enforcement aspects are a sad price to pay. But everything you said about cults etc holds true. Just that I'd expand that beyond something what just managers want.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- UtopiaPunk 4y agoI once had an office job where HR encouraged employees to watch a TED talk about "grit." It's a word recruiters seem to like these days. I don't think it reveals anything really about the company. Just expect that the first round of interviews will be pretty generic I guess.
- babyshake 4y agoIt means they want people who have the traits of a startup founder. Whether the compensation packages they are offering are also reflecting this is a different story.
- totetsu 4y agoParadoxically the same thing as when they offer 'unlimited wellness leave'
- wnolens 4y agoDoesn't give up when the first thing they try doesn't work. There's a clear difference between someone with grit and someone without. A person without grit will message me on slack with a half baked question that is practically, "I tried almost nothing and I'm stuck, can you solve this for me?"
- nathias 4y agothis is very weird, I never even seen a junior behave like that ...
- wnolens 4y agoThat's surprising. It happens with junior engineers who aren't used to having to solve tough problems. Most will take feedback and improve though. It also happens with more intermediate or senior engineers who have been able to get away without rigorous methods to solve problems. Maybe they are used to an overly helpful tech lead, or they have changed domains to something more challenging/where stack overflow doesn't have the answer. Many a time I've been faced with obscure build/environment issues that no one on my team has seen, and googling doesn't provide any easy out. At that point, I feel the necessity for grit. It's a good word too, as it can feel like sandpaper on my soul to start cracking open codebases I wished just worked to get past a complete impasse that my deadline didn't account for me to face.
- queuep 4y agoThis is it. There’s a real shortage in tech of people that are willing to try before asking. (I’m not in the US)
- antupis 4y agoI think this cultural thing because Finland it is much more common that people try like 2 weeks and don't ask those stupid questions. It of course speeds up learning but other-hand some problems could be solve like hours instead of weeks.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aaron695 4y ago
- JediLuke 4y ago
- FooBarBizBazz 4y agoReminds me of: "A fighting contract in Ukraine: A job for a real man!" ...which is apparently an actual slogan used by Putin's military recruiters (in Russian of course). Not coincidentally, that's another shit job.
- ineptech 4y agoThey're probably referring to the term of art in psychology[0]. I personally don't think it's an important concept; I don't think measuring "grit" tells you anything deep or important about a person. For example, someone might exhibit "grit" in one job but not another, just because one was a good fit and one wasn't. But neither do I think it tells you anything deep or important when a company mentions it in a job description. I think it's a trendy fad in pop-sci, akin to Myers-Briggs or DiSC. Someone there probably read an article about it recently. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait)
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoI would tell them that I am not a Philadelphia Flyers fan. But seriously, pay me market rate and respect that a "996" working schedule produces garbage output. If you want me to sacrifice my well-being for your company, I deserve to have the title of "Founder" and a percentage of the company to match that.
- cercatrova 4y ago> Grit gained a great deal of attention thanks to Dr. Duckworth’s provocative claims that it "beats the pants off I.Q., SAT scores," and other traditional measures of potential in determining "which individuals will be successful in some situations." Subsequent research has showed this to be an undeniable overstatement, in some cases a massive one. While some studies have found that grit might be useful for predicting achievement in certain narrow contexts, the first grit study conducted on a large, representative sample of Americans, published last year, found that "intelligence contributes 48-90 times more than grit to educational success and 13 times more to job-market success." Source [0]. I've recently been reading the book that the author of this article wrote, called The Quick Fix, which looks to debunk popular psychology concepts such as grit. Companies may want gritty people but if the underlying concept is false, they're not going to get the kinds of people they want. But perhaps they use "gritty" as simply a marketing term for "persevering." Aside, I see you also saw the Flexport ad asking for "gritty" people to apply. I was a bit turned off the company as well once I started reading the book above. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-false-promise-of-quick-fix-psychology-11617981093 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-false-promise-of-quick-fix-...
- kmoser 4y agoToday's "gritty" is 1990's "nimble". Every decade or so, another buzzword emerges to indicate a personality that can roll with the punches, think for themselves, and not get stuck on small problems. Other phrases which we hear all the time are "self-starter" and "ability to work independently". Sure, some companies may try to take advantage of those qualities by pushing workers too far, but I would say that's more determined by a given company's corporate culture, and not just because they're using specific buzzwords like "gritty".
- tezza 4y agoThe 2010s called and want their adjectives back: rockstar ninja 10x
- jusssi 4y ago> 13 times more to job-market success I don't have anything to question the result, but the phrasing makes me wonder if "job-market success" means being good at getting things done, or being good at advancing into positions that pay more for less work.
- braingenious 4y agoI kinda read it as some sort of passive aggressive dig at whatever not-gritty previous hire that was so soft as to not pass muster. The other thing that pops into my head is a hiring manager that is really into buzzwords. Either way, it’s a signal not to take the company seriously.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- divbzero 4y agoI think they’re trying to catch people’s attention which evidently worked because (a) we’re discussing this in an HN thread and (b) even before seeing this thread I had paused to consider the curious word choice.
- nurettin 4y agoIt means they don't like people who make them thankful that work gets done three months later than it is supposed to be, while the employee runs out of physical, mental and familial excuses.
- entropicgravity 4y agoThey're going to use you like sand paper.
- lmeyerov 4y agoCan be good or bad * Prioritizes ownership, working hard (not just smart), and solving the problem, even if it requires manual effort (not beneath you, grinding, ..), skills you don't have, emotional rollercoaster scenarios of startup life, etc. Amazing when the team is like this, and while common to senior startup teams, rare for teams in companies with large/reliable revenue. * Can signal needing to make up for an unhealthy lack of resources, a bigger rollercoaster than you may have thought, and more work than you want * Startups that don't look for it risk a culture of overspending and dangerous levels of complacency wrt needs for product/market fit and revenue generation. Startups that do may burn their team out, including critical staff. We look for it, but in the marathon sense wrt effort+emotion, and creativity+ownership for getting your area done. Important to know where key lines in the sand are here, such as avoiding burnout.
- peteforde 4y agoThey want someone who doesn't need hotdogs to test if the tablesaw safety mechanism is in working order.
- anigbrowl 4y agoPhiladelphia Flyers mascot appreciators. I'm guessing you didn't mean to capitalize 'Gritty' but it's too late now. In the more conventional sense, it's a bit of a red flag. Grit as a character trait implies extreme self-sufficiency and tenacity.This can sound very appealing to managers when they want to despatch someone to do a job, but may prove awkward when that someone returns with unwanted insight into the origin of the problem.
- scottLobster 4y agoGiven the ambiguity of the term and the fact that I don't know who exactly wrote the job ad (could be some HR person completely divorced from the actual work), I'd shrug it off as standard marketing speak and see how the interview went. Might bring it up as an aside when asking about how my day-to-day would typically go
- whateveracct 4y agoThey might be able to tell I cut my meat with sawdust, so I pass on them.
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoJust to name names: “Flexport is hiring smart, gritty People who get stuff done” - [0] (Flexport is a YC company [1], and therefore they get to list job offers on Hacker News from time to time) Honestly, I can think of two things. 1) They're bad, looking for smart people to grind them down with 70-80 hour workweeks, with no end in sight, with the illusion of small stock grants that will be diluted a few more times before IPO. 2) They just needed a short title for the job posting (HN limits titles to 80 characters), and they tried to summarize the fact that they look for people who are motivated, willing to work hard. But it doesn't say much about their attitude, their desire to exploit workers, vs simply trying to find good hires to add value to the company. I don't know if it's #1 or #2, or a #3 that I can't think of right now. A wise prospect employee will do the homework to understand what's the company culture, what's the cap table situation, etc. There are plenty of resources to get a better sense of whether it's a good idea to work for a company or not. [0]: https://www.flexport.com/company/careers/ https://www.flexport.com/company/careers/ [1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flexport https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flexport
- raverbashing 4y agoYeah I wonder how's the turnover there if they keep reposting the same positions over and over Asking for "gritty people", sorry, I'm not sandpaper
- dan-robertson 4y agoHiring for the same position over and over could mean high turnover or it could mean a growing company. To take this to an extreme: Google aren’t constantly hiring software engineers because they have one software engineer role and everyone quits mere seconds after starting.
- lultimouomo 4y ago> Google aren’t constantly hiring software engineers because they have one software engineer role and everyone quits mere seconds after starting. If their first task was to create a new conferencing platform, this would explain a lot of things.
- LightG 4y agoPeople who are able to get the job done in a company which lacks adequate resources. Been there. Done that. Never again.
- gorgoiler 4y agop90+ effort for p90+ comp. I imagine there are businesses out there with the gross revenue to support hoards of median engineers doing clearly defined jobs with unsurprising workloads. I used to do that at a well funded public org. It was easy and required little effort. It required the opposite of grit. People with grit find their own problems, solve them, and you don’t even hear about half of what they did unless you ask. Initiative, drive, and the ability to actually execute to completion autonomously, or even better to autonomously organise a group of ICs to make impactful change — those are the people with grit I want to work with, and how I see myself. If you are deliberately adversarial about the amount of effort you are putting in — a common canard is bringing up work/life balance, as if it’s something unique only they care about — then you’d probably be much happier working for HP or Cisco!
- kaikai 4y agoIt’s confusing because “having grit” and “being gritty” are different things. If you describe a dive bar as “gritty,” you don’t mean it has perseverance and will push through difficult tasks. I’ve worked on teams that look for “grit,” and at the time it meant someone would persevere in the face of adversity. Now I perceive it as a dog whistle for “willing to tolerate thankless and difficult work without adequate support or compensation.”
- fergie 4y agoI think "red flag". Also vaguely sexist?
- renewiltord 4y agoI want to work there because I believe that everyone who would interpret that as exploitation-oriented and self-select out is far too cynical and I would rather work with optimists than cynics at any point. No tech employer could exploit me after the first two years of my career so I don't fear the downside outcome where the cynics are right. If I will be poorly compensated for my work, I can figure that out when I interview the company.
- globalise83 4y agoGrit has a tendency to damage smoothly running machinery.
- rullopat 4y agoGritty is the new Ninja
- eric4smith 4y agoAs an employer.... I think they just want people who will show up and work diligently in the working hours. People who don't need too much supervision. People who have common sense. People who have street smarts. People who can figure out things. Is there something wrong with that?
- JohnFen 4y agoOf course not. That's what every employer is looking for. But to use the term "grit" or "gritty" is far too ambiguous. It means very different things to different people. My assumption would not be that they mean what you say, because that's the default expectations for any job. My assumption would be that they're trying to say something fairly unique and special, but the vagueness of the term means that it's up to me to try to read the tea leaves to figure out what they're actually looking for. My experience in the industry tells me that what they're probably looking for is someone willing to put up with a terrible working environment.
- rnx 4y agoThat they are not interested in the mental health of their employees.
- ochronus 4y agoAs a hiring manager, I have the same gut sense when I see such a post. It's either just unfortunate wording or the employer very honestly telling the candidates what to expect. I understand where it is coming from – but I can't help but wonder what the job post is trying to achieve with this statement. Maybe they want to attract people who would like to work with other “gritty” folks. The problem is that it can mean a lot of bad or good things on a wide scale. Be more specific, please.
- manholio 4y agoEmployment is a relation of power. The employer holds the capital and controls the synergy that makes your work valuable - you have limited and fungible human capital required to make their business work. The employer is large and you are a single person, so unless you hold exceptionally critical and rare skills, like say, Michael Jordan at the peak of his abilities, you are quite fungible and hold very little power in this relationship. Any employment contract you can ever sign is with company that needs gritty people. You are not a partner, you hold no capital, you are not a unique snowflake the company values, you are just a cog in a money making machine that needs to work reliably - by easily replacing damaged and worn out cogs. The whole obsession with startups and stock options in them on HN is nothing but the aspiration to reverse this power asymmetry. So that you too can get the power to set the rules of the game, and that others, that you employ, follow your decisions. Money is just another name for power, and the rules of power are the same since the days we started walking on two legs, and probably before that too.
- abriosi 4y agoDon't overthink it based on a words There are possibly hundreds of reasons a company might ask for gritty people Investigate, then deliberate
- itronitron 4y agoI think it means that the company doesn't yet have a "no assholes" policy.
- rl3 4y ago>When I see this I immediately think the work will be the kind of grind that requires lots of Grit to survive. Hello, and welcome to DevOps. Here you will trade your time for money, building a set of self-perpetuating skills largely superfluous outside of the needs created by software complexity having gone awry. Extreme perseverance in the face of unending frustration and monotony is ideal for this role. You will be well-compensated so as to discourage premature, permanent departure from the specialty—and life. Good luck.
- orangesite 4y agoI think I'm too old for what they're looking for and go back to perusing job listings that talk about how the founders focus on getting the job done efficiently so everyone can spend more time with their families.
- rawoke083600 4y agoSame as when the JD says: -hard worker (Which employer is not looking for that?) -be able to work under pressure (yea.....no) -talented (there are companies that want untalented ppl ? Can I give this title/attribute to myself) -"Too much happy vibes" Example: an AMAZING Company XYZ is looking for an AWESOME talented ROCK STAR developer to fill this FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY ! (am I joining a cult ?) What I DO look for are JD's that have at least a 'smell' that a tech-savvy person had a word in writing it. -Come solve interesting problems (rare, but usually gold level indicator of cool job) -No mention of design-patterns (no thank you Mr-Fortune-500-Banking-Company). I do have nothing against them in practise where they fit, but not on JD. -More focus on meta-skill or interests (problem solving, thinking, math, physics, science, DrWho) Less mentions and focus on tech-stack (not NO mention of tech stack, just don't make it a laundry-list of buzz-words/frameworks etc) -Some mention of philosophy (douch-filter) Example: -You are not your code -No one knows everything -a Hint of a joke/humor :) Last 2cents: If you are looking for "web devs", a rule of thumb I found useful is to look for "programmers that can do webdev" in contrast to web-dev that can do programming... a small but subtle difference at least in my country and experience Almost forgot to most important thing. NO SCRUM !! If I wanted to be a cole-miner-of-code-on-an-assembly-line, I would have become a cole miner
- jaclaz 4y agoI always liked this one (the original is not online anymore): https://www.forensicfocus.com/forums/employment-and-career-issues/message-to-recruiters/ https://www.forensicfocus.com/forums/employment-and-career-i... >This is how most job ads sound nowadays >We’re looking for a person with more than 100 years of experience in software development, coding everything from BIOSes to cloud applications, knowledge of all past, present and future operating systems and setting up secure networks. The applicant must also be able to juggle up to twenty balls and read hieroglyphs, be fluent in Swahili and dance like Michael Jackson (especially moonwalking – nice to have at corporate Christmas parties).
- cammil 4y agoI think avoid them. I have worked in maybe 10 different companies as a consultant and I get the feeling that the grit required is often needed to deal with poor internal practices or systems. If the work is simply hard, that to me should translate to needed skilled workers, not gritty ones.
- krainboltgreene 4y agoI hear a catchy term that has an ambiguous meaning that will almost certainly actually result in a toxic environment. If anyone has "grit" in the tech ecosystem it's going to be HR and legal, as they suffer through the rules skirting and generally childish behavior.
- eps 4y agoThey are looking for people that think of themselves as gritty. Presumably this works well as a filter and gets them people of a certain type. What type it is - hard to say, you will need to ask self-described gritty people that :)
- timwaagh 4y agoRed flag. Sounds like I'll be slaving away in some mine to be honest. I suppose I'd need 50% more compensation to accept working like that.
- michaelwww 4y agoI had no idea "grit" was a thing these days. There's even a Ted Talk! Grit is Stamina. Grit is not about being the smartest person in the room – it’s about having more passion and perseverance to stay the course. When the going gets tough, the gritty keep going. Grit is the #1 factor in success. “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare,” according to Angela Duckworth’s best-selling book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. We agree. Watch her Ted Talk here. https://www.highradius.com/culture/go-gritty-or-go-home/ https://www.highradius.com/culture/go-gritty-or-go-home/
- rroot 4y agoI think the company and/or team is broken. I see two reasons for hiring: 1. To join a broken team and getting stuff done by constant grit. In which case I don't want to work there. 2. Company actually wants to fix the team and hire gritty people to phase out the defunct team. I also wouldn't want to do that.
- hackerlight 4y agoOr 3. grit is simply a useful filter for overall effectiveness (as a proxy for resilience, initiative, motivation, perseverance) regardless of whether it's really needed in the current company.
- hackerlight 4y agoA lot of impactful work requires a bit of initiative and willingness to do annoying or unconventional things that act as hurdles, as well as perseverance. Many people are unwilling to pay those costs and therefore have little impact. So I don't see it as a red flag.
- danielbarla 4y agoI see a lot of negative connotations in the comments so far. But honestly, the first thing that popped into my head was the relatively recent book "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance". In it, the author argues that success has more to do with the amount of energy and time you invest in improving, rather than any natural gift you may have for a specific job or sport. Or at least, that talent is not sufficient for success. I see a lot of truth to this; e.g. there are plenty of people who are super intelligent, but have lackluster skill portfolios, or are way to quick to switch jobs or environments when it's anything but ideal. In a controversial way, this may even be somewhat correlated with being very talented, since there's a history of having things go easy for you and not needing to learn healthy coping mechanisms for adversity. Before we get too far along that wagon though, there's probably also the flip side, where people are _too_ gritty, and don't solve problems that should be solved, because they can endure through it. It's something of a balance. But the core message is good; people who are passionate and enduring about their profession tend to be good at it.
- Brian_K_White 4y agoThe negative reactions are entirely appropriate. Using other words like passion and perseverence is no better. The problem isn't being dedicated, the problem is using those virtues as a good sounding way to say "We want people we can abuse and work like dogs for no real reward," I exhibit all those qualities of liking what I do and doing it almost 24/7 by choice, and overcoming all the hard problems that come along that others give up on etc, and I see ads like that as toxic AF. No way am I working for anyone that thinks it's cool to demand that sort of work-worship. I give it voluntarily to people who treat me like a human, and such people by definition don't ask for slavish devotion. And if they had to ask for above & beyond for some outstanding reason, they for damned sure don't try to couch it such language, and it's the exception not the rule.
- danielbarla 4y agoAnother way to read the ad might be "we prefer people who are good at their job, rather than being good at IQ tests during the interview", which might be a positive interpretation. I don't disagree with your points, I just have a different set of connotations attached to 'grit', I guess. For me, it's not necessarily an indicator that a place will work you harder, or expect overtime heroics, etc, it could just mean they have a preference for a certain personality type, which I have no issue with. But you could be right, if it's used as a pre-filter for people who put up with a toxic workplace.
- Nathanael_M 4y agoI think it’s a startupified abstraction for pain tolerance. If you have the pain tolerance to push through tedium and failure and work, that will check the boxes required to be considered “gritty”.
- geraldwhen 4y agoThey’re trying to filter for young men, specifically. When posting inclusive job roles, you limit language that is unnecessary to the role that one group may describe themself as but not another. “Coding ninja”, “gritty developer”, “rockstar”, etc. HR tells me that studies have shown that this kind of language biases applicants to men, which isn’t a huge surprise. I now make an effort to be truly honest in job postings about what is required and leave it at that. Flexport wants young men to commit their lives to their product so they can burn them up and spit them out in a year or two.
- csande17 4y agoMy first guess was that they meant, like, rough around the edges. Maybe they do a lot of swearing and fights in the office! But that's kind of a weird thing to put in a job posting these days. Then I remembered that "grit" was a trendy pop-psychology concept a few years ago. I recalled it being used as a way to explain why some students do better in school than other students without resorting to ideas like "innate intelligence". The core of the idea was that you do better in school by working hard and not giving up. That kind of grit doesn't really work as the adjective "gritty", though. So my impression of the company is that they were looking for trendy way to say "we want to hire developers who are good at their jobs", stumbled over a dead trend, and didn't run it past a copy-editor. A poor first impression, but an understandable one.
- fastball 4y agoI think a lot of people in this thread are reading wayyyy too much into it. When I read the Flexport post title, I interpreted gritty to mean "our goal is to build, our goal is not providing the cushiest engineering job".
- atoav 4y agoI think they are looking for someone who is a stupid sucker that won't complain when their workplace is badly designed, badly managed and without proper boundaries. At the same time it tells me that your company is precisely that: badly managed. If your company needs "gritty" employees once every couple of years when some catastrophic unforeseeable event happens, good. When you need gritty employees on a daily basis that smells like someone is unable to organize their core business. The exception would maybe be if your company is in the business of incident response or similar, where employees must expect a certain type of "bursty" workload given the nature of the business. But then you will probably pay them like lords.
- laserbeam 4y agoMy first thought is they saw this ted talk at some point, which claims grit is the best predictor of success. It's also a good short generic term. I don't think it's a red flag, not by itself at least. https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_powe...
- hkon 4y agoThat a new buzzword is about to emerge.
- pwdisswordfish9 4y agohttps://assets.teenvogue.com/photos/5cfe804fc546b6fd4bb1ff79/16:9/w_2560%2Cc_limit/00-story-gritty-mascot.jpg https://assets.teenvogue.com/photos/5cfe804fc546b6fd4bb1ff79...
- GeneT45 4y agoSounds like 60-80 hour weeks to me. However, ime, not always for nothing. Back when I was willing to work those kinds of hours I was well compensated for it.
- apengwin 4y agoI was once asked by a company if I was used to/willing to pulling all-nighters for projects. Heard later from the grapevine that the work hours were terrible, and wlb was nonexistent. Huge red flag imo
- Jetrel 4y agoI see Gritty and I think — "bad things happen in Philadelphia."
- RobotToaster 4y agoRun away really really fast.
- otikik 4y ago“Pass”
- bvoq 4y agoIf the money matches the grit, then it's good in my book. If not, then not.
- quickthrower2 4y agoYou are going to work like a founder without being one.
- giantg2 4y agoProbably that the job is even more shitty than the places wanting the hot shots that are looking for a challenge and have an insane list of competencies listed in the typical toxic positivity way.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoCounterproductive. When recruiting you only have to care about one problem: Getting enough qualified applicants. However, most ads read like the employer has too many unqualified applicants and would like unqualified applicants to weed themselves out. But that doesn't work because there is no way to know what phrases make people feel like the job isn't for them. In my opinion such ads should contain as few "filter" clauses as possible.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throw__away7391 4y agoTo me, "grit" is the defining characteristic that seperates "technical" people from "non-technical" people. At some point you didn't understand how something worked, but you stuck with it and figured it out. Meanwhile someone else faced with the same situation gave up. Over time these types tend to accumulate quite a bit of deep understanding about how things work that is not easy to replicate without this kind of experience. Perhaps gritty people tend to work more hours, but this has very little to do with having grit itself.
- RickJWagner 4y agoIs it a soap company?
- kthejoker2 4y agoThis thread confirms every job description is a Rorschach test. Your response to it says way more about you than it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- taylodl 4y agoWhat do I think? Management expects the workers to compensate for the management's incompetence.
- muzani 4y agoI often see two variations: 1. You get your typical 996. Everyone works long hours. They are visibly suffering. They are well compensated for their suffering. Often there's a third party - stockholders, clients that are witness to this and believe that they're doing their best work. 2. As they say, eliminate distractions. That's often things like games, travel, and other personal ambitions. Some choose to keep the personal ambitions and pleasures and eliminate family, friends, and health. Burnout is common and as such, working more than 40 hours/week is discouraged, but you end up too exhausted to be dealing with all but a few things. Either way, work life balance is expected to be quite low.
- citizenpaul 4y agoShort answer. Unpaid work, unpaid work, unpaid work. Longer. Unpaid work, Passive aggressive abuse, no work life balance, bosses like in office space, an owner/CEO that will randomly storm in demanding drop everything and handle his problem of the week, no holidays, sneaky changes in your job contract, diluted options/stock, ignore your health, secretive sus behavior, psychological abuse, workday never ends... and more. Grit is for primary stakeholders. ANYONE that EVER says you need grit is looking to abuse you. Grit is the ability to withstand unreasonable torment and keep working.
- JohnFen 4y agoI wonder what the hell they mean by "gritty" people.
- julik 4y agoThey are asking for people who are ready to be exploited, usually without sharing either authority or rewards (for good outcomes) and without properly communicating risks (for bad outcomes). Avoid.