27 ms·

> But after a while, it seems to be a lot more important to tell people they are wrong Honestly, this is one of the main reason I see that a lot of hiring mana

by coffee 15y ago

> But after a while, it seems to be a lot more important to tell people they are wrong Honestly, this is one of the main reason I see that a lot of hiring managers LOVE young, inexperienced, recent college grads. They do not want to be told they are wrong. They want these people to shut their mouths, buckle down, and just continue with the death march. Even if the end result is failure, which it typically is, it's way easier to fail in this manner than it is to work hard at succeeding...

temphn 15y ago
If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt and the hiring manager no longer has the ability to hire. Moreover, the guy who picked the job picked the wrong company, so he failed as well. Hard work is a necessary but not sufficient component of success. Too many older folks equate passion or hard work with "death march" and foment a negative, lazy, can't do attitude. That is particularly poisonous at a startup where persistence in the face of rapid change and uncertain requirements is key.
- jasonwocky 15y ago
  >If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt In my experience, that rarely holds true in the non-startup world.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Sadly in manager buzzword bingo they are a success, they "built a team" and delivered " thousands of lines of code." Everyone needs to stay current. And people who do stuff in their own time often have no trouble finding work because the "off time" work often is more relevant in the next job than their 10 years of experience on their employers proprietary system. The warning sign should be if all you do when you get home from work is watch tv or play video games, you are falling behind the skill sets of those entering the market.
  - ootachi 15y ago
    So, in effect, you should work all the time. Half of the time you should work for free, so you can get hired again after you get laid off, and half of the time you should work for pay at your current job. What a wonderful industry we work in.
    - beachgeek 15y ago
      I don't think that's what Chuck meant. I think you need to have a passion for the industry and show it in some way. If you're not passionate about tech then maybe you should switch to some other industry. BTW Chuck I remember NIS+!
    - velshin 15y ago
      We're professionals paid 6 figures or more. It's reasonable to expect we 'work' (study, learn) outside of the office. The extra time, 10 - 15 hours a week, keeps you current. Would you want to visit a doctor that only put in 40 hours a week seeing patients, and never studies recent medical advances? Or a lawyer whose case law knowledge did not extend beyond their own experience? If you work in tech and honestly expect to only put in 40 hour weeks for your profession, as you get older you will end up in a dreary IT department -- not a software company -- and eventually be laid off.
    - ChuckMcM 15y ago
      An interesting way to look at it, but no. In any professional career (Law, Medicine, Accounting, Engineering, Etc.) the field is constantly evolving and changing. To stay current you have to go to conferences, read papers, experiment. You need a 'learning lifestyle' which, for folks who are passionate about what they do, is natural. An Electrical Engineer who stopped learning after they left school in 1990 is not a desirable hire, just like a lawyer who hasn't bothered to keep abreast of the changes in the law for 20 years. What I'm saying is that if you're a professional and you're not keeping current, then your lack of currency, more than your age, will hinder your employment. That being said, there are age biases out there. Young managers can be intimidated by hiring an older person, especially if they are insecure. And like the antecendent of this post older people who have 'been around' can sometimes see the reality of things which are uncomfortable for others to admit are true.
- michaelochurch 15y ago
  I've been through several death marches and I still work hard and have "passion". The signs of a death march are different from those who are working hard because they're excited about what they're doing. Death marches usually happen because shared suffering becomes more important than creativity and insight. You might notice that this is how a lot of organizations run. Poor managerial or group performance leads to more of a sense of urgency, which means that one needs to suffer and sacrifice even more in order to keep up with the group. Eventually, there's a lot of effort but minimal effectiveness and group performance goes from transiently weak to objectively bad. Some death march signs: * People feeling they "have to" spend unusually long hours in the office. * People coming to work when sick. * Hard deadlines on short timeframes (i.e. the 4:30 work drop). * Low employee autonomy on what is done and how. * Full-time workers dedicated to maintenance efforts (instead of maintenance being a minor chore shared by the group). * Wide disparities in measured performance: one or two people being "manic" and generating 1000 LoC/week, with the rest of the team struggling to keep up with their changes. * Lots of moving targets, scope and feature creep, and unstable interfaces that come from sudden unnecessary couplings (premature optimization). Older people (as a group) don't have a "can't do" attitude. They just know the signs of a death march and they know what it's like to burn out, and they're not going to commit 120% until they know their efforts are going to pan out. That said, they shouldn't be required to commit 120 percent. You get 40 hours, minus whatever you take away in meetings and such. If you want them to work more than that on a project, it's your job to motivate them to do it.
  - temphn 15y ago
    You get 40 hours Then they shouldn't want to work at Google and Facebook. No one serious there works 40 hours per week. It's like Jamie Z said: the first wave at Netscape wanted to make the company great. The next wave, the one that ruined them, wanted to join because the company was great. Make no mistake, people like the ones you describe -- listless ones who clock 40 hours while looking at the clock and describing every major shipping push as a "death march" -- are the ones you want to avoid like the plague. If you want them to work more than that on a project, it's your job to motivate them to do it. An alternative and far more successful approach is to hire young guns who are intrinsically motivated. You just don't want to hire people who want to (a) be highly paid and work at the best companies in the world but (b) work only 40 hours a week on projects that are so unambitious that they are guaranteed to ship with no tricky bits.
- coffee 15y ago
  > If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt and the hiring manager no longer has the ability to hire. This is NOT what I've seen, first hand. Usually were talking about a series "X" round of funding. Hiring is scaled out. When the end result is a failure (many times over), usually you'll see someone like the VP of Engineering fired and replaced. This does not equate bankruptcy.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

by coffee 15y ago

temphn 15y ago

If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt and the hiring manager no longer has the ability to hire. Moreover, the guy who picked the job picked the wrong company, so he failed as well. Hard work is a necessary but not sufficient component of success. Too many older folks equate passion or hard work with "death march" and foment a negative, lazy, can't do attitude. That is particularly poisonous at a startup where persistence in the face of rapid change and uncertain requirements is key.

jasonwocky 15y ago
>If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt In my experience, that rarely holds true in the non-startup world.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
Sadly in manager buzzword bingo they are a success, they "built a team" and delivered " thousands of lines of code." Everyone needs to stay current. And people who do stuff in their own time often have no trouble finding work because the "off time" work often is more relevant in the next job than their 10 years of experience on their employers proprietary system. The warning sign should be if all you do when you get home from work is watch tv or play video games, you are falling behind the skill sets of those entering the market.
- ootachi 15y ago
  So, in effect, you should work all the time. Half of the time you should work for free, so you can get hired again after you get laid off, and half of the time you should work for pay at your current job. What a wonderful industry we work in.
  - beachgeek 15y ago
    I don't think that's what Chuck meant. I think you need to have a passion for the industry and show it in some way. If you're not passionate about tech then maybe you should switch to some other industry. BTW Chuck I remember NIS+!
  - velshin 15y ago
    We're professionals paid 6 figures or more. It's reasonable to expect we 'work' (study, learn) outside of the office. The extra time, 10 - 15 hours a week, keeps you current. Would you want to visit a doctor that only put in 40 hours a week seeing patients, and never studies recent medical advances? Or a lawyer whose case law knowledge did not extend beyond their own experience? If you work in tech and honestly expect to only put in 40 hour weeks for your profession, as you get older you will end up in a dreary IT department -- not a software company -- and eventually be laid off.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    An interesting way to look at it, but no. In any professional career (Law, Medicine, Accounting, Engineering, Etc.) the field is constantly evolving and changing. To stay current you have to go to conferences, read papers, experiment. You need a 'learning lifestyle' which, for folks who are passionate about what they do, is natural. An Electrical Engineer who stopped learning after they left school in 1990 is not a desirable hire, just like a lawyer who hasn't bothered to keep abreast of the changes in the law for 20 years. What I'm saying is that if you're a professional and you're not keeping current, then your lack of currency, more than your age, will hinder your employment. That being said, there are age biases out there. Young managers can be intimidated by hiring an older person, especially if they are insecure. And like the antecendent of this post older people who have 'been around' can sometimes see the reality of things which are uncomfortable for others to admit are true.
michaelochurch 15y ago
I've been through several death marches and I still work hard and have "passion". The signs of a death march are different from those who are working hard because they're excited about what they're doing. Death marches usually happen because shared suffering becomes more important than creativity and insight. You might notice that this is how a lot of organizations run. Poor managerial or group performance leads to more of a sense of urgency, which means that one needs to suffer and sacrifice even more in order to keep up with the group. Eventually, there's a lot of effort but minimal effectiveness and group performance goes from transiently weak to objectively bad. Some death march signs: * People feeling they "have to" spend unusually long hours in the office. * People coming to work when sick. * Hard deadlines on short timeframes (i.e. the 4:30 work drop). * Low employee autonomy on what is done and how. * Full-time workers dedicated to maintenance efforts (instead of maintenance being a minor chore shared by the group). * Wide disparities in measured performance: one or two people being "manic" and generating 1000 LoC/week, with the rest of the team struggling to keep up with their changes. * Lots of moving targets, scope and feature creep, and unstable interfaces that come from sudden unnecessary couplings (premature optimization). Older people (as a group) don't have a "can't do" attitude. They just know the signs of a death march and they know what it's like to burn out, and they're not going to commit 120% until they know their efforts are going to pan out. That said, they shouldn't be required to commit 120 percent. You get 40 hours, minus whatever you take away in meetings and such. If you want them to work more than that on a project, it's your job to motivate them to do it.
- temphn 15y ago
  You get 40 hours Then they shouldn't want to work at Google and Facebook. No one serious there works 40 hours per week. It's like Jamie Z said: the first wave at Netscape wanted to make the company great. The next wave, the one that ruined them, wanted to join because the company was great. Make no mistake, people like the ones you describe -- listless ones who clock 40 hours while looking at the clock and describing every major shipping push as a "death march" -- are the ones you want to avoid like the plague. If you want them to work more than that on a project, it's your job to motivate them to do it. An alternative and far more successful approach is to hire young guns who are intrinsically motivated. You just don't want to hire people who want to (a) be highly paid and work at the best companies in the world but (b) work only 40 hours a week on projects that are so unambitious that they are guaranteed to ship with no tricky bits.
coffee 15y ago
> If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt and the hiring manager no longer has the ability to hire. This is NOT what I've seen, first hand. Usually were talking about a series "X" round of funding. Hiring is scaled out. When the end result is a failure (many times over), usually you'll see someone like the VP of Engineering fired and replaced. This does not equate bankruptcy.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]