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Yeah I'm not talking about being "on call". I don't know anything about Amazon other than it's probably full of bad culture. Nowhere I've worked has ever been l

Yeah I'm not talking about being "on call". I don't know anything about Amazon other than it's probably full of bad culture. Nowhere I've worked has ever been like that except a handful of emergencies. I'm talking about working at a relaxed place because everyone actually gets their stuff done 9 to 5. A place that's fun and interesting enough that you feel happy to randomly think about work in the middle of the night for an hour or two or whenever else motivation strikes to keep it that way. I'm saying that these little nudges from the team where extra hours are silently worked prevents being forced to pick up the slack that shouldn't be there in the first place. Slack comes from miserable people regardless of how many hours they do or don't work.

matrix87 3y ago
I initially thought above comment was about on call because of the "things catch on fire part", I guess not > where extra hours are silently worked prevents being forced to pick up the slack that shouldn't be there in the first place. Slack comes from miserable people regardless of how many hours they do or don't work This is true except from my experience the miserable people who leave slack for others to pick up aren't normally all that miserable, just not really motivated. At least, they're not miserable until management does something about it
- zztop44 3y ago
  I think it depends. I’ve encountered some people that definitely seen that way. But I also know that during every period of prolonged underperformance in my career (there have been a couple) I have felt awful about it despite having a strong incentive to try to convince myself it’s my fault.
  - strken 3y ago
    I think a lot of underperformers end up in a hole where they're burnt out to such an extent that they don't have the energy to leave. It takes clarity, introspection, positivity, and extra work to find a new job; those are exactly the things that burnout saps. Of course, most people are really good at hiding their emotional state, since that's a requirement to fit into a professional workplace. The facade of happiness stays up well after the real thing is gone.
indigochill 3y ago
> A place that's fun and interesting enough that you feel happy to randomly think about work in the middle of the night for an hour or two I feel like in my experience it's actually less about fun and interesting and more about do you feel like the people running the company see you as a compatriot or a cog? I worked at a pretty tiny startup in college where I regularly talked with the CEO and worked directly for one of the VPs. They were great and from start to finish it's been my most positive work experience, since I felt like one of the team. Dare I say it even felt a bit like a family (well, the CEO and VP were a husband-wife team and I was a college kid at the time). Then I switched to a company that billed itself as having a startup culture but really couldn't because of turf wars between layers of irrelevant middle management, never mind regular tone-deaf decisions from upper management and repeated bad bets from them that lead to multiple layoffs. The work itself is actually more interesting than what I was doing at the real startup, but the mismanagement has pushed me into a mindset of mostly only giving them what I'm contractually obligated to, with rare exceptions for smaller projects that I feel I can have a greater direct impact on. I would hazard a guess that management in that company is actually a net negative because if it wasn't for all the bad politics there, I'd probably be just as happy to give them extra time because like you say the work is fun and interesting. And I know a couple other guys there who -were- regularly giving extra time until they got repeatedly personally burned by management.
- watwut 3y ago
  > a company that billed itself as having a startup culture but really couldn't because of turf wars between layers of irrelevant middle management, never mind regular tone-deaf decisions from upper management and repeated bad bets Honestly, that sounds like typical startup to me.
  - indigochill 3y ago
    The real startup I worked at was probably around a dozen people when I joined. You could probably grow some beyond that and still be reasonably agile (that is, the CEO still has a good idea of the day-to-day operations and can move the company to the right market fit), but once you're at a size where irrelevant middle management is capable of existing (probably around the point that you need two layers of management), I'd posit it's not really a startup any more. Although this might fly in the face of the common definition.

matrix87 3y ago

I initially thought above comment was about on call because of the "things catch on fire part", I guess not > where extra hours are silently worked prevents being forced to pick up the slack that shouldn't be there in the first place. Slack comes from miserable people regardless of how many hours they do or don't work This is true except from my experience the miserable people who leave slack for others to pick up aren't normally all that miserable, just not really motivated. At least, they're not miserable until management does something about it

zztop44 3y ago
I think it depends. I’ve encountered some people that definitely seen that way. But I also know that during every period of prolonged underperformance in my career (there have been a couple) I have felt awful about it despite having a strong incentive to try to convince myself it’s my fault.
- strken 3y ago
  I think a lot of underperformers end up in a hole where they're burnt out to such an extent that they don't have the energy to leave. It takes clarity, introspection, positivity, and extra work to find a new job; those are exactly the things that burnout saps. Of course, most people are really good at hiding their emotional state, since that's a requirement to fit into a professional workplace. The facade of happiness stays up well after the real thing is gone.

indigochill 3y ago

> A place that's fun and interesting enough that you feel happy to randomly think about work in the middle of the night for an hour or two I feel like in my experience it's actually less about fun and interesting and more about do you feel like the people running the company see you as a compatriot or a cog? I worked at a pretty tiny startup in college where I regularly talked with the CEO and worked directly for one of the VPs. They were great and from start to finish it's been my most positive work experience, since I felt like one of the team. Dare I say it even felt a bit like a family (well, the CEO and VP were a husband-wife team and I was a college kid at the time). Then I switched to a company that billed itself as having a startup culture but really couldn't because of turf wars between layers of irrelevant middle management, never mind regular tone-deaf decisions from upper management and repeated bad bets from them that lead to multiple layoffs. The work itself is actually more interesting than what I was doing at the real startup, but the mismanagement has pushed me into a mindset of mostly only giving them what I'm contractually obligated to, with rare exceptions for smaller projects that I feel I can have a greater direct impact on. I would hazard a guess that management in that company is actually a net negative because if it wasn't for all the bad politics there, I'd probably be just as happy to give them extra time because like you say the work is fun and interesting. And I know a couple other guys there who -were- regularly giving extra time until they got repeatedly personally burned by management.

watwut 3y ago
> a company that billed itself as having a startup culture but really couldn't because of turf wars between layers of irrelevant middle management, never mind regular tone-deaf decisions from upper management and repeated bad bets Honestly, that sounds like typical startup to me.
- indigochill 3y ago
  The real startup I worked at was probably around a dozen people when I joined. You could probably grow some beyond that and still be reasonably agile (that is, the CEO still has a good idea of the day-to-day operations and can move the company to the right market fit), but once you're at a size where irrelevant middle management is capable of existing (probably around the point that you need two layers of management), I'd posit it's not really a startup any more. Although this might fly in the face of the common definition.