6 ms·

No poaching agreements are not bullshit - you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are) and in exchange you're expecting them to use tha

by emmett 14y ago

No poaching agreements are not bullshit - you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are) and in exchange you're expecting them to use that information only for the purpose directed. It's similar to an NDA. Nothing bullshit about it.

phillmv 14y ago
> you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are) Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat. You don't even need to know that in order to recruit people. -- I feel that NDAs are kind of bullshit too, but they're typically not as expressly oppressive. Unless they stretch into noncompetes, which are incredible bullshit.
- simonw 14y ago
  "Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat" I don't think that's true at all. Some of the best engineers I've worked with have had very small online footprints (they're too busy building awesome things at their company to spend much time on Twitter etc). Now that I'm responsible for hiring, I consider knowledge of that kind of person to be incredibly important.
  - dagw 14y ago
    I have to agree here. Most of the best people I've worked with don't have much in the way of twitter and github accounts. Github and twitter only seems popular within a fairly narrow professional and cultural niche.
  - pawelwentpawel 14y ago
    I understand using github/twitter a lot if you're a developer. When you work on something you might want to get some immediate feedback/testers on it. Yet still, linkedin (even though useful) scares me away a little bit. Each single time I get back, I see more and more people inventing longer and more exotic job names and descriptions, pitching around with some void statements and uploading their pictures in suits.
    - nathan_long 14y ago
      My problem with LinkedIn is other people. People want me to say I know them when I don't (hey, networking!). People want me to recommend them when I have only seen them in the hallway and don't even know what they do. I am very conservative about these things. Does LinkedIn's own model disagree? Does it push people towards larger networks, instead of smaller, higher-value ones? Am I doing it wrong, or is (seemingly) everyone else?
      - pawelwentpawel 14y ago
        There is quite a lot of recruiters/randoms just adding as many people as possible. Without any introductory message, I would just consider that as spam. However, if you know somebody in person but don't know him very well then I don't see a huge problem. I get quite a lot of invites from my former class mates that I had no real connection with. But hey, you never know where your life takes you. Those connections might accidentally come in very useful one day. As for the recommendations - they've got nothing to loose really. In the worst case they won't get one.
  - vellum 14y ago
    I agree. Github is like a portfolio. But you don't need a portfolio if you're a great developer with a strong network.
- barrkel 14y ago
  This is really, really not true. Some of (perhaps even most of) the best engineers I've worked with had almost zero public profile, almost to the point of being publicity phobic.
  - phillmv 14y ago
    In retrospect, I was being a little hyperbolic. I too know plenty of developers without an online presence. Anyhow, my point was, who your best employees are is not privileged information.
- SonicSoul 14y ago
  care to elaborate exactly how you accomplish this in 10 min? or any other time period? out of all the great developers i know, 1 has a technical blog (and he updates it very infrequently). Also, how do you gauge if someone is a star based on their twitter or linked in profiles?
  - phillmv 14y ago
    A good 90% of the people I know have linked in profiles. You look at their titles. See who is a friend of the top cheese on facebook, sort by universities. Github is self explanatory, I hope.
mjwalshe 14y ago
its colusion and in some places ileagal it also voilates for on the Universal Human rights.
JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Poaching is a myth. You assume the only reason your folks are working for you, is they don't know about a better deal elsewhere? Every sensible employee should regard every paycheck as a renewed offer of employment. If a better deal exists, its their choice, not yours, whether they stay or not. Your only real option is to treat employees well, make sure they know you appreciate their talents, and try to generate some loyalty.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Good post. Loyalty in the workplace is also nonsense. We're (mostly) all capitalists here we should act like it. Never ever stay at a company because you "love it" or some childish notion of "loyalty". You should be there because it's the best allocation of your resource of time/knowledge. I don't care about the company I work for and I feel no more loyalty to them then I do an online electronics store. Having said that, my employment has two goals: making me money now and making me money later. This means that I won't leave the company I'm at if someone else offers me $2 more a year. There are a lot of factors that make up my market value and all of them have to be considered. I have left one company to work at another at lower pay because I knew that move would put me in a better position several years down the road, i.e. would increase my market value. I said before I didn't care about companies I work for. Emotionally that's true. Professionally, of course I want them to do well because them failing hurts the value of the time I spent there. I also want to stay long enough to accomplish big things that I can talk about to the next place I interview for. If you go into a relationship where you are more emotionally attached to them then they are to you you're going to get hurt. And a company is just one downsizing away from letting you go no matter how much they make you feel like "family".
  - lsc 14y ago
    >Good post. Loyalty in the workplace is also nonsense. We're (mostly) all capitalists here we should act like it. Never ever stay at a company because you "love it" or some childish notion of "loyalty". You should be there because it's the best allocation of your resource of time/knowledge. This is how I feel... and probably how most entrepreneurs feel. That's why we are striking out on our own. This is not how many employees feel. One guy working for me (at wages I pay) felt actively guilty and apologized to me for interviewing with google. I mean, he'd have gotten a staggering raise if he got the job. (I think he's right on the edge of being good enough; I bet if he practised interviewing and tried a few times, he could make it. Fortunately for me, he failed the first interview, and like a lot of people, he finds interviewing uncomfortable.) I mean, if anything, I feel a little bit proud when my employees go on to much bigger and better things; I don't have money, so I hire people that are just starting, or that have been unemployed for a while and need to start over. I mean, I'd /like/ them to stay with me longer? But if you aren't capable of becoming google materiel, well, I try not to let you past the 'project-based contractor' stage, so it's just plain irrational for me to expect people to stick around for my low wages forever. I absolutely don't understand this. I mean, I don't expect loyalty. (I mean, I expect honesty... but I don't expect anyone to stick around if someone else offers a lot more cash.) But, many employees really do feel something like Loyalty. As a owner, it would be in my interest to put some effort into making those sorts more comfortable. Now, what to do? I don't really understand that feeling of loyalty, so I can't address it directly, but I can say "besides money, what makes these people comfortable/happy? that I can give them and google can't?" - like one benefit I give employees is extreme schedule flexibility. Another is being careful to have an environment where your employees don't feel like they will get fired. (yeah. I don't get this one, either. But it's huge. Normal people are terrified of getting let go. But, I guess large companies do this, too. Of course, instead of giving people severance, when I have to lay people off, I go pester all the recruiters I know and try to get them better jobs.) but yeah. this is something, I think, that we, as entrepreneurs, should study. It's important to understand.

by emmett 14y ago

phillmv 14y ago

> you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are) Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat. You don't even need to know that in order to recruit people. -- I feel that NDAs are kind of bullshit too, but they're typically not as expressly oppressive. Unless they stretch into noncompetes, which are incredible bullshit.

simonw 14y ago
"Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat" I don't think that's true at all. Some of the best engineers I've worked with have had very small online footprints (they're too busy building awesome things at their company to spend much time on Twitter etc). Now that I'm responsible for hiring, I consider knowledge of that kind of person to be incredibly important.
- dagw 14y ago
  I have to agree here. Most of the best people I've worked with don't have much in the way of twitter and github accounts. Github and twitter only seems popular within a fairly narrow professional and cultural niche.
- pawelwentpawel 14y ago
  I understand using github/twitter a lot if you're a developer. When you work on something you might want to get some immediate feedback/testers on it. Yet still, linkedin (even though useful) scares me away a little bit. Each single time I get back, I see more and more people inventing longer and more exotic job names and descriptions, pitching around with some void statements and uploading their pictures in suits.
  - nathan_long 14y ago
    My problem with LinkedIn is other people. People want me to say I know them when I don't (hey, networking!). People want me to recommend them when I have only seen them in the hallway and don't even know what they do. I am very conservative about these things. Does LinkedIn's own model disagree? Does it push people towards larger networks, instead of smaller, higher-value ones? Am I doing it wrong, or is (seemingly) everyone else?
    - pawelwentpawel 14y ago
      There is quite a lot of recruiters/randoms just adding as many people as possible. Without any introductory message, I would just consider that as spam. However, if you know somebody in person but don't know him very well then I don't see a huge problem. I get quite a lot of invites from my former class mates that I had no real connection with. But hey, you never know where your life takes you. Those connections might accidentally come in very useful one day. As for the recommendations - they've got nothing to loose really. In the worst case they won't get one.
- vellum 14y ago
  I agree. Github is like a portfolio. But you don't need a portfolio if you're a great developer with a strong network.
barrkel 14y ago
This is really, really not true. Some of (perhaps even most of) the best engineers I've worked with had almost zero public profile, almost to the point of being publicity phobic.
- phillmv 14y ago
  In retrospect, I was being a little hyperbolic. I too know plenty of developers without an online presence. Anyhow, my point was, who your best employees are is not privileged information.
SonicSoul 14y ago
care to elaborate exactly how you accomplish this in 10 min? or any other time period? out of all the great developers i know, 1 has a technical blog (and he updates it very infrequently). Also, how do you gauge if someone is a star based on their twitter or linked in profiles?
- phillmv 14y ago
  A good 90% of the people I know have linked in profiles. You look at their titles. See who is a friend of the top cheese on facebook, sort by universities. Github is self explanatory, I hope.

mjwalshe 14y ago

its colusion and in some places ileagal it also voilates for on the Universal Human rights.

JoeAltmaier 14y ago

Poaching is a myth. You assume the only reason your folks are working for you, is they don't know about a better deal elsewhere? Every sensible employee should regard every paycheck as a renewed offer of employment. If a better deal exists, its their choice, not yours, whether they stay or not. Your only real option is to treat employees well, make sure they know you appreciate their talents, and try to generate some loyalty.

flyinRyan 14y ago
Good post. Loyalty in the workplace is also nonsense. We're (mostly) all capitalists here we should act like it. Never ever stay at a company because you "love it" or some childish notion of "loyalty". You should be there because it's the best allocation of your resource of time/knowledge. I don't care about the company I work for and I feel no more loyalty to them then I do an online electronics store. Having said that, my employment has two goals: making me money now and making me money later. This means that I won't leave the company I'm at if someone else offers me $2 more a year. There are a lot of factors that make up my market value and all of them have to be considered. I have left one company to work at another at lower pay because I knew that move would put me in a better position several years down the road, i.e. would increase my market value. I said before I didn't care about companies I work for. Emotionally that's true. Professionally, of course I want them to do well because them failing hurts the value of the time I spent there. I also want to stay long enough to accomplish big things that I can talk about to the next place I interview for. If you go into a relationship where you are more emotionally attached to them then they are to you you're going to get hurt. And a company is just one downsizing away from letting you go no matter how much they make you feel like "family".
- lsc 14y ago
  >Good post. Loyalty in the workplace is also nonsense. We're (mostly) all capitalists here we should act like it. Never ever stay at a company because you "love it" or some childish notion of "loyalty". You should be there because it's the best allocation of your resource of time/knowledge. This is how I feel... and probably how most entrepreneurs feel. That's why we are striking out on our own. This is not how many employees feel. One guy working for me (at wages I pay) felt actively guilty and apologized to me for interviewing with google. I mean, he'd have gotten a staggering raise if he got the job. (I think he's right on the edge of being good enough; I bet if he practised interviewing and tried a few times, he could make it. Fortunately for me, he failed the first interview, and like a lot of people, he finds interviewing uncomfortable.) I mean, if anything, I feel a little bit proud when my employees go on to much bigger and better things; I don't have money, so I hire people that are just starting, or that have been unemployed for a while and need to start over. I mean, I'd /like/ them to stay with me longer? But if you aren't capable of becoming google materiel, well, I try not to let you past the 'project-based contractor' stage, so it's just plain irrational for me to expect people to stick around for my low wages forever. I absolutely don't understand this. I mean, I don't expect loyalty. (I mean, I expect honesty... but I don't expect anyone to stick around if someone else offers a lot more cash.) But, many employees really do feel something like Loyalty. As a owner, it would be in my interest to put some effort into making those sorts more comfortable. Now, what to do? I don't really understand that feeling of loyalty, so I can't address it directly, but I can say "besides money, what makes these people comfortable/happy? that I can give them and google can't?" - like one benefit I give employees is extreme schedule flexibility. Another is being careful to have an environment where your employees don't feel like they will get fired. (yeah. I don't get this one, either. But it's huge. Normal people are terrified of getting let go. But, I guess large companies do this, too. Of course, instead of giving people severance, when I have to lay people off, I go pester all the recruiters I know and try to get them better jobs.) but yeah. this is something, I think, that we, as entrepreneurs, should study. It's important to understand.