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> Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose. Many had accepted below-average salaries and uprooted their lives to commit to the outdoor
by dakiol 1y ago
> Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose. Many had accepted below-average salaries and uprooted their lives to commit to the outdoor lifestyle and the dream job. Suddenly, they were left scrambling for new work and visa sponsors with just a few months’ pay as severance. The six bosses, meanwhile, pocketed an estimated 20 to 30 million euros each.
That’s why, and call me unethical, I never do more than necessary at work. Never help outside of business hours, never engage with rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places. Maximise my income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while trying to work the minimum.
For dreams and craft, I have my side projects.
- lycopodiopsida 1y agoThere is nothing unethical about: you are doing the only sane thing in this system and economics. Morons, who work themselves to death believing bosses shit-talk about “our mission” and “we are in this together” will learn it the hard way.
- benterix 1y agoTry saying that on LinkedIn and watch the reactions. There is a huge difference between what you can feel and do, and what you can say.
- baq 1y agoIf you are in a game of smoke and mirrors, you play the game according to the rules. I don’t post on LinkedIn. Got better games to play.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- prmoustache 1y agoWhy would you say anything on Linkedin in the first place? There is absolutely no reason to engage there unless you are PR for a company or self proclaimed career ̶c̶o̶a̶c̶h̶ liar.
- lycopodiopsida 1y agoWell, if your boss doesn’t say what they think, you shouldn’t either. And why would even consider posting something to linkedin, in the first place?
- MarceColl 1y agoI saw a post recently on linkedin. A founder was saying "If you had one year to live, would you still choose to work at this company? That is the bar to join <crappy nonsensical startup>". It was so incredibly sad.
- lycopodiopsida 1y agoSince slavery is forbidden, morons are the next best thing, I guess.
- oc1 1y agoBoy, please share. I need something depressing to laugh about
- MarceColl 1y agoManaged to find it again, there you go: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/arnau-ayerbe_met-brian-chesky-in-sf-heres-what-he-told-activity-7349052775378448384-mmIi https://www.linkedin.com/posts/arnau-ayerbe_met-brian-chesky...
- oc1 1y agoWay more depressing than i thought. If that's what these YC folks are even in public, i want my time back wasted listening to their messages.
- aleph_minus_one 1y agoInteresting: "How fast do you want to learn?": in my experience many companies in my opinion don't want employees that learn fast, because otherwise these employees would immediately see and call out a lot of bullshit. "Would you feel ownership on day one?": in my experience many software companies don't want employees to really feel ownership about their code, since "ownership" means that the respective employee will be willing to fight hard that his vision of this "owned" code is retained and this code won't be "tainted" by "unworthy" ideas of other colleagues.
- 1y ago
- Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago> There is a huge difference between what you can feel and do, and what you can say. Agree 100% - if I were to bring my authentic self to work I'd be fired in about a minute flat.
- michaelt 1y agoIn principle, we can imagine jobs that contribute positively to the world. When a builder builds a house, or a doctor mends a broken arm, the community has one more home and one less broken arm - and the community is left richer even after the builder and doctor have been paid. That house will be keeping a family warm and dry 20, 40, 100 years into the future, and the patient will be using that arm for the rest of their life. I can see how a person with a job like that could take pride in the fact they've contributed to their community, in addition to the fact they've gotten paid. Of course, a lot of jobs aren't that way, but have tricksy bosses who will try to convince you they are. Which is what it sounds like happened in Komoot's case.
- kelvinjps10 1y agoIn the workers side they could be doing good but on the corporations side not, like insurance companies charging way more for the broken arm than it should be and the house prices being way more higher than they should
- goopypoop 1y agoplus the sepsis and subsidence
- const_cast 1y agoThe unfortunate reality is that a lot of jobs don't exist to enrich the community, they exist for the exact opposite purpose. They exist to make the world a worse place. They exist to make people sicker, or cause more children to die, or maybe even to accelerate acts of war. You don't need to do good things to make money. You can do bad things and make lots of money, and actually, that's typically a little easier. You can even create your own unique evils and then sell solutions to them.
- bjackman 1y agoI'm gonna copy paste a comment I wrote yesterday that I think fits perfectly here: As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good reasons to do it are: 1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some other thing that's more important to you than work. 2. You really enjoy the pure engineering side and find meaning in the technical artifact you're creating. Probably it's open source and has some value/community outside of your employer. 3. You're gaining valuable experience that you can later leverage into something else. Probably you're in the first 5 years of your career. If the main thing driving you is growing a business, and you don't directly own (not options or RSUs or whatever, actual real equity) a significant slice of it, you are very likely misdirecting your energy. --- It sounds like the staff here thought they were in case 2, but they were not. I think that the article explains the reason why nicely: the thing they were building was not part of the commons.
- A_Duck 1y agoThis is a shame though. We should work towards a world where most people can find meaning in what they do. For now it can work better to be a contractor and have your 'meaning' be a positive reputation in your industry. More like being a medieval blacksmith. You don't mind what you're making, but you're known in your village by the quality of your work.
- terminalbraid 1y agoWhat's your reasoning equating "a medieval blacksmith" serving a village directly with their own work and "a rank and file employee" which is how the post you're commenting on was intentionally framed?
- A_Duck 1y agoI'm contrasting rather than equating them. The medieval blacksmith / freelancer may be in a better position to feel meaning in their work, compared with an employee, because of the system of incentives around them.
- Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago> That’s why, and call me unethical, I never do more than necessary at work. Never help outside of business hours, never engage with rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places. Maximise my income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while trying to work the minimum. That's not unethical at all, in fact I think that's a highly intelligent strategy to look out for the little guy (namely you) in the bear pit of tech capitalism. Anyone buying into the "we're more than a company, we're family" schtick is just another sucker to be worked remorselessly to line the pockets of the VPs and C-suite. My previous employers included me in their Director/VP meetings, and the family schtick evaporates pretty quickly when they start talking cuts. One VP in a meeting, quite literally, proposed laying off an entire team of veteran engineers (most with young kids) and the very next thing that came out of this doucebag's mouth was "are we ordering in some lunch?". They do not care a whit about you and once you realise that then you should just look to yourself first and foremost and forget accepting below-average salaries just for some "mission". They will happily kick you to the curb for any of the following reasons, which I have personally witnessed in the past few years, - Their pal is looking for a job that's currently occupied by someone else. So they fire and hire. - They want to deflect blame for their own failures, so they fire a bunch of folks who had nothing to do with the failures. - They want to appear 'ruthless' to the CEO, so fire people to enhance their own image. - They do a clear out of their previous incumbents staff once they replace someone and bring in their own crew.
- tdiff 1y ago> For dreams and craft, I have my side projects. In very infrequent cases can you achieve any noticeable (for society) results without being part of a large org.
- Xylakant 1y agoThat depends on what you consider noticeable. A lot of things are noticeable (and noticed) on the local level. The folks that organise reading sessions with the kids a my sons school. The people managing the local hockey club. People doing local education in IT. Organizing the neighborhood meetup. The people that do hack and tell. Blog about what they’re doing by as fun projects. They may not be known beyond their local communities, but they have impact on society. Most of them are contend with that. If you’re looking to change the world, then that’s likely not good enough, but then again, if you’re looking to do that it’s unlikely that you will achieve that as a rank and file employee in a corporation.
- tdiff 1y agoI agree, but I also see how even a regular employee in, say, space travel corp (or in pharma and so on) can consider their work to be more impactful than running a local community (even in reallity their impact is minimal).
- benhurmarcel 1y agoThere’s some maturity in being happy doing things that are not significant for society.
- bremon 1y agoAs a warning: every time I’ve pushed hard, then had to rein it in and do less, I’ve gotten fired. There’s nothing you can do that makes you irreplaceable, even if you’re the only one in the world that can do it. It’s fine if you want to stay in your happy place as the only one that can do X and then keep selling them on the value you provide and how you’re doing big things. But, nothing lasts. Don’t burn out, but sitting on your ass is a bad strategy.
- ponector 1y agoThe goal is to not push hard from start, to set up moderate expectations. The recipe of success is also to do a little bit more (15%) than your colleagues, be reliable and punctual.
- baq 1y agoDon’t do that then. Work on 90% with bursts of 130%. Don’t work on 120% all the time because it’ll be assumed you’ve gotten lazy when you just need to slow down.
- Sammi 1y agoThose percentages are all too high for a normal salery.
- hdjdi 1y agoThe definition of “100%” varies. In U.S. even though a full-time job is “40 hours”, many in non-government jobs put in more. The “120%” spoken of would be 48, so let’s say roughly 2 extra hours a day, so 7:30-18:30 with an hour lunch. Tech startups in my experience are usually 44-46 hours for low-mid IC dev or more if higher or any lead/manager responsibilities. Some dev/IT managers may be on-call most of the week. But some people literally are working 40 hours/week. Other countries “100%” hours/week are roughly: Europe 35-40, Eastern Europe ~40, India 45-55, China 45-50, Africa 40-50. And similar applies for dev/IT startups and management. Some work > 100 hours week on average, but I think that’s difficult to do in dev/IT for more than a month at a time without burnout, even if you just keep hitting a button over and over.
- zzzeek 1y agoYup, when headhunters reach out with all these idiotic startups that I know full well are just playing the game of "see if you can bullshit long enough for someone to buy your useless company" I don't even laugh anymore, just shake my head. If you have real life obligations and can't afford to hop jobs every year, never work for a startup.
- mellosouls 1y agoThis approach doesn't work ethically if you are working for (say) public service organisations. There's also the argument an abundance of cynicism - as well as being occasionally aimed at a misjudged target (eg you work for bosses who do try to do the right thing) - is corrupting to the self and wider society.
- carlosjobim 1y agoOf course the argument works for everybody who works in public service. You do the duties you are paid for. If you think that's not enough you are welcome to volunteer for free.
- gus_massa 1y agoI agree. Or if the task is so important they should get a bigger salary.
- astrobe_ 1y ago> This approach doesn't work ethically if you are working for (say) public service organisations. This remark is specially apt with regard to the leitmotiv of TFA; one sees, indeed, an entirely different picture when the goal of an organization is something else than growing and making profits.
- NoGravitas 1y agoSomewhat disagree. If a public service organization is demanding more than that approach, it either needs to hire more people, or manage projects more effectively. I'll take a lower salary for public service, but it doesn't help anyone for me to burn out.
- 010101010101 1y agoI like to remind those I mentor that The Company’s sole goal for their employment is to extract more value from them than they are paid - not because The Company is evil, but because that’s just what’s required in a capitalist endeavor. But, what it does mean, is that you shouldn’t feel like you owe any company anything - the goal of any for-profit corporation is to extract more value from you than they give back to you, period.
- javcasas 1y ago> it was a mission and purpose Is this "we are a family here" for the people that don't fall anymore for the "family" con?
- atoav 1y agoBosses always want workers who treat their job and the company like family, but when it comes to them treating their workers like family somehow it is all about the numbers and they barely even treat them like people (if the law permits it). It may seem over the top, but my feeling is we as a society need to stop accepting, excusing or even applauding behavior like this for our own good. This should be a stain on their names for the rest of their lives and the rest of society might consider treating them as outcasts. I know this is an extremely unpopular position to take on a platform where half of the people dream of creating a company, pretending it is the mission of their lives, just to sell it to the highest bidder and live a life in luxury after. Everybody has to watch out for themselves they would say. If your goal is to leave the planet worse off than before that is the sure way to do it. This is a model for a society of sociopaths who kill everything good and it is time we start putting up some resistance.
- izacus 1y agoThis is the approach that most workers took in our eastern European countries during socialist era. It was shitty. Pretty much all services were terrible since people just did the minumum. I've noticed US going down this path for a few years now and I can't figure out why in the frigging world would you cheer on towards such horrible society. All the best places I've lived at were great because people cared about the jobs and other work they did.
- twixfel 1y agoThere’s nothing wrong with caring about your job and what you do. Just don’t buy into any of the horse shit about missions and so on. The bosses are ruthlessly capitalist so it’s immoral to expect the workers to be any less self interested.