6 ms·

How to Hire—and Get Hired—in a Recession

3 points by prakash 17y ago

Chocobean 17y ago
I've worked 10+ hour days for months, before, and I can do it again, but it'll cost the employer. It'll cost him in money , productivity, and goodwill. No more unpaid overtime, and you'll be paying more per hour as well. I'm only flesh and blood, so after so many hours, the over time will actually be counter-productive, but I'm sure you already know that. And once the economy recovers even slightly, or as soon as I get a new offer, I'm gone. Little Chinese saying: You want a horse that's good, and you want a horse that doesn't eat grass. Can't be done, brother; at least, not for long.
- ibsulon 17y ago
  Honestly, it's a different thing to be in a position where a job is monitoring -- IE, 8 hours of the day are meetings, 3-4 hours a day are tracking and writing email. I can work 12 hours a day doing that because it's not that difficult. It feels like work, it is work. However, it's not banging your head against the wall on a problem, or writing documentation, or... Creative positions have a maximum output. Sometimes, I've worked more hours because the other time is taken up by meetings, and I don't burn out nearly as quickly as when I'm working to write or debug code. As such, I wonder if the hiring advice is better for sales/management.
evilneanderthal 17y ago
I didn't think much of this article. A requirement to work nights, weekends, and vacation is called a death march, not hard work. "How to get hired: give off every indication that your time is worthless. Agree to anything that is asked of you without regard to compensation. Act like being burnt out is a standard that indicates professionalism." The article might as well be titled "How to hate life - and get divorced - in a recession."
- Tamerlin 17y ago
  Exactly. He's specifically targeting his methods to hire one of the most harmful people to a software shop -- the ones that burn up lots of hours writing bugs, and spend even more time hacking around them.
- azanar 17y ago
  You reacted better than I did, then. I was positively repulsed. The hypothetical dialogue he provided between the candidate at employer suggests what he is really looking for here: people who are honorable. But it has to be his definition of honor, which is entirely image-based and self-sacrificial. You make a spectacle of the duration of your presence at the office, and you make eloquent speeches about the spectacle you will make of yourself. Keeping up the spectacle requires long hours, tangible evidence of disciplined behavior, and political maneuvering. The spectacle doesn't matter, what you accomplish does. And what you accomplish is not linear with the number of hours you put in. In fact, figuring out a correlation is damn near impossible, because of variables like the type of work, which hours were worked, what distractions were present, and how much subconscious thought entered into all of this while not actively working. I'm probably missing several other variables, but the idea is there. This article amuses me, because outside of possible questions in interviews, there is absolutely no indication of what the potentially employee does outside of posturing and preening. The entire article seems like an exercise in the very same sort of posturing he would like to see his ideal candidate do during the interview, along with enough handwavey, fearmongering bullshit to panic people into doing what he says. If we want to know why more people are becoming entrepreneurial, this gentleman's ideals are one of the catalysts.
  - menloparkbum 17y ago
    The spectacle doesn't matter, what you accomplish does. Some people start companies because they have a deep seated need to be "the boss." In these companies spectacle often takes precedence over everything else.
dusklight 17y ago
Hmm what is more honorable, for the employee to stay until the employer leaves .. or for the employer to stay until all the employee leaves? If you followed his advice as far as interview questions go, as an employer, you would be screening out the best candidates -- those who are bright enough to figure out that you are trying to squeeze unpaid overtime out of them, and who have other options and sufficient self respect to reject such underhanded methods.
strlen 17y ago
This is horrible advice. First, this won't weed out the "clock punchers". It will do is hire the "clock punchers" who punch their clocks 1930 instead of at 1730: the focus here is still on _having an appearance of doing work_, not on doing work. It will also create a great degree of churn: people will put on a show just to get the job and then leave after a few months. Churn is always incredibly expensive and demoralizing and kills start-ups: to some degree it's not avoidable in a start-up, but this is just asking for it. So how do you hire hard working and passionate people? It's much simpler: is this something that they do for fun? Do they have side projects or participate in open source projects (which may conflict with the idea of them spending all their time at the office!)? Do they give any indication of a passion for their work (instead of just putting on a show and telling you what they wan to hear?) Lastly, this is just plain bad advise for employees as well. Like in dating, you don't want to look desperate: especially in a situation where the competition is so high. Talking about long hours and weekends you will put in and how you just want a subsistence salary will show desperation.

3 points by prakash 17y ago

I've worked 10+ hour days for months, before, and I can do it again, but it'll cost the employer. It'll cost him in money , productivity, and goodwill. No more unpaid overtime, and you'll be paying more per hour as well. I'm only flesh and blood, so after so many hours, the over time will actually be counter-productive, but I'm sure you already know that. And once the economy recovers even slightly, or as soon as I get a new offer, I'm gone. Little Chinese saying: You want a horse that's good, and you want a horse that doesn't eat grass. Can't be done, brother; at least, not for long.

ibsulon 17y ago
Honestly, it's a different thing to be in a position where a job is monitoring -- IE, 8 hours of the day are meetings, 3-4 hours a day are tracking and writing email. I can work 12 hours a day doing that because it's not that difficult. It feels like work, it is work. However, it's not banging your head against the wall on a problem, or writing documentation, or... Creative positions have a maximum output. Sometimes, I've worked more hours because the other time is taken up by meetings, and I don't burn out nearly as quickly as when I'm working to write or debug code. As such, I wonder if the hiring advice is better for sales/management.

evilneanderthal 17y ago

I didn't think much of this article. A requirement to work nights, weekends, and vacation is called a death march, not hard work. "How to get hired: give off every indication that your time is worthless. Agree to anything that is asked of you without regard to compensation. Act like being burnt out is a standard that indicates professionalism." The article might as well be titled "How to hate life - and get divorced - in a recession."

Tamerlin 17y ago
Exactly. He's specifically targeting his methods to hire one of the most harmful people to a software shop -- the ones that burn up lots of hours writing bugs, and spend even more time hacking around them.
azanar 17y ago
You reacted better than I did, then. I was positively repulsed. The hypothetical dialogue he provided between the candidate at employer suggests what he is really looking for here: people who are honorable. But it has to be his definition of honor, which is entirely image-based and self-sacrificial. You make a spectacle of the duration of your presence at the office, and you make eloquent speeches about the spectacle you will make of yourself. Keeping up the spectacle requires long hours, tangible evidence of disciplined behavior, and political maneuvering. The spectacle doesn't matter, what you accomplish does. And what you accomplish is not linear with the number of hours you put in. In fact, figuring out a correlation is damn near impossible, because of variables like the type of work, which hours were worked, what distractions were present, and how much subconscious thought entered into all of this while not actively working. I'm probably missing several other variables, but the idea is there. This article amuses me, because outside of possible questions in interviews, there is absolutely no indication of what the potentially employee does outside of posturing and preening. The entire article seems like an exercise in the very same sort of posturing he would like to see his ideal candidate do during the interview, along with enough handwavey, fearmongering bullshit to panic people into doing what he says. If we want to know why more people are becoming entrepreneurial, this gentleman's ideals are one of the catalysts.
- menloparkbum 17y ago
  The spectacle doesn't matter, what you accomplish does. Some people start companies because they have a deep seated need to be "the boss." In these companies spectacle often takes precedence over everything else.

dusklight 17y ago

Hmm what is more honorable, for the employee to stay until the employer leaves .. or for the employer to stay until all the employee leaves? If you followed his advice as far as interview questions go, as an employer, you would be screening out the best candidates -- those who are bright enough to figure out that you are trying to squeeze unpaid overtime out of them, and who have other options and sufficient self respect to reject such underhanded methods.

strlen 17y ago

This is horrible advice. First, this won't weed out the "clock punchers". It will do is hire the "clock punchers" who punch their clocks 1930 instead of at 1730: the focus here is still on _having an appearance of doing work_, not on doing work. It will also create a great degree of churn: people will put on a show just to get the job and then leave after a few months. Churn is always incredibly expensive and demoralizing and kills start-ups: to some degree it's not avoidable in a start-up, but this is just asking for it. So how do you hire hard working and passionate people? It's much simpler: is this something that they do for fun? Do they have side projects or participate in open source projects (which may conflict with the idea of them spending all their time at the office!)? Do they give any indication of a passion for their work (instead of just putting on a show and telling you what they wan to hear?) Lastly, this is just plain bad advise for employees as well. Like in dating, you don't want to look desperate: especially in a situation where the competition is so high. Talking about long hours and weekends you will put in and how you just want a subsistence salary will show desperation.