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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

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.

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.