14 ms·

A culture of beer and overtime

• throwmeaway2525 13y ago
  I love leaving companies like that one. You should celebrate, with a beer, perhaps? (Kidding) When you took the job, did you sign an offer letter that outlined your employment status and role with the company? Just curious. I would think an offer letter would resolve any questions about that, should it become necessary.
• vertis 13y ago
  I'm all for putting in the occasional overtime, and working on stuff at home if you're still engaged. But an expectation that you will work more than the 40 hours a week that they're paying you for, blows my mind.
• dfrey 13y ago
  The project manager sounds like a dick, but the author also sounds like a push-over. The author had a chance to out the manager as a huge asshole, but based on the post, it seems like he just left silently.
  • klochner 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure everyone already knew the PM was an a-hole.
  • thejosh 13y ago
    Sometimes it's worth taking the highroad out so it doesn't cause more dramas down the road. But sometimes it is funner to burn all bridges.
    • fleitz 13y ago
      Burn bridges to light the way forward.
  • xentronium 13y ago
    Why would he even do that? Author doesn't want to engage in office politics, he wants to code. Participating in dramatic events is completely counter-productive. Also, consider whose side his co-workers would pick, taking in account whatever happened to the previous two guys.
    • hudibras 13y ago
      Well if he didn't want any drama, I'm glad he took the time to write a blog post about it then.
    • russgray 13y ago
      It doesn't have to be dramatic, but I would at least have made it clear that I was leaving rather than being fired. I couldn't stand there silently at a standup whilst some jerk insinuates to my team that I'm being shown the door.
  • pcrh 13y ago
    I doubt "outing" the manager would have made the slightest bit of difference.
  • laughfactory 13y ago
    As others have said, sometimes it's simply not worth it. A person like the PM sounds like they are isn't going to know truth if it hits them in the face. No matter what you say to them, they simply won't get it. Some people lack any degree of recognizable "emotional intelligence." When you encounter such a person, all you can do is make them pay in other legitimate ways. My favorite is to tell the truth about a place on Glassdoor. By doing so I help other job seekers avoid bad employers, and raise the cost of bad employers doing business. It's the purest form of justice. Personally, I've deeply appreciated a lot of the reviews I've seen of employers on Glassdoor. Just recently, during my last job hunt, I was looking into a couple San Diego companies with promising positions...until I looked them up on Glassdoor. When I saw not one, but many reviews from different reviewers saying such things as "Working for this place will suck your soul dry then crush it" I immediately lost all interest in working for the company. Granted, the Glassdoor reviews aren't perfect, which is why I look for general agreement on the company from different reviewers and/or position titles (as a proxy for different departments of the company).
  • nbevans 13y ago
    Why would he want to "out" the manager? He already sussed out the situation for himself. He had nothing else to prove to anyone else. He was only there for a short time so probably hadn't made any meaningful friendships with other workers there anyway. The only thing the OP should have done differently, IMO, is made clear to his colleagues that he handed his notice and that he wasn't being sacked.
  • Choronzon 13y ago
    Better things to out given the security practices Out the company to quote.. """, it allowed the transactions of users to be skewed, allowing malicious users to cause other users to essentially lose money, or worse yet, put them in a potential dispute, and ultimately, cause our product to lose customers.""" report to the regional financial services authority. Create anonymous story about how company x is causing massive user vulnerabilities etc.Send this information to the companies clients.You could cause massive damage and come out looking like the good guy if you spun it right.
• patio11 13y ago
  n.b. It was time to leave, and the HR lady came to me and said I would have to sign a release letter and send it back within 2 work days (the following Monday was a holiday), otherwise I would not get any of the remaining pay I'm not familiar with the law in Canada, but I rather suspect that it's similar to America, so a bit of advice for the young and impressionable: virtually no threat to not pay an employee wages is worth taking seriously. Don't sign anything. Say you'll run it by your lawyer. You don't even need to have a lawyer when you say that, but the prospect of your lawyer going to the employment commission and saying "My client was denied wages. Do you need me to say anything else or can we just proceed directly to 'He gets them'?" will generally make them back off. I mean, as one point among many, your lawyer is going to say "You think he was a consultant? We have written representations from you that he was a FTE, and you treated him as a FTE, for example in attempting to control his working hours. It is materially against his interests to be a consultant, because this implies that you haven't been paying employment taxes on him. That's unfortunate, but it's not our problem, and rather than stick him with the bill for $X,000 in back taxes we're just going to tell the tax authorities that he's been maliciously reclassified and that you're delinquent in your obligations. Given that this will likely trigger an audit and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of fines for you, how about we just agree to give my client what he has coming to him, and you report an inadvertent paperwork screwup to the tax authority when you pay your fair share?"
  • crusso 13y ago
    Exactly. As someone in HR will tell you, never ever ever mess with someone's paycheck that you owe them from the time they were in the office. Even if they were stealing from you, just pay them their wages and be done with them.
  • jholman 13y ago
    Oh, the employment law is a lot employee-friendlier in Canada than in the US. In particular, BC employment law (relevant to this post) is a lot friendlier than California employment law. And when you go to take them to court, the government will, under some circumstances, provide free legal services to the employee (you can look up the BC gov's Employment Standards Branch). That said, IIRC, even BC is pretty employer-friendly for the first 3 months, in terms of notice and so on. And it appears the author thought he was entitled to stock options after 9 weeks, which is.... not typical, in my limited experience. And they company sounds like they were dicks about it, but basically, terminating the relationship and paying out your salary (but not bonuses or unvested equity) is usually legit. If he had made it through 3 months, he'd have a right to some severance pay, and if they tried to terminate-with-cause he'd be able to sue for wrongful dismissal. Because of this, even in borderline cases, most (many?) companies go for termination-without-cause. All the bits about reclassifying a full-timer as a contractor, though? Hells yes, that's a world of hurt for the company if they try that. Not only work direction and taxes (both huge issues), but also consider the pay consequences of trying to get 70-hour weeks out of a contractor. But I doubt that they were actually trying that; it seems so unnecessary. The spin of the article is weird, though. He's having trouble justifying his 9 weeks? "I tried an experiment because there were some very attractive aspects about the opportunity, but it turned out that management had no experience and very unrealistic expectations, and it didn't work out." What could be simpler? SHORT VERSION: as patio11 said: don't hurry to sign anything, and spend at least an hour reading about your legal rights, and as patio11 suggested, drop hints that you're interested in your legal rights
• smileysteve 13y ago
  You Were Fired. When you have contractor status, are brought into a meeting where they say you are underperforming, not committed, and turn deaf ears on however you try to justify yourself... and you end up leaving the company... you may have been fired. The biggest mistakes you made was a) still being a contractor b) not asking for severance if you would opt of of claiming unemployment on them.
  • fleitz 13y ago
    In general if there's overtime you should be getting paid hourly, unless you have more than 1/N percent of the shares where N is the number of employees. (eg. a disproportionate amount of extra value accrues to you anyway)
  • jarrett 13y ago
    > You Were Fired. I don't think you can fairly say a person was fired simply because s/he quit following a dispute with the boss. Maybe the person would have eventually been fired, had s/he not quit. But that's pure speculation. There's the cliched "you can't quit, you're fired"/"you can't fire me, I quit" scenario. I think the question of who terminated the relationship is less clear there. But that doesn't seem to apply to the story the author tells. Why quibble over this? Because the distinction between being fired and quitting matters for the employee's future prospects. > The biggest mistakes you made was a) still being a contractor How do you know the author was in fact a contractor? The author didn't post his offer letter, tax forms, or other similar documents. So we can't know for sure. But he says he understood himself to be a full-time employee. Some of what he describes, e.g. the boss's comments about hours, seem to support this view.
    • smileysteve 13y ago
      Just to the last bit, Op said that found out when HR gave him the paperwork that he was somehow a contractor as opposed to a full time employee.
    • smileysteve 13y ago
      Re: Fired / Being fired. The distinction only matters as to whether the OP has leverage over severance or goes after unemployment. OP's future prospects are hurt either way if the next job calls that PM as a reference -- and slightly by this blog post.
• mkramlich 13y ago
  before he even got to the first "red flag" I started to see red flag patterns. a team that small with its own PM and copywriter, detached executives (plural, and again, with an overall team/copmany size that small, etc.) disadvantages to getting older, but one advantage is accumulating a set of observed good patterns and bad patterns you can start doing pattern matching against. there's a reason some companies specifically going after 20-somethings, folks. because y'all are more likely to fall for the anti-patterns, not see the warning signs early enough until its too late.
  • w0rd-driven 13y ago
    You bring up excellent points. I'm in a very similar situation and I think of it in these terms. Developers are doers of the work and where the payments accrue. If I don't work, we all don't get paid. I don't say that because I don't value sales, which I won't do (because I understand my weakness) but its hard to divorce this mentality when it becomes engrained. That's also not to say copywriting or design isn't valid but its severely hard to justify a PM when there's a total of 3 cats to wrangle. I imagine his attitude comes from fully understanding he's all but worthless and instead of bending over backwards to make up for the deficiency, jackass syndrome sets in. Bait and switch seems to be pretty prevalent in our field, whether it is intentional or not. I personally wouldn't name and shame immediately but at some point when the anger subsides, I owe it to the people that come after me to be perfectly honest about this point in time. Can company x grow out of the mire of this? Sure. But this will help others read red flags early before any major damage is done.
  • l0gicpath 13y ago
    It's not very uncommon in newly funded startups despite common belief. It's like giving a kid a box of candy, they'll surely eat it all. Inexperienced founders would likely allocated resources for roles that they don't have a need for.
  • hackula1 13y ago
    I agree with everything except that a PM can be extremely valuable on a small team. Developers are much more valuable designing and coding than in endless meetings and planning sessions. That said, IME PMs should be at the same level in the hierarchy as the devs. PMs manage projects, not people.
• thejosh 13y ago
  If you were listed as a contractor, isn't that grounds to sue? Here if you are fulltime you have different employee protections compared to contractor.
• cbryan 13y ago
  What are good questions to ask during an interview to avoid situations like these? How are other people weeding out employers like this one? This sounds like a bad situation that I'm sure we'd all like to avoid.
  • throwmeaway2525 13y ago
    I don't think there's a sure-fire way to know, but you can ask upfront (even in the initial communications by email or phone) if it's a new position, or a "backfill." And during the phone or in-person interview you can ask questions about team dynamics, like who you report to and are working with, how long the interviewer has been working there and how they like it, etc., to try to get a sense for how things work. And I'd say ask as many questions as you can reasonably think of--it's more about how they answer questions than the answers themselves. If they show resistance or evasiveness, then that may be a bad sign.
    • eru 13y ago
      Abouth the `backfill': you can also ask about length of average stay at the company.
      • showsover 13y ago
        You can, but there's no way of finding out if it's true until you're there.
        • eru 13y ago
          Indeed. But that's true for almost all questions. (Don't just ask for an average, ask for the shape of the distribution.)
  • lmm 13y ago
    I make a point of telling them in the interview that I don't work over 40 hours a week. (This may not be strictly true, but I don't want to work for a company that would consider it a problem if it was).
• fleitz 13y ago
  Call a lawyer, this sounds super fishy if the location is in Vancouver. Did they ever deduct taxes from you? Did you give them a GST number? Did you submit invoices to them? If they made deductions and you didn't give them a GST number they are likely in big trouble. If a judge smells employment he will classify you as such as make sure you get your due.
• will_work4tears 13y ago
  Having no experience with startups, I gotta say that I have some sympathy and it sounds horrible, however, what does this have to do with beer? I read the whole story and you had one friday night, after hours, with beer, and you didn't partake as you are a teetotaler. That's fine. I didn't see any other references to that fact, so I'm confused how it has anything to do with the story. It doesn't sound like they have beer there every day and you were let go because you didn't drink. Just one instance where you were questioned about a single party (which is none of their business, IMO).
  • brianpgordon 13y ago
    It's well-known in startup circles that companies provide food/soda/beer to their developers in the hope that they'll work harder.
    • gaius 13y ago
      It's a bargain, from the company's POV. For $5 worth of pizza per person, you can easily get $200 worth of overtime. That is why it is so hilarious when CFOs cut perks like that to save money. Actually that is an alarm bell: it means the management of your company do not get it.
  • code_duck 13y ago
    I agree that one party night with beer doesn't really add up to a 'culture of beer'. I was hoping for a much more gripping tale of a beer-oriented office.
  • laughfactory 13y ago
    I've worked for a start-up which definitely had a "beer culture." It sucked. Some people should not be allowed to mix beer with work. Especially if they're a VP.
  • jayhuang 13y ago
    Yea, it probably wasn't the best title, but in terms of "beer nights", they were more frequent than 1, I just don't want to ramble on and on.
• coffeemug 13y ago
  Wow. I'm a founder of a tech company, and the thought of checking someone's LinkedIn profile or old website to verify degree of commitment would never even occur to me. The fact that someone would not only think of it, but actually act on it is absolutely mind-boggling. I've seen new managers do silly things, but this is seriously new.
  • bigiain 13y ago
    Serious question, or at least food for thought: How are you instilling that attitude in your company? How big would your company need to grow before misguided middle management might be appointed who _does_ think this is an appropriate management technique, resulting in this happening on your watch with you later described as a "detached executive"? Having stuff like this "never even occur to you" leaves you in the possible danger of not being aware if it starts happening around you. (Though, in this instance, the revolving door developer role should have brought some scrutiny on the manager in question…)
    • coffeemug 13y ago
      This is a good point. I've never managed more than 15 people so I can only speculate, but it seems that the proverbial fish rots from the head (I'm sure I'll learn many painful lessons when it's time to grow). The startup described by the OP is smaller than our company, and they already have this problem. If we were large enough to need middle management, I would be absolutely paranoid about hiring good people that understand management. There is a lot of culture around hiring good engineers and sneering at management, but it seems to me that hiring good managers is an order of magnitude more important. A bad engineering hire can be a very expensive mistake, but a bad management hire can be absolutely devastating. They can derail their own team, and a few other teams they interface with. If I had a really insecure/misguided manager like that reporting to me, I cannot imagine not noticing. Here's one simple trick to do that -- have occasional one on ones with their reports. Most people won't necessarily say anything bad about their manager directly, but you can quickly gauge people's sensibility in what they don't say. It's like doing reference calls on hires. Few people will say "this guy wasn't good" but there is an enormous difference between references who say "this guy was ok" and "this guy was spectacular". You can sense it very quickly if you're looking out for it.
• jrockway 13y ago
  The part where they expected him to sign something in order for them to release his own money to him that he already earned was hilarious.
• jmgtan 13y ago
  I encountered the same criticism (not doing overtime) when I was working for a Japanese company even though I'm the only one who is doing 5 projects at the same time and all ahead of schedule with no major issues. I was actually passed over for a promotion because of it. This post brings back bad memories :)
  • vadman 13y ago
    Could you elaborate a bit? I know the Japanese generally work long hours, and would love to hear an eyewitness' account of how things are done there and how you were dealing with the status quo (i.e. what you told your bosses, did you experience peer pressure).
    • jmgtan 13y ago
      Well we normally have a time in (9am) and this is usually enforced via a fingerprint scanner and a physical attendance check by one of the admin person. There are 3 checks a day: morning, lunch, and 3pm tea break. Lunch break strictly starts at 11:45am until 12:45pm and tea break starts at 3:30pm until 3:45pm, any tardiness even 1 minute late would be reprimanded by one of the senior managers. We work until 6pm, well that was the plan, but for the most part everybody stays an hour late, but the Japanese folks in the company usually stays in until 11pm. I know this for a fact because one time I came back in the office around 10pm and everybody (Japanese) was still there (we're not allowed to access the servers remotely, any critical issues should be addressed from the office). For the most part there's no peer pressure from my colleagues (both Japanese and non-Japanese), but the pressure comes from the senior management. My probation period was extended because of me leaving on time everyday, even though all of my tasks are completed. I left the company for a different reason though. I applied for my honeymoon leave and got rejected twice. (This little story is by no means a representation of all Japanese companies or all Japanese, just a retelling of my experience working for a Japanese company)
      • vadman 13y ago
        Very interesting, thanks. The fact that they monitor 1-min deviations from prescribed time really seems outlandish to me. Makes me view my chill startup job (45-55 hours a week) in a new light.
• beachstartup 13y ago
  > One would mean I would be moving to Palo Alto, California, where I would be joining a well-known, highly successful, technology company. The pay was great, and working there would make any future job hunts virtually non-existent. in my humble opinion, the only time you should pass up an offer like that is to work on your own startup. after all did you not apply, and interview, and compete fo, and WANT the job? i don't get it. sorry, it's just too good of an opportunity. jeez. at least someone else got a shot because this guy passed it up.
  • thaumasiotes 13y ago
    I got an offer much like this (though located in SF, not Palo Alto). I took it, because my only other offer at the time was for roughly half the salary. I ended up leaving after what was considered a surprisingly short time because I didn't particularly like living in the area. There are other aspects to life than having a famous employer. That said, I'm with you that it's an attractive opportunity. But founding a company of your own is just one of many reasons to pass. Personally, I value telecommuting.
    • mdpopescu 13y ago
      Ah... yes. I have no idea why it's still so hard to find remote jobs in 2013. I really, really don't want to move my whole family yet again because you really like my smell or something.
      • thaumasiotes 13y ago
        This isn't a full answer to that question, but I'm pretty sure it's related... I remember seeing a post by someone asking for advice, his problem being "what can I do to counter people's assumption that <I am typical of people with the same credentials as I have>?" (<>s mark my paraphrasing). This problem is, in fact, a source of great aggravation to almost everyone I know. And the best response, which stuck with me, was "nothing; it's an assumption by someone you don't know". There really are a host of advantages to dealing with other people in person. And if you're thinking of hiring a stranger, you really don't know most of what you want to know. And the connection between workplace and remote worker is necessarily more tenuous.
• Domenic_S 13y ago
  I'm starting a new policy of not reading posts like this unless they say who the offending company is.
  • redthrowaway 13y ago
    How would you enforce said policy without reading the article?
    • joelgrus 13y ago
      By reading the comments? ;)
  • l0gicpath 13y ago
    Walk a mile in their shoes, sometimes it's illogical that the offending party would not be disclosed. However, most of the time it'd make perfect sense for OP.
  • kafkaesque 13y ago
    I once created a throwaway account here to post about a company's bad practices. I named the company, as well. It was immediately removed from this site. I'm actually from Vancouver, so I would love to know the name of the company. The OP's old employer: 1. Has one (big) claim to fame 2. Located in Vancouver 3. Has a product "dealing with large amounts of money from customers’ bank accounts" But (3) might not be part of a product already released. There are a lot of game developers in Van--with, of course, a thriving beer/overtime culture, but who really knows, to be honest.
    • mcantelon 13y ago
      Yeah, I'm from Vancouver and curious as well.
    • jayhuang 13y ago
      I'm very hesitant to post the name of the company because most of my experience has to do with the PM, and not the company as a whole. Although I do have some issues with how this company is run in particular, I do not want to misguide people into thinking that working at this company will be an absolute nightmare. I have seen different dynamics on other teams within the company, but it's also not the complete picture as I am not part of those teams. Either way, (3) is a new product, essentially a startup on it's own. There are many other such projects within the company. It is also not a game development company.
• ztnewman 13y ago
  I don't understand what beer culture has to do with the majority of the post
  • pcrh 13y ago
    It's mainly a reference to a "party" that was held at the employers premises where beer was consumed, OP doesn't drink alcohol. In any case, while this was apparently a pretty "lame" party, it appears to have been an important part of the culture of the firm, and OP didn't jibe with it very well.
    • thaumasiotes 13y ago
      I've experienced one party held at my (then) employer's premises. Alcohol (as I recall, mainly wine) was consumed. I don't drink. There was thanksgiving food; there was cake; a few people brought small children; my boss played an instrument and sang for us. It was great. Basically I agree with you that the "party" described was lame. The problem isn't that there was beer at an on-premises party even though OP doesn't drink. The problem is (definitely) tacit mandatoriness and (to a much lesser extent) that the party didn't have anything to offer other than a chance to show that you're "dedicated".
  • redthrowaway 13y ago
    People who don't drink tend to view quasi-mandatory drinking as exclusionary and indicative of strange priorities. Imagine you were a non-smoker and your team regularly got together to smoke, then questioned your commitment when you didn't join them. It would heavily colour your opinion of the team dynamic and why it seemed broken to you.
    • prawn 13y ago
      Bit of a difference between passive smoking and drinking water around colleagues who are having a few drinks.
      • aestra 13y ago
• vinceguidry 13y ago
  What in the world? I don't see how anybody tolerates this crap. I wouldn't have lasted a week there. And you better believe there'd be threats of legal action on any withheld pay. It's obvious to me that they're just riding horses into the ground until they get where they want to go. I also wouldn't have put up with that "You're not 100% committed here," crap. I probably would have laughed in his face. "Look pal, unless you have a specific problem with the job I'm doing, stuff it. Then I'd make a show out of leaving at 5. A company needs to deserve overtime before I'll give it to them. Pulling shit like this is the fastest way of losing it. It's easy to see the psychological tactic they're pulling, preying on your desire to be part of a team to extract an unreasonable amount of effort out of you. If they're using them on you, then they're probably using them on everybody and working there will be misery. Time to call the other shops and see if they filled their spots yet.
  • rfnslyr 13y ago
    I want to be your friend/coworker so badly. I hate management praying on the modest and kind. At my old job we had a really shy intern and he took all the shit that came his way and it was really sad to see.
    • vinceguidry 13y ago
      It's ugly out there. I think my secret is that I didn't really get into the office world until my late twenties. By then I'd bounced around dozens of different jobs, been in and out of the military, college, sales, construction. I've been fired at as many jobs as I've quit. Now I see this stuff going on and I'm wise to it. Four months ago I started working for this company, the understanding was I'd work for three months at $20 an hour then they'd hire me at $60K. Three months roll around, nothing. I called my recruiter, told my boss, but nothing happened for another two weeks. Finally I badger my boss into making some inquiries. He tells me we're all good, follow me into the CFO's office and we'll talk about bringing you on. I get in there and the guy tells me that the recruiter's fee is $8K and they don't want that going on this year's balance sheet. So they want to bring me on Jan. 1st. Fuck that. I told him, no, that's not acceptable, we need to work something out. The difference in pay is $400 a week, are you willing to give me that as a bonus? He tells me maybe they can come up off a grand. I stare at him until he cracks. Finally he says he might be able to get them to put the fee on next year and they can bring me on Dec. 1. I didn't react to that. After I get back to my desk, I'm pissed. After venting to my boss, he lets me go home at lunchtime. I spent the weekend shoring up my resolve. Monday morning rolls around, I call my recruiter and tell him to start looking for a new job for me, and explain to him the heap of bullshit they're expecting me to swallow. He doesn't want to give up just yet and asks me if I'd be willing to make a deal. I tell him I want a salary bump to $65K. I leave work that day feeling better than I had all weekend after finally sacking up and doing something. The next day I get a call from my recruiter saying they're going to bring me on immediately, at $60K. I didn't get the raise but I don't care, it's a victory and everyone knows it. The CFO looked like a sad puppydog who had his toy taken away when he came around to drop the news himself. My boss and I are chuckling a bit as he leaves.
• jmspring 13y ago
  There are startups like this. I left one before a pivotal point that might have resulted in me making some money for some of the very same reasons: 1) Commitment was questioned -- in my case, I disappeared for a rainy weekend for my wife's birthday and wasn't online over the weekend. 2) Attitude was questioned -- regular beat the staff meetings in the morning after pulling an all nighter, I tossed the pen to the next guy (a friend) and miss threw and it hit the ceiling. "Why are you being an asshole?" It took a bit to realize that was what was being asked. 3) After a great showing at Demo we launched with no ops/support and engineers with the knowledge (me) were expected to be on call after 80 hour weeks. I got grumbled at due to a support issue as I was returning from a morning at the Legion of Honor and heading down Highway 1 (no signal, peace). Oh, the wife wasn't happy either -- "why are they bugging you on a Saturday morning?" That said, the overall product we built was one of the more fun and diverse I was involved in. It was very hard to make the decision, but sometimes you know it is just right to walk away. There are startups that are like that. Sometimes, like the post above, the signs are there early. Sometimes, they don't show themselves until much later. A couple of years later when the company had an exit, of the 35+ people that were there when I left, only four that I new (including the two founders) actually remained.
  • pcurve 13y ago
    "A couple of years later when the company had an exit, of the 35+ people that were there when I left, only four that I new (including the two founders) actually remained." Assuming it was a good exit, those 2 are some shrewd (and despicable) founders.
  • zobzu 13y ago
    I wouldn't stay there more than a day. And I'd also expose the company name.
    • jacques_chester 13y ago
      > I'd also expose the company name. Defamation lawsuits are expensive to launch or defend; but a vengeful founder usually has more money that an individual.
• fizx 13y ago
  Cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.jayhuang.org/blog/a-culture-of-beer-and-overtime/&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.jay...
• ryan-allen 13y ago
  To me this is less about 'beer and overtime' and more about conformity to pre-existing culture. It doesn't matter if it's beer or if it's Star Trek or if it's an religious-like attitude to Cucumber Testing or even if it's a tech company or not, the fact is that some potential asshole who's on a slightly higher salary than you can decide to fuck with your livelihood if you don't tow some intangible line that matters to them. I see it as a byproduct of capitalism, bosses will be bosses, and I've seen people trashed with 'fairness' as often as I have seen them trashed with non-conformity to whatever the ones in charge (or even the ones in the middle) care about. As long as you have a list of conditions attached to your paycheck, this isn't going to change. It sucks, but it is how it is. You either have to play the game or find some place to work where the game is tolerable to you and your values. It doesn't matter how you cast it, but there's always a game to be played, some will seem more virtuous than others, and that will change from person to person.
  • rmc 13y ago
    No-where has "full capitalism". There are some conditions that you cannot attach to a paycheck.
  • lsc 13y ago
    Yeah, first? I agree that "cultural fit" is bullshit; It's the result of people placing the comfort of working with people "like them" over actually getting things done. however... >I see it as a byproduct of capitalism, bosses will be bosses, and I've seen people trashed with 'fairness' as often as I have seen them trashed with non-conformity to whatever the ones in charge (or even the ones in the middle) care about. I don't see how you relate it to capitalism. This is about valuing 'culture' over money; you are going to see it even more in a co-op or commune. Now, you could say in capitalism, this "cultural fit" is more top-down, but I don't think it's any less ugly or destructive because it's coming from your peers. I mean, that's what some people like; some people only want to deal with people who are like them. But it's not a profit-maximizing move.
    • fragsworth 13y ago
      "Cultural fit" isn't bullshit, it's just a euphemism for how reasonable someone's personality is. It's easier to say "I don't think they'll fit our culture" instead of saying "their personality sucks"
• pcurve 13y ago
  makes me wonder if the PM is part of the mgmt team and this is just his tactic of extracting cheap labor without diluting founders' shares.
• pekk 13y ago
  My interpretation is that you were fired for reasons which would be embarrassing or illegal to admit, e.g. because you were embarrassing the team with their XSS bugs.
• rfnslyr 13y ago
  I love reading stories like this. If I see assholes like these being founders, and I'm not that asshole, it makes me feel every bit capable of being a founder one day. Sorry you had a bad experience OP, but you sound like a good guy and I'm sure you'll have loads of awesome gigs await you in the future. Personally I would have snapped and handled that situation extremely poorly haha.
• notacoward 13y ago
  At my very first programming job a long time ago, I was criticized for not putting in enough overtime leading up to a milestone. When the next milestone was near, I worked back to back all-nighters, careful to leave copious documentation of everything I'd done and when. When the boss who had criticized me finally rolled in, I just said "where the hell were you?" and went home to get some sleep. I didn't hear any crap about not working hard enough after that.
  • justin66 13y ago
    > I worked back to back all-nighters You don't think this whole scenario you've described represents a victory for you, do you?
    • notacoward 13y ago
      It did in the sense that doing it once stopped the bitching. Since I clearly had both the ability and will to do such things when needed, my failure/refusal to do them at other times could not be construed as lack of those characteristics. Obviously there was a cost, and continuing to put in long hours under less exceptional circumstances would have been a very different matter, but that one time had an effect that I considered worthwhile. It's kind of funny to look back on that now, when I'm actually on sabbatical in preparation for a shift to less than forty hours a week. Almost the opposite action, but toward the same goal of asserting control over my own time. Different circumstances call for different tactics. It's easier to refuse from a position of strength and trust, which doesn't exist when there's no record of one's ability to step up when it's truly necessary.
      • swayvil 13y ago
        I have the ability to eat dog shit, but...
        • notacoward 13y ago
          So you can eat dog shit and you can troll. Anything else?
• laughfactory 13y ago
  Dude, I feel ya. And thanks for sharing. I'm not (yet) a developer (though that is my long game), but I have run into similar situations in data science. I had an idiot boss (boss of my immediate boss) who sat around all day with his feet on his desk, staring off into space, but demanded that we all work 60-ish hours a week. And this was at a bank, where the standard was 40 and they made a lot of noise about their support for work/life balance and having family, etc. Anyway, he was a dick, too. Passive aggressive, the whole nine yards. So I found another job with a rapidly growing tech company and received an excellent offer. It seemed like a fantastic opportunity to really take my skill set (in data analytics) to the next level. I'd be the data guy and the role would work directly with the CEO, President, and all the other acronyms at the highest levels. The work I did would directly impact everything. Seemed cool. And for a couple days, it was. I went in early, stayed late, and worked my ass off to learn everything. They had three or four different databases running MySQL and MS SQL, and none of the data was documented. Which is to say that the only ones who knew what a given field was in the database were their 3 developers. When I started they presented me with a list of 114 reports they wanted created for the company. When I left, after having produced a significant number of those reports, the list had grown to 124. From the first day it was a constant struggle to figure out how to pull data from all their various databases, determine which fields were the right fields (i.e., it's called X, is it X? Or is it called X but it is actually Y? Or it is called X, it generally is X, but sometimes it's Y?), and smoosh everything together fast enough for their near-daily meetings. After a week the President called me into his office and told me I wasn't coming up to speed fast enough. I was completely stunned. And I attempted to professionally defend myself against his baseless assertions. I pointed out that I'd only been their a week. That I had a huge amount of data in a number of databases for which there was no data dictionary of any sort to make sense of. That I was making rapid progress in both learning the data and making effective use of it. That he'd be hard-pressed to find anyone else who could do any better than I was. I pointed out that I was doing everything in my power to get up to speed as rapidly as possible: I was coming in early, staying late, and working weekends. In the week I worked there I put in close to 70 hours. And I didn't get to see much of my family (wife and daughter). It sucked. But I thought that it might be worth it. The clincher came when, in our conversation, I told him that I was rapidly coming up to speed, but that doing so fully would take time. He told me (verbatim), "we don't have time. We need to go faster and faster. I don't have time for you to come up to speed." Then he gave me (implied with a grim smile full of teeth) a week. "We'll see how you're doing in a week..." he said. But after he blind-sided me like that, I put in a long day, mulling things over. Then I went home and talked to my wife. The conclusion I arrived at was similar to your own. It could've been a great opportunity if the company leadership (namely my boss the President) wasn't completely unrealistic and divorced from reality. To this day I have no idea how they expected anything different than they got from me. Did they truly expect me to come up to speed even faster than I was? Within a week? Or was our weird and painful conversation some perverse sort of pep-talk? Either way, in talking it out with my wife, when it came down to it we realized that it just simply wasn't worth swimming in the sea of vipers. There was no way I was going to work 70-84 hours a week for the salary I was making ($57,000/yr). Not when it was working for people who clearly had no idea what they were asking of their employees and how to treat people. They just didn't deserve to have my talent, abilities, and work ethic on staff. I wrote a one sentence resignation letter and dropped it at their office the next day. I said "This letter serves as notice of my resignation, effective immediately." I decided that any more long-winded explanation of my reasons for departure would be lost on a person like the President, so I put all those reasons in a Glassdoor review of the place. True to form, I received an email out of the blue from the President a month later. "Abe, saw your Glassdoor review. What gives?" Also, similar to your experience, I got the impression after a couple days that I wasn't the first data guy they'd tried to bring on board. Though no one would talk about it, I got the impression that they, too, hadn't stayed very long. Anyway, I share my story by way of commiserating with you. It's shocking to find such horrid work environments somehow persist, even for highly skilled individuals. We expect better treatment, and often get it--which makes it all the harder to take when we don't. Of course, in your case and mine, I wouldn't take that kind of treatment no matter how much the job paid, or how much I liked the work or product. Thanks again for sharing!
• duncan_bayne 13y ago
  In business, people will push for all they can get. That includes you, after all, I presume you negotiated a good salary and conditions? Two examples from my past: The law here in Victoria changed, and I (as a contractor) became a payroll tax liability to the company that hired me. So their CFO scheduled a meeting with me and informed me that he expected me to lower my rate to take into account the payroll tax. I said, "no - the legislation clearly states that the liability is incumbent upon the employer." He said, "yes, that's true" and dropped the matter. I continued there amicably for another year or so before my contract expired. Another example: I joined a company as a permanent employee (not a contractor) with clearly specified business hours in my employment contract, and no mention whatsoever of on-call work. Then a few weeks after joining, it was announced that there was a requirement for 24 hour support from the dev team, and we'd all be expected to participate. My response was: I'm happy to keep an eye out for problems if I'm at my computer and not busy, but on-call was never part of the deal, and I'm not doing it. Nothing bad came from my refusal in either case; in fact, I suspect my dealings with the first company was smoother afterwards, once it became apparent that I was not a push-over. Some caveats: - in neither case were the people involved assholes; rather the contrary in fact - I was in my thirties when both things happened; had I been in my early twenties I almost certainly would have caved to both requests (self-respect and confidence both lacking back then) - I remained calm and polite at all times
  • raverbashing 13y ago
    Kudos for that A good contract and a good professional attitude does wonders
  • swayvil 13y ago
    In nature, the animals will push for all they can get - red in tooth and claw etc. No thanks, we are above that shit.
• avenger123 13y ago
  I don't know what it is about people that are in our field. We seem to be too trusting and too honest. I followed this along and there are so many signs that the person should have realized, "hey, I'm being screwed here or about to be screwed, do something about it". Instead, he kept going based on what he was told even though his own intuition told him otherwise. One thing I have learned is that strong, aggressive and manipulative people size you up instantly by throwing something at you that puts your own strength on the line. This could be a request they make of you, a statement or something else. If you at that moment don't show that you are just as strong and aggressive as they can be but choose not to be, then they know they have you and will step all over you all the time. Standing up for yourself and calling out the project manager for making you looking like you were fired instead of quitting is not a question of being professional or not. The obvious question will be "Why didn't you speak up? You were already being let go?" The project manager would not dare to do such a thing if the right boundaries were setup initially.
• weixiyen 13y ago
  At one of my first jobs, I resigned after about a year because I found a job that offered 2x as much in terms of salary. Director: "How much is the new place offering? We can match." I told him the number. Immediately his tone changed, and said I should take the other offer. I wanted to give a 2 week notice, which I thought was the norm, but he asked me to leave immediately and use up my remaining days as vacation days as my last few days at the company. At that time I did not realize that I was entitled to my pay for the remaining vacation days, so I agreed to it without much thought. Part of it was because I could not imagine this guy doing anything shady in my previous interactions with him, as he always seemed like a stand up guy. By forcing me to use my vacation hours, the company saved a few hundred dollars, which would have been a lot for me at the time as I only had a few hundred dollars in my bank account. But looking back in retrospect and reading many similar stories, it seems common, almost expected, for younger kids to be screwed over like this in the workplace, especially when departing a company.
  • jaf656s 13y ago
    You were treated fairly. Bluntly but fairly. When you turn in your resignation, your notice is just an offer of a grace period. They are not obligated to take you up on your offer.
    • teebrz 13y ago
      To be clear, the specific part you mention is fair...but I don't think anyone would object to that. The part where it seems somewhat unfair is where the director asked weixiyen to give up pay they were entitled to. It's fair enough to ask for a favor ("hey, do you mind using up your vacay days before you leave?"), but you should make clear that it is a favor and what it entails - it sounds like that may not have done in this instance.
      • mattlutze 13y ago
        Unless the state has particular laws, every contract I've had as an employee allows me to quit at any time, and be fired at any time, without reason given. The director was under no obligation, after that notice, to allow him to work those last two weeks and then take the vacation. He was obligated to pay the vacation as it was compensation earned by weixiyen. But weixiyen (again, could be wrong if his/her state has certain laws) had no legal grounds to compel the company to allow him/her to continue working.
• lignuist 13y ago
  This was a sect, not a company.
• tempestn 13y ago
  Was anyone else reminded of this? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-ficti... "Denise’s smile was pained. “But then there’s your absence at most of the weekend and evening events, all of which are of course totally optional, and your corresponding PartiRank, which is surprisingly low for a newbie." "Optional" beer party anyone?
  • jayhuang 13y ago
    Funny you should mention that article, this blog post has been on my mind for a long time, but I never got around to it[1]. Part of the reason I finally wrote it and posted it on HN was because of seeing that article a while back. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6673385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6673385
    • tempestn 13y ago
      Ya, the LinkedIn stuff was spookily similar too. You were living in the (dystopian) future! "On Friday, you find out that your dad’s O.K. But the rest of the weekend, you basically go blank. You logged into your profile only three times, and nothing was updated. It’s like you disappeared!" BTW: if you haven't chosen a new gig yet, or you're still freelancing as well, feel free - or encouraged - to fire me an email (in my profile). We're based just over here in Victoria, but do the 100% remote thing.
      • jayhuang 13y ago
        Sent!
  • hamburglar 13y ago
    This isn't about the beer parties, or the linkedin profile, or the personal website. It's about a petty PM with no legitimate complaints who has the misguided notion that you should be working 70 hours, and he is casting about for stupid reasons to call you "not committed." If that PM had any actual authority, then the author was 100% right to leave. Even if he didn't, that may not have been an environment you want to work in anyway if that sort of manipulation flies, so leaving might have been good. But I've been in situations like this where some clueless guy in a polo shirt and khakis thinks he's going to jedi mind trick you into working harder, and sometimes the correct response is to just ignore him instead of deciding the whole environment is toxic. It's a matter of how much influence this guy really had over the team. Nobody else in the office who isn't trying to pull this lame bullshit gives a damn if you go to the beer parties or not. Some people like them, some people don't. Some people just want a chance to unwind after work and shoot the breeze over a beer. Some people want to fuck off at 5:00 sharp on friday and go home and drink beers by themselves or with their real friends. Some people don't drink. Nobody cares. Sure, there are brogrammers in the world who are going to diss you or think you're lame for not doing it, but this is on the level of people who would diss you for wearing the wrong brand of shoes, so fuck 'em. Same with the linkedin and website stuff: nobody cares unless they're trying to use it as a pathetically ineffective lever against you. It would be like complaining that you haven't posted any Facebook updates gushing about your new job. You'd just laugh in their faces or ignore them, because it's just so ludicrously irrelevant. Through reading the article, I waffled between sympathizing with the author and thinking he sounds like someone who doesn't have the backbone to say "come back to me when you have concerns based on something real." The impression that I got was that the author accepted that these factors were the measure of his contribution in this particular team, and thus decided that this was not the team for him, whereas what was needed was to put his foot down and say "no, you're not measuring me that way." Because unless the whole company really was toxic, I doubt many others would have gone along with such a weak bunch of evidence that he's "not committed."
• kamaal 13y ago
  >>“I’m not saying you should be working 80 hours a week, but 70 is not ridiculous to ask, and if you were committed you would do more”. From when did working 30+ additional extra hours just became a sign of being merely committed? The way I see these are just mind games played to extract tons of work for free. I see this pretty standard these days. The Google 20% time policy is a standard in many companies to get free innovation out, while your grinding your bones to dust(sold to you as 'chasing your passion' , 'developers like to code during late night and weekends', 'world changing problems' etc) working whole nights to get some thing done, a VP some where is sleeping through his job. What happens at the end of it is the VP gets a fat bonus and a promotion for 'driving the innovation' while you are at the very best known to be just 'committed' and given a certification, which isn't even worth the paper its printed on. Almost any time you hear some senior guy glorifying long working hours, demanding free innovation and depicting heroic contribution as just doing bare minimum job. Know one thing for sure, this guy is going to leech you till the last drop of blood in your body.
• kubiiii 13y ago
  Some managers are unable to assess employees efficiency, so they measure working time and are only happy when everyone is working 70 + hours per week. They also measure commitment by how hard you laugh at their jokes. Even though it is infinitely more precious to have someone productive working around 40 hrs a week (i.e. with around 30 extra potential hours to work when there is a rush) who finds critical software vulnerabilities like you did. Their loss.
• jamin 13y ago
  I fail to see how a few beers in the office one Friday night is a culture of beer...? Did you have conversations about this with anyone other than the PM?
• furyg3 13y ago
  70 hours a week is just crazy. Working 14 hour days for even a week sprint is a really awful week, and represents serious bad planning, bad management, or a massive resource shortage. Expecting that kind of workload on a sustained basis is not just a bad organizational culture, it's borderline unethical. On our team, if these kinds of workloads start popping up before a product launch, there is a serious discussion about it. It means that someone over promised, and that person needs to be taken to task.
• digitalzombie 13y ago
  Happened to me, total clustered fuck from the start... But I knew half way I was going to get shafted. So I ask tons of questions and try to learn as much as I can from my senior peers.
• guangnan 13y ago
  "You are not 100% committed." Added to my big-picture_manager RubyGem. https://github.com/guangnan/big-picture_manager https://github.com/guangnan/big-picture_manager
• brianmtully 13y ago
  "Beer Party"?
• 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > “You are not 100% committed.” I can't remember quite how I responded to that the first time I got it but it went something very much along these lines: "To gain big you have to gamble big, if big gains were simple everyone would be doing them. There is always the possibility of failure, of losing everything you bring to the table, and being a hundred percent committed to anything, bringing everything you have to the table, is a bad gambling strategy. We can work together for our mutual benefit, but if you expect me to throw my entire life, and potentially all my future options, behind something that may or may not work out... well, I can see how that's to your benefit but I don't see how it's to my likely long-term good. The average lifespan of a company is thirty years, and significantly less in the startup space. I'm afraid that if you want me to sacrifice my interests for yours you either need to be paying me a lot more to justify the added risk you're asking me to take on, or we've reached a parting of the ways." People like that are, I feel, just looking to take advantage of you. Loyalty is won by laying the best hearth, not demanded.
• michaelochurch 13y ago
  It was time to leave, and the HR lady came to me and said I would have to sign a release letter and send it back within 2 work days (the following Monday was a holiday), otherwise I would not get any of the remaining pay, including my “stock options”. Apparently instead of full-time as stated in my offer letter, I was a “Contractor” and that the agreement was “terminated”. I guess that’s to protect them somehow. And the “stock options” that she said I would be paid amounted to $0 (as expected).* That shit is highly illegal. Get a lawyer. Even now, after the fact, there are things an attorney can do for you, like negotiate a settlement. (If they pressured you into signing a release or non-disparagement agreement, they're afraid). The release should be voided by the threat of withholding wages. This reversion to consultant status is fishy, too. It seems like they're afraid of a constructive dismissal claim (essentially, the argument that the PM's horrible behavior constitutes wrongful termination). I'm not saying that you should sue them. That's not my decision to make, and for a 9-week job it's rarely worth it. Given that they already broke the law, you don't much to lose, and there is something to gain, by getting an attorney involved. If nothing else, it'll make that horrible PM look bad to his superiors, and that's a small win. You won't get stock options, of course. Typical vesting is 4/1, meaning you get zero if you leave in the first year. I don't know why they even mentioned that. Almost no one gets stock options (for obvious, legitimate reasons) who worked at a place for 9 weeks.
• hoopism 13y ago
  Whether you consumer beer or alcohol or not it's usually enlightening to attend these events. I've gotten more insight into the companies and dept I work for by socializing after hours than all the "regular" work hours. I hear people often complain about communication... they rarely attend these functions. It's not their fault I guess... but it's a reality.
• ilbe 13y ago
  What a horror story, I've been at a company with red flags, and left due to that fact, but have not seen anything to this extent. I will keep it in mind as a warning. Sounds like the PM has a psychological disorder.
• georgemcbay 13y ago
  “I’m not saying you should be working 80 hours a week, but 70 is not ridiculous to ask, and if you were committed you would do more”. My response would be: So I'll of course be getting a 1.75x raise over my current salary, right? To be clear, I'm not against really giving it your all for your work, but I lament how across much of the tech industry putting in insane hours is considered just the baseline. If I've got real equity in a company and I'm really a "stakeholder" (a term that gets thrown around to a ridiculous degree), sure, I'll work my ass off. If you're paying me approximately market rates and a piddling amount of common shares that are bound to be diluted away to nothing, sorry but you're going to have to do much better than that if you expect me to negatively impact my overall quality of life to any degree.
• anoncow 13y ago
  You still haven't updated your LinkedIn.
  • jayhuang 13y ago
    I see what you did there (;
• Maven911 13y ago
  Thank you for sharing your story. I am going through a pretty tough hiring process where the decision makers in corporate made the decision to hire me, but the local people in the current office seem to hate me and doubt I am up for the job, along with local HR joining the bandwagon and complaining about my hiring. So you sharing your problems gives me a feeling of belonging that I am not alone in being stuck in bad situations.
• slaunchwise 13y ago
  Two things jumped out at me. The first is that the PM had no substantive complaint and was basically being a bully. Some people do that. Since you had been really interested in this job, you might have done the second thing, which is to take your complaint upstairs. I would have told the story to someone above the bully before resigning. They might have backed up the bully, to their discredit. But they might decided they can't afford the kind of turnover this a-hole creates. If this feels like going outside of channels, it is, but tech isn't big on channels in my experience. You might have saved an interesting job. At the least, it would have been an entertaining thing to do.