10 ms·

Reid Hoffman on the relationship between employers and employees

231 points by jrs235 11y ago

hkmurakami 11y ago
>"YOU DON'T FIRE YOUR KID BECAUSE OF BAD GRADES" At huge traditional Japanese companies, even terrible, negative productivity employees aren't fired (the kid with the bad grades). Part of this is because of regulation, part of this is because they really behave as if they are a family. (Kyocera's maniacal devotion to its company-wide athletics tournament is a famous example) The company provides you with pay, shelter (corporate dorms), a wife (there are women hired in administrative roles who are of a different category of employee than the full knowledge worker who are expected to marry a male employee and leave the company within some handful of years), commuting expenses, a pension, etc. In return, you are expected to be loyal to the company. And it pays to be loyal, because (1) the upper levels of the companies are all "propers": i.e. people who joined as new grads rather than mid-career transfers, and (2) because pay is backloaded. Do I think this is a good system? Well, in industries where the development, retention, and continuity of incremental knowledge was important, this seemed to work quite advantageously. When the economy was reliably expanding YoY, seniority based pay and lockstep promotion was feasible since more and more seats could be added in the pyramid structure. But when the economy stagnates and the backloaded, highly compensated "kids with bad grades" fill the ranks? The youth suffers, and something's gotta give.
- x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
  > a wife (there are women hired in administrative roles who are of a different category of employee than the full knowledge worker who are expected to marry a male employee and leave the company within some handful of years) Where can I read more about this? How wide-spread is this practice?
  - hablahaha 11y ago
    Patrick McKenzie touches on it a bit in his blog: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/. Search for the part where it says "Don't have a wife?"
    - hkmurakami 11y ago
      >Don’t have a wife? You might quite reasonably think “I don’t have time to even think about that.” Don’t worry — the company will fix your social calendar for you. It is socially mandatory that your boss, in fulfillment of his duties to you, sees that you are set up with a young lady appropriate to your station. He is likely to attempt to do this first by matching you with a young lady in your office. I can attest to this, having this very situation in action first hand.
  - hkmurakami 11y ago
    Search for "Ippanshoku" or "Ippan Shoku". The Japanese characters are 一般職. The more oldschool the company culture and the farther away from major cities (esp. Tokyo/Osaka) you get, the more common it will be. It is very common throughout the Toyota Group where I used to work (which is coincidentally the same geographic area as where patio11 worked). It's actually a fairly effective social arrangement, though it is understandably very odd from a Western perspective (I was initially appalled, having grown up in SV).
geggam 11y ago
You work to get paid. If you are well enough off you don't need to work to get paid you aren't working any more.
- x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
  Some people actually find meaning in work and would continue to work beyond their financial necessities.
dredmorbius 11y ago
"The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family."
- bhartzer 11y ago
  It's more like a relationship you have with a girlfriend you know that you'll never marry.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- buckbova 11y ago
  This goes two ways. Oftentimes employees act like entitled children as well. You are not "owed" anything for your loyalty to a company other than a paycheck for services rendered.
  - taurath 11y ago
    Whats loyalty then if not doing things that aren't fully in your own interests for the interests of the group? Why do people insist on simplifying relationships and work to a transactional standpoint? Do you not see the significance it has on your life?
  - zo1 11y ago
    Well, would you not feel entitled to something if you were told "do this, keep at it, and surely you will be rewarded with X". Quotes to look out for in that regard: "You're going places", "You have a future in this company", "Your work is so valuable".
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    Indeed. Many employees expect the company to bear very significant, parental-type responsibilities without assuming any real obligations themselves. Employment is a new transaction between two parties every day -- it occurs only so long as it's mutually beneficial, just like every other transaction. No one, neither employer nor employee, should expect more than that.
- 11y ago
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I find Reid's prognostications quite fascinating. Mostly because they take similar inputs that I have experienced and pull out a different conclusion. For example I see small companies as much more 'family like' than he does. However my understanding of the word 'family' is not 'fruit of my loin' sort of family, rather of a group with a higher than average social awareness of the peer members. Mostly I want people to treat each other "like family" because if someone is going through a painful divorce and their work output is suffering, I'm not inclined to kick them to the curb. Especially if they were a solid performe before.
buckbova 11y ago
> "They know that employers want loyalty," Hoffman says. "They know they want to hear, 'Oh, I plan on working here for the rest of my career.' When asked about where I wanted to be in my career by my boss (boss' boss actually), I was honest about having my resume out there and looking for other opportunities outside my current company. Now, I've heard from other sources a promotion that was possible in my future has been basically pulled. Honesty is not a good policy. Keep lying. Everyone says they want the truth, but if you are told you're not doing meaningful work, the justification for your job is vanity metrics, and the guy with less experience than you who does terrible work makes more money than you, how happy would you be? If you told management, you're using the position and any promotion as a jumping off area for a newer better job at a different company, how happy would management be?
- mentat 11y ago
  Promotions for loyalty are poisonous to the company. Merit / track record is the only way to go.
  - sheepmullet 11y ago
    To an extent. As soon as you consider externals for a role though the merit/track record approach falls apart because of the information disparity. Its usually better to hire the internal person who you know can do a good job, than to hire an external who looks twice as impressive on paper. Yet we often do the opposite.
  - __abc 11y ago
    THIS! Tenure isn't worth zero, but it's not a "guarantee for greater responsibility and compensation".
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    Your parent did not describe promotions-as-reward-for-loyalty. Merit/track-record is a key metric, but not the only requirement. Interpersonal skills, future plans (loyalty, career track, etc), attitude, potential...
  - 11y ago
euphoria83 11y ago
The longer my career gets, the more I realize this to be true. This also has the added disadvantage that the employers take the employees lightly. In a family, the head of the family has more power than others. If employers considered an employee's duration at the company more as a contract, then they would also work harder to keep the other party satisfied with the contract. Unfortunately, the relationship is tilted in favor of the employer due to the fact that a loss of employment generally has worse consequences for the employee that for the employer.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Treating an employee's duration like a contract is a terrible idea. It puts into the employer's head that the employee is just a temporary expense, which starts begging the question - just how temporary can I make this employee?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - dman 11y ago
      What point?
  - eropple 11y ago
    Have you considered that most companies--especially in tech--already are doing that? They'd be stupid not to.
    - stephengillie 11y ago
      Yes, I'm certain I've worked for more than one employer who felt that way. And I've considered contract employees that way. It's what inspired me to write my comment. Of course, since I am again a contractor, I'm getting some perspective about my feelings while at my previous employer.
cblock811 11y ago
A lot of this rings true from my days working in hotels. You could work for Marriott or Starwood and hop between brands, but still be a part of that company. If you jump ship some people would get awkward and not know if they should talk to you. It's the strangest thing I've seen. At the same time it made the 6mo - 18mo tenures in startups seem super small and non-comital. Maybe it's more of an issue with larger companies.
patmcc 11y ago
Loyalty is such a ridiculous thing for most companies to expect. It needs to be earned, and it's not even that complicated. Here's how you get loyal employees: 1. After some probation period, fire only as a last resort or for really terrible behaviour. Have a plan to correct behavior in all other cases. 2. No layoffs unless the firm's very existence is threatened. It's a tough year? Too bad, that's part of the risk involved in being the owner. 3. Keep pay up to market/replacement rates. If someone is 20% more valuable with his new knowledge, pay him 20% more. 4. Have good benefits/vacation policies. 5. Make sure there's lots of interesting and challenging work to do. Allow people to switch roles/teams on a regular basis if they're interested. 6. Hire good people. That's a company I'd be loyal to, and I think a lot of others would be too. Sure, you'd get people who would leave for their own thing, or a dream job, or because their husband/wife got a job 2000 miles away, but I don't think you'd see people jump ship nearly as often. The other stupid thing is companies trot out how much it costs to hire a new person, but never want to invest in just retaining their employees.
- jackmaney 11y ago
  > Loyalty is such a ridiculous thing for most companies to expect. It needs to be earned, and it's not even that complicated. In this day and age, anyone who expects loyalty--from an employer or an employee--is either blinded by nostalgia, hopelessly naive, or a blithering idiot. Loyalty in the workplace died many, many years ago.
  - madez 11y ago
    That is not true. I work for a company where firing is kind of a no-go, at least at the the level of engineers. You'd have to provoke it, e.g. by stealing something. Also, if I decide to leave the company, I tell so as early as possible. It seems you must have had experiences at workplaces where there was no trust. Disclaimer: I work for a german company.
    - jackmaney 11y ago
      Yeah, being outside of the US could make a huge difference. For the most part, in the US, you can be laid off/fired for damn near any reason, at any time, with absolutely no warning. Companies such as your employer are prettymuch unheard of around here.
jacquesm 11y ago
Companies typically get back exactly as much loyalty as they are willing to extend to their employees. So there's a hint if you want loyal employees.
nwenzel 11y ago
When I interview candidates I always bring up his book and ask: "If all this goes well and you come work for us, what's next for you after that? Where do you want to be positioned to go after you move on from here?" It's a weird question. But it's how I know whether or not I can deliver value to that potential employee. At big companies, salary and benefits is usually the main "value" that they provide. So, in essence, they provide the higher comp package necessary to make up for the fact that an employee is not going to learn as much as they would at a smaller company. A small company or an early stage startup is full of opportunities to learn. If your goal is to start your own company someday, I can make sure you're leaning the things that will help you get there. If you want to be a race car driver, I don't have much for you. Employment is a two-way agreement. It's true that employers have the upper hand because they typically represent 100% of that person's income. The employee, on the other hand, is 1/N of the workforce. Switching costs are also likely higher for the employee. For many people, I would imagine that a transparent and honest assessment is preferred to a pretend make-believe world where we imagine that an employee will spend their entire career in one place.
- analog31 11y ago
  Do you expect a non-bullshit answer? For better or worse, this sounds to me like one of "those" interview questions, and expecting a company to care about what I do next makes about as much sense as expecting the company to treat me like family.
  - xrange 11y ago
    Maybe he's self-selecting for sociopaths/people who are good at telling him what he want's to hear? I've always wondered about an organization consisting of psychopaths. You disguise it as a consulting firm, at which point it severely cripples the target company as they infiltrate and demoralize. Then the evil mastermind covers his short positions/options. Seems like it could make for a good book or movie anyway.
    - twic 11y ago
      I don't get it. What do you think he "wants" to hear? I think this is a great question, that's honest about the nature of a skilled employee's relationship to an employer. I don't think it's at all about the employer pretending to care about the employee - it's a straightforward way to find out what the prospective employee wants (other than loads of money, which this employer doesn't have), so that the employer can try to offer it to them. It's classic SPIN selling.
zxyzzxxx 11y ago
For me the biggest "lie" is that companies want employees to settle at their company and at the same time they don't offer contracts that don't expire.
yellowapple 11y ago
"You don't fire your kid because of bad grades" Hoffman seems to underestimate how dysfunctional some families are :)
SilasX 11y ago
Could we replace the LinkBait title with a more informative description like "LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman on the biggest employer lie: the company is like a family".
- dang 11y ago
  We replaced it with a phrase from the first sentence. First paragraphs often contain a more accurate and neutral description of what an article is about. It's as if, having baited you in with the title, they immediately start walking it back.
  - alexqgb 11y ago
    In publishing, it's the editors who compose the titles, not the writers. This is why the writer's lede is so frequently a more reliable point of entry to the story.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
"I order you to stand around and drink beer until you're as loyal as Kif here." - Zapp Brannigan, "Futurama"
datashovel 11y ago
"he sits atop the largest, most data-rich hiring platform the world has ever seen"... How would one extrapolate the "loyalty" issue from that vast amount of data at LinkedIn? It seems the point is being made in order to give Reid Hoffman a segue to explain his company's approach to hiring, instead of actually attempting to find "the biggest lie" based on actual data.
xrange 11y ago
>"So we'll ask, 'What's the next job that you would like to have post-LinkedIn?' ... 'It brings some honesty to what is otherwise kind of a collective self-deception dance.'" ...Am I the only one who thinks this guy is self-delusional if he thinks that this brings honesty to the table? Now interview candidates are just going to have to lie about what they think the interviewer wants them to say. Is this going to turn into the next "tell me about your biggest failure"? Maybe we can roll the answers to those two question into one. "My biggest weakness is that I work too hard, sometimes forgoing sleep. In a sleep deprived stupor, I'll probably accidentally accept a middle manager job at ResumeCo.com, when trying to perform some corporate espionage as a double-agent".
joesmo 11y ago
I disagree with his point about references. They tell you nothing and are a hundred percent of the time only going to tell you positive things about the employee, regardless of reality. No one with half a brain would ever give a reference out that wasn't going to be positive. Even if you don't have one positive reference, asking a friend to pretend to be one is easy and I don't doubt it happens even when people have qualified references. I'd much rather interview a potential employee than have to use references. The mere thought of references making any difference whatsoever in a hiring decision is rather angering in its stupidity.
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  Perhaps there's a middle ground? Interviews have a series of notorious problems. References can easily be shills, although note his recommendation to looks for references that didn't come from the candidate. Seems to me that the whole hiring process is a logically-flawed nightmare, so why not include multiple approaches? I read the comments about only references with no interview to be jocular, not necessarily implying that he is against interviews.
- alain94040 11y ago
  You may be thinking of references from HR. Those won't tell you anything insightful about the candidate. But if I know someone I trust who has worked with the candidate and can give me a strong recommendation, that's a huge factor in my decision. In other words, my ex-coworkers's co-workers make for a great filter.
- sgustard 11y ago
  The article specifically says to check references other than the ones given by the candidate. I wish Reid would expand on that. If I interview at LinkedIn, is he going to blab to my boss and the world that I'm looking for a new job? I've been cold-called to give references on people I found weak. Frankly, I'm not going to blurt out a lot of negative data to a stranger. It's either a legal or ethical liability, and what's in it for me to trash a colleague?
  - sokoloff 11y ago
Udo 11y ago
Employers may want to believe their workplace really is like a family, and, in that moment, they may convince themselves it actually is like a family. When I was an employer, I pretty much embodied this sentiment. To me, work was this great place where smart people meet every day to have fun and solve interesting problems. I couldn't fathom that employees were just there to make money and then forget about everything when they got home. In retrospect, there are two aspects to this: 1) An employee can actually do a 9-5 job AND have a good relationship with their colleagues, have fun at work, and apply themselves - fanatical devotion is not required and should not ever be a criterion for judging performance. 2) However, the "bad" employees I hired (which was totally my mistake in the first place) did all have in common that they didn't care about their work at all. Some even consistently lied, about the work they had actually done, about how much they cared (unprompted), and about how they dealt with customers. There is a fine line between utter disinterest and having a healthy work-life distance. I'm not surprised so many managers have problems categorizing this.
justicezyx 11y ago
'What's the next job that you would like to have post-LinkedIn?' I was not asked this question in my LinkedIn interview...
sdalfakj 11y ago
Clickbait on HN. Great. tl;dr "The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family," Hoffman says.
- galago 11y ago
  Of course CEO of a company that coordinates credential evaluations between employers and employees thinks that this is more important than interviews. His business depends on it.
  - fsk 11y ago
    It seems that every post on "how to fix hiring" was written by someone who has a product that claims to fix hiring.
hkmurakami 11y ago
>And now he wants both workers and employers to begin having honest conversations with each other — conversations that admit employment isn't for life, that loyalty only lasts so long as it coincides with self-interest, and that the relationship doesn't have to end when the worker leaves. I read this and immediately thought of McKinsey as the best company that manages the relationship between the firm and the individual throughout the latter's professional career.
mikerichards 11y ago
That whole "we're a big, happy family is annoying". The company I previously worked at it was big into it. It seemed to work for them when they were small (<= 50 employees and before I was there), but once they got to a certain size it just became annoying. They used to have these monthly "before work hours" meetings that turned into bi-monthly meetings that were especially annoying. They would trot out some executive to say this and that and also had this weird group of employees that would dress up in costumes and put on these weird little skits. But the final straw for me was when we were acquired by another company and they started trotting out the new executive team. One lady was showing pictures of her family riding 4-wheelers. That was it. "I'm sure you're a nice lady, but I don't care. We have our own families". I told my boss that I wouldn't be attending these anymore and I would give my resignation if he wanted. He grinned and said he understands..it was annoying to him too. I think I left a couple months after that. The whole sappy-happy family wasn't the main reason, but it sure was annoying.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cma 11y ago
>[Hoffman is a] capitalist who made early investments in everything from Facebook to Airbnb >I was at an Airbnb board meeting and I ran into two former LinkedIn employees who walked up to me and said, 'Hey, how's it going? I'm working here now. I'd love to tell you about some of the stuff that I'm learning.' They know the way that we operate, is not, 'Oh, you've left LinkedIn, so you're no longer part of our tribe.' We continue to be allies. So he has ownership interests in both companies, and an employee moved between the two. He's like chief of one tribe and minor chieftan of another. He feels righteous because he can be allies with someone who left his major ownership to work under a different company in which he has less-major ownership? This is the exemplification he is choosing for his earlier quote, "and that the relationship doesn't have to end when the worker leaves?" Come on.
- IndianAstronaut 11y ago
  Our CEO has a really great policy about workers moving on. He doesn't chastise them but welcomes their move forward and wishes them the best of luck. He makes it a point to have managers do that as well. The end result is that many people that have moved on from the company help promote the company and its services at their new place.
yegor256a 11y ago
I wrote something similar a few months ago: http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and-reality.html http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and-rea...
michaelochurch 11y ago
Frequently employers are so casual about references they either a) don't check them, or b) only check the ones the prospective candidate gives them. See, that's a problem. That stands out more than any of the good things that he might say. People talk and things come out and shit happens, but deliberately going behind someone's back for back-channel references is just plain unprofessional, if not unethical. This is the kind of behavior that has the rest of the country (in which ethical standards aren't seen as old-fart ideals to be "disrupted" but are actually considered important) thinking that we, in tech, are a bunch of immature psychopaths. The back-channel reference check is an unprofessional show of power-- like waving a gun around at work-- because it takes social access to get any information out of it (people don't just offer candid opinions up to complete strangers). What's communicated by the back-channel reference check is "your colleagues are more loyal to me than to you". There's a fucking reason why people outside of tech consider it unprofessional and borderline unethical.
- SamReidHughes 11y ago
  > People talk and things come out and shit happens, but deliberately going behind someone's back for back-channel references is just plain unprofessional, if not unethical. It's not unprofessional or unethical. > The back-channel reference check is an unprofessional show of power-- like waving a gun around at work-- because it takes social access to get any information out of it For it to be a show of power, such an action would have to involve "showing" something. It's actually an attempt to avoid hiring bad employees -- that's the benefit people get. > (people don't just offer candid opinions up to complete strangers). This merely raises the threshold of badness before they might offer negative information. If their coworker was bad enough, they would. And do. > What's communicated by the back-channel reference check is "your colleagues are more loyal to me than to you". The miscommunication is on your end. (Also, your former colleagues don't owe you or some potential employer "loyalty.")
  - fsk 11y ago
    Michael O Church once lost a job due to a "back-channel reference check", so that explains why he's so hostile to them. Also, in the USA, there are rules limiting what you can say about a former employee. By giving a negative back-channel reference, you and your employer might be susceptible to a lawsuit. However, actually suing a former employer for something like that is probably a bad idea, because (1) it'd be hard to prove it (2) it would make you even less employable when other people find out about the lawsuit. If I ever am in a position to do hiring, I probably wouldn't do it, because I'd trust my judgement more than someone else's.
brazzledazzle 11y ago
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Netflix since they've seemingly embraced something similar to this honesty as an integral part of their company culture.
bootload 11y ago
Employees and employers lie/deceive each other (point two), so assertion in point number four, "employers put too much weight on interviews, and too little weight on references" is questionable.
ilaksh 11y ago
Wage work is simply a variation on slavery where the 'employee' finds his own food and lodging. Money is just a simple technology for officializing and perpetuating class.

231 points by jrs235 11y ago

>"YOU DON'T FIRE YOUR KID BECAUSE OF BAD GRADES" At huge traditional Japanese companies, even terrible, negative productivity employees aren't fired (the kid with the bad grades). Part of this is because of regulation, part of this is because they really behave as if they are a family. (Kyocera's maniacal devotion to its company-wide athletics tournament is a famous example) The company provides you with pay, shelter (corporate dorms), a wife (there are women hired in administrative roles who are of a different category of employee than the full knowledge worker who are expected to marry a male employee and leave the company within some handful of years), commuting expenses, a pension, etc. In return, you are expected to be loyal to the company. And it pays to be loyal, because (1) the upper levels of the companies are all "propers": i.e. people who joined as new grads rather than mid-career transfers, and (2) because pay is backloaded. Do I think this is a good system? Well, in industries where the development, retention, and continuity of incremental knowledge was important, this seemed to work quite advantageously. When the economy was reliably expanding YoY, seniority based pay and lockstep promotion was feasible since more and more seats could be added in the pyramid structure. But when the economy stagnates and the backloaded, highly compensated "kids with bad grades" fill the ranks? The youth suffers, and something's gotta give.

x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
> a wife (there are women hired in administrative roles who are of a different category of employee than the full knowledge worker who are expected to marry a male employee and leave the company within some handful of years) Where can I read more about this? How wide-spread is this practice?
- hablahaha 11y ago
  Patrick McKenzie touches on it a bit in his blog: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/. Search for the part where it says "Don't have a wife?"
  - hkmurakami 11y ago
    >Don’t have a wife? You might quite reasonably think “I don’t have time to even think about that.” Don’t worry — the company will fix your social calendar for you. It is socially mandatory that your boss, in fulfillment of his duties to you, sees that you are set up with a young lady appropriate to your station. He is likely to attempt to do this first by matching you with a young lady in your office. I can attest to this, having this very situation in action first hand.
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  Search for "Ippanshoku" or "Ippan Shoku". The Japanese characters are 一般職. The more oldschool the company culture and the farther away from major cities (esp. Tokyo/Osaka) you get, the more common it will be. It is very common throughout the Toyota Group where I used to work (which is coincidentally the same geographic area as where patio11 worked). It's actually a fairly effective social arrangement, though it is understandably very odd from a Western perspective (I was initially appalled, having grown up in SV).

geggam 11y ago

You work to get paid. If you are well enough off you don't need to work to get paid you aren't working any more.

x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
Some people actually find meaning in work and would continue to work beyond their financial necessities.

dredmorbius 11y ago

"The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family."

bhartzer 11y ago
It's more like a relationship you have with a girlfriend you know that you'll never marry.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
buckbova 11y ago
This goes two ways. Oftentimes employees act like entitled children as well. You are not "owed" anything for your loyalty to a company other than a paycheck for services rendered.
- taurath 11y ago
  Whats loyalty then if not doing things that aren't fully in your own interests for the interests of the group? Why do people insist on simplifying relationships and work to a transactional standpoint? Do you not see the significance it has on your life?
- zo1 11y ago
  Well, would you not feel entitled to something if you were told "do this, keep at it, and surely you will be rewarded with X". Quotes to look out for in that regard: "You're going places", "You have a future in this company", "Your work is so valuable".
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Indeed. Many employees expect the company to bear very significant, parental-type responsibilities without assuming any real obligations themselves. Employment is a new transaction between two parties every day -- it occurs only so long as it's mutually beneficial, just like every other transaction. No one, neither employer nor employee, should expect more than that.
11y ago

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I find Reid's prognostications quite fascinating. Mostly because they take similar inputs that I have experienced and pull out a different conclusion. For example I see small companies as much more 'family like' than he does. However my understanding of the word 'family' is not 'fruit of my loin' sort of family, rather of a group with a higher than average social awareness of the peer members. Mostly I want people to treat each other "like family" because if someone is going through a painful divorce and their work output is suffering, I'm not inclined to kick them to the curb. Especially if they were a solid performe before.

buckbova 11y ago

> "They know that employers want loyalty," Hoffman says. "They know they want to hear, 'Oh, I plan on working here for the rest of my career.' When asked about where I wanted to be in my career by my boss (boss' boss actually), I was honest about having my resume out there and looking for other opportunities outside my current company. Now, I've heard from other sources a promotion that was possible in my future has been basically pulled. Honesty is not a good policy. Keep lying. Everyone says they want the truth, but if you are told you're not doing meaningful work, the justification for your job is vanity metrics, and the guy with less experience than you who does terrible work makes more money than you, how happy would you be? If you told management, you're using the position and any promotion as a jumping off area for a newer better job at a different company, how happy would management be?

mentat 11y ago
Promotions for loyalty are poisonous to the company. Merit / track record is the only way to go.
- sheepmullet 11y ago
  To an extent. As soon as you consider externals for a role though the merit/track record approach falls apart because of the information disparity. Its usually better to hire the internal person who you know can do a good job, than to hire an external who looks twice as impressive on paper. Yet we often do the opposite.
- __abc 11y ago
  THIS! Tenure isn't worth zero, but it's not a "guarantee for greater responsibility and compensation".
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  Your parent did not describe promotions-as-reward-for-loyalty. Merit/track-record is a key metric, but not the only requirement. Interpersonal skills, future plans (loyalty, career track, etc), attitude, potential...
- 11y ago

euphoria83 11y ago

The longer my career gets, the more I realize this to be true. This also has the added disadvantage that the employers take the employees lightly. In a family, the head of the family has more power than others. If employers considered an employee's duration at the company more as a contract, then they would also work harder to keep the other party satisfied with the contract. Unfortunately, the relationship is tilted in favor of the employer due to the fact that a loss of employment generally has worse consequences for the employee that for the employer.

stephengillie 11y ago
Treating an employee's duration like a contract is a terrible idea. It puts into the employer's head that the employee is just a temporary expense, which starts begging the question - just how temporary can I make this employee?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - dman 11y ago
    What point?
- eropple 11y ago
  Have you considered that most companies--especially in tech--already are doing that? They'd be stupid not to.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    Yes, I'm certain I've worked for more than one employer who felt that way. And I've considered contract employees that way. It's what inspired me to write my comment. Of course, since I am again a contractor, I'm getting some perspective about my feelings while at my previous employer.

cblock811 11y ago

A lot of this rings true from my days working in hotels. You could work for Marriott or Starwood and hop between brands, but still be a part of that company. If you jump ship some people would get awkward and not know if they should talk to you. It's the strangest thing I've seen. At the same time it made the 6mo - 18mo tenures in startups seem super small and non-comital. Maybe it's more of an issue with larger companies.

patmcc 11y ago

Loyalty is such a ridiculous thing for most companies to expect. It needs to be earned, and it's not even that complicated. Here's how you get loyal employees: 1. After some probation period, fire only as a last resort or for really terrible behaviour. Have a plan to correct behavior in all other cases. 2. No layoffs unless the firm's very existence is threatened. It's a tough year? Too bad, that's part of the risk involved in being the owner. 3. Keep pay up to market/replacement rates. If someone is 20% more valuable with his new knowledge, pay him 20% more. 4. Have good benefits/vacation policies. 5. Make sure there's lots of interesting and challenging work to do. Allow people to switch roles/teams on a regular basis if they're interested. 6. Hire good people. That's a company I'd be loyal to, and I think a lot of others would be too. Sure, you'd get people who would leave for their own thing, or a dream job, or because their husband/wife got a job 2000 miles away, but I don't think you'd see people jump ship nearly as often. The other stupid thing is companies trot out how much it costs to hire a new person, but never want to invest in just retaining their employees.

jackmaney 11y ago
> Loyalty is such a ridiculous thing for most companies to expect. It needs to be earned, and it's not even that complicated. In this day and age, anyone who expects loyalty--from an employer or an employee--is either blinded by nostalgia, hopelessly naive, or a blithering idiot. Loyalty in the workplace died many, many years ago.
- madez 11y ago
  That is not true. I work for a company where firing is kind of a no-go, at least at the the level of engineers. You'd have to provoke it, e.g. by stealing something. Also, if I decide to leave the company, I tell so as early as possible. It seems you must have had experiences at workplaces where there was no trust. Disclaimer: I work for a german company.
  - jackmaney 11y ago
    Yeah, being outside of the US could make a huge difference. For the most part, in the US, you can be laid off/fired for damn near any reason, at any time, with absolutely no warning. Companies such as your employer are prettymuch unheard of around here.

jacquesm 11y ago

Companies typically get back exactly as much loyalty as they are willing to extend to their employees. So there's a hint if you want loyal employees.

nwenzel 11y ago

When I interview candidates I always bring up his book and ask: "If all this goes well and you come work for us, what's next for you after that? Where do you want to be positioned to go after you move on from here?" It's a weird question. But it's how I know whether or not I can deliver value to that potential employee. At big companies, salary and benefits is usually the main "value" that they provide. So, in essence, they provide the higher comp package necessary to make up for the fact that an employee is not going to learn as much as they would at a smaller company. A small company or an early stage startup is full of opportunities to learn. If your goal is to start your own company someday, I can make sure you're leaning the things that will help you get there. If you want to be a race car driver, I don't have much for you. Employment is a two-way agreement. It's true that employers have the upper hand because they typically represent 100% of that person's income. The employee, on the other hand, is 1/N of the workforce. Switching costs are also likely higher for the employee. For many people, I would imagine that a transparent and honest assessment is preferred to a pretend make-believe world where we imagine that an employee will spend their entire career in one place.

analog31 11y ago
Do you expect a non-bullshit answer? For better or worse, this sounds to me like one of "those" interview questions, and expecting a company to care about what I do next makes about as much sense as expecting the company to treat me like family.
- xrange 11y ago
  Maybe he's self-selecting for sociopaths/people who are good at telling him what he want's to hear? I've always wondered about an organization consisting of psychopaths. You disguise it as a consulting firm, at which point it severely cripples the target company as they infiltrate and demoralize. Then the evil mastermind covers his short positions/options. Seems like it could make for a good book or movie anyway.
  - twic 11y ago
    I don't get it. What do you think he "wants" to hear? I think this is a great question, that's honest about the nature of a skilled employee's relationship to an employer. I don't think it's at all about the employer pretending to care about the employee - it's a straightforward way to find out what the prospective employee wants (other than loads of money, which this employer doesn't have), so that the employer can try to offer it to them. It's classic SPIN selling.

zxyzzxxx 11y ago

For me the biggest "lie" is that companies want employees to settle at their company and at the same time they don't offer contracts that don't expire.

yellowapple 11y ago

"You don't fire your kid because of bad grades" Hoffman seems to underestimate how dysfunctional some families are :)

SilasX 11y ago

Could we replace the LinkBait title with a more informative description like "LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman on the biggest employer lie: the company is like a family".

dang 11y ago
We replaced it with a phrase from the first sentence. First paragraphs often contain a more accurate and neutral description of what an article is about. It's as if, having baited you in with the title, they immediately start walking it back.
- alexqgb 11y ago
  In publishing, it's the editors who compose the titles, not the writers. This is why the writer's lede is so frequently a more reliable point of entry to the story.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

"I order you to stand around and drink beer until you're as loyal as Kif here." - Zapp Brannigan, "Futurama"

datashovel 11y ago

"he sits atop the largest, most data-rich hiring platform the world has ever seen"... How would one extrapolate the "loyalty" issue from that vast amount of data at LinkedIn? It seems the point is being made in order to give Reid Hoffman a segue to explain his company's approach to hiring, instead of actually attempting to find "the biggest lie" based on actual data.

xrange 11y ago

>"So we'll ask, 'What's the next job that you would like to have post-LinkedIn?' ... 'It brings some honesty to what is otherwise kind of a collective self-deception dance.'" ...Am I the only one who thinks this guy is self-delusional if he thinks that this brings honesty to the table? Now interview candidates are just going to have to lie about what they think the interviewer wants them to say. Is this going to turn into the next "tell me about your biggest failure"? Maybe we can roll the answers to those two question into one. "My biggest weakness is that I work too hard, sometimes forgoing sleep. In a sleep deprived stupor, I'll probably accidentally accept a middle manager job at ResumeCo.com, when trying to perform some corporate espionage as a double-agent".

joesmo 11y ago

I disagree with his point about references. They tell you nothing and are a hundred percent of the time only going to tell you positive things about the employee, regardless of reality. No one with half a brain would ever give a reference out that wasn't going to be positive. Even if you don't have one positive reference, asking a friend to pretend to be one is easy and I don't doubt it happens even when people have qualified references. I'd much rather interview a potential employee than have to use references. The mere thought of references making any difference whatsoever in a hiring decision is rather angering in its stupidity.

dikaiosune 11y ago
Perhaps there's a middle ground? Interviews have a series of notorious problems. References can easily be shills, although note his recommendation to looks for references that didn't come from the candidate. Seems to me that the whole hiring process is a logically-flawed nightmare, so why not include multiple approaches? I read the comments about only references with no interview to be jocular, not necessarily implying that he is against interviews.
alain94040 11y ago
You may be thinking of references from HR. Those won't tell you anything insightful about the candidate. But if I know someone I trust who has worked with the candidate and can give me a strong recommendation, that's a huge factor in my decision. In other words, my ex-coworkers's co-workers make for a great filter.
sgustard 11y ago
The article specifically says to check references other than the ones given by the candidate. I wish Reid would expand on that. If I interview at LinkedIn, is he going to blab to my boss and the world that I'm looking for a new job? I've been cold-called to give references on people I found weak. Frankly, I'm not going to blurt out a lot of negative data to a stranger. It's either a legal or ethical liability, and what's in it for me to trash a colleague?
- sokoloff 11y ago

Udo 11y ago

Employers may want to believe their workplace really is like a family, and, in that moment, they may convince themselves it actually is like a family. When I was an employer, I pretty much embodied this sentiment. To me, work was this great place where smart people meet every day to have fun and solve interesting problems. I couldn't fathom that employees were just there to make money and then forget about everything when they got home. In retrospect, there are two aspects to this: 1) An employee can actually do a 9-5 job AND have a good relationship with their colleagues, have fun at work, and apply themselves - fanatical devotion is not required and should not ever be a criterion for judging performance. 2) However, the "bad" employees I hired (which was totally my mistake in the first place) did all have in common that they didn't care about their work at all. Some even consistently lied, about the work they had actually done, about how much they cared (unprompted), and about how they dealt with customers. There is a fine line between utter disinterest and having a healthy work-life distance. I'm not surprised so many managers have problems categorizing this.

justicezyx 11y ago

'What's the next job that you would like to have post-LinkedIn?' I was not asked this question in my LinkedIn interview...

sdalfakj 11y ago

Clickbait on HN. Great. tl;dr "The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family," Hoffman says.

galago 11y ago
Of course CEO of a company that coordinates credential evaluations between employers and employees thinks that this is more important than interviews. His business depends on it.
- fsk 11y ago
  It seems that every post on "how to fix hiring" was written by someone who has a product that claims to fix hiring.

hkmurakami 11y ago

>And now he wants both workers and employers to begin having honest conversations with each other — conversations that admit employment isn't for life, that loyalty only lasts so long as it coincides with self-interest, and that the relationship doesn't have to end when the worker leaves. I read this and immediately thought of McKinsey as the best company that manages the relationship between the firm and the individual throughout the latter's professional career.

mikerichards 11y ago

That whole "we're a big, happy family is annoying". The company I previously worked at it was big into it. It seemed to work for them when they were small (<= 50 employees and before I was there), but once they got to a certain size it just became annoying. They used to have these monthly "before work hours" meetings that turned into bi-monthly meetings that were especially annoying. They would trot out some executive to say this and that and also had this weird group of employees that would dress up in costumes and put on these weird little skits. But the final straw for me was when we were acquired by another company and they started trotting out the new executive team. One lady was showing pictures of her family riding 4-wheelers. That was it. "I'm sure you're a nice lady, but I don't care. We have our own families". I told my boss that I wouldn't be attending these anymore and I would give my resignation if he wanted. He grinned and said he understands..it was annoying to him too. I think I left a couple months after that. The whole sappy-happy family wasn't the main reason, but it sure was annoying.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cma 11y ago

>[Hoffman is a] capitalist who made early investments in everything from Facebook to Airbnb >I was at an Airbnb board meeting and I ran into two former LinkedIn employees who walked up to me and said, 'Hey, how's it going? I'm working here now. I'd love to tell you about some of the stuff that I'm learning.' They know the way that we operate, is not, 'Oh, you've left LinkedIn, so you're no longer part of our tribe.' We continue to be allies. So he has ownership interests in both companies, and an employee moved between the two. He's like chief of one tribe and minor chieftan of another. He feels righteous because he can be allies with someone who left his major ownership to work under a different company in which he has less-major ownership? This is the exemplification he is choosing for his earlier quote, "and that the relationship doesn't have to end when the worker leaves?" Come on.

IndianAstronaut 11y ago
Our CEO has a really great policy about workers moving on. He doesn't chastise them but welcomes their move forward and wishes them the best of luck. He makes it a point to have managers do that as well. The end result is that many people that have moved on from the company help promote the company and its services at their new place.

yegor256a 11y ago

I wrote something similar a few months ago: http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and-reality.html http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and-rea...

michaelochurch 11y ago

Frequently employers are so casual about references they either a) don't check them, or b) only check the ones the prospective candidate gives them. See, that's a problem. That stands out more than any of the good things that he might say. People talk and things come out and shit happens, but deliberately going behind someone's back for back-channel references is just plain unprofessional, if not unethical. This is the kind of behavior that has the rest of the country (in which ethical standards aren't seen as old-fart ideals to be "disrupted" but are actually considered important) thinking that we, in tech, are a bunch of immature psychopaths. The back-channel reference check is an unprofessional show of power-- like waving a gun around at work-- because it takes social access to get any information out of it (people don't just offer candid opinions up to complete strangers). What's communicated by the back-channel reference check is "your colleagues are more loyal to me than to you". There's a fucking reason why people outside of tech consider it unprofessional and borderline unethical.

SamReidHughes 11y ago
> People talk and things come out and shit happens, but deliberately going behind someone's back for back-channel references is just plain unprofessional, if not unethical. It's not unprofessional or unethical. > The back-channel reference check is an unprofessional show of power-- like waving a gun around at work-- because it takes social access to get any information out of it For it to be a show of power, such an action would have to involve "showing" something. It's actually an attempt to avoid hiring bad employees -- that's the benefit people get. > (people don't just offer candid opinions up to complete strangers). This merely raises the threshold of badness before they might offer negative information. If their coworker was bad enough, they would. And do. > What's communicated by the back-channel reference check is "your colleagues are more loyal to me than to you". The miscommunication is on your end. (Also, your former colleagues don't owe you or some potential employer "loyalty.")
- fsk 11y ago
  Michael O Church once lost a job due to a "back-channel reference check", so that explains why he's so hostile to them. Also, in the USA, there are rules limiting what you can say about a former employee. By giving a negative back-channel reference, you and your employer might be susceptible to a lawsuit. However, actually suing a former employer for something like that is probably a bad idea, because (1) it'd be hard to prove it (2) it would make you even less employable when other people find out about the lawsuit. If I ever am in a position to do hiring, I probably wouldn't do it, because I'd trust my judgement more than someone else's.

brazzledazzle 11y ago

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Netflix since they've seemingly embraced something similar to this honesty as an integral part of their company culture.

bootload 11y ago

Employees and employers lie/deceive each other (point two), so assertion in point number four, "employers put too much weight on interviews, and too little weight on references" is questionable.

ilaksh 11y ago

Wage work is simply a variation on slavery where the 'employee' finds his own food and lodging. Money is just a simple technology for officializing and perpetuating class.