Very very far away. It makes me feel I got lucky in ending up at the bomb factory over the software factory when I moved to Seattle. As nice as we bring you booze and food if you work late Friday night can be I was just old enough to realize that getting to go home at 4:30pm every day and having weekends off (outside of on call duty every 2 months or so) was worth the 10K less I was getting compared to jumping ship to the dotcom world.
Of course now the bomb factory has caught up with lets outsource, slash costs, etc, etc.
Man, this gets really confusing in the blog view where you can’t tell what parts are quotes and what parts aren’t.
Uses the same blockquotes as every other post on boing boing. Sorry.
Oh, no doubt. Just sayin’ the blog view is lacking in that regard.
I added quotation marks.
As Steve O’Grady says at the bottom of this piece - http://redmonk.com/sogrady/ , Tech seems to be following Wall Street in terms of “spectacular tonedeafness, outrageous excesses of compensation and uncontrolled greed”.
As somebody who works in tech (although not in this bullshit startup world for many years) I agree 100% and I’m saddened by these ridiculous outbursts.
The (Bostonian) author projects his own avarice on his employees, then gets angry at them for being as greedy as he assumes they are. Of course the executive class are greedy shits, that’s how they became executives. Many of the rest of us just want stable, well-compensated fulfilling work, then to go home to our families and live our lives.
I’m in healthcare technology and a union member. I get overtime when I work more than 8 hours in a day. I get a shift differential when I work past 6:00. I get fully paid healthcare and retirement. The minimum wage for a union member is $15.00, and the low paid workers who are being bullied because of that recent change are being actively protected by the union.
There are unions available that will represent tech sector workers - find them and join them. Organize your workplaces. The power of a union to get you daily overtime, workplace protections, healthcare, set hours, and much more is incalculable for the quality of your working life.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring booze to the bomb factory…
To be fair I work in a totally cube farm area and for the commercial side of things so other than being against the rules booze would be fine where I currently have a desk as long as nobody is getting drunk anyway. Also I have had no desire to get the security clearance for working on defense related things.
“If management can’t properly resource at a 1000 person company, you should run away.”
The second most important thing I learned from my first full time boss was that “a failure to plan on their part does not constitute an emergency on our part.” I still use this a couple decades later.
The most important thing was that the nice supportive boss will still stab you in the back.
If management can’t properly resource at a 1000 person company, you should run away.
Hell, I should’ve taken that advice a lot sooner at the 100 person company…
If it’s a pattern, and it’s expanding…perhaps it is a sign of some bubble quietly deflating, somewhere?
Somewhere between 20 and 40 it needs to shift. by the time you get to 80 the ethos of the old days, being a tight knit team in the garage, needs to become “culture” while the company is a business.
Jason - you hit the nail on the head!
Having worked at many of these startups, I have watched this over and over. Lack of good management, constant re orgs and giving executive positions to Bro’s with little to no experience. Here in the Valley the trend flows in to the community as you have VC, Start up Execs and those who just worked at FB or google at the right time who feel they know all because they made some $$ from options. How many times have I heard here that retail, restaurant and caregivers should pack up and move if they can’t afford to live in the Valley and it their fault for not being them. Completely tone deaf response.
Well, it makes for a nice change from reading from rich tech guys in San Francisco complaining about how they shouldn’t have to look at poor people because all that misery is totally bumming them out…
I’ve never worked for a startup.
You don’t need to cancel sushi dates, because you should be working on a schedule like 9 to 5.
Buwahahahahaha! I don’t live in California or Seattle.
As a extremely high tech generalist who has to compete every day with people 35 years younger than me, if I don’t work when the work needs doing, I’ll be out of work - perhaps permanently. I haven’t worked set hours in decades. 35 hours continuous emergency work, 20 hours without food, I’ve done those, although I physically can’t pull 35 hour shifts any more, so I have to solve problems faster these days.
But it’s just the way it is. If I don’t want the 20 year olds to shove me into the unemployment line, I have to work the conditions that they do, and I have to do a better job than them. I don’t expect any sympathy and I’m not complaining, I’m just telling you how it is.
…having one of those days, don’t mind me…
The brain trust where I work accidentally leaked the employee payroll for the (very almost) entire company today.
It made it abundantly clear that it’s not what you know but who in determining your pay. Some people doing an easier/less skilled job get as much or more than 2x that of those in very challenging / demanding positions.
Age doesn’t seem to play a factor as there are those in their early 20’s making low and high wages, but those making high don’t have anything over their counterparts beyond who they knew that got them the job at this company.
It’s typical investment BS - suck out all the wealth, leave a shattered mess and move on to the next target you can “invest in” (extract wealth from). We went from having even growth of almost double digits, even through the recession, and now for the first time have back to back years of not making our numbers - not even close.
Those in the drivers seats got those seats because of who they know, not what they know. then they surround themselves by “like minded” people - it’s like Lloyd & Harry only want people like them around. I had an executive, who has since departed, confide in me that he hides his technical intelligence (then rattled off the OSI layers, when was the last time you ran into a CEO that could do that?) because it intimidates his coworkers and that type of intimidation will put you on the outside.
It leaves me wondering why we’re all hot on democracy right up until we clock in and go to work - why is it OK to then shift to a dictatorship? Especially considering it’s where most of us spend the majority of our time?
Just curious and genuinely not intending to sound even a little bit snarky, but do you guys have a style guide? I feel like all of your writings (regardless of quality) are pretty idiosyncratic with regards to format (meaning all y’all, not just @jlw).
YES.
From the article:
who enslave them and force them to shop at that GHASTLY Trader Joes instead of Whole Foods. The masters who dare to make them share an apartment with a (GASP) ROOMMATE,
Hahaha! He thinks the employees can afford Trader Joes and that one roomate is enough. Christ, what an asshole.
In penning this, I honestly have no interest in assassinating this person’s character.
Good. Then don’t. Asshole.
to be paid at a level commensurate with their lofty expectations and delusions of grandeur (hold the phone, you little whelps).
For shame, begging to be paid what they earn from their labor! Next they’ll be telling us that labor is something they sell us for money, rather than a privilege we magnanimously grant them.
Listen. This shit is hard. I get it. You come out of school with unicorn tears in your blood and a fire in your belly. Laser beams from your eyes and lightning from your arse.
No, I come out of school with tens of thousands of dollars in debt and zero tolerance for bullshit about why I shouldn’t pass the cost onto you. Just like you claim you pass on the cost of taxes to consumers.
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” - Edison
Says the man who outright lied, cheated, and stole his way to wealth. Is that the kind of perspiration you’re talking about?
There’s often a reason why your founder, VC, or those who manage you are in the position that they are in – they worked for it.
Really? So all those people in the company are just sitting doing nothing to make the company profitable? I’m sure that absolutely none of them put in the hours and the effort that you do. Why you could run that company so much better if it wasn’t for all the fucking employees.
Ask yourself who would you rather share a foxhole with? Who would you rather work for? The battle-tested, resolute, woman who is building while you are blogging? Or the social media darling driving the WAHmbulance? I know my preference. What’s yours?
Someone who compensates me. Do I own shares in your company? No. Do I have a say in senior management decisions? No. Any low level employee is a mercenary, a gun-for-hire. They’ll fight the war for you when you pay them in a way they feel is worth their time, risk, and energy. It’s basic economics.
But one thing is certain: the work is hard. Do the work.
Work is hard, soft, slow, fast, smart, or dumb. When you’re the boss, I do the work you assign me, and I expect payment. When the fuck did asking to get paid money in exchange for services become something like asking for a fucking handout?
Fucking late stage capitalism.
You were seriously not paying attention, then. I mean, there was a bit more diversity back then, but a lot of international economic migrants were already starting to leave by then and the corn fed men streaming in from the midwest to replace them were all as white as white bread can be.
