

Employees Suck - nside
http://www.slideshare.net/johnbuckman/employees-suck-presentation?type=powerpoint

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patio11
The real title of this should be "The traditional employment model sucks", and
I agree with that statement.

I spend 60+ hours a week on the clock as a Japanese salaryman. It kills me. It
kills everyone else even more than me because a) I'm the slacker American who
actually leaves after a mere 60 hours and b) I don't have a wife and kids.

And looking at my paystub, oh boy, the incentives at the margin make me weep.
Monetarily and otherwise. A starting Japanese engineer makes $2,200 a month
plus biannual bonuses of something like $4,000 plus benefits. I've got 4 years
professional experience so I'm above that but not grossly above it and,
anyhow, treble it and it wouldn't make a difference.

The incentive at the margin, on a professional level, is to spend one hour
slowly working through the 473rd unit test case on a feature that will be used
once a year that isn't crucial to any client anywhere. The feature exists
largely to keep up the appearance that the company is working hard for their
money. I love programming but I don't love _this_ programming.

The incentive at the monetary level is, well, "less than motivational".

Now I also own a small business selling software. Its no great shakes, but I
get to pick the features I implement and the marketing/etc direction I choose.
And when I do stuff right, its not the 473rd bullet point on a spec that may
never see the light of day, its fifteen paying customers sending me Christmas
cards with pictures of their kids. Or if I kick butt and take names for two
weeks, rather than getting a pat on the head from the boss, a new stack of
busywork, and $60 added to my Christmas bonus (yaaaaay), my sales increase by
$400 a month FOR FOREVER.

Is it easy? I don't think anything worthwhile is easy: I've been part-timing
this for 2.5 years now and am just creeping into the $20k a year sales range.
But someday, in the not so distant future (certainly not 5 years from now like
the slideshare presentation suggests), it will be enough. (It actually would
cover my burn rate at the moment but I'm a bit of a cautious type.)

And then I will calligraphy-up my resignation letter, make my bows, and walk
out of the office while the sun is still shining for a change.

And, as God is my witness, that will be the last time I ever deal with a
company as an employee. If they want to be business partners, we can be
business partners. If they want me to live my life for them out of a sense of
obligation, ho ho ho, I will be happy to introduce them to service providers
who are more appropriate to their needs.

(This isn't really a Japan-only thing, incidentally. There are any number of
American companies which could be my company, easily. And there are Japanese
companies which are better but, really, none is ever going to be as good to me
as I would be.)

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kqr2
Just curious, given the long hours and low wages, why do you choose to work in
Japan as a "slacker American"?

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patio11
I choose, for the moment, to _live_ here, in a little town I rather like,
close to friends I rather like, attending a little church I rather like, etc.

For better or worse, choosing to live here (or really, anywhere) generally
means you get to work nearby as a package deal. I'm working on making that
more of an a la carte selection.

(Edit: Incidentally, I don't dislike my job. Parts of it are actually quite
fun -- it has made me a much better engineer, I've learned quite a bit, and it
has done wonders for my ability to read web application stack traces in
Japanese.

Its just that, well, I have a finite number of years to live and hours in my
waking day. They can have a few years and many hours. Or they can have many
years and few hours. But I'm not willing to sell many years and many hours.)

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donw
I'm curious as well as to where you live... and also, about your experiences
doing software over in Japan. I've never really had the chance to live there
for an extended period of time, but I'd like to give things a go in a year or
two... just to get that nagging monkey off my back, and to do something
different.

Hopefully, the stack traces don't just read 'エラーが起きました。たいへん申し訳あります。' _grin_

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basugasu
I think you mean 申し訳ありません (inexcusable).

Though I've tried using 申し訳あります (literally, there is an excuse) before as a
joke to lighten the mood when apologizing. I'm not sure they got it.

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donw
Damnit, I can't believe I typed that, and didn't catch it. Goes to show how
bad my Japanese has gotten over the past year. I really need to start studying
again, and not just chattering with my girlfriend.

Yeah, 大変申し訳あります sounds like something you'd see in 漫才.

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sobriquet
Does slideshare offer a printable version that just extracts all the text into
paragraph form?

While I was interested in the topic, about 30 slides in I got tired of
clicking through the "presentation" and gave up. I'm getting tired of slides
with huge text and no design. Makes me almost miss bullet point monotony!

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xiaoma
I couldn't agree more. That's a terrible interface.

If he had just put his thoughts on a web page I would have read them. By
putting the onus on me to waste my time clicking over a hundred times and only
feeding me a sentence or two per click, he just drove me off. Unless people
who like clicking a lot while reading slowly are his target audience, this is
a bad thing.

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sobriquet
My guess is the presentation was originally given to a live audience, and then
the slides posted online. However, an online-formatted version would've been
much more helpful.

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swombat
A bit self-contradictory and misleading.

1) It's more about "being an employee sucks" than "employees suck"

2) It gives the very dangerous advice that "you don't need more PR/marketing"
and the follows that up with the saner "you need to get people blogging about
you". Oh, so now, getting people blogging about you isn't a marketing
exercise? Really? What is it then?

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potatolicious
I think what he means is that you need geurilla, viral marketing that's driven
by _genuine interest_ from real people about the product.

As oppose to a slick ad copy written by (very expensive) professionals.

The gist of it is that if your product isn't cool enough to the target
audience that they want to tell all their friends about it, then it's probably
not good enough to make serious money.

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dgabriel
It very strongly depends on what kind of product you're developing, and who
your target market is. For a Web2.0 social app, skip the salespeople.

For an app that capitalizes on your MS in material sciences and love of
python, and targets big manufacturing companies, an experienced sales team is
worth quite a lot. Viral won't cut it.

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jbarciauskas
I think this underestimates the degree to which even the most talented
programmers are creatures of habit. Most are able to find a job that is
reasonably satisfying and very secure, and so long as they make enough to buy
all the Diet Coke and Subarus they need, plus some equity upside, they do not
go out looking for new jobs just to increase their pay.

I also think an overwhelming majority are downright allergic to the notion of
becoming a contractor. Having to sell yourself every 6 months to 2 years, with
all the uncertainty in between gigs? No thanks! The proposal to quit and sell
"intellectual goods" just doesn't appeal at all to people who place the value
of an extra dollar far below the value of extra stability.

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henryl
I like the high level information. Unfortunately, that's all there is. I'd
love to hear the actual presentation.

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matt1
Yeah, the comments indicate he spoke at the Le Web conference. Are there any
videos or was that banned like everything else?

~~~
danielh
<http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/961379>

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known
Employee - ESOP = Wage Slave

Employee + ESOP = Motivation

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qqq
Long but worth skimming.

