
Searching For Beasts In Silicon Valley’s ‘War For Talent’ - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/16/bring-out-the-beast/
======
rayiner
What a bunch of crap. It's _great_ that young engineers are making so much
money right now, because that's just money that the VCs would otherwise be
making. And what can I say, I'm a partisan--I think that's a perfectly fine
thing. Indeed, it's worthwhile to take a page out the the VC playbook here.
Clearly, the VCs have figured out that you don't need to keep young, ambitious
people "hungry" for them to work their asses off. Look at who the VCs hire--
people exiting from bulge bracket NYC banks. Look at what they pay these
people. Every time I hear complaints about skyrocketing SV engineer salaries,
I go over to WSO and remind myself: nope, still not ridiculous yet:
[http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/salary/venture-capital-
compen...](http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/salary/venture-capital-compensation)
(note that VP is not a particularly senior person in most financial firms--
usually 6-8 years out of college assuming the person didn't go back for an
MBA).

~~~
calinet6
That's a relative viewpoint, which still doesn't explain away the effect of
money on the individual developers, who essentially no longer have to strive
to create something of value in order to maintain their lifestyle. I think the
article's right: that's a problem, and it's very difficult to pin down, much
less solve.

~~~
rayiner
Sure it's a comparison between two industries, but I don't see why the
observations don't translate. The young associates working for VCs don't rest
on their laurels just because they have fat paychecks coming in. Indeed, they
work incredibly hard to keep the gravy train from stopping. Why should it be
different in engineering? Just because an engineer makes a lot doesn't mean he
doesn't have tremendous incentive to create something of value, because
ultimately if he doesn't those paychecks stop coming. Indeed, big paychecks
and golden handcuffs are actually an incredibly effective way to get smart
people to put in tremendous effort. It's a model that the Valley fully
believes in and buys into, because that's the model VC firms use.

------
edw519
Every once in a while you read something and shake your head thinking, "I
always _felt_ this but was never able to verbalize it like this." This is one
such post: one of the best things I've discovered in 6 years of Hacker News.

As someone who has always built and shipped, I've been troubled by a subtle
shift in thinking in our industry the last few years. Why so much hostility
and failure to learn from others? Why so much attitude?

This brilliant post finally explains it: because so many of us who at one time
would have been building products, services, and value are now building
anything but: resumes, reputations, portfolios, and (Heaven forbid) "personal
brands".

Thank you, Glenn Kelman, for one of the best arguments I've seen in a long
time for builders to just shut up, find a customer, and satisfy them.

Just a few gems that really resonated with me:

 _But one crucial difference between this boom and the last is that the folks
in the last boom had to ship or starve._

Amazing what you can do when you _have to_.

 _But how many engineers hired from Stanford or Berkeley in the past year will
ever feel the savage need to make something happen, to bust out of the matrix,
to push the limits of their abilities?_

Is "bust out of the matrix" the new "think outside the box"?

 _The problem is that the young engineers earning that much become well-fed
farm animals at the very moment in their lives when they should be running
like wild horses._

What a great metaphor!

 _The result for many engineers and product managers is often a case of
arrested development, as they drift from one startup to the next, dabbling in
several side-projects, without the ballast of having solved some really hard
problems or contributed to a lasting business._

Sometimes, _not_ having an alternative is the best motivator to finish
something.

 _After all, the only way to get much better at your craft is to be challenged
in ways that make you uncomfortable. Yet not many people in high technology
are uncomfortable these days._

I had no idea.

 _Startups, like professional football, are best done by the most desperate
people on the planet._

Great observation!

~~~
svachalek
I just noticed the football comment and now I'm wondering how bad I just got
trolled. (Surely a $2M salary makes you desperate indeed.)

~~~
kybernetyk
Pro football players have to earn a life's salary in a few years before they
get worn out. $2 million over 50+ years isn't really that much.

~~~
derekp7
You mean it is impossible for them to work a regular job after retiring from
the NFL? Keep in mind that NFL recruits from College, and (if you ignore the
cases of cheating the system) most colleges have academic eligibility
requirements. Therefore pretty much all pro football players also have a
college degree (except the ones that get drafted before graduating -- I don't
know what that statistic is).

Heck, if I could have gotten a couple million dollar head start in life by
working on my hobby once a week, I'd take that even if I had to delay a
regular career by a few years.

~~~
ijk
Except that you'd be betting that you're the exception:

"According to Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are divorced, unemployed,
or bankrupt two years after leaving the game, and MSNBC reports that one in
four NFL players live paycheck to paycheck" [1].

Most athletes do not invest wisely, and often lack the experience to handle
large sums of money [2]. Are you so sure that you'd be the exception?

[1] Slideshow warning: [http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/04/six-reasons-why-
pro-at...](http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/04/six-reasons-why-pro-athletes-
going-broke-shouldnt-be-a-surprise/lottery-winner-syndrome)

[2] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/like-lottery-
winners...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/like-lottery-winners-
pro_b_294275.html)

~~~
derekp7
I understand the statistics, I was just responding to "they have to earn a
lifetimes salary". I was under the assumption that the reason for College
sports eligibility requirements was so that athletes can have the ability to
support themselves after their sports career is over. In fact, I've often run
across people in various professions (such as the guy at the car dealership)
who were former professional athletes.

------
dictum
Pardon me if I'm being too cynical or if I'm missing the point, but all I see
is a CEO saying that young employees should work more for lower wages, with
some naturalistic, late XIX century imagery of bravery — fighting in a war,
the most desperate people, bringing out the beast, horses running wild.

~~~
waterlesscloud
He's also saying startup CEOs have it too cushy. He's saying they can just
cruise from startup to startup, and while they may not get OMG rich, they can
live a pretty well-off lifestyle.

Which he's arguing, not entirely unreasonably, reduces the chances they'll
swing for the fences. They can take less risk and still get a fairly
guaranteed reward of a good level of comfort.

~~~
asveikau
Think about who benefits from the CEO living an ascetic lifestyle and that
then being a "cap" on everyone below them. I read this whole thing as an
appeal to young founders to screw themselves over.

~~~
bravohippo
In the old days of Unions, people willing to work for no money would get beat
up, because fools like that ruin life for everyone else.

The types of people willing to destroy their health and have no family, no
significant others, no interests outside of work should be thrown in jail
because all they do is drive down the quality of life of everyone else.

The more that these kinds of myths spread, the worse our lives will be. As
software people, it's essential that we counteract this romanticization of
economic exploitation, or we will be dragged down with all the clueless fools
who buy it into.

~~~
asveikau
I can't get behind beating people up or putting them in jail. Maybe a scolding
and/or a sternly worded letter. Or, if people are taken in by the hype, maybe
even on a place like hacker news, raise awareness of your objections in the
form of a comment.

~~~
bravohippo
Putting people that harm society in jail is one of the few ways to actually
deal with these kinds of social issues.

Your kind of gutlessness is pretty much exactly why the world has been gifted
to neoliberal extremists. Normal liberals lack the courage of their
convictions. They're afraid to do anything beyond sending a stern letter.

Your pathetic sternly worded letters go straight to the paper shredder. The
corporate state doesn't care. Capitalism doesn't care.

The only truth that capitalism recognizes is power. The only way to stop
neofeudalism is through strength and power.

Putting people in jail as I said is really not an effective policy. There are
far better policies. But I'm not actually making a specific policy
recommendation, I'm arguing that normal modes of individual behavior that are
condoned by American capitalist democracy are not effective at solving these
issues. To solve these issues the only choice is to do things that your
neoliberal masters would consider immoral. The point is that what they call a
sin is actually virtue, and vice versa.

Using your muscles/strength/laws/guns/brains to ensure economic safety for
everyone is a virtue

~~~
pron
You should take a look at this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5383976>

~~~
bravohippo
Wow, I DO NOT envy that Sisyphean task you have undertaken!

Still, bravo!

------
jamespitts
One one hand, I totally agree with what Kelman has to say. Perks are poisonous
and can seriously undermine our culture. On the other hand, what about the
power-law-driven disparity between what the CEO stands to gain if the company
becomes successful vs. employee #5? Or #100?

These perks reflect the fact that employee #5s are beginning to understand
their real worth, just as players have in professional sports world. I guess
even employee #1s are wanting perks as well, feeling the gap between
themselves and their wise and well-moneyed investors.

We can decry the loss of innocence -- or the loss of some kind of better work
ethic from yesteryear -- all we want, but it won't bring the good times back.
Let's just move the industry forward and make the best of our latest batch of
talented brats.

------
eli_gottlieb
_Maybe some of these examples sound preposterous to you, but they’re what the
rest of America does every day. Looking for candidates who have visited that
hard place in themselves at one point in their life isn’t some Marxist fantasy
of mine. It’s how capitalism works best._

I'm pretty much spewing morsels at my screen now, screaming for the sheer
irony of this statement.

MARXIST FANTASY!? Bull ever-loving mother-fucking shit! Yes, this is
capitalism, but not "how capitalism works best", this is Capitalism, Red in
Tooth and Claw, _solely because the author values the bloodshed and tears more
than the actual creation of wealth in today's startups_.

I could take a criticism of the frivolity of some of today's businesses, or
some other attempt to persuade that the boom cycle is reaching its end and the
"fake" businesses that don't really produce enough value to justify their own
existence will have to die.

But this is just blood-fetish! He says in his own words: engineers' salaries
are worth every penny in value created!

 _Startups, like professional football, are best done by the most desperate
people on the planet._

Then get out of Silicon Valley and take this _Fight Club_ crap to Gaza Strip,
one of the most desperate regions on the planet.

Or just shove your head in this instead:
[http://www.culturecongress.eu/english/theme/theme_cyberiad/b...](http://www.culturecongress.eu/english/theme/theme_cyberiad/barbrook_davos_parallax)

~~~
bravohippo
Oh, eli, you never disappoint.

This guy has Protestant work ethic brain damage. He enjoys the aesthetic of
self-flagellation, the pain and suffering.

He's sado-masochistic and loves pain, both his own pain and the pain of
others.

People who talk like this are the worst people in the world because they
always end up taking out their bloodlust on others. They advocate for low
wages, for harsher punishments, for more terror at every opportunity. It is
the most blatant expression of thanatos and the fact that people like this
hold significant positions of power pretty much sums up why the majority of
the world's population has their head held underwater by a tiny, brutal elite.

The elites are sadists. They morally justify their sadism with their own
masochism--"I love to suffer, so you should too!"

Horrific.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_Oh, eli, you never disappoint._

Ok, apparently I really do need to shut up.

 _This guy has Protestant work ethic brain damage._

The thing being that the Protestant work-ethic comes off as _completely
ridiculous_ to anyone who's _not_ a Calvinist or a secular raised on Calvinist
values.

I mean, I pulled some truly long working hours just last week-and-a-half.
Project had to get done, and I had realized I needed to rebuild it shortly
before it was due in. So it _got done_ , and more than just that got done too.

Doesn't mean I liked it, for Heaven's sake, nor that I would recommend
continual 12-hour workdays and all-nighters as the Right Way. It's entirely
unsustainable over the long term, and, as I deserved, I crashed _hard_ on the
weekend.

------
pnathan
I immediately was reminded of jwz's response to Michael Arrington about two
years ago:

[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-
se...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/)

~~~
redschell
Same here. That jwz piece really left an impression on me, so whenever I run
into an article, like the TC one here, with some founder/VC/"serial
entrepreneur" talking about culture or work ethic or some crap like that, I
really have no choice but to assume that this guy is just some scrub trying to
lure me under a desk.

~~~
pnathan
The old adage "follow the money", or the even older, "cui bono"[1] really
should be brought into play here.

jwz made out all right, he got the startup lotto. But most people won't. And
I'm not keen on seeing underpay and overwork glorified in some song and dance
by a CEO/VC/$etc. Cui bono.

Of course, if someone wants to pour blood, sweat, tears, health, and their
life into a company, that is of course their choice. But I think they should
own both that risk and that reward for that risk. I think that if an employee
is asked to go without, then the employee should also own the reward as well.
It is a basic principle of investing: higher risk carries higher rewards
(otherwise you don't invest).

If the employee with a family who works 80 hours a week and sleeps under his
desk wants to write a paen of glory to their lifestyle, that I will respect.
They will know of what they write.

I think I would rather be underpaid in graduate school, personally.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono>

------
peterhunt
I challenge the idea that a startup is the best place for an aspiring new
engineer to learn. If you don't have an adequate number of high caliber
technical folks on your team it's simply impossible to effectively absorb and
train new engineers.

Just because someone is smart and has raw talent does not mean they are wise.
In order to build that technical wisdom you need to be a part of an
engineering organization that has it already. Some startups do, but
universally characterizing all startups as being the best learning environment
is incomplete advice at best and dangerous, self-serving advice at worst.

When new grads approach me about wanting to do a startup I tell them to work
at a Facebook or google for a year to learn the ropes, then make the jump.

~~~
bravohippo
Like you said, it's just complete bullshit. Rapidly assembling CRUD apps to
discover a market is somehow gaining technical skills?

If you want to develop technical skills, the way to do it is by reading and
then trying to solve the challenging perennial problems. This generally is not
profitable activity which is why it is funded by research grants.

This guy is confusing technical skills with something else, something that
sounds like a hypermasculine myth about the value of self-flagellation. It is
Protestant work ethic bullshit, the kind of bullshit that, when it permeates a
society, makes that society utterly anti-pleasure and impossible for any sane
person to enjoy.

------
crazygringo
> _Now, of course, you can cash out as soon as the startup has made any
> significant progress. ... How many startups would be doing better now if all
> their early people still had to work there for a big payday?_

You can also look at it from the other direction: if only a small proportion
of people are great at founding startups, then doesn't it make more sense for
them to leave early to found other startups? As long as the people left at the
first one have the ability to continue the trajectory, I don't see the problem
-- and presumably, the people allowing them to cash out don't see the problem
either. It's just a more efficient allocation of scarce resources.

> _The broader trend of generally increasing pay, ... Before most computer
> science graduates ever walk across a stage to get their diplomas, they’re
> set for life._

Why shouldn't they be? If doctors and lawyers are set for life (depending on
how you look at it), why shouldn't highly capable engineers be too?

> _The result for many engineers and product managers is often a case of
> arrested development, as they drift from one startup to the next, dabbling
> in several side-projects, without the ballast of having solved some really
> hard problems or contributed to a lasting business._

I don't get what's so bad about this. A lot of businesses don't last, period.
Side projects are great.

This whole article comes across almost as a lament for where the Real Men
Engineers all went -- the ones who would slave away for little money, solving
the hardest problems, out of some kind of macho competition, romantically
proving their mettle.

But that's ridiculous. As long as engineers play a valuable role in the
economy, they should be compensated in accordance.

This whole article seems to be rooted in some kind of anti-change nostalgia.
It almost all boils down to the author being annoyed that 24-year-olds are
"collecting expensive scotch". If that's what really bothers you, then the
problem is with you judging other people's tastes, not with them.

Maybe there's a valuable point somewhere in the article, but it's hard for me
to see it with the author's terribly patronizing, the-trouble-with-kids-these-
days attitude.

------
tatsuke95
> _"Before most computer science graduates ever walk across a stage to get
> their diplomas, they’re set for life."_

Be careful, the market can and _will_ sort this out. Blacksmiths used to be
set for life; so did lawyers more recently, now they struggle to find jobs.
Smart people are what will always be in demand, not a specific skill.

Good article. My expectations are low with TechCrunch nowadays.

~~~
tomrod
My experience in third world countries are that blacksmiths and, more
commonly, ferriers are set for life (though not set greatly); this is because
of the ability to customize things to specific needs. I guess in the US this
would be the equivalent of a machining shop?

~~~
khuey
Skilled trades are doing pretty well these days even in the US. Much better
than a lot of college graduates. The going rate for a decent
plumber/electrician/welder isn't cheap.

~~~
tomrod
Agreed.

------
kayoone
"The problem is that the young engineers earning that much become well-fed
farm animals at the very moment in their lives when they should be running
like wild horses."

Thats probably the most rational thing to do since the chances of making it
big with a startup are minimal while the chance to ruin your health/life are
huge.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Well yeah, but don't you see, workers and founders behaving rationally _ruins
the romantic hero-story investors tell themselves to justify their place in
the world!_

Someone shove these people into a _Davos Parallax_ VR already....

------
dyno12345
Silicon Valley has a weird relationship to capitalism. They sometimes like to
pretend to themselves that work isn't about money, and the laws of supply and
demand shouldn't apply to labor.

You should work for us because, it's, like, really great! You should want to
work 55 hours a week because you really want to! The fact that you're creating
stockholder wealth is merely incidental.

Every company in the valley seems to pay "market wages" and then complain that
there's simply not enough talent out there. It shouldn't be about the money
for them. They should want to work here, because it's so great!

People should be paid what's "fair" and should want to work as much as is
practical. Some kid out of college should be paid what's fair for them as a
person - it's like a moral issue - not according to the value they create for
the company, which can be enormous even if it's just a kid of school. And we
need rock stars, not warm bodies, even if the gain to the company from hiring
each non-rock star is still enormous.

I am familiar with several SV firms that would make like $400,000 per year per
new hire, but insist on paying "market wages" based on experience, and then
complain it's impossible to find enough people to hire. You think if we were
on wall street a firm would hesitate to double someone's salary if the firm
thought they could make double that by hiring them? No one in SV wants to
compete on pay. Everyone wants to convince themselves that they've created the
greatest place on earth to work, and that everyone should work there because
it's so great. The fact that they create wealth for the stockholders is a
benign coincidence.

If SV ran the retail industry, everyone with the same job titles would make
pretty much the same amount of money working at either Saks Fifth Avenue or
Old Navy. What if Saks wanted to hire someone away from Old Navy? They would
try to convince them that Saks is really great!! Not because Saks could see
that it could gain more from the person working for them than at Old Navy than
Old Navy would and can therefore pay them more. That's economic efficiency.
But it seems kind of crass, doesn't it? You should want to work for us!
Because it's so great, and we'll give you a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the
equity.

What if I went around telling employers I wanted a strict 40 hour work week?
How suddenly would they forget about that hiring shortage? Wanting to work
less shows you don't _care_. You should want to work here. Not because by you
working here it creates more wealth for us than we're going to pay you. You
think that multiple still doesn't apply if someone is working 13% less hours!?
But someone who wants to work less doesn't _care_ , and you should want to
work and want to work here as much as possible.

I get six dozen recruiter emails a week. All of them sound exactly the same -
you should work here because it's so great! None of them want to compete on
fundamentals - pay me more and give me more vacation time. How distasteful! As
a result I am completely indifferent between all of them. Everyone likes to
pretend it's not about money and there is no price curve for labor. It's
weird.

~~~
rayiner
> Silicon Valley has a weird relationship to capitalism. They sometimes like
> to pretend to themselves that work isn't about money, and the laws of supply
> and demand shouldn't apply to labor.

What's amusing is that SV is also a place bankrolled by VC, and the VC firms
don't buy into that stuff at all. They have no problem paying huge bonuses to
lure people away Morgan Stanley, Goldman, etc. But you'll rarely hear them
espouse for engineers the mantras they believe for financial professionals:
you gotta pay those big bonuses if you want to get the "top talent."

~~~
eli_gottlieb
It's perhaps difficult to quantify the marginal contribution of your latest
hire. However, almost all companies are keeping track of their revenue-per-
employee, and it's fairly common around here to remark that your company is
not yet doing well until that number hits about $200,000/man-year. Apple and
Google and the like have about double that.

At that level of revenue, yes, there are taxes and capital costs to pay, but
you can also afford damn fine salaries, too.

~~~
bravohippo
You're my favorite HN poster and I've read all your comments going back tens
of pages.

Marry me?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I'm already engaged to someone, and sorry, but I really do feel pretty
uncomfortable with open fanboyism. I guess for a better response I might
paraphrase Marx: the development of _you_ is the basis for the free
development of _us_.

~~~
bravohippo
Sorry for the fawning adoration.

But you see I've been reading HN since the beginning and the endless
neoliberal bullshit has made me despair for hacker culture--to the point where
I'm now embarrassed to tell educated people that I work in the software
startup scene. I'm ashamed to call myself a hacker because of the people the
word is associated with.

The smartest people I know see only bad things coming from Silicon Valley. I
try to convince them that there are a few good hackers out there who can make
positive contributions to civilization...

But even the hero Aaron Swartz has a blighted track record because he created
reddit--a shitheap that is destroying culture and causing a resurgence in
"White Nationalism" aka Nazism.

If you recognize that memes don't matter, reddit's most notable cultural
achievement is that it has become the biggest white pride recruiting site on
the planet. And this is the legacy of our BEST hacker activist... this is pg's
big hack of society.

So your existence on HN has been meaningful. There are other hackers with
similar thoughts, but they rarely speak up publicly. The ones that I know have
learned to keep quiet or use pseudonyms so they can get by without conflict.

Anyway don't take my fanboyism too seriously.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Funny thing, Reddit mostly doesn't have an _indigenous_ white-nationalism
community. What you see is, mostly, a raid from Stormfront that turned into a
permanent infestation owing to Redditors' bizarre notion that the First
Amendment guarantees them a right to say anything they want on Reddit without
censure or moderation.

------
mbesto
_the typical founder of a company that hasn’t yet released its first product
earns, according to private salary surveys, nearly $200,000 per year._

Whoa! So, let me get this straight, if you get funded in the valley (let's say
even if you go through YC) then as a CEO you decide to pay yourself $100k+?

~~~
seiji
Assuming your funding round is high enough (a few million dollars), then yes.
You raise money then pay yourself.

If you're smart, you keep the money to grow the company and _don't_ pay
yourself $250k/year. Under $150k is safe. You don't want to be worrying about
your own expenses while running a company, but you shouldn't be out buying new
Audis or Teslas as a baby founder CEO.

------
auctiontheory
If you're 25 years old and have no college debt and no responsibilities of any
kind, $50K may be enough to live on in SF or in the Valley. (Although probably
not without parental assistance, or some sweet group housing deal.)

If you're 35 or 45, $100K or even $200K is not going to pay the mortgage and
support a family.

We clearly have seen some egregious examples of CEOs cashing out before their
company succeeded. But the suggestion that paying yourself $150K is out of
line - displays a lack of familiarity with the cost of living in the Bay Area
today.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Now $200k isn't enough to pay a mortgage and support a family?

This story is getting ridiculous.

I know people in SV who are supporting entire families on incomes less than
$100k. It's not uncommon.

It's simply exaggeration, bordering on lying, to say otherwise.

------
gdubs
I feel like this article is one big false equivalence. I'm not really sure
what the takeaway point is either. Is this representing the P.O.V of the
employers, or is this someone who wishes the best talent would break-out and
build spectacular products on their own? Because, I suspect it's the former.
There's a big draw for young talented engineers to start their own thing, be
their own boss -- that's why there are perks for settling at a bigger
corporation. For a young, brilliant, mathematician who in school dreamt of
winning awards for solving the unsolvable... well, they're probably not gonna
be too excited about selling coupons, ads, or whatever else it is your company
does. That's why there are perks. /rant.

------
brador
_Build something good_ is no longer an acceptable USP for a startup. Any tech
of value can be copied fast.

The tech innovator has been replaced at the head of the table by the hustler.
Someone who can network, cut deals, bring in the $ is more valuable to a
startup this cycle. It's no longer value being traded, it's expected value.

This is what the 07-13 spin of the wheel is all about.

Hustle or die.

~~~
freework
This has been my experience. "Hustle" and "Hack" make up the ying-yang of tech
startups. Hustle skills are more valued nowadays in SV than hacking skills.
Silicon Valley these days is full of hustle and hype, but with no hack to back
it up.

------
qwerta
Perks such as massage, car wash, or yoga classes are peanuts. How much it
costs to wash a car? 10 dollars a month? It is like saying company provides
chair and free toilet paper in a bathroom.

------
gregpilling
From the article: "After all, when evaluating a Redfin job applicant one of
the big questions I’m trying to answer is “when did she do something hard?”

It could be something you put yourself through for fun like running a marathon
or far more serious like fighting in a war. It could be the grinding
repetition of preparing for a piano recital or the grit required to dig
ditches or paint houses for a living. It could be raising a child all by
yourself."

\---------

I completely agree with this part. I have hired a 100+ people and the most
impressive ones in the long run are usually people who have achieved something
notable - published in a poetry book, achieved something in a competitive
sport, etc. - it doesn't seem to matter what it is, as long as they have done
something hard, and that they know they achieved something. It seems to give
them the confidence to get through more challenging problems in the workplace.
Even a person who has run a small 2 person business has achieved something
that most of the population never will, and they tend to have more 'grit' or
whatever you wish to call it.

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majormajor
Is there any other industry where people in high demand like to talk and read
so much about how they're actually overpaid?

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prostoalex
Few points in defense of perks:

1) A lot of it is about efficient use of engineering (or sales, or product)
time. Yes, one can skip catered/cooked meals, gyms, and onsite dentists, but
what's the tradeoff? The team will go out for lunch, which, depending on
location, might waste up to two hours of employees' time. In a busy location
like SoMa or FiDi it's just deciding on the place and then waiting to be
seated, in a remote location, like Google's or Facebook's campuses, it would
be the time it takes everybody to get in the car and drive.

2) Tax savings also come into play if the company is profitable or on the
verge of achieving profitability. Catered lunch to every employee of the
company is a business expense, transferring the same amount of money to an
employee in the form of higher salary or bonus is taxed at both company and
employee levels.

3) Some of the perks cost very little to establish. Car washes, onsite
dentists, haircuts are something that employees usually have to pay for, and
it's just the matter of providing some space to the vendor who's willing to
provide this service to the employees.

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goldfeld
I see this as part of a bigger problem, which is a lack of gusto in Sillicon
Valley. People aren't striving to solve problems deeply meaningful to
themselves, they are looking for the next big buck in social/local/corny.
Others are just as much going after whatever seems to have money in it rather
than some problem domain they could be passionate about. Then, of course, if
you haven't some problem that truly bugs your existence, you're gonna cash out
and live like a fat cow as soon as you can. I could never understand people
aiming for exits. Exit? I want to change the world! Or a tiny bit of it. But
MY tiny bit.

Passion, people! I know the term gets thrown around a lot and it often doesn't
mean as much as people make it, but I'd say a minimum of passionate
involvement with your problem domain would be nice to find in SV more often. I
know I can never rest on my laurels until I've brought down at least one big
corporation by doing what they do in an open source, anarchic, power to the
people way. Hell, I want to bring down the www, have it lose mindshare to a
fully peer-to-peer network, but bluetooth doesn't cut it. I hate these walled
gardens, I fear for our future which they can undermine, and I wouldn't want
to contribute to more of these gardens, pretty on the inside with unicorns and
flowers, until you reach a wall and see surveillance equipment and people shot
down trying to escape.

But what do VCs know? They're in for a buck, and so are most companies who get
big enough to lose it's founder's initial vision. Some companies are founded
on a great vision, to solve a passion imbued problem, to give true value to
society. O'Reilly has been discussed here recently and it rekindled a lot of
my beliefs. I don't want to be at the helm of some billion-dollar ex-startup
if I'm just gonna be a puppet to a board of investors. I'd rather stay lean,
hungry and foolish, make a true crowd business out of my problem domain, where
my software is open source and lots of third-parties have a go at profit. I'm
just one of them, thriving on an open ecosystem. That sounds better. I like
what App.net is doing. More people should follow the lead.

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DaniFong
Every era has its pyramids; this is far from the first or worst severe
misallocation of human effort and resources.

It absolutely is happening, however. So if some tiny fraction of this current
era's chosen realize their good fortune and power, they could truly change the
world.

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Myrmornis
However much sense it contains, it really is best to avoid writing an article
along the lines of "Arrh, now, back when I were a lad..."

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bennyg
I agree with what he says, but his bio at the bottom feels a little at odds
with it. Sequoia backed... Sequoia backed...

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eksith
Good article, but I wish one of these days I can visit a tech site without
having to disable JavaScript.

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softbuilder
Great. Here comes the next interview question. "Tell me about a time when you
did something hard?"

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CurtMonash
Entrepreneurship is a game for the highly motivated.

The nature of that motivation can vary from person to person.

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michaelochurch
I don't buy in to this "excellence requires discomfort" mythology, at least as
used to justify bad work conditions and low compensation in startups. Truly
excellent people have intrinsic ambition that wouldn't go away just because
they had stable, high salaries. In fact, they're going to have more freedom
and do better stuff.

What causes wealth to ruin many people isn't comfort, but the social pressures
that are often required if one wants to stay wealthy and in access to high-
status people, most of whom turn out to be a defective or, at best, a mediocre
crowd. Giving people enough money that they have the autonomy to run their
lives and some comfort isn't going to have that effect.

~~~
SatvikBeri
There are real ways in which certain types of discomfort are useful, but many
organizations have completely perverted this into "all discomfort builds
character."

-To improve rapidly at a skill, you have to practice at the edge of your abilities. If you're a decent writer you're not going to improve by mindlessly writing what you already know for hours on end. Only the time you spend challenging yourself really counts.

-There's a decent amount of evidence that being surrounded by wealth triggers laziness. That is, if your office has opulent wooden desks, high-end art, etc., that sends signals along the lines of "conserve the resources we already have." While if your surroundings are a little messy it triggers an instinct to work hard and gain more resources. _The Talent Code_ goes into detail on this. Note that all that matters here is appearance-this doesn't mean that you'll get more performance by giving your employees crappy computers, it means you'll be better off if your office _looks_ spartan.

As long as a company only promotes "discomfort" in these two elements, that
can actually be a good thing. But when you get to the point of physical
discomfort, that's almost certainly a negative.

~~~
michaelochurch
That's really interesting. You're absolutely right on the first point. The
issue is more of one where a corporate environment with prevailing discomfort
discourages the high-end deliberate practice, because people don't want any
more risk or pain. As for the second, this is the first time I've heard about
it, but it makes a lot of sense.

