

Jason Fried: How to Hire an Assistant - gatsby
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110501/jason-fried-how-to-hire-an-assistant.html

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stcredzero
I had tremendous problems with this. I hired a friend of mine who is
intelligent and recently graduated from a highly reputed engineering school.

I told her that she was there to save me time, and that she should act with
maximum initiative. One day I asked her to arrange a meeting for me within a
certain time-span tomorrow, at a café with wireless Internet. She emails me
back several hours before the requested time-span with a list of possible
cafés and with everyone's availability -- thereby leaving it for _me_ to
arrange the meeting!

I also gave her a copy of my password database, and told her she was
responsible for this. We go over everything and I make sure she knows how to
open the password vault program. Later, I hired someone to do some Wordpress
stuff for me, and emailed them both, explaining that the Wordpress contractor
was supposed to coordinate with my assistant for all of the relevant access
and passwords. I wake up one morning to see an email from my assistant to the
contractor saying, "I don't know anything about that password." I end up
having to send another half-dozen emails to my contractor and answer as many
calls, while I was onsite and supposed to be billing hourly to another
company.

Days later, I find out that she lost access to the password db file, and she
never told me.

It's been hard to hire an assistant!

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larrik
Why on earth would you pick an engineer to be an assistant? Engineers are
usually people who want to build things, and being a good assistant has
nothing to do with that. I don't know what fields are ideal for this sort of
position (MBA would be my guess), but I can't imagine any engineering field to
be one.

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stcredzero
_Why on earth would you pick an engineer to be an assistant?_

Because I could also tell her to do stuff like "Set up an Amazon EC2 instance"
and she could just look up instructions and do it. (I know, because exactly
this happened!) She could do geeky, she just didn't understand "assistant." I
wanted someone who could do both.

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tptacek
I'm not going to say that you're wrong to want to hire a person like that, but
I will say that most people who hire "assistants" don't expect them to
coordinate password databases with contractors or spin up EC2 instances.

I can see why it would be particularly hard to hire the kind of assistant you
seem to be looking for.

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true_religion
Correct, most people don't do this but there's a class of 'assistant' where
technical skills are worth more than secretarial skills.

For example, research assistants are expected to help with the tedium of
econmetric studies (e.g. performing regressions, collecting data, etc.) and
this requires at least a masters level education.

~~~
roel_v
Right, but you don't call those 'assistants', they're professional staff.
'Assistant' = title inflated way of saying 'secretary'. Who with a master's
degree wants to have 'assistant' on their business card, unless it's very
clear that it's a short stepping stone towards becoming whatever is after the
'assistant'?

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teej
The article title is technically ".. _when_ to hire an assistant". It's an
important distinction to make. The core point of the article is about how
hard, but incredibly valuable it can be to let go of your baby.

~~~
stcredzero
They also go over a bit of the how. (By aggregating all the tasks for a week
that they'd have the assistant do, and presenting that list.)

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timedoctor
I've been working with a virtual assistant for more than a year and it's
really amazing. Saves me a huge amount of time, mostly booking travel but
could be anything really.

I think the job of a CEO is to constantly develop systems such that you do not
need to do the work, giving the work to other people or developing a process
that doesn't require as much effort. A neverending battle to reduce the amount
of work you have to do (and at the same time work more strategically on your
business). An assistant is part of that process.

I think a virtual assistant in combination with sites like task rabbit is a
good option as well (and an order of magnitude less expensive).

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stevenj
>This is a problem with job listings in general: They don't seem to describe
an actual day's work. They're heavy on skills but not actions.

Ya. Job listings should detail exactly the work that the person will be doing.

I think part of the reason why this isn't done is because it may not sound as
good.

But an employer should want someone who will enjoy their work.

So be honest and open about it. Employers should leave out the buzz words and
marketing speak and just be straight forward. I wouldn't be surprised if doing
so made hiring easier and better.

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kadavy
I'm really shocked that it took them that long to hire an assistant. It would
be very difficult to think creatively with all of those trivial concerns in
one's head.

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larrik
Here's an idea, instead of "executive assistant" call it "office manager" or
something. It seems like that would solve the "stepping stone" issue he ran
into, while effectively being the same job. (I'm not saying the job titles are
always related, but I AM saying that they could be the same thing.)

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JoachimSchipper
The SvN post (at [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2544-were-looking-for-an-
offi...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2544-were-looking-for-an-office-
manager-executive-assistant)) is titled "We're looking for an Office Manager /
Executive Assistant".

~~~
larrik
Huh. A little odd it wasn't in his article, but I guess it didn't help anyway.

Color me surprised. Perhaps the volume of responses they got were more from
fans of 37signals rather than actual job seekers? Regardless, I don't have any
ideas on how to combat that.

~~~
stcredzero
I call my current assistant a "Producer." This is because he also has skills
in professional theater, and could well do some work as a spokesperson.

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larsberg
Many places solve the assistant problem by going through a temp agency and
then offering the individual full-time employment if they work out at the end
of their contract.

And I think there's an article waiting to be written about the dangers of the
receptionist/assistant turned underqualified office manager. I've seen more
companies go dysfunctional over that (fear to try to get more graph paper,
kitchens that never get restocked, replacement keyboards/mice never get
ordered, etc.) than even the dreaded IC-overpromoted-to-lead problem.

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marcamillion
Fried always says they are looking for people that are good at their job and
want to keep doing that for many years.

So if they provide no upward mobility, do they give raises annually ?

At the very least to keep up with inflation or from time to time to keep
people encouraged and wanting to come to work ?

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dave1619
sounds blissful.

~~~
tptacek
Not really, not until you need one (we have an office manager now, and she's
awesome, but in years 1-2 the role would have been more trouble than it's
worth today).

