
Why the ‘Best Places to Work’ Often Aren’t - frostmatthew
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/a-great-place-to-work-cant-be-found-on-lists/
======
7Figures2Commas
This is timely in light of the "Dear Future Homejoy Engineer" job posting[1]
that is currently on the front page. It starts off with "so it's xmas eve and
i'm in the office with several other folks who didn’t have plans for xmas
either. everyone is cranking away. we’ve decided to watch the interview later
and then get dinner and drinks together" and gets more depressing from there.

This article speaks about "four core needs" of employees ("physical,
emotional, mental and spiritual") but the author doesn't seem willing to
consider the possibility that employers aren't capable of meeting these deep
personal needs in the first place.

Personally, I think the imbalance, chaos and unsustainable pace you see in
even the supposedly "best" workplaces is more often than not just a reflection
of the fact that large numbers of individuals don't set boundaries, prioritize
or make a dedicated effort to invest in their own health and well-being. These
people are not going to go to the Googleplex or a hot startup's swagged-out
SOMA digs and suddenly find enlightenment. Unhappy, unbalanced people are
going to be unhappy and unbalanced wherever they go and in many cases, they'll
seek out environments that are unhappy and unbalanced.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956)

~~~
smacktoward
Dear God, that Homejoy job posting is terrible. Just completely tone deaf.

 _> right now i’m taking a quick break and after a quick lap around the
office, i notice actually many more people here. i wonder — how am i so
fortunate to be the ceo of a startup where people are so driven?_

I dunno, maybe the people noticed that the CEO is at work on Christmas Eve and
fear that if they aren't there too they'll be pigeonholed as slackers?

Leaders lead by example. If you, the CEO, are sitting in the office on
Christmas Eve, you won't have to tell people they're expected to come in.
They'll observe your behavior and come to that conclusion for themselves.

~~~
bbarn
Not to be a huge ass, but the lack of using capital letters, while proving the
shift key does in fact function (@, % both featured in posting) only further
solidifies the idea I had in my head that this is a crazy person posting. Not
a fun, quirky, startup CEO kind of crazy, but more the delusional, oblivious
type of crazy.

~~~
bravo22
maybe he is channeling e.e. cummings :)

~~~
wonnage
(she, but thanks for playing)

~~~
bravo22
Oops. Thanks!

------
nostrademons
Ex-Googler here, now working on my own startup. I had weeks at Google with 14
hour days and time in on the weekends. I also had weeks where I worked 4-6
hours/day and put away the phone & laptop on the weekend, or even ducked out
at 2:30 on a Friday afternoon so I could celebrate my anniversary with my
girlfriend.

I appreciate the sentiment of the article, but there's a lot of complexity to
the issue that it ignores. For one, most of the time that I was working crazy
hours was because I a.) wanted and b.) needed to. I believed in the project's
mission, the work was fun & challenging, and there was a lot to do that just
wouldn't get done if I didn't put in the hours.

Similarly, when I worked very light hours, it was because there wasn't much
work that I had to do. I was blocked on other teams, or in-between projects
and my manager didn't have a good idea where I'd be productive at the moment,
or "held in reserve" so that if we needed to react quickly to market
opportunities I'd be well-rested and not occupied by other projects.

Working hard is not always a bad thing, or onerous, or exhausting. Sometimes
employees work hard because they believe in what they're doing and want to do
a good job; that's part of what makes a company a good place to work, after
all. And sometimes it is, and creates a very unhealthy competition where
everybody tries to outdo each other. I think that one of the things that
Google in general and Larry Page in particular realizes is that people will
have different desires for work/life balance at different stages in their
life, and that within a large company, there should be places that can
accommodate everyone from the achievement-oriented new Ph.D grad to the family
with a young kid.

~~~
droopyEyelids
The fact that you mention taking off at 2:30 on a Friday to celebrate your
anniversary as an example of your privilege or freedom at work proves the
author's point.

That point has more to do with our inherent freedom to live self directing
lives than arguing that hard work isn't a good thing. It's more an indictment
against the whole employee lifestyle than your admittedly superior company.

To reiterate my point, you feel like it's worth mentioning that you were
allowed to stop making BigCorp money for two and a half hours to celebrate one
of the more important events in your life.

------
glesica
I once worked in a very, very low-on-the-totem-pole position for a company
ranked highly on the Fortune "Best Companies to Work For". The reason their
employees said such nice things about them is that they went to great lengths
to only hire people who would "drink the Kool-Aid", so to speak. If you only
hire people who can be convinced that you are wonderful, your employees will
surely say that you are wonderful.

That being said, it was not a completely terrible place to work. There are
much worse. It would have been hard to convince even "suckers" that it was a
good place to work if it had, in fact, been a truly awful place to work. But
it definitely wasn't great. The pay was mediocre, and the expectations were
through the roof. And if you didn't act sufficiently grateful, if you didn't
appear thrilled to be there at all times, then it actually became a pretty
hostile place to spend time.

~~~
mattm
This is the real reason behind when companies say things like "We only hire
the best." It's not to attract the best, it's for people working there to
believe that they are part of the "best" (whatever that means).

The way pretty much every company finds people is that it hires the best,
according to subjective and biased criteria, from the people that currently
are looking or don't have jobs who tend to live in the area and happened to
find out the company had an opening.

------
WalterBright
I work for myself. The only problem is my boss is incompetent.

~~~
gonzo
Bill Joy used to say that the number of bright employees in a company was the
log of the number of employees. He would then explain that he had not
expressed the base, which could be different on a company by company basis.

Though he never expressed the result for the self-employed, log(1) = 0 in any
base.

~~~
WalterBright
I'm certain that my company has one Bright employee in it.

------
tonysuper
So, for those of is trying to start companies, how do you create an effective
work-place environment?

It's obvious from articles like this that you can't just dump a bunch of cash
on slides and ping-pong tables, but it also isn't fesable (for most companies)
to have 4-hour workdays. How can you balance the need for breaks with budget
concerns?

I'd really appreciate somebody with experience in the area weighing in.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
1\. Hire qualified people regardless of where they came from and what they
look like. In other words, be careful about falling into the "culture fit"
trap that is responsible for a lot of the "I can't find candidates" complaints
at startups. Diversity is healthy, and when you don't have a homogenous
workforce, you're far less likely to end up with a bunch of 20-something "go-
getters" who aren't yet wise enough to understand that output (work product)
matters way more than input (hours worked).

2\. Be careful about perks that have social implications and/or require
employees to spend non-work time at work or with co-workers. A lot of the
perks startups offer today, such as catered lunches/dinners and frequent group
outings, send the message that you're trying to build a family, not a company.
Many people have a life outside of work and these "perks" ask/require
employees to give up what should be their free time.

3\. Don't ignore management. A lot of startups eschew basic management
practices, mistaking management for bureaucracy. The reality, however, is that
a healthy dose of competent management is one of the best ways to promote
productivity and avoid time-wasting dysfunction.

~~~
VexXtreme
The whole "culture fit" concept is a direct result of corporate hubris. When a
company mentions "culture", I don't walk, I run for my sanity.

~~~
ryan90
This statement couldn't be more wrong. Sure, corporations blow it out of
proportion, but culture fit is so incredibly important.

------
hw
Question of whether a place is 'good to work at' is pretty much subjective.
Some might argue Google is a great place to work given the perks, benefits and
compensation. Others might avoid big companies like Google where working long
hours is the norm and is in fact recommended (if you want to get out in front
of your peers).

Others might like companies with less perks, but a great work culture, where
there's less focus on facilities but more focus on the having great work /
life balance and culture.

It's tough to find a company that has both =\

------
ryan90
This topic is very valid, but far to complex and nuanced to be addressed in a
single article.

Long hours at Google? Please. The long hours argument would certainly hold up
at many of the other companies on the list, however. Point being that no
generalization can define why these rankings are misleading (though they
certainly can be).

------
defenestration
Quote from article: "But these lists don’t really measure something even more
important: the quality of their employees’ lives." But the article isn't
showing that the quality of life at lower ranked companies is better. In the
end you are responsible for your own quality of life. You can achieve amazing
things at Google, Facebook, etc, but it comes at a price. Key question is:
what do you value most?

------
bane
I work for a "best place to work".

Before that I worked at a place I could charitably call a "bottom place to
work".

I've worked at a few very mediocre places as well.

So I've been around the block so to speak.

About a decade and a half ago, I worked at a place that doesn't show up on any
of these lists. The main day-to-day difference it seems from where I work now
and this place I worked at long ago is that I get free candy and juice. The
other place had more interesting work. Almost all of my professional
acquaintances come from the former place.

We have a badass cafeteria, but I still have to pay for it. So I guess that's
better than the Amazon gig and the mediocre to decent food I was offered?

One of the chefs here is a former Google executive chef, his Polenta with
mushroom sauce is pretty good, but a bit tart.

I get whatever hardware and resources I've asked for so far. So far I've
gotten a large format printer with staff, 3 developers, a new rMBP with top of
the line specs, a new monitor, travel expensed and have $100k worth of rack
mountable GPUs on order. I'm throwing a lot of people and hardware at a
problem that everybody including the client thinks should be solved this way,
but for <reasons> probably won't work out in the end...and we all know it.

I've found not-for-profits to be consistently decent places to work, plus I
can take pride in working at them for all kinds of principled reasons. Even if
the pay sucks, the offices tend to be nice and its nice knowing you're helping
the species move forward a little every day. The unofficial motto where I work
is "fuck the money, do the right thing by the client". I like that.

But I know from long-timers that work-life balance kind of sucks and there's
been some lean times recently that have left some old-timers hungry with a
thirst they can't quite get rid of. There's a yoga class I can take,
$60/season. We have a Gym, the showers are cleaned twice a day.

I've found that for-profits make me a heck of a lot more money, but range from
miserable to mediocre.

I've almost worked at Google, Amazon and a few other bright stars on these
kinds of lists, but the problems didn't seem terribly interesting even if the
cafeterias were cool. I guess pushing ads, on-line retail or some other kind
of kool-aidery is hip. I like my Android phone well enough. Maybe if I could
have taken that salary and moved cross country and displaced my life, the free
catered meals would have been worth it. The quiz-show interview was lame and
completely irrelevant for the job they wanted me to do.

I've interviewed with a few places that think they're best places to work. 3
catered meals a day, game room, casual dress code, whatever. It's fine, but
then they're supporting 10 year old application cruft and the hardest problems
they have to solve is supporting the new release of Java.

The most I've ever learned, and thus the most rewarding job I ever worked was
for a small and scrappy startup that failed. The lessons I learned there have
earned me nonstop promotions at better places. I would absolutely do that
again if I had a time machine even though it had really sucky aspects to it.
It didn't even come close to being a best place to work...though I also got
free candy and juice.

The best problems I've ever worked was for a shitty shitty mega-corp. They
sent me around the world 4 times in two years, to active war zones, where I
got shot at. Coding under fire is amazing. Saving people's lives is amazing.
Dealing with corporate bullshit back home where none of that is recognized for
any reason sucks. I recently was contacted by an employee to answer questions
about code I hacked out 7 years ago while I was taking mortar fire. The
stories I'll tell my grandkids come from this job. Also not a best place to
work. No free juice or candy, no cafeteria.

It's interesting McKinsey is in the top-10. I've only ever heard terrible
things about working there. The average rate of burn-out is under 2 years for
new hires, so the suck factor must be incredibly high. But then again, a
McKinsey bullet on your resume opens lots of doors.

In-N-Out and Costco are probably great to work if you don't have options. But
I definitely need more than $12/hr for the lifestyle I've become accustomed
to.

I know of Googlers who take month-long spur of the moment vacations 3 times a
year and keep advancing. I know others who are on-call and put in hard 14-16
hour days constantly and fight with their managers for their pay increases.

It _really_ is relative. If the work doesn't interest you, or the politics
suck, or you like getting paid on time, and that matters to you more than
anything else, then you might have a terrible time. You want dry-cleaning,
catered lunches and work-life balance? Then maybe this list is a good one for
you.

Google _does_ have interesting problems, but it's likely that you won't be
working on them.

~~~
scroy
All right I'm intrigued. What kind of coding were you doing under fire? Were
the problems interesting in their own right or was the danger factor the
biggest part of it? Was the work anywhere near the "principled reasons"
category?

The scrappy startup: can you share a couple textbites about the lessons you
got there? What kind of crossover did those lessons have in the war zones - or
was that afterwards?

------
trhway
best places i worked at i'd not call a "Best Place to Work" as it was about
successful work and not about being a "Best Place". Currently i work at a
typical BigCo, mindless work, mindless management, one of those highest rated
"Best Places to Work" for those who care :)

------
xigency
From interviewing at Google, I had a really robotic impression of employees
and life there. The entire process was disorganized. I drove four hours across
the state to get there, navigating all sorts of construction, and found my own
accommodations. When I arrived on site I was repeatedly asked to solve the
same Java/C problems on whiteboards for a new person each time.

No one bothered to ask me what made me unique or interesting, even though I
have amazing stories to tell from traveling around the world and from projects
I've worked on in the past. The free lunch thing is sort of over-blown, when
you have to fill out a form and shout over a line of people to get a BLT
sandwich made. And then there were a bunch of bicycles strewn out across the
campus, mostly toppled over, for no explicable reason.

Honestly, the only reason I would want to work there is for the money, and for
that reason employees should not really expect to enjoy their time there.

~~~
dhaivatpandya
I don't think it is reasonable to expect a Google interviewer to ask you about
your "stories ... from travelling around the world." Their primary reason for
hiring you is for your ability as (I'm assuming) a developer. Although your
travel experience may make you a more interesting person, that isn't
altogether the point of the interview.

I guess you could say that measuring the "likeableness" and culture-fit of a
potential employee is important, but that can definitely be derived from the
interview in general rather than from your life stories.

~~~
mehrdada
> Although your travel experience may make you a more interesting person, that
> isn't altogether the point of the interview

Maybe it is a mistake that it's not a point in the interview? In fact, I'd
care a lot about the personality of a person I will be working with in the
future.

I understand that in the "cattle hiring" model where you hire people and then
assign a team, this is irrelevant, but I personally consider this a huge
weakness of cattle hiring.

~~~
dhaivatpandya
I agree it should be _considered_ in an interview, but I don't think it should
be _the_ point or _the_ focus of the interview. The idea is that even though
you'd like to work with someone who has a nice personality, I'm sure you'd
also like to work with someone who is competent and the company would much
rather hire someone who is competent rather than only interesting.

------
michaelochurch
Different take on this: being perceived as "the cultural leader" is actually
detrimental to a company.

Let's take Google as an example, although any large company with a strong
reputation would do. Take technical or cultural or managerial attribute Q
(say, which programming language to privilege). Ask "what is the best Q option
_for Google_?" Most people will admit that they don't know. There are lot of
variables. Ask "what is the best Q option for _the cultural leader_? Suddenly
you get a bunch of bikeshedding product executives trying to throw their
weight around. Now that it's not "Google" being discussed but "the cultural
leader" hanging in the balance, peoples' opinions get much more entangled and
politicized (if less relevant to the specific needs of the company, Google).

The concept of "the cultural leader" in technology is flawed and dangerous and
it attracts people for the wrong reasons. You should hire the people who want
to _make_ a cultural leader by doing great work and, um, leading... not people
who want to _hold high positions_ at an organization already recognized for
leadership.

