> To help keep our employees happy (and to be competitive with bigger companies when recruiting), we try to get as close as possible to big-company salaries, we don't expect anything beyond 40 hrs / week, 100% paid health benefits, 401k, 25 paid days off per year, snacks, food, full financial transparency, etc.
These sound reasonable.
Quick question - has anyone you tried to recruit walk away because you mentioned the 40hr/week expectation?
In the book Chaos Monkey [1], Antonio Garcia Martinez writes:
I recall very little from the interviews, except a comment from
one of the DabbleDB engineers. After getting through the stress
questions, I asked him, "So what do you like most about Twitter?"
By this point, we'd build a decent rapport, so with a nod and a
wink, he said, "Well, you know, in companies like Facebook and
Google, they serve you breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here at Twitter,
they one serve you breakfast and lunch."
I cringed inwardly. So the big selling point was that nobody worked
late into the night, so we could have that chimerical work-life
balance? I smiled to keep the warm vibe going. But that comment more
than anything else sealed my decision. I was not going to blow the
biggest career wad of my life on a company that hesitated to work
past six p.m. daily.
This mode of thinking is apparently common, and yet so alien to me... When you're 80 looking back, are you really going to wish you'd put in more hours making Dorsey or Brin & Page or whoever more money? At the expense of your own life beyond a company which doesn't and never will care about you except as a replaceable factor of production?
[Dear any future employers who've bothered to de-anonymize me off Hacker News: Just kidding! I'm all about long hours and have no interests or loved ones outside of working for you!]
I have interviewed someone who was getting really tired of his coworkers putting in minimum acceptable effort while he was working very hard; so yes, this person exists.
These sound reasonable.
Quick question - has anyone you tried to recruit walk away because you mentioned the 40hr/week expectation?