Doing a job hunt right now and im trying to assess "what's my day to day like" and it comes down to two factors: what are the people like, and what is the actual work.<p>I want to really like the people, as I've discovered my life is way more boring otherwise. I spend 8-10h/day working, I need to be able to laugh and make other people laugh and have interesting conversations. I'd love to make friends out of it. People often tell me don't rely on work for that, but the time investment is too steep not to use it as a social outlet.<p>I also want to know the actual work. Not the buzzwords, or the product name, or fast paced industry, but the actual initiatives for the next year. Crank out new features for mobile app? Not my skill set. Typical oncall rotation? Nah.<p>I'm shocked how many companies are willing to start the interview process immediately. I decline until I have at least an hour convo with who would be my manager.<p>As per the article, yes more blogging helps but how do I know it's genuine and not marketing bs? I don't.
> <i>“If I haven’t responded to something that you’ve sent me, that’s probably because I’ve read it and don’t feel particularly strongly - so just make a call on what to do if you don’t hear back in a reasonable time frame.”</i><p>Surely there's a more effective protocol that works for an exec?<p>Even make a macro button for the exec that responds "dfps", so that:<p>1. sender is immediately unblocked and empowered when they get the "dfps", and<p>2. avoid accidents in which the exec would need to say something but didn't get the message, but sender assumed an "implicit dfps".
I notice that, nowadays, startups are emphasizing "work/life balance" much more than they used to. I'm sure part of that is because of the pandemic, which created strange new realities, where companies that had previously been workaholic and office-centric were forced to change by the historic events of the last 2 years.<p>But also, I think the trend had started before the pandemic. They heyday of valorizing a workaholic, 24/7 lifestyle was awhile ago, in the years after the 2008 crisis, when young people were trying to start their careers in very difficult economic conditions.<p>As one data point, which I think suggests the change, I've noticed how the comments have been changing, in regards to my book "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps" which describes events that happened in 2015. When the book first came out, some people said "Lawrence should not have stayed so long at such a dysfunctional startup" but everyone who read the book seem to know about such workaholic startups. But lately the comments have been more doubtful. A recent comment on Amazon:<p>"Working regularly till 2-3AM? I've never seen that even among startups in co-working spaces. The boss screaming at employees at video calls, yet everyone just takes it and nobody immediately quits?"<p>I don't know who wrote that, but if they've truly never seen such things, that suggests to me that they've been working at places that have a healthy work/life balance, and I think such places (in the startup world) are more common now than 7 years ago.<p>I created the first rough draft of the book simply by copying-and-pasting text from Slack messages and email. Even after editing, 80% of the final copy was based on text written at the time of the incidents. There are no exaggerations in the book. And yet I think the culture I describe is fading away (which is probably a good thing).<p>The last few startups I've consulted with have all emphasized work/life balance, and I'd like to think that startups in general are moving towards supporting a more sustainable lifestyle for their employees.<p>Having said that, I recognize, the world will always have ambitious people who work 100 hours a week because they are trying to get ahead. The question, always, is whether such people have a right to ask others to also work 100 hours a week.
A bit amusing to see the article and think "they really could have summed it up as "show, don't tell", aka the old sage writer's advice. :)<p>Some very good points made in the article, glad I read. I admit the personal instagram would be a huge turnoff for me since it shows ("shows") that there's not an expectation for work sphere and personal life sphere to be airgapped. Then again maybe that's the kind of person they're trying to filter out.
When I ran my bootstrapped company, I had lots of equity and little money. I couldn’t get people interested in the equity. They didn’t understand it & they certainly didn’t want it. I certainly couldn’t afford to pay market rates. Two things worked for me.<p>The first being I was hiring in 2010, and a lot of people where looking for meaningful opportunities that weren’t dead end minimum wage jobs. Honestly, this was probably the biggest factor.<p>The second thing was I offered training, health insurance, and sold the vision of how working for me was a great way to break into the industry & better paying jobs, which was true. I told people up front that we’d charge clients $100/hour & pay them $20/hour. I let them work at home with flexible hours, didn’t demand any sort of loyalty, and I generally left them alone if they were getting the work done. This type of opportunity was quite appealing to people who were the job-primary income earners & they were looking for a chance to start a new career. Several people who worked for me went on to work in the field themselves, and I was happy for them.
We've had really good luck just telling the truth. I'm 2 for 2 on targeted hires (where we found them and landed them) this year. Being radically honest really pays off when it comes to talent.<p>(you do have to have a good story and good place to work)
Two points: first, I look at their t-shirt statement about what they do and decide on the spot whether I am interested. Like a pitch deck. I don't even care what the job is, I'm just interested in the statement, "making X for Y's," and maaabeeey "with Z." That's 98% of what I need to know. Second, advice to a startup about how to attract you is like asking fish how to catch them, and they always say, "send more worms!" If I'm hiring for a startup, I need to find believers in my mission (or me) with a positive attitude and the minimum viable skills to execute on it - or people cheap enough I can afford to pay a second set of hires to finish what the first ones screw up.<p>If you will work for a fridge full of kombucha and some lottery tickets because your boss tolerates your alarming haircut, that's really amazing, but it seems like succeeding against a fabricated constraint. What do you win? You are basically haircut-rich, meaning a person who does surprisingly better than anyone observing their most apparent life choices would expect. I say this from some pretty cringey personal youthful experience.<p>Growth is attractive, you can't fake it, there is no substitute for it, money can't buy it, and everybody knows it when they see it. These tips are nice, but taken together, they're bike shedding.
It's weird, this is an advertisement for these companies, but I would only mainly care about point 4 ("the business"), and company values. The rest seem immature, like from the perspective of someone just leaving college looking for a job that really "vibes" with them, but don't know how to evaluate companies for real substance.<p>How "fun" / "x" a founder is likely won't correlate with the success of the business, in fact could be a negative. Teams change frequently from turnover especially in the bay area and especially in startups, so "the team" and these detailed team bios will quickly become stale. Same for the "culture" built on that team.
Your peer group return on investment is one of the strongest measures you can use to show value generation. Although most investors are familiar with this calculation, businesses that don't encounter it frequently could find it to be more complicated. The numbers and concepts of investing math are straightforward, but getting there needs extensive analysis, to reiterate.<p>Use the procedure outlined below to demonstrate to investors that you are adding value, whether you are assessing these indicators on your own or with the help of outside counsel.
At some point, it became acceptable to post hand-drawn diagrams with illegible handwriting. If you don't care about presenting information clearly, I don't care about what you have to say.