The Rule of Awesome

&#62;<i>If we are hiring you because you are awesome, then you have 30 days to do something awesome. And awesome is simply defined as me (or your supervisor) thinking to him/herself, “man, that's awesome!” just once.</i><p>"You have 30 days to do something awesome"? Really?<p>Well, how about you stuffing your job offer you know where?<p>Professionals, including trained Computer Science and IT professionals, demand professional respect. They are there to solve specific needs. In our case code quality code, iterate, engineer and polish programs to completion, ensure a solid architecture for your offering, and all that.<p>Programming is not a parlor trick, and employees are not trained dogs to do back flips at will for your amusement.<p>The sense of self-entitlement of those BS managers always amuses me. As if your shitty startup is the be all end all, and people should be grateful and "amaze you" for having given them work. Like some decadent Roman emperor towards his circus act: "amuse me or die".<p>Not to mention that amazing some exec with something "awesome", as everybody has witnessed at some point, can be miles away from shipping solid code and solving the company's real problems keeping it from sinking.

It's a rare client with whom I spend more than 2 days a year. At my rates, if they didn't think I did awesome stuff, they surely wouldn't (re)hire me.<p>If a sales guy can't set up a meeting with an awesome prospect his first week on the job (set it up, not necessarily get around to having it), chances are he's not a great sales guy.<p>If a process-oriented manager can't find some stupid process and short-circuit it her first month on the job, what is she good for?<p>This standard isn't as crazy as it first sounds. What worries me more is the pompous tone of the whole thing.<p>------------------------------------<p>Also, I'd hope that any organization that abides by this rule goes all-in on the Rule of Awesome, which in its original form is the a tabletop RPG principle to the effect of "Anything sufficiently awesome is automatically allowed." :)<p>(Compare Rule of Funny, Rule of Cool.)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure <i>timely</i> and <i>imposed</i> awesomeness is exactly what is needed.

Is fixing bugs awesome? Because a guy who can fix bugs for 30 days straight is the most valuable engineer in the building, but using this rubric, he'd be fired, because I don't think anyone considers fixing bugs awesome. I wouldn't want to work somewhere where everyone is rushing to impress the boss with "awesome" features, when the rest of the product isn't getting love.

Awesome and relevance aren't always aligned.<p>Some days, we do something awesome in the office (laser cut a table from aluminum sheet, or print hundreds of digits of \pi directly onto a storebought pie [0] for example), and everyone around says "Whoa! That's awesome!".<p>At the end of the day, though, we're physicists, and we need to ship some physics out the door.<p>[0] <a href="http://guavaduck.com/laser/" rel="nofollow">http://guavaduck.com/laser/</a>

<i>"If we are hiring you because you are awesome, then you have 30 days to do something awesome"</i><p>I'm curious about how much autonomy and latitude people need to do something that breaks the awesome threshold. It seems to me that the more guided or directed someone is, the less likely the work they do will be considered awesome.<p>I tend to prefer more quantifiable terms. For example, having a clear million dollar improvement to the top or bottom line in one year. However, I very much agree that everyone should add <i>something</i> to the team.<p>[edit, format quote]

So much is this depends on your "awesome" level. Personally I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything anyone on the planet has done this year that is awesome. Or at least that I've heard. A couple of my friends done "pretty excellent" things involving either cooking or overcoming fears in the last year but not a single thing in this past year has filled me with awe.<p>Call me jaded...

I think this standard is probably a lot easier to beat than people expect.<p>From personal experience, my hypothesis is that in any organization, there are a handful of high impact but low cost improvements to make. These low-hanging fruits will not be blatantly obvious, and will not be discernible to someone who isn't "awesome" for whatever reason, e.g. lack of curiosity, incompetence, bad business sense, etc... In a startup with sufficient autonomy, it's probably even doable to make a lasting difference in the first week.<p>This is probably also tied to the idea of a 10x engineer, because they can figure out the right problems to solve and use 100% of their time to provide 1000% value.

Sure... one of my colleagues was doing something awesome according to my CEO, another not so much. The former was demonstrating open-source software build by others. The latter implemented lots of stuff adding intrinsic value to the community.<p>Manager, if you require "awesome", you will get "awesome", but it will be tailored to you and won't surpass your intellect or vision.

I might be wrong, but I would like to think everyone getting a new job has something in them to do something awesome. Well anyone with a decent amount of experience anyway.<p>A fresh set of eyes and no history is all it takes a lot of the time. I am not sure this makes someone really awesome though.

Ugh... Why does every portfolio website use this identical layout? (the left nav, the random image header above it, etc). All people do is switch up the colors and put their own obscure image at the top. Lame.

So, Marissa Mayer is past her 30 days. What has she done that is awesome?

Last time I did something awesome I had 3 days left in my quota.

30 days to do something awesome, and then...?

Yeah, I am a bit worried by the 30 days thing too, but the idea I like - I would want myself to be doing something awesome every quarter say.<p>Milestones matter