1) "You’re serving a “tour of duty” that might last a year or two" Actually, the book makes it clear that the duration of a tour of duty depends on the mission the employee has agreed to tackle--tours of duty can be 6 months long, but then can also last for a decade (think of NASA scientists working on a deep space probe).

2) "Companies burn you out and churn you out when someone better, or cheaper, becomes available." This is purely Dan Lyons; the point we make in the book is that few employees expect or want lifetime employment at a single company; what people really want is lifetime employability and career progress. We would consider companies that behaved like Lyons described as "breaking the Alliance," which would harm their reputation as an employer.

3) "In this new model of work, employees are expected to feel complete devotion and loyalty to their companies, even while the boss feels no such obligation in return." Once again, this is the exact opposite of what our book says. We believe that employers and employees need to recognize that employment is a voluntary, mutually beneficial alliance, and that managers should be explicit about how an employee's job assignment is going to help develop his or her career.

Dan Lyons certainly has right to his opinions, but he shouldn't have a right to misrepresent our ideas.

Any citation about this claim? Because in my experience, it's completely incorrect.

Outside of the US, lifetime employment is a heavily coveted goal, because economies outside of the US are in a terrible shape overall with unemployment rate routinely above 10%.

Inside the US, except for white collar workers in major cities, long time employment remains the holy grail of most of the workforce, even though the US economy is in a pretty good shape overall.

Interestingly, even though Dan Lyons technically belongs to the white collar community that is probably not interested in lifetime employment, it's pretty obvious to me that when he joined that semi-startup, his goal was a lot more to write a book about it than embracing the party line and planning a long career there.

I mean... you're hiring Fake Steve Jobs and when he's out of the company, your executives try to illegally get a copy of the book with the futile hope that it won't get published... Seriously? What did you expect?

The vast majority of my young friends are uninterested in jobs which would provide lifetime employment. (As am I.)

Honestly, it was incredibly risky for HubSpot to hire Lyons and the outcome seems predestined. He came in with completely mismatched expectations and an ax to grind.

This is also a huge contributory factor to ageism in tech. Of course you won't hire older people when they expect lifetime employment at a startup which might not even exist in a few years.

Now if you have no kids or major bills and a high paying job then sure it can feel like a vacation. But there is a reason unemployment is often considered one of the most stressful periods in someone's life.

However, I'm not sure if that's a matte of preference or realism. Our generation knows that "lifetime employment" at a single company does not exist any more. The only way to remain sane is to accept the reality.

I'm a student know, and repeating the same summer job search process every spring is stressful. I don't look forward to future with joy, but what alternatives there are?

Please don't do the personal-swipe-as-a-question thing. Your comment would be good without that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nice stats you just pulled out of your ass

The modern world seems to be a constant case of vocabulary misunderstanding, where we all say "widget", and I mean thing and you mean "an element of a UX".

"Job security" is a specific example that can mean different things based on worldview. It can mean "the business will employ you no matter what you do or how bad you are" - the classic 1970s Union paradigm. "Job security" can mean "the creation of skills that will continue to have value in the market", i.e. "a law degree means you will always have job security. Or "Job security" can even mean something beyond the individual, to mean "working for a company that will survive" i.e. "working for the government provides great job security - they can never go out of business". Dan Lyons' sacking from Newsweek and the dying of traditional media shows how industry viability is in some ways more fundamental than the individual's talents to "job security".

Now, which of those definitions people understand - and which definition your worldview puts front and centre - will dictate how you view a new sort of life/work manifesto.

Dan Lyons idealises a world in which people worked their whole career for one company, had a slow progression of minor promotions and pay rises & retired to a gold watch they took to Florida. That reality makes me personally want to buy a chair, some rope and to Google how to tie a noose, but my view is certainly NOT universal, and I need to accept and recognise that.

I would hope people would go beyond seeing this as "misrepresent our ideas", and get to bottom of the misunderstanding - to the fundamental worldview misunderstanding at the core of the disagreement. Rather than defend against a perceived attack, I think a policy of agree and amplify makes sense. Dan Lyons is correct - the world has changed and in this new reality, 50 years of depressing work for one company is over. The new world may not have a gold watch at the end of the rainbow, but it should have a much brighter and happier journey, and the a world in which employment is for a specific period, the goal changes from work hard and hope, to maximise skill development. That is the heart of "The Alliance" - an acceptance the world has changed, and making it work for you.

But Dan Lyons is misrepresenting us when he implies that we believe that employees should be loyal to companies even though companies show no loyalty to employees. We're not pro-corporation or pro-employee; our point is that work is a voluntary relationship where both parties should benefit.

I didn't read it like that. It's pretty clear from your statement (even taken out of context) that you expect lower loyalty on both sides.

On the other hand there are bosses that would like loyal employees, even though they're not loyal themselves. They may even get a simulacrum of loyalty, as the fear of unemployability increases with unemployment itself. (Unless we take rather drastic measures, unemployment will continue to rise. Next in line are drivers.)

Beneficial mutual relationship under Ricardo's law of comparative advantage is great, but we must not forget that some people, organization, or even countries, may have no comparative advantage. What are we to do with them? We can let organizations and countries collapse, but surely we shouldn't just let people die?

Finally, it's not clear that work is really voluntary when the alternative is not being able to eat: employers face this conundrum much less often than employees do. There's a fundamental asymmetry there that when strong enough turns "voluntary" into plain old blackmail. (As a white male programmer, I don't believe the asymmetry I face is that strong. The neighbour who works at Starbucks however…)

Since we can't predict the future, we shouldn't blame those individuals who were unlucky enough to have invested in now-worthless skills. As a society, we need to understand that investing in re-training so that someone can find a new job is far better and less expensive than either putting someone on the dole for the rest of their life, or letting people "die in the streets," which is as nonsensical as it is callous.

1 desert island with nothing to eat, 100 dogs. Every day, a chopper comes in and drop 95 pieces of meat. 95 dogs can eat, the 5 slowest are left starving. A dog trainer sees that, and decides to train the slower dogs so they can eat. And they do. Now 5 other dogs are left starving.

My current take on this is, employment is overrated. We should find other ways to live our lives.

Basic income tends to postulates that humans have needs they deserve to satisfy (food, shelter…), even if they don't have any marketable skills. Basic income is a kind of charity.

Salary for Life tends to postulate people are productive, even if no money is involved. An elder couple looking over their grandchildren do something useful, even though they're explicitly paid for it. Unemployed people don't just slack off, they often work for free. Work deserves income, and that's what Salary for Life is: not charity, but the recognition of one's worth to society.

There are also practical differences: Basic income tends to be financed with income tax. Salary for Life proposes to be financed with "Non-wage labour costs" (yuck, what a crappy name).

Finally, basic income is mostly compatible with capitalism, and can only increase as much as the need for labour decreases. Salary for Life on the other hand is inherently socialist, and mostly needs the abolition of lucrative property (you can still own your house and your stuff, but you can't rent a house or own a factory).

Or do you address that corporations are run by people, who each have lives and that those who are older, female or who gave young families they must support and who they want to spend time with don't feel they are in such "voluntary" work forces? What about corporate cultures where if you say no to ridiculous work hours (often unpaid) or unreasonable demands will be "graduated" from their role?

Or have you addressed the disruption to someone's life when they are forced out of a job, or the feelings of worthlessness they often feel, or the injustice that is often done to them?

Your views appear to promote toxic corporate cultures. Frankly, they are designed for people who are highly mobile and who have as much power as their employers. You don't appear to address any of these things.

This doesn't mean that all companies will behave in an enlightened way, and there are cases where employees who lack specialized and valuable skills will still be treated badly.

2) There are also corporate cultures that place such high demands that they have negative impacts on employees' health and happiness. The purpose of our book isn't to defend all corporate employers! Its purpose is to lay out a plan for how corporate employers who believe in our ideas can build stronger, more mutually beneficial relationships with employees.

3) Losing a job can be devastating, both to your financial life, and to your health and happiness. It doesn't help that the social safety net in the United States is stingy and inconsistent. But unless you prohibit employers from laying off employees, I really think this is more a matter of government policy. And preventing employers from firing people always has unintended consequences, such as discouraging any hiring, and encouraging black market, off-the-books work.

Have you actually read our book, or even one of our many articles? I feel like you're judging me based on Dan Lyons' editorial, which as I've already pointed out, quotes exactly 6 words out of the entire book.

Broadly speaking, capitalism works because it is a voluntary exchange mechanism. It doesn't work perfectly, which is why we should strive for things like educational reform (to give everyone a chance to get a good education). But no system does.

True, top talent has less to worry about since any setback in employment is easily reversible. Many (most) don't have that luxury. These are the ones for whom the new economy is angst inducing and a bit intimidating and who look back with fondness and melancholy at the old less tumultuous economy before the new management style took over.

In my experience, many people (I don't like the word 'middlings' for some reason) think job to job instead of about a career. And then they have job problems.

Likewise, many people think paycheck to paycheck instead about longer-term finances. And then they have cash flow problems.

Isn't part of the solution to get employers and employees to talk to each other in terms of career trajectory, professional development, and skills marketability?

Couldn't part of the power imbalance be solved by getting employers to think again about giving out dead end jobs in dying industries? Right now we put the onus on the employee to recognize the problem and demand a better deal. Assuming automated freight trucks become a thing, shouldn't trucking companies say, "Hey, work for us. We'll have you trained for better jobs by the time the truck drives itself!"?

This is where government action will be required; this is a society-wide problem that needs a society-wide solution.

I guess I'll read the book now if it isn't too expensive (or even available in my region!), but I think many of these ideas about mutually beneficial employment only really works where power is relatively well balanced - in other words the employer can't get rid of you or treat you badly because you are irreplaceable it very hard to replace, and the employee has loyalty towards the company.

The instant this changes, then one party will often be largely unfairly affected.

That's the difference between the powerful and the powerless. The powerful thinks the imbalance is a fact that will never change; the powerless thinks that must change.

The problem in corporate world nowadays is that the powerful people disguise this difference all the time. For example : "hey, you can negotiate your salary and if you disagree, you have total freedom to go somewhere else. How powerful you are !"

I'll sure read your book, but I'm under the impression I'll see another, maybe very sophisticated disguise...

(yes you can call me a "socialist" (in the European sense) :-) because all of this is super political in fact)

But the bigger issue is that people have ended up in a position where they are powerless. And that is because the system doesn't see them as valuable. In an economic sense, unskilled labor isn't that valuable. But in a philosophical sense, those human beings are part of a society that should be looking out for them.

The best instrument of change in this case is government action (which I suppose means that holding this opinion also makes me a little bit socialist).

The root cause of the problem, at least in the United States, is that our educational system (aided and abetted by institutional discrimination and/or neglect) has failed to give many of its citizens the skills and knowledge they need. Furthermore, the social safety net is both inconsistent and insufficient.

As a mere business book author, I have a hard time tackling such problems, though I've certainly offered my opinions.

The situation when a person has to accept intimidation or even abuse at work is not much different from slavery.

It's possible (though: see game development companies for counterexamples) that abusive management of technologists at technology companies will be self-defeating, and that those companies will find themselves locked out of the talent market. But the story Dan Lyons is telling seems pretty well aligned with, for instance, reporting about Amazon's or Yelp's work culture: if you're not a young or elite technologist, management can in fact abuse you with impunity.

I agree with point 3) people should have a safety net. Maybe some of the problem with this culture would be mitigated, since people would have a net to fall back on and wouldn't fear for their survival. But this plan also costs money. So companies with this sort of work culture should be paying the taxes to support the employee they laid off. Once you take the increased taxes into account, then you might see a more rational approach towards the average employee that is thrown out instead of retrained. Does the hyper libertarian mindset take into account this negative externality? Or do they simply try to dodge their taxes in offshore accounts or move their headquarters to avoid paying the tab?

The thing is, they are right; their relatively unskilled labor is no longer valuable to the system (especially when equivalent labor is available at a fraction of the price in other countries). Where they are wrong is the belief that isolationist and anti-immigrant policies will restore a happy time when blue collar workers without a college education or special training could have secure, well-paid jobs that would allow them to live a comfortable middle-class existence.

1. That doesn't necessarily follow. In any economy there will always be talent, but the issue here is that you refer to the "best" talent - surely such a scenario you give also implies that once you are no longer the best talent, although you were so at one point, you can be perceived as no longer so and this you can be replaced?

There will also always be those who strive hard but have average performance no matter what you do. I don't see how you cater for anyone other than a relatively small proportion of high achievers.

That said, I don't see that it's the case that companies will ever have a problem recruiting new talent despite what they did to previous employees. There is no way of new employees to know how a business treated previous employees till they work for them, unless they know someone inside the company already and that's rather unlikely in my view.

2. That's a worthwhile aim, I guess I think some of the viewpoints about corporate culture in general that you wrote in your comments seem hopelessly naive and would foster toxic work practices.

3. It works fine in other cultures. In Australia we have incredibly high employment, and unless you work for a small business employer you can only be fired for cause, otherwise you must he made redundant which means your role cannot be fulfilled for at least a year.

The consequences of this are that employees cannot be unjustly removed and that employers need to clearly document what they have done to help the employee correct and improve their performance.

A side effect was that bullying someone out of a job became a tactic for having them leave by lower and middle managers. We now have stringent legislation that enforces proper investigation of claims of bullying by HR departments. This now happens - because the legislation penalises directors if it is found the issue is not addressed satisfactorily. I have personally seen that this is working - in my last role the colleague who took over my job was bullied by a middle manager, so he put in a bullying complaint to HR, who were forced to act very quickly through mediation and the bullying almost immediately stopped. The one being bullied got on with his job and company productivity improved.

This would never have happened unless it was legislated for.

As for companies not hiring - they still hire workers, but tend to be careful I their screening process and the legislation allows for a probation period where the can let the employee go and don't have to give cause. This can't be longer than 6 months, but it can be negotiated downwards if they really want the employee.

It works really well. Australia's workplace relations laws are very strong, and whilst there is black market, off the books employment this is quite low and we have fairly effective detection and enforcement of such practices.

4. I haven't read your book. I'm thinking of purchasing it to read it so I can better understand your ideas, but so far I have made my comments based on your comments on HN. If I've unfairly characterised your views I obviously apologise, but the comments that formed my view are on HN.

The one major point in your latest comment I'd disagree with is that companies will never have a problem recruiting new talent regardless of what they did to previous employees. Here in the US, most employees check services like Glassdoor where employees and former employees rate company behavior; the companies with bad reputations suffer certain consequences. (Of course, some companies offer so much potential wealth that employees ignore the poor working conditions, but that doesn't mean people are unaware of those working conditions.) How do people in Australia learn more about what it's like to work at a potential employer?

If your company strategy can work with the vast majority of talent and where some job/company-specific learning is in play (which is the vast majority of companies), then you would naturally prefer an experienced employee to a rank novice. That gives some power advantage to the incumbent employee over a walk-in applicant.

If your company strategy can use nearly anyone and there is no significant learning on the job, then incumbent employees are competing on fairly equal ground with new applicants and it can become a race to the bottom, but it also requires the lowest amount of investment on the part of the employee.

Your job as a prospective employee is to understand what type of company you're considering joining, and to get yourself in the right place on that spectrum, where right is a function of your abilities, aspirations, and preferences. Some like the battle to be the very best. Some like the idea of a lifetime of learning and stable employment. Others prefer (or have thrust upon them) a job where not too much is demanded of them in terms of job-related learning and development.

In theory they have to offer permanent employment after a certain time, but there are lots of ways around that. I worked as a casual staff member at a university here for 8 years and they just shuffled me to a different department when I got close to that point. Didn't bother me as I was both working and studying there at the time but the "casualisation" of staff that want permanent roles is rampant.

The best way of handling this, I feel, is to only allow a percentage of any business to be casualised, unless special dispensation is granted. Also, there it should be financially more expensive to follow this tactic - this way those of fixed contracts get compensated for the risk of their employment ending, and employers have an incentive to employee more full time employees.

It's like squeezing a tube of toothpaste; squeeze in one place, and the laws of economics cause the paste to come out in another.

Then why did Lyons cite grandparent's book as though it supports his worldview? Why did he sandwich quotes from the book with paraphrasing that doesn't represent the book at all?

> That is the heart of "The Alliance" - an acceptance the world has changed, and making it work for you.

Are you preaching to grandparent about what his book is about? That strikes me as strange.

The reply (not mine) was not a defense. It was adding a new point of view to the conversation; that this disagreement might be mostly involve a mismatch on what abstract words like "job security" mean. It's implied that progress might be had if people broke down and discussed details a bit. Like, "is it a good idea to assume a company will be around for 50 years?"

I think the angle you're missing on this sort of job is that it's perfect for someone for whom their job is not their self-identity. In the tech realm today, a lot of people really tie their identity to their work, and for them, this sort of job is really bad. However, there are lots of people for whom a job is just a paycheck, and their passion lies elsewhere. Often that passion is in an area where significant money just cannot be made (family is the most obvious one, but there are others.) I've worked in public service in the past, and you see lots of people that have been working the same job for 10, 20, or even 30 years. When you talk to them, it's clear that the job is fine, and they enjoy it, but what they really care about is their kids, or the dogs they walk at the local shelter, or whatever their passion is.

On a side note: public service is the last place I want somebody who doesn't care about their job.

Your statement inadvertently highlights the point on language which is being made in the article and in this thread.

Lack of Passion != disinterest.

If somebody is passionate, then they certainly do care about it, but you are correct lack of passion does not equal lack of care, so I'll revise my statment.

Public service is the last place I want somebody who is not passionate about their job.

I think that would involve some combination of:

* Choice over what kind of tasks you work on

* Freedom to spend some extra time on a task, both to get it to a level of quality you are happy with and to use the opportunity to learn the domain in question a little better

* Blocks of time to work on a maker's schedule; to read, concentrate, and work with minimal interruption from coworkers

These things benefit not only the happiness and well-being of a software engineer (which is where I'll focus since that's what I am and this is hacker news) but also his/her ability to learn and improve over time.

In the short term, these things might make you less valuable to the business by not being at the constant beck and call of others, and taking longer on tasks.

In the long term, I think they would more than pay for themselves for all concerned. If I were offered these sorts of improvements to the working arrangement in exchange for a pay cut, I'd be very very interested.

> * Choice over what kind of tasks you work on

At a high level, you already do that by choosing one job over another.

> * Freedom to spend some extra time on a task, both to get it to a level of quality you are happy with and to use the opportunity to learn the domain in question a little better

That should be in your schedule estimate. When the PM asks "How long will this take?" the duration you tell them should include time to understand what you're doing and make it nice.

> * Blocks of time to work on a maker's schedule; to read, concentrate, and work with minimal interruption from coworkers

I don't exactly understand what this means. Block off time in your calendar and turn off IM and email. If that doesn't work, go to an empty meeting room or somewhere else quite where people can't find you and work from there.

My experience has been that the social norms and cues in the workplace are generally stacked against people doing these things, and in the past five years seem to have moved farther away from these ideals rather than closer to them. Maybe that isn't really the trend; that's my perception of it though.

Maybe I just need to do a better job of finding the right arrangement. It doesn't seem like an easy topic to address in the hiring process though. I find that I only really learn what the environment is like by working in it, and even that can change from team to team or month to month.

The economy itself is an "actor" on this stage. It's going to make choices about who can afford what. It's going to reward those who reduce inefficiency, those who find new growth paths, and if not that, it will build reserves to help it through lean times.

In that system, people who don't "add value" are a carrying cost, and the system will try and reduce them.

The system we have, can not be expected to spend its surplus generously, or happily.

Also, I'm not sure that anthropomorphizing the economy, while interesting, is the right level to think about this.

No Union protects employees no matter how bad they are.

Uh, not quite. How about union-represented employees who kill people? We continuously read how Police department unions defend cops who kill unarmed citizens:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/how-poli...

Once of many examples from the article:

"Hector Jimenez is one Oakland policeman who was fired and reinstated. In 2007, he shot and killed an unarmed 20-year-old man. Just seven months later, he killed another unarmed man, shooting him three times in the back as he ran away. Oakland paid a $650,000 settlement to the dead man's family in a lawsuit and fired Jimenez, who appealed through his police union. Despite killing two unarmed men and costing taxpayers all that money, he was reinstated and given back pay."

There's a difference between the rigor required for an online discussion, and the rigor required for a formal paper. I knew some of my post would miss the mark - and by a very WIDE margin - because using very simplistic, stereotypical cultural lingua franca makes the general point easier to make, but lacks pretty much any rigor.

Viewing it more as a starting point for discussion - and trying to see past the many bad parts - is all I hoped for.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI#History

In this telling it's the GM management who are incompetent, not the line workers. Clearly that's not the version you're selling though.

Unions are democratic institutions that rely on precedent, so it's really essential to defend employees all of the time.

HubSpot fired two senior managers because they tried (foolishly) to use deception to obtain copies of Dan Lyons' book before it came out. You seem to be implying that our book promotes such unethical behavior. Again, I'm unconvinced that describing a program for allowing employees to expense networking lunches constitutes encouraging an abusive culture.

Not even close. Speculation is fine as long as it is labeled as speculation ("I suspect..."). It's nothing like what Lyons did, which is to misleadlingly paraphrase the contents of a book.

> I think that you are getting just criticism, and you are taking it quite badly.

I think his complaint is totally understandable, and I find the personal nature of your criticism bizarre.

This might be a function of broken promotion processes. Perhaps, in a world in which employees believed that they could advance their careers by either staying at one company or moving around, we would see a significant fraction of workers who would want to have long tenures.

One of the people I talked with when writing the book was a young woman who worked for a financial services firm. She loved her job, loved the culture, but told me that she was going to have to leave because the only way to get a promotion was to go to another firm, then return later.

That's why the alliance model makes sense: you might be going elsewhere to find an open promotion, but that shouldn't imply "disloyalty."

The real issue with his article is that he was lying to himself before he even joined Hubspot. I'm really surprised how shocked people are when they join startups and aren't happy. What did you expect?

Hubspot is not Salesforce. Uber is not Google. DoorDash is not Groupon. The maturity of companies at different stages varies significantly.

I read articles on HN every month about people who are bamboozled about startups after they start working there. These same people delude themselves about how awesome startups are. Startups are the birth of companies.In the beginning and up until you reach a certain point of market dominance, it's always hard. It's been this way for years and yet people continue to write articles about this nonsense every month...I'm really tired of it.

  > he was lying to himself
  > delude themselves about how awesome startups are
  > people continue to write articles about this nonsense every month

But does that in any way absolve employers of making realistic representations of what employees can expect? Does that absolve people in management positions from behaving with decency and fairness?

When two cars collide, sometimes both parties are at fault, "blame" is often a positive-sum game. It would be fair to hand out as much opprobrium and vituperation for the employers in these situations as the employees.

All in all, it seems like they had grossly mismatched expectations. Lyons clearly thought HubSpot would magically twist itself to match his desires for a traditional workspace, while HubSpot apparently thought Lyons might be slightly adaptable. In a just world, they'd both chalk it up to an experiment gone wrong.

Of course, Lyons is a journalist with an ax to grind so he'll make hay off that failed experiment.

The parent said: "You seem to be unrelentingly "blaming the victims."

I'm pointing out that some degree of "blaming Dan Lyons" is in order. He's a sophisticated tech insider.

It's as if a professional investor lost all his/her money on a private company that claimed to be a great company in its press releases, after which the investor complains about getting screwed. Yes, the investment is partly to blame for being so shitty. But the professional investor is a "sophisticated investor" and is also partly to blame for his/her own loss.

I would be more sympathetic to someone getting screwed by HubSpot if they were a fresh college grad who got misled and didn't know better.

The life-stage of a company rarely has much to do with the working conditions, cult/culture weirdness or how well the business is run.

There are plenty of great startups that are very solid companies that anyone would be happy to work for.

Blanket hate of "startups" doesn't make much sense. Also none of the companies you mentioned are "startups" anymore either, incorrectly applying that label to every company doesn't help.

Expect? Of course not, anymore; you'd be a fool to expect that.

Want? Well, more complicated: if it's a matter of wanting lifetime employment in the presently existing field of options, as employment and firms are presently constituted (and as firms presently look at employees), maybe not. If it's a matter of wanting to be working in the kind of regime in which lifetime employment really was more common, the answer might change.

Your response to 3 is a non sequitur. And employment as a condition is certainly not a voluntary matter: think of what that would mean! (Hint: it would mean that anyone who wanted to could quit their job and not seek employment elsewhere and things would be fine. We don't live in that world.)

When I say "lifetime employment at a single company," I refer to spending one's entire career at a single firm.

When I say that employment is a voluntary relationship, I mean that the employer cannot compel an employee to accept a job offer, and that an employee cannot compel an employer to extend one.

That's not how permanent employment works in many parts of the world, nor is it even desirable.

That's interesting. I've had a number of managers in my career and never, not even once, has one of them espoused anything resembling such a position. It's always what can the employee do for the company, not what's mutually beneficial.

Ultimately, I ended up deciding that what I wanted couldn't be achieved inside Google, but they certainly made the effort.

That's a characteristic of lifetime employment, not the kind of jobs under discussion here.

How to do that? That is the hard part, net work and move on when you work for a bad one.

When I was a manager in a small startup, I tried to regularly discuss their career goals and how they could develop towards those goals. One of the benefits of a startup was that we had a lot of flexibility to create experiences matching those goals.

I know that Intel has changed. A lot. But in the early 1980's Andy Grove (as President, before he was CEO) came up to Oregon to speak to the employees. Someone asked him when they were going to have showers for the employees. Andy responded "Intel is a place of employment, nothing more."

That's not easily forgotten, even though Intel did eventually install showers while Andy was still in charge!

Of course good managers care about their reports, regardless of the tone set by top management.

(I'm also surprised/disappointed at how rarely that advice is taken - there's a _very_ strong tendency for people to "stay put" in a sub optimal career position instead of taking the risk of jumping into the unknown and possiby scarey "next level up". So many devs tell me "I'm not ready for a mid level role yet" or equivalent, even when thay _clearly_ are...)

There's a difference between being ready for a midlevel role, in the sense of being able to take on the responsibilities and requirements, and wanting to take on the midlevel role. For example, if a developer sees that the "seniors" on his team 1) don't get to program as much, because they're in meetings all the time 2) have a lot more stress, because of having to take responsibility for design decisions 3) don't get compensated very much more and 4) sacrifice their ability to switch jobs easily by becoming more specialized in the methods and practices of the company they're currently working for, I think it's entirely rational for the developer to not desire that promotion.

But, of course, it's not politic to say, "Oh, I don't want that promotion, because it's a lot of work and I don't see any upside to it," so people make euphemisms. Saying, "I'm not sure I'm ready for that," is a good way of demurring while not causing offense, and simultaneously leaving the door open so that they can be considered for a promotion in the future.

The next time someone says that they're not "ready" for a mid-level role, I would like you to ask yourself, "Are they not ready, or are they not willing?"

There may also be some distrusting "Why is my manager encouraging me to leave? I'd better dig myself in and make sure I don't fuck anything up" thoughts (although I'd like to think I'm not thought of as "that guy").

But I also see cases that are closer to a reverse Dunning Kruger effect, people who just don't realise (or admit to themselves) how good they are compared to their peers. (Sometimes at an astonishing penalty to their earnings...)

Which is the primary reason why earnings are typically kept secret. Company policy almost certainly prohibits you from saying: "John makes 110k/y Joe, you are three times as good as John and you make 90k/y, we most certainly are not going to pay you 330k/y, but maybe you should ask for a 30k raise ?"

An employer doesn't train people, they hire those with the skill. If an employee is no longer valuable, the employee moves on. The employer has no particular interest in or control over the employee's career before or after their 'assignment'.

I'll have to give your book a read because it reflects some vague ideas I've been having. It feels like having "more liquidity" in the job market could benefit both employees and employers: it would make it easier for me to find a job that's a good fit and to adjust my role as my circumstances change; similarly, it lets companies be more flexible.

My theory is that this is the sort of thing that's only a problem relative to our expectations. If everybody expected people to move between jobs more often, it would have a significantly lower cost while conferring the benefits I mentioned above.

Then again, I'm the sort of person who can't imagine spending 40 years climbing a hierarchy at a big corporation, so I might just be fundamentally different from the people who actively want that...

That's nonsense. A right to opinions that don't "misrepresent others' ideas" is essentially no right at all.

Don't cite my work in a narrow, out of contex way, that entirely misrepresents the body of thought I put together which ia almost entirely at odds with your message.

sure, the people should be allowed to say whatever they want, but if you incorrectly attribute qoutes or ideology to someone, in my mind, you lose credibility. so sure you have a right to mistepresent others ideas but unless you have wholly original thought, if you do that, you call into question the validity of your process, all your sources, and ultimately all of your nessage that relies on non primary research/information

It's kind of a basic tenet of poststructuralism that a text can have multiple meanings, one of which might be intended, but none of which uniquely are compelled.

If you don't want to subject your words to interpretation then don't publish. It would be one thing if author was plagiarizing or misattributing, but that doesn't really seem to be the case.

If he had simply said something along the lines of, "I believe that The Alliance calls for employees to show loyalty to companies, but for companies not to show loyalty to employees" (completely not true, by the way) it would be clear that he was providing his interpretation of our work. As it is, those who don't read the book will take away an impression that is exactly the opposite of what was originally intended. While words are always subject to interpretation by their audience, I object to my words by misinterpreted by another in a major publication.

If I say "I like capitalism," that is my opinion.

If I say "Karl Marx likes capitalism," that is a misrepresentation of someone else's ideas.

If I say "Karl Marx likes oppressive authoritarian regimes" because every country implementing communism has pretty much turned out that way, that's pretty much misrepresenting someone else's ideas too.

I have misrepresented your post in the same way Dan Lyons misrepresented the parent poster. I took a quote out of context and used it to espouse exactly the opposite intent of your message.

I have to admit that I thought long and hard about even clicking on the article because I do not want to give Dan Lyons more credibility. His history for writing sensational stories which damage other people is rather legendary. Despite his famous apology, I have not seen him improve in any way what so ever. I honestly wish people would stop publishing his work. This is unfortunately unlikely given his talent for inciting outrage and convincing people to click on his articles (which I have once again done :-P ).

You could sloppily quote a book to make the message seem like anything, and it feels like that could border on defamation. A malicious version of this would be lying about somebody to injure their reputation, which is not obviously something you have a right to do.

This case isn't grave or clear-cut so it's not going to go to court or anything like that, but it's still a bit of a jerk move by Lyons.

You'd be surprised.

Then I started to think he might have planned the book before the job. At that point who cares about journalistic integrity?

For as long as the pissing contests over languages, productivity, hubris, etc continues among intelligent people like programmers, their Jimmy Hoffa won't be born and their cause will lie with the company's objectives.

In a nutshell, programmers -deserve- the Bezos and Hastings of this world. Keep thinking you are God's gift to programming and insure the demise of your own fellow programmers.

I have zero sympathy toward programmers (having been one for 17+ years now) - not because I don't love the profession or the contribution we make, but because of the infinitely immature attitude and disunion that exists among engineers.

If there's one thing that has motivated me to think of doing something else, it's that...

The best way to punish the Bezos of the world is not to work for them. Which it seems like more and more people are—most of my friends wouldn't even consider a job at Amazon.

That seems true for every type of job.

I wholeheartedly concur. Its been a source of great confusion to me why otherwise intelligent and open-minded people are so steadfastly opposed to the one thing that can improve their earnings potential dramatically. I have observed a strong shift to the "left" in the last few years though, so I won't be surprised if this happens soon. I also expect that given the resources and capability inherent in a "programmer's union", the capacity and ability of such a movement would be very significant very early on. We built the modern world with its social and communications infrastructure, and we aught be able to exploit it for our personal betterment easier than most. Doctors, dentists, lawyers all benefit greatly from their "protected" professions, why not us ?

Doctors, dentists, and lawyers don't have unions. They have professional associations (which might be a good idea for programmers) but they still negotiate individually.

In what way would a union prevent that?

The fact that you may be adversely effected does not concern me. I'm sure you are more than capable of holding your own. As a "peak performer" I'd fully expect you to raise to the challenge and do even greater things.

Where do you think the "significant raise" will come from? What tactics will a union employ to cause that happen and if successful, what will the side effects be?

Programming is already an incredibly high leverage and highly lucrative field. If you don't have leverage now, will you really have more with a union? (To be clear, I don't believe that unionizing would significantly raise programming wages.)

* I'm sure you are familiar with how collective bargaining power works and how it can be used for good or ill. It is because of the actions of worker unions that people today enjoy many rights that they take for granted. You, personally, have benefited greatly from union movements through the ages. In fact, the creation of the so called "middle-class" worldwide can be directly attributed to worker union agitation. In many ways unions have created the world we live in. As the middle class produced the consumers corporates depend on. To me, these are all excellent and worthwhile side-effects. Today you can witness the slow destruction of the middle class again, as capitalism looses its way and degenerates into corporate fascism.

Programming is a "incredibly high leverage and highly lucrative field" ? Compared to what ? Investment banker ? Oil rig worker ? Corporate management ? Chartered Accountant ?

I do believe unionizing will significantly raise wages, historically they have.

* (apologies for the little rant, I'm leaving it in as it amuses me)

> Programming is a "incredibly high leverage and highly lucrative field" ? Compared to what ?

High leverage compared to:

1. Any job where labor is roughly proportional to output. Want twice as many cars in the same period? You're going to employ roughly twice as many people. Want twice as many Starbucks? Roughly twice as many baristas. Want to sell twice as much software or have twice as many subscribers to your SaaS company's offerings? You might need 0-10% more programmers to support 100% growth.

Highly lucrative field compared to (all figures 2014):

1. Median household wages in the US of $53,567.

2. Median household wages in CA of $60487, in MA of $63,151, in NY of $54,310.

I don't know any full-time industry programmers who are working for less than the median household income; that's before any income from other sources or other household members. We're paying fresh college grads around the 70-75th percentile of US household income (again, as individuals).

Those signs don't point me towards the idea that programmers are an oppressed class desperately in need of unionization.

> I do believe unionizing will significantly raise wages, historically they have.

Are there examples of such highly paid professions unionizing? Did wages rise afterwards? (It's a genuine question; I can't think of any highly paid professions that are overwhelmingly [or even typically] union.)

I don't know when or where this inflection point is yet, but by the looks of it, it's already present.

Best thing an individual can do for now is draw up boundaries you aren't willing to cross... or have crossed, and never draw these in isolation of your kin. Talk, share, organize and roll with the punches... The cavalry isn't coming and sure as hell your momma isn't gonna do it for you.

Check this out.

Now imagine software engineers at Amazon, Netflix or wherever they are being treated unfairly had the chutzpah to stage a massive walk out, where suddenly the collective objective of the union becomes more important than continued employment under the current conditions, whatever those may be?

Yes, this kind of collective bargaining can be abused selfishly, but if you don't even have this kind of unity as engineers, then I ask you - how will you find out what is possible if you don't put up a fight through the best means known to man - mass disobedience and non-cooperation?

Look in the mirror, dear colleagues, and ask yourselves tonight - what do these Verizon workers have that I do not? Whom do I have to be so I can inspire my peers to follow my example rather than have them only look out for #1? What sacrifice do I/we have to make individually to contribute to the betterment of the whole? How will I tighten my and my family's belt next week, month or a year down the road so that this kind of action becomes possible?

Yes, you may be fired for this, or worse, bribed or promoted to get you to back down. Hell, you may even be killed, Hoffa style.

The question then becomes - what is sacred and sancrosanct to me? What do I value more than my own life?

There is no heuristic, no algorithm to answer this for you. It's just the mirror and whatever higher cause you believe in.

For me, I don't see the upside in unionizing. I'm very much libertarian and believe in the power of the individual. I'll bargain for myself and make my own choices long before I'll pay someone else to do that on my behalf collectively with a bunch of other people, many of whom I disagree with.

Individual bargaining works very well I think, and from what I saw of the family members in the coal, steel, and railroad unions growing up, those are not the situations that I'd like to spend any time, attention, or money on. It's hard for me to separate the union aspect from "way shittier than programming job" aspect, but seeing my grandpa forced to stay home to support a strike he didn't seem to believe in made an impression on me.

The article used the word start-up 3 times, plus one more in the title of his book. The company he worked for however, HubSpot is 10 years old and public and thus by definition is not a startup. Other two companies mentioned, Amazon and Netflix are both over a decade old and public and thus are not start-ups by any stretch of the imagination. Startups and tech companies are not synonymous and using them interchangeably is harmful to our discourse. If we can't agree on what words mean, how can we agree on deeper issues?

PS. I also have issue with author's use of the word "tech worker" to describe telemarketers. I maybe wrong, but a "tech worker" to me is not someone who works for a tech company but rather is one who creating the tech.

If your primary innovation is business model, and all the interesting tech you end up working on is purely a result of your scale, well, you're not a tech company. You're a company.

Those companies are probably great (or at least, so far as great == profitable/growing), but calling them 'tech' loses sight of what's interesting about tech to me. I'd argue that true 'tech' companies create technology as their primary or near-primary focus.

So... Uber? Not a tech company, I think. AirBnB? Not tech. Apple? Tech. Google? Tech.

(And yes, I'm aware these companies I call 'non-tech' are probably solving hard, tech-related problems; their developers contribute MLOC to open source projects, and they even release internal tools as open source. But to me, what you sell defines what you are as a company.)

I don't know how anyone gets away with calling call center employees "tech workers." It's a farcical trend and a way to make headlines ("Tech workers making only $30k a year"). They're not more tech workers than a developer at a news company is a journalist.

Countless of these articles critiquing the tech work culture pop on HN and it's rarely ever written by devs/management. The tone always comes off as criticism from 'outsiders' who worked within the company, who treat the pride taken in creating eccentric workplaces as somewhat alien to them. Maybe because they aren't truly insiders to the culture... especially in the sense that they aren't ever the creators/leaders or long term members. Only temporarily working within the environment before going back to more typical corporate environments from where they write their analysis with a certain level of cynicism.

The part in the fresh air interview that talks about jargon is especially interesting.

Well, I agree this sorts of equivocation can completely confuse important issues. But worth noting that you will always be able to ignore an opposing viewpoint if they have to agree with you on the definition of every term. Better to simply say in this case that the terminology confusion invalidates parts of his argument, and then when replying to bend over backwards to state your thesis unambiguously (in both languages if necessary).

Generally newly created, but not necessarily. In 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries one of the primary examples is based around Intuit, which is a large publicly traded company.

You're wrong, if you work at a tech company you're a tech worker. Programmers like to think they're special, but you're the help just like the sales people, support people etc

There's also the idea at this point of a stereotypical "start-up culture" that lives beyond the idea of whatever a "start-up" is. This also breaks the circular definition, because from that perspective "start-ups" no longer define "start-up culture".

After reading this article, and the one from Fortune[0], and his post on LinkedIn[1], it feels like he's out there scraping together blatant PR for his new book. And it makes me honestly wonder whether he went to work for HubSpot looking for a story to write in the first place... and being a writer for the "Silicon Valley" TV series doesn't really help his credibility in that sense.

Disclaimer: I really don't know anything about this story. Something just feels off. Maybe HubSpot really is that bad, who knows.

[0]: http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyo...

[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-comes-age-bias-tech-comp...

---

Edit:

After listening to the interview from @CPLX's response[2] I have to agree, he doesn't seem outlandish or anything. And all of the points he makes about HubSpot's content model being complete spam I agree with. I've definitely never liked interacting with HubSpot as a consumer, that much I know.

I feel like in these scenarios he's incentivized to get outlandish PR for his book, so some of the things I'd take with a grain of salt--sentences like, "The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall." But there is probably a lot truth to his story as well.

@ghaff also summed it up well: "That said, I find it's a cogent perspective even if it probably shouldn't be taken as literally accurate reportage."

[2]: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473097951/laid-off-tech-journa...

If you genuinely want to get a read on the guy listen to this long form interview on Fresh Air from a couple days ago:

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473097951/laid-off-tech-journa...

He comes across as quite lucid and nuanced in my opinion, and also credible, as he has been covering the tech industry for decades and has a sense of context (he was also fake Steve Jobs by the way) rather than a "look at these crazy start up kids" point of view.

There's a broad grey line between "factual objective news reporting" and "storytelling" and the word journalism isn't specifically defined enough for it to be strictly towards the news reporting edges of that grey area. As Wikipedia puts it (with all the lack-of-credibility of quoting Wikipedia as a source, I'll admit): "Journalism, however, is not always confined to the news media or to news itself, as journalistic communication may find its way into broader forms of expression, including literature and cinema."

To me, journalism as commissioned by The Rolling Stone is _supposed_ to be "embellished storytelling". The front page of the NY Times? Sure, that's supposed to be "news" not story telling. But a long-ish form article in the "Sunday Review" section of the Times? At least my expectations lean closer to a Rolling Stone story than a hard hitting fact checked piece of investigative journalism...

[1] http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyo...

[2] HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11369632

The only glimmer of hope is that personally I'm noticing my peers and friends working all over the Bay Area are starting to notice. Maybe in a few years we'll do something about it.

I'm not sure I can even understand how your arrive at this conclusion? Looking over the entire set of available jobs, tech is clearly one of the best fields to be in. From pay to autonomy to working conditions, etc etc. You want to see a bad job? Coal mining is a bad job.

Being a little bit less screwed doesn't make you not screwed, it makes you less screwed.

I am not sure if you would be happy to work in such a workplace and that describes most of the corporate culture. People are fond of bashing startups for what they are while conveniently ignoring how much more work they get done while keeping everyone happy. Don't like it? Get a job at IBM.

Nope, there will just be another round of new faces, new tech, and new fundings.

Wow, that must take a whole lot of careful coordination.

See this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate

Also play with this http://www.theyrule.net/

I do not much like them, if that is not obvious.

What makes me a little bit sad is when I meet somebody who works there--it's Boston, if you are in tech circles you are going to meet HubSpot people--and they're bought-in hard enough to not see that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. They hire a lot of good kids and try to kill them, or at least turn them into Dilbert-esque sodden gray rags, by the end of their second year. They're not the only company to do it, and not the only company to do it here in Boston, but they are a stand-out offender.

Just because someone is earning $150k doesn't mean they're not being sweated and exploited. To its owner, an expensive machine is still just a machine, and not an equal partner.

The tell is always the quality and genuineness of the relationships between employees and owners. It's completely possible for owners to take a genuine interest in the welfare of employees, and to see them as colleagues instead of productive units to be sweated.

But this may not happen as much as it should. And the boilerplate puppies-on-adderall always-crushing-it change-the-world so-very-excited incredible-journey rhetoric turns out to be an excellent smoke screen for owners who have no interest in anything except personal gain - and aren't even slightly concerned if they leave a trail of human wreckage behind them.

And even if you start off wanting to be a humane founder, there's no guarantee investors will let you run your company like that.

So it's easy to criticise Lyons for playing to the gallery with his book. But that doesn't mean that what he's playing is an improvised fiction.

I read your comment after the edits were applied, and I still thought it was one of those sneaky sorts of "homeopathic ad hominem" attacks where you don't make the attack directly, but instead allude to the "questions" that invoke the attack when considered by the reader.

Are you asking me: why does it matter what existing motivations a person has when trying to uncover which parts of their account is truthful? Seems pretty obvious why that information is important...

Going solely off of "Is it true? Sounds like it is." sounds like an easy way to end up just confirming your own biases all of the time.

Sorry you took my comment that way, that's not how I intended it. I was honestly curious because I knew nothing about him, and the few articles I found seemed suspect, so I wanted to know if others felt the same, or if he was legit. And with people's replies with more information, I can now say for myself that it seems like he's more legit than not.

> Tech workers have no job security.

> The free snacks are nice, but you also must tolerate having your head stuffed with silly jargon and ideology about being on a mission to change the world.

> The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall.

> Dogs roam HubSpot’s hallways, because like the kindergarten decor, dogs have become de rigueur for tech startups.

> On the second floor there are shower rooms, which are intended for bike commuters and people who jog at lunchtime, but also have been used as sex cabins when the Friday happy hour gets out of hand.

> Arriving here feels like landing on some remote island where a bunch of people have been living for years, in isolation, making up their own rules and rituals and religion and language—even, to some extent, inventing their own reality.

> Inside the company he is always referred to simply by his first name, Dharmesh, and some people seem to view him as a kind of spiritual leader.

---

I'm not saying there isn't truth to what he's saying, and with others chiming in as to his credibility, it seems like there's more truth than I assumed. I was simply asking for context, because a lot of these things do seem slightly blown out of proportion to make the articles sound more interesting, and thus to sell more copies of his book.

>when I first sold the book and start to write it, it was meant to be sort of a modern-day "Office Space ... I wanted to write just a funny story about being in a kooky company. It was just a comedy.

On one hand I think it's sort of disingenuous - the company culture was never a good fit for him and he shouldn't harm others because of his mistake (I know people who have had negative non-fiction stories written about them, and it can take a personal toll - I hope he left names and specifics out). It doesn't seem like HubSpot ever tries to hide their culture like Amazon has been known to do.

On the other hand, it really is an interesting story. I'm old enough that I'd never work at a place like HubSpot, so to me it's an interesting perspective on an interesting work environment that is common in the new millennial world. In other words, real journalism :)

How about the company shouldn't try to harm its workers? Because they do. Most startups do (it's practically part of the business plan, underpay your workers and dilute their equity 'til, if you are a mega-success, selling out might make up the delta between your underpaying salary and the one they could have gotten at a normal company), most tech companies do (though in other ways, hello collusion and managerial gaslighting). And shining a light on that is, if not noble, at least necessary.

It seems more like he found himself in a somewhat ludicrous situation and wrote a book about it.

Surely this is clearly an observation? When I read this I read it as opinion, and a personal observation he had - after all, it speaks of his kids' preschool and it is a judgement he makes.

This sort of comment is done in long-form journalism all the time. The fact you spotted it as subjective commentary almost immediately means it is commentary!

The book he wrote is a commentary on his personal experiences with HubSpot, interspersed with his views. I honestly don't see where the issue is, it's still factual but as with any article or book like this the author is giving his considered view on the material he is writing about. It's perfectly reasonable to disagree, of course, but is it really to get PR for his book?

Sounds like Google. It's famously decorated in preschool chic.

This sounds like a great place to work. Outside of the phony hyper-positive posturing by management.

Look up "Fake Steve Jobs", it was a great read back in its day. He stopped the blog when it became apparent that Jobs was mortally ill.

Pretty good insights into the "Silicon Valley" pathological culture.

(It has long since mutated astonishingly from the simple Fairchild seed that named it.)

Pointing out the age difference in the manager and the employee, and their sexes, is just baiting. Unless he wants to make the case that there was sexism or agism from the manager, or that the company engaged in sexism or agism, it is just a red herring. In fact, it's quite cowardly, since it implies something the author isn't willing to actually say.

Finally, the fact that the person who was fired was with the company for 4 years doesn't mean anything at all unless we also get the context. It may be that this person struggled from the beginning, and they hesitated and didn't fire her for four long years. Or it may be that they hired her to do some specific job, and that job went away, and despite repeated attempts she just could not manage to learn anything else.

The thesis that she was 'disposable' is just ludicrous. If she was good at her job, then the manager is just an idiot who is cutting his and the companies own throat, and we can't make a moral argument against stupidity. If she couldn't do the job then there is no reason to be discussing this. If she was borderline, we still can't make a moral case, since borderline situations are at worst slightly wrong.

So once you cut through the left handed implications, I don't think there is any argument left.

Be an adult and make a tough decision without masking it as a great "thing" (aka: graduation)?

Again, the practice is sadistic at least at the emotional level to me. May be it is Graduating as a Rock Star.

ps. Please stop moving the goal posts.