Interview with Max Levchin
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It took me a while to learn, but working hard doesn't equate to being stressed, and being stressed is more than likely to result in mediocre results.
Edit: on closer inspection, this is an example of the uncanny power of titles to focus attention, magician-style, on only one thing. Certainly Levchin didn't write the title and the interviewer probably didn't either. We shouldn't pick the most provocative detail and then react exclusively to that.
I can almost guarantee that if the headline had singled out his fierce astronomer grandmother instead, the comments here would be about fierce astronomer grandmothers. Which come to think of it would be a lot better.
I think Max's point in discerning between an all-nighter and continued and long-term stress is very smart. Everyone has and can pull an all nighter, but dealing with problems for weeks on end is a rare trait and most will break. Hence this is a quality he and most in this business should seek: can the candidate handle prolonged stress? If so, he's built for the challenge.
There is nothing impressive about someone writing code to fix a big for 24 hours straight. This doesn't move the needle forward at all.
"It’s about having compassion even when you feel you may not have the strength for it in the moment."
Layoffs are bad if they involve a lot of people, no question about it, especially if there's been a sense of dread around them for the days/weeks leading into the announcement. But at the end of the day, "we're laying you off" means one or more of: "our business is not healthy enough to support the team we think we need" and/or "we made a poor managerial decision and mistakenly hired a whole bunch of the wrong people" and/or "the nature of our business is changing and we don't need you to do what you currently do".
Telling people they don't have a job sucks, but it's a lot harder to fire individuals for underperformance, especially if they've been trying hard and don't want to go....they like their jobs and they don't want to deal with the finality of "we don't want you to work here anymore, $name."
Please don't. It just poisons the well further, and is not a very positive way to defend somebody.
You can't possibly know all the iotas someone else cares about. Please don't give into cheap attackiness here, especially not when mentioning a specific person.
(Edit: I originally wrote "what iotas", but "all the iotas" perhaps makes the point clearer.)
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13154540 and marked it off-topic.
“[Mayer] is by far the hardest working person in Silicon Valley,”
Max Levchin told Pando’s Sarah Lacy. “She gave birth to twins and
then traded emails with me about a feature of a product she was
launching in a week, within, from what I could tell, 20 minutes
of giving birth,” said the PayPal cofounder, speaking before a
group of people.
The audience tittered. “She is intensely committed to her cause.
She’s awesome,” said Levchin, who is now devoted mainly to a new
consumer finance startup called Affirm. He also talked about how
much he respects Mayer for being a pioneer and one of the few
women to ascend to such a high level in tech. “She is a woman
who rose through the ranks in the male-dominated world,” he
said. “I think that’s pretty special.”
Levchin’s comments do more than just celebrate his friend,
though. Applauding such an extreme work ethic sends a pretty
clear message to those interested in growing and developing
their careers: Work all the time and give up everything if
you want to succeed.
"[Mayer] is by far the hardest working person in Silicon Valley.
She gave birth to twins and then traded emails with me about a
feature of a product she was launching in a week, within, from
what I could tell, 20 minutes of giving birth. She is intensely
committed to her cause. She’s awesome."
You can draw whatever conclusions you want to from that, but that sounds wildly unhealthy to me, and is nothing I would ever want anyone working for me—or anyone I work for—to venerate.
That's not a convincing response to a call for more careful thinking. In fact, it's arguably not thinking at all. It's a game of labels, seeking an emotional payoff.
dang: "You can't possibly know what iotas someone else cares about"
aaronbrethorst: Here's a quote that describes what Levchin cares about.
greglindahl: "Here you have a Huffington Post editor getting extremely close to putting words into someone else's mouth"
aaronbrethorst: Here's just the quote that describes what Levchin cares about.
dang: "You completely changed the subject"
I give up.
Many users come to internet forums to release pent-up emotional energy at their favourite symbolic targets. Monkeys do that too, only with feces rather than words, and not on the internet. We're all monkeys in this respect (edit: i.e. I don't mean to pick on you personally), so I don't believe HN can be immune to this (not for a while anyhow). But I do think we can do a little better.
The point here is not about Max Levchin, of course. The point is that feces-throwing is extremely predictable (that's part of its pleasure) and therefore extremely tedious. It cuts against the mandate of this site, which is to gratify intellectual curiosity—the polar opposite of tedium.
Since you agree with this, we agree on the only thing I'm arguing for.
What helps is (a) not doing it, (b) trying not to do it, and/or (c) being conscious that one is doing it— in that order.
I read this paragraph from the article twice, I think it backs my point, meaning that people like Levchin put their company's and investors' interests first and foremost before the interests of people which are their employees (I generally tend to ignore the "compassion" in speeches like this, I cannot pay rent or my bills with "compassion" once I'm out of a job).
I'm not saying that what Levchin (or any-other person in his situation) does is bad, because that's what capitalism is all about, I just wanted to say that we shouldn't foul ourselves in thinking that the employer-employee relationship is a "Hare Krishna"-type of thing.
I have no idea if Levchin meant what he said, but I'm pretty sure he said what he said.
Expanding on your point:
While it may be reasonable to extrapolate (provisionally) some of the iotas $NAME cares about in his role as an investor, care should be taken to avoid conflating $NAME-the-investor with $NAME-the-person, about whom there is probably less evidence from which to draw conclusions.
This is particularly important to keep in mind since, even though $NAME-the-person likely influences the behavior of $NAME-the-investor, there are very good reasons for $NAME to avoid signaling the extent of that influence.
Care to explain yourself? Are you confusing Levchin with Thiel? Granted they co-founded Paypal, but if you see Levchin's public talks (at SXSW, YC School etc), you'll see he's a very honest individual.
Affirm itself was formed because Max felt it wrong that Big Banks makes a majority of Profits on hidden, sleezy, fine-print fees. He says this so himself at the SXSW Talk (search in youtube).
Affirm touts itself as being honest and upfront about each and every charge or fee for their service.You can see it on their website.
If you have a case to make, you're welcome to make it substantively. If you can't do that or don't have time, please don't post at all. That way you at least won't degrade the thread.
I don't see why you'd deny them the right to speak about topics outside the narrow band of their startup.