Comment by sbuccini | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sbuccini | Hacker News Reader

I just want to provide a counterpoint to the above article. My first job out of college was at one of the "sexy" unicorns. I had fun working there, loved my coworkers, etc. I ended up leaving after 18 months to go start my own thing for many of the same reasons listed in this article. I'm in my twenties! Now is the time to take risks and optimize for learning!

In retrospect, I wish I hadn't. Maybe that's because they just filed for IPO. But I underestimated how rare these jobs are. Let's be honest--the types of experiences the author references are only available at hyper-growth startups the Valley has deemed to be "sexy". Just look at the examples: Uber, Stripe, Coinbase. The author makes it sound like you can walk into one of these roles whenever you want. It's a lie.

First, these companies only come around once in a blue moon. Second, you've got to time it just right. Third, you have to convince them to hire you. I'm sure most people on here have a story about how they didn't get a job for no discernible reason whatsoever.

There are many good reasons to leave a job. Don't let hustle porn be one of them.

Did your unicorn job meet the Accomplishment, Impact, Growth, Challenge, and Community aspects of the article?

While I have some reservations about the article (chiefly that these all have to be evaluated every three months) I think the framework to assess your current position is very different than just changing to start your “own thing”, chase the newest shiny object etc.

Those aspects are also too inward/selfish.

What About the company? Did you join for the mission, is the mission something you still support, is the mission something the leadership actually conveys or is it lip service, do you feel you’re in a position to be impactful for that mission.

Sometimes you might get a crappy job at a company with a cool mission (such as SpaceX) but it doesn’t mean you have to leave. Transfer internally!

Personally, I agree. I was just trying to put your comment/critique in the context of the article.

For me, connecting to an overall mission/purpose is more important and provides the discipline and motivation to continue when the job isn’t hitting on all the cylinders outlined in the article.

It all comes down to what you want to optimize for. The article seems to make a case to optimize for self actualization. Your comment about exiting before an IPO being a mistake seems to elude that one should optimize for maximum financial gain. Neither of those are my particular priority, but to each their own

I’ve yet to work somewhere that has instilled faith in their internal transfer process. It’s rife with subjective and/or closed door requirements and “deals” like your current manager having to agree to the transfer.

Be extremely, extremely, extremely careful for staying at any company for the "mission". The primary mission of any capitalist company is to make their biggest investors and founders a lot of money, and you shouldn't forget that.

While some exceptions do exist (I actually think your SpaceX example is a very good one - Musk has pointed out, rightfully IMO, that if he just wanted to get richer there are easier ways to do it), they are few and far between. VCs and investors largely depend on the "mission" myth solely as a motivational tool to get employees to work harder.

I think mission statements ought to go away entirely, anyway.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/jobs/23mgmt.html

I would argue the examples in that article are poor mission statements. They are really just PR fluff.

A real mission statement is suppose to provide a lens through which tough decisions can be viewed, similar to the military idea of “commanders intent”. Vague, overly generalized mission statements like those in the article don’t really provide that sort of framework.

The most general I‘ve come across while still having some sort of decision meaning was “create more value than you capture”. So if you are proposing some rent-seeking idea, you should know it’s a bad idea.

A real mission statement is suppose to provide a lens through which tough decisions can be viewed, similar to the military idea of “commanders intent”.

I think a well written and deliberately structured playbook of org strategy (or departmental playbooks) is better than a mission statement for this.

Taking your military reference: these are akin to Field Manuals. Commander’s intent is meaningless unless there’s an established tradecraft behind it that governs how to execute on that intention in a way that brings alignment to behavior, initiative and decentralized execution of said intent.

Mission statements probably give you a “North Star”, but they don’t-on their own-necessarily help teams execute

I agree with your overall view, but I don't think the understanding of commanders intent is quite right. Field manuals are meant to give the tactical, detailed guidance. "Commanders intent" is specifically meant for times when there is no detailed guidance. It's meant to guide decisions when the situation is unique enough, or moving quickly enough, to require improvisation because there is no standard procedure or field manual to guide it. Instead of a strict procedure, it's meant to give a philosophical decision framework.

"Provide the most value to shareholders" and "Provide more value than you capture" are two high-level (granted, not the most specific) mission statements. But if you can imagine an ethically ambiguous decision point, you can see how each can lead into diverging choices. Whether mission statements truly guide decisions or are just lip-service is largely a leadership issue.

Maybe my view is merely more radical than tradition requires: if executors and operators of intention find themselves in an ethically ambiguous situation, crippled by analysis paralysis, the commander has failed to sufficiently articulate his intentions and directives and possibly even in the training of standards and requirements.

The entire purpose of commanders intent is to make the mission clearly known, and allow for decentralized decision making of the tactical day-to-day. It should never replace tradecraft, yet it also shouldn’t stand in the way of independent thinking either.

Instead, those ethical decisions should include commanders’s intent.

Gen. Bruce Clarke has a brilliant book on this, “About Face”-with many lessons on this echoed more recently by the likes of Gen. James Mattis (“Call-Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead”) and the popular Jocko Willink (“Leadership Strategies and Tactics-FM-02”). Therefore I say thusly: commander’s intent informs tradecraft, tradecraft is commander’s intent manifested.

Edit: I believe I got the Clarke book wrong, instead it appears to be a collection of his writings on leadership, he himself didn’t give it this name apparently.

I'm familiar with the books you mentioned (haven't read Mattis' yet though) but I think you are probably referencing the About Face book by David Hackworth. Jocko also had covered this book ad nauseum on his podcast.

I'm not sure we're disagreeing on much other than you can't have a field manual for everything which is where the commanders intent comes in. Yes, field manuals should align with the commanders intent just like standard procedures should align with a mission statement. But the commanders intent is there for the times when there isn't clear guidance. Same goes, IMO, with a mission statement to align the values of a company. When a decision maker comes across a situation not explicitly covered by a standard procedure/field manual, they need to ensure whatever decision they make aligns with the overall mission/commanders intent.

If the leader "has failed to sufficiently articulate his intentions" that means there is no well-understood commanders intent. The leader has failed to articulate the why behind the mission. The same is true (as previously stated) for poorly formed mission statements. They don't articulate the values of an organization in a meaningful way to guide decisions. If you are making the case that there should be clear tactical, detailed guidance provided on all scenarios, that is the opposite of decentralized command.

>Instead, those ethical decisions should include commanders’s intent.

This goes without saying. That is exactly why I said it provides the framework for decision making.

If mission is what is a primary driver, you don’t have to work for a for-profit company. There are many opportunities in government, NGOs, not-for-profits etc.

> Those aspects are also too inward/selfish. What About the company?

Wasn't that covered by: "Community: Am I excited and happy to go to work every morning and see my teammates. Do I believe in the mission, vision, and leadership of this team or company?"

> Sometimes you might get a crappy job at a company with a cool mission (such as SpaceX) but it doesn’t mean you have to leave. Transfer internally!

Yeah the author specifically mentions this: "Change doesn't always mean to quit."

How many companies out there have a mission that one can give two shits about? They're making some commercial goods and/or providing services, they're not saving the world. The only place that comes to my mind which has a legit mission I could get behind is probably the government and its various agencies.

Many of these types of posts of reflections of the insecurity of the authors.

You don’t want to be like one of the IBM lifers back in the day who sat around waiting to get culled like a steer. But staying at a job where you enjoy what you do usually isn’t a bad move.

Agreed. There are many axes along which one's career can be wasted. Throwing prime earning years at a low expected yield activity like founding startups can be one of them, depending on your priorities and luck. If one views making money as the primary purpose of a career, that will inform decisions differently than the criteria this article identifies.

Even so you have to choose between status/money and skill. The way SV thinks about engineering is under the influence of billions of dollars being poured into 90s tech for incremental improvements. Linux. Java. Javascript. The research community has long known how to do better but change doesn't benefit monopolies.

> Now is the time to take risks and optimize for learning!

Why is now the time to take risks? Long term debilitating losses have more years to compound for you. For example if you crash in a motorcycle and are paralyzed you'll have to spend more years in a wheel chair than someone who is older.

There is no back, only forward.

Looking back I should have kept that, sold that, married that one, stayed away from that one, moved out earlier, tried harder, given up, etc...

Can I ask what happened to your startup?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com