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Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

"Tell me why you’re interested and willing to put up with bullshit, and don’t just tell me you need the money."

I don't think there are many sane persons around, who honestly want to deal with company bullshit, if not for the money.

I mean, you can find a million fake answers, "I want the challenge", "I want to improve myself in difficult situations", blabla, - but this is exactly the kind of bullshit I am only willing to put up with, if I need the money. So why can he just be honest and say so?

I mean, it is a valid concern, if a person who was on his own for a long time, can fit back in into a coporation, and it needs some convincing that he actually can - but telling people to fake motivation, when all they actually want is the money - just increases company bullshit.

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Because nobody wants to hire someone because they need 3 more months of income so they can leave. "I want the challenge" is an obvious bullshit response. "Your company deals with _________ at a scale larger than I can on my own" is a potentially real answer to that question. If it's true it also means they're probably not going to bail once they have replenished their savings account.

Even if the your knee jerk truthful answer is "I just want the money" it might be deeper than that. When I went from consulting full time for ~4 years to corporate work, I would have told you it was just for the money, but it was actually for the stability and peace of mind to not worry where my next rent check was coming from.

Those people who lie about the time they plan to work for the company, will also lie about their motivations.

My point was, that I want honesty on both sides. Otherwise it is coporate bullshit to me.

"would have told you it was just for the money, but it was actually for the stability and peace of mind to not worry where my next rent check was coming from."

Yeah well, thats another way of saying you mainly want to work for the money.

And about the "real answer":

"I want to build great things in a team and I am aware that every organisation has problems it needs to overcome, to succeed, which usually require the ability to make compromises. And I am willing to make the necessary compromises, for a successful project."

Which is actually my honest opinion, but I don't need any hypocrite bullshit. I only would put up with it, if the pay is adequate. And starting by having to fake my motivation, would mean a higher expected compensation from my side.

> thats another way of saying you mainly want to work for the money.

Is it?

Years ago... I had a friend who was just getting in to dev work, but he was pretty good, even then. He was doing low-pay work someplace, not even dev work entirely, but he got to learn a bit on the job. But... was making around $37k (2007?). I offered to connect him with a recruiter who had a 6 month python gig lined up for him at ~$50/hr. That's... after his taxes... it's about $45k for 6 months of work.

"But... what would I do after that? I wouldn't have my health insurance! There's too much risk!"

I said "you'll be making more in 6 months than you do in a year... you can figure things out then, and very likely there will be more stuff after that, once you're 'in' there".

"Too risky..."

So... the 'stability/peace of mind' is, imo, not just another way of saying 'in it for the money'. I think stability with known lower pay is a stronger motivation for some folks.

The stability your example cites is stability of the amount of money you have and are making.

Not to say that the other kind isn't a real thing people care about, but I don't think this is an example.

>I think stability with known lower pay is a stronger motivation for some folks.

And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday. Which may be true for some people with very in-demand specific skills. But is utter fantasy for people in more specialized roles, older, etc. who actually are making a comfortable amount of money and like where they are. Why take a jump they don't really need to just for some extra cash?

> And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday

I have never had this illusion, but I think my wife has had that idea (for me, not for her), and I had to disabuse her of that notion :) We're not in a terribly HCOL area to begin with, nor in a major tech hub, so... traditional w2 9-5 jobs, even in tech, are, for most senior folks I know, topping out in the mid $100s. If you want to count 401k/insurance/etc in total comp, you're still generally going to be under $200k (probably even fully loaded cost). Not so say there aren't any higher paying jobs, but they're relatively limited, and are going to have higher competition, etc.

This is true of the vast majority of tech work, notwithstanding typical compensation conversations on HN.

> I don't think there are many sane persons around, who honestly want to deal with company bullshit, if not for the money.

I really don't think this is true. I know a fair number of people who don't really have to work but choose to. And far more who could do something else tomorrow, including self employment, without trouble.

One common factor is the desire to achieve something bigger than you can do as an individual. There is probably some selection bias at work here but I don't think it's so unusual.

I do agree that when considering hiring someone who has been working individually for a long time, you'll want to probe how they will fit into a team. That's not the same thing.

I guess it depends on the definition of "company bullshit"

"I know a fair number of people who don't really have to work but choose to"

Because those people probably do not have to put up with lots of "coporate bullshit", otherwise they would indeed go find something more fitting, if they are not desperate for the money.

But also people who are mainly desperate for the money, can be good employes - and if they do not have to start by having to fake enthusiasm ("don't tell me its because of the money") - there is a good chance that they will stay, even when they are not desperate anymore. That was my main point.

It's unfortunate, but you need the bullshit response precisely to signal that you can and will put up with the company bullshit.

There's many non-bullshit answers. When you work on your own projects, you rarely can impact many people. It's much easier to leverage the company and their existing user base to make changes that impact more people than you could possibly do so on your own.

Running your own business still has bullshit too. It's just a different type of bullshit. You have to deal with paperwork, accountants, lawyers, marketing, sales, engineering, product, customer support and more. There are probably a few of those at least you'd consider bullshit.

People don't just work for companies because the money is more certain. Sometimes it's nice to be an individual contributor and yes you have a boss or two. It's more of a choose your bullshit adventure.

Well: IMHO, "company bullshit" really has nothing to do with the word "company"; you could as easily substitute "interpersonal" / "human" / "team dynamics". People are the hardest part of any problem...

...but also the most rewarding. For me, no, the money would not be enough to put up with the bullshit, not by itself. Much more compelling is the idea that multiple people working together as an effective team can build things of greater scope, quality, and importance than one person can working alone.

Of course, if "people here can't work together as an effective team" - e.g. because the culture is overly cutthroat, or the environment is interruption-prone, or project teams are demotivated by a lack of trust / agency / autonomy, or impossible deadlines are the norm - well, if those things are part of the bullshit, no amount of money will make that enjoyable and rewarding.

In such an environment, what's a rational strategy? Probably to save up a bunch of money, to the point where the next job search can be motivated by things other than immediate financial need, and quit once that's achieved. (Hence "rest and vest" behaviour, which is often a huge red flag about the organization and not the individual person.)

By company bullshit, I just mean the standard bullshit that comes w/ any job. As an entrepreneur, I was accustomed to solving problems my way. When I became an employee, it took me a while to understand that just because I could make an impact in some way, that doesn't mean the company would be interested in letting me do it that way. Basically it's hard to go from being in full control to doing it someone else's way.

There are two kinds of "company bullshit":

Type 1 is characterized by broad policies and processes indiscriminately applied that may not always make sense at the ground level. This type is not only inevitable, but is actually necessary for a company to work at scale—once you get into the hundreds and thousands of employees it just doesn't work leave things to each individual manager's judgement as it won't be fair, and it will eat a lot of cycles.

Type 2 is characterized by the people problems you mention, including all manner of incompetent management, and other inefficiencies that prevent the essential work from being done properly. While some amount of this is also inevitable, it's generally avoidable by competent management as long as the org doesn't release a tipping point of dysfunction at which point all the competent folks start to leave for greener pastures.

Distinguishing between type 1 and type 2 can be very tricky, especially for low-level employees at a large company where they won't have the experience or the visibility to make an informed read. However making the distinction is super important if you want to be upwardly mobile in large companies. There is a level of bullshit you will need to put up with anywhere, you just need to be able to understand what is worth putting up with for the greater good and what is not.

There are lots of developers who realize that running a business is not for them. It's completely valid to say something along those lines; "I love the tech work, but not the admin/sales work."

You just described me. I ran a company. I was good at generating referral business & closing it, but I was not good at throwing money at something that generated business in an outbound fashion. So the bigger my business got, the more vulnerable I was to my referral pipeline drying up. I did not like that, and I didn't want to remain small, so I got out.

Geez, this is such a negative outlook. I know this is the trendy, anti-capitalist, labor-friendly view of the world these days. But it is still possible to believe the tech product you are working on is contributing something positive to the world. Or to simply enjoy creating and improving on things that are used by many users, even at a big company where your own scope of work might be much more narrow than on a personal project you have 100% control over.

It is possible to be motivated by both the money and other aspects of the job, and in my own experience this is the case for all of the best coworkers I've had over the years.

> telling people to fake motivation, when all they actually want is the money - just increases company bullshit.

With this perspective, anyone who chooses to see the glass half full instead of half empty is bullshitting. Anyone who says or does something kind to somebody else even though their own life is not perfect, is bullshitting. You could make that argument but that's not what most people would call bullshit.

"It is possible to be motivated by both the money and other aspects of the job, and in my own experience this is the case for all of the best coworkers I've had over the years."

Sure it is, but the question was about the motivation to put up with coporate bullshit, not the motivation in general.

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