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Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

A major reason that people do only what's required to get by in their "day job" and tool away on startups is that the promotion is dead. You don't advance in the workplace by any means except changing jobs or doing your own thing. Companies don't promote on merit anymore. So if you pour your heart into your job, you get nothing for it. You're better off pouring your heart into side projects-- even if they don't turn into actual businesses, they act as portfolio projects that might help you to make that next hop between jobs with an accompanying raise.

The MBAs have made this bed via all this "money doesn't really motivate people, here's how to hack motivation..." BS, and now they have to lie in it. If they want employees' full attention, they have to compensate it. People have to have a stake-- either stock or the real possibility of a meaningful promotion. You get what you pay for.

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Bingo! What's the point in going "above and beyond the call of duty" for a dayjob employer, when they aren't going to recognize you for it, compensate you for it, or acknowledge it in any way? Of course, this isn't true of all employers. Sometimes people do get recognized and compensated for merit... see the recent post about the guy at Google who got $100MM. But most people know if they work for a company where merit is rewarded or not. And if you don't work in one of those, and you have some ambition, the rational choice is to work on a startup.

I agree with both api and mindcrime - and I did an MBA in Tech.

Although I'm sure there are several companies that do incentivize correctly - there's a growing awareness of creating an "intrapreneur" spirit and opportunities, though in most companies it's just that - empty talk.

I clicked the up-arrow soooo hard.

Businesses MUST focus on incentivizing their capable employees correctly. If they did, there would be far less of these side-projects which double as portfolio support.

I know a few people who are very well-incentivized inside of the company they work for. They are very entrepreneurial, but they've been bought-off by very smart managers. When they retire, they will have done very well indeed without ever having to launch anything.

The problem for companies has become that it is so easy for many more people to create a startup on a shoestring budget that you have to incentivize many more people than you used to. What's a company to do? I'm not sure. I think this frustration is at the heart of David's grievance.

I'm pretty sure everyone will read this as

"Help ! My little wage slaves are not giving their maximum effort to me and instead putting it towards an effort that might at some point make them independent from me. This means I have less absolute control over them and they only do as good as I can reasonably expect them to do, instead of working their ass of to get me more money without any advantage to themselves."

Dear employers, you pay your people $x to do at least <y> effort. If y => y' does not translate into $x => $x' in a predictable and fair manner, you have no cause for complaints.

Totally. One more to add to this list (for tech employees) - even if an employee writes awesome code at work, there is no way he/she can show it to future prospective employers, as it doesn't belong to them (at max, they can show their employer's website/product and say "I worked on this"). All this makes side projects very attractive

If your employees/co-founders have a side gig, it's a sign that your company isn't paying them enough and doesn't offer them enough opportunity. If you were truly a great company, they'd see that you really were the next $10-100B firm and they'd be doing 16x7+++. Or that you were such a huge branding exercise that without immediate equity prospect that the 16x7 was worth it for them.

Oh, your segment isn't that interesting? Oh you're actually probably not going to make payroll on Friday? Actually, your employees "side-gig" is called a lifeline: something to talk about in interviews that's rather more pleasant than your crash and burn and a project that has a rather longer life expectancy.

If you want your employees FULL attention, EARN IT.

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