You're Hired (And Fired) - The Future Of Work | Hacker News Reader

You're Hired (And Fired) - The Future Of Work

futureofwork.glider.com

6 pointsjmartens6 comments

Uh, how about having an open conversation between employer and employee on how to foster the employee's growth within the company?

I've only worked for a few companies, but when I was hired as a full time employee, there was no expectation I'd be doing the same job forever. If anything, there was an expectation that I'd grow in role and responsibility.

Now, being a contractor is different--in that case you typically are hired to perform specific duties, and if the duties change, the contract should be updated to reflect that.

Some of the other issues I can see from following Rick's approach): * short termism, especially as you get to the end of your working period * loss of good people as they move on after you fire them * workforce ridigity ("I wasn't hired for that")

In short, I appreciate the provocative nature of the post, but see some real fundamental problems in his solution.

It seems like many posts could be boiled down to that simple attitude: why not talk about it? If you're unhappy in your position with your employer, or vice versa, start a dialog to try to change things. Don't allow yourself to hate your work, or start slipping in quality, if you don't have to.

Having an open dialog with management could allow you to change positions, roles, or, if necessary, leave the company for another.

Totally agree. And I'll try to write some stuff about facilitating that communication in future posts.

I didn't mean to come off like a cranky passive aggressive ass. I mean, I am. I just didn't mean to come off that way ;)

This was just a hack at providing some definitive timelines to an often nebulous arrangement.

Totally agree that it's a very rough concept. And that it's full of flaws. But I hope that it's a bad idea that gets people thinking about better ones.

And it wasn't really coming from a place of a negative view of an employer. I'm sorry if it came off that way. I was more of the mind that it gave a target for employees as to determine "how much good can I do here before my time is up?"

The problem with this is that then there is no institutional memory. Many student groups in colleges (at least at my college) fight the same problems in a recurring cycle every 4 years, because no one remembers why it didn't work out last time - the groups that avoid this are the ones that maintain connections with alumni or have a stable mentor. And this is for small groups that know each other well. If you had a corporation with 100s of people, it couldn't hold itself together with 25-30% annual employee turnover.

This articles mentality only really works if you are being hired to do a specific project, as an independent contractor, in the context of a larger team. Its also better for young people whose skill set is changing rapidly and may become better suited to different positions more quickly, as opposed to someone who has years of domain expertise and needs stability.

My question about this is: Have we reached a point where "institutional memory" is more of a liability than a benefit? I often wonder about this. "That's the way we've always done it," "We tried that before," or "That's not how we do things here," are all institutional memories that hamstring innovation.

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