Carnival Cash: The Cult of Seniority
daedtech.com
daedtech.com
It is apparent from Erik's response to recruiters[2] that he approaches work in a somewhat mercenary way. And while that can work it sets a tone for your relationship with the people in the company that does not work to your advantage, and can sometimes be a handicap down the road as you re-encounter people with whom you have previously worked.
Companies are communities of people. Communities have norms and values and expectations. It is always uncomfortable when you don't fit in with the community, and some people are better at "finding their people" than others are. I can say though that when you and the community "click" for what ever set of reasons, it can be a wonderful thing indeed, and a real sense of loss when you lose it.
[1] One of my early friends at Intel is still there 30 years later, and the same with folks at Sun I knew who are now with Oracle as part of that acquisition.
[2] From the comment section Erik wrote:
This is particularly valuable when talking to labor
salesmen (i.e. recruiters).
"They have a pool table!"
"Don't care, what's the pay?"
"$X"
"Not enough money."
"But, they have a pool table, and everyone there will be
your dudebro and they'll even add rockstar to your
title!"
"Don't care, not enough money. Call me back if the
offer changes."I'm all for working hard and leaving a position with everyone feeling like I made a difference, and I'm still close friends with many of my former colleagues and bosses. But at the end of the day my compensation for doing work others want done is my salary and the cash value of the provided benefits.
The cash value of a pool table in the break room is essentially $0, and a recruiter pretending it's not is trying to pull a fast one.
> Wanting good pay instead of meaningless breakroom
> toys makes you a "mercenary?"
My view is that it's best to establish at the beginning if you're in the right ballpark to avoid wasting people's time.
> When do you think is the best time to bring up
> compensation then?
Generally, if you are taking a full time job somewhere it will have four things you want to consider, "hours spent working on it", "location(s) where you will be working", "environment in which you will be working", and "monetary remuneration, including bonus opportunities".
Lets walk through them:
1) hours spent -- Some jobs require a lot of your time to do effectively, some can be essentially automated/supervised into a modest time commitment. If you are someone who values doing things outside of work that might be very valuable to you, if you are someone who values what you do at work, it might be a negative.
2) location(s) -- This is where you will be spending your time while working. It could be the middle of a cubicle farm, far away from a window, and it could be in the back seat of new fighter jets working with avionics. Depending on how much energy you get from variety (or how drained you get from moving around) that might be a good thing or a bad thing.
3) environment -- Generally you spend a lot of time at work relative to say "home" so what is available there to make that more comfortable, whether it be nap chairs, a lounge with pinball machines and a pool table, a well stocked library, or a cafe, has an impact on how "hard" it is to work there. Where hard in this context is defined as pushing yourself to do something you would rather not be doing given any choice of your time.
4) and money -- which is, at least for me, somewhat secondary in terms of how much I "like" or "dislike" my job. It is very important to me that I can share economically in delivering something excellent, it is less important how much over my baseline minimum you pay. But there is a baseline.
There is a fifth consideration, which is my own personal path of learning. So for example when I was at Intel and interviewed at Sun Microsystems I had the choice of working in the kernel group (very technical) or being what was essentially a technical marketing engineer. I initially chose the latter because my goal was to be able to start and run companies in the future, and to do that I had to know what marketing really did, the best way to learn that was to embed myself in a group that was known to do good marketing. And about a year and a half later, after learning what I needed to know, I transferred over to the kernel group and worked there which was much more in my comfort zone.
So in any conversation I have about a half dozen variables I'm evaluating in terms of what to do next. Monetary compensation is one of those variables but by no means the most significant. So in my own method I try to get a handle on the other three bits and they help define what level of monetary compensation I would need to stay, it could be quite small.
For example, if Elon called me up and offered me a job at SpaceX for half my current salary, I would still be inclined to take it because its an area I'm fascinated by, I have always wanted to be part of a private space firm (way back in the DC-X and RotaryRocket days) and I would learn a ton of stuff. So the 'monetary' compensation discussion would be biased toward saying 'yes' rather than 'no'.
In contrast I have had folks at trading firms offer to literally double my salary and move me and my family to New York and I've turned them down because I know I wouldn't be happy doing that for any amount of money. So in that regard the money conversation is irrelevant.
Bottom line, all of those factors are considered "compensation" by me, not just money. For mercenaries it is just about the money and nothing else.
"How many meetings do people in this position usually take a week?"
"Maybe 20, but it varies."
"That's not good, the interview process should end here -- but tell me if or when you have an environment that is more in line with what I am looking for."
You see how the same problem seems to appear? Unless your critique isn't what I am imagining, pay-first isn't the issue, it's that you think it's a violation of standard norms in hiring situations to have hard requirements, and to bluntly communicate when something is not a good fit. I think you will find that hiring managers do not share this opinion of correct behavior.
When you get the answer "maybe 20, it varies" rather than end the interview, understand the environment. So I'm going to assume that going to meetings for you is something you don't like to do (and I can certainly understand that, worthless meetings are worthless) But in this same stream of questions my next one after 20 would be "How many of those meetings are run by the person in this position?" If the previous person in that position was calling 15 meetings a week it would credible to ask if the job required them to do that (and if so why) or if it was simply their preferred way of operating? If you are leading/managing a project with a fairly large scope you may find it easier to have a short meeting with the sub-project groups than read imr emails each week, where i, m, and r are issues, members, and replies. But if its a small company and the previous person just wanted to have meetings with everyone to feel useful, that might not be your style either. If there are 20 people/groups that want the person in this position to be at their meeting then its a valid question of how you might want to scale that position in a way that doesn't involve meetings.
Money is a "score" and number of meeting are a "task". Mercenaries go for a big score and don't care about the tasks needed to get there. There isn't anything wrong about being a mercenary, it is just another community of people.
Some people value the work they do, or the work their company does. Some people value their teams and the people they work with on a daily basis. Some people value working in a nice space, or their own spaces. Some people would like to look back at 65 at what they have built, rather than what they have earned, not really caring that they may have earned 20% less.
I do agree that chasing seniority for title only can be a fools errand. A higher title can be a substitute for self-esteem issues, but on the other hand, it can also lead to higher pay scales.
Also, I've known companies to reward those "corporate idealists" with more than just carnival tickets.... If your company doesn't reward putting in the occasional extra hour and seeing things through to completion, it's a bad company to work for.
Who says social comparison (discarded by this article as "carnival tickets") plays no role in satisfaction? Research shows that making more than peers is a better predictor of happiness than absolute income (http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/handle/10016/15313/happin...)
Great article.
This is what I don't like about articles like this. It provides a language to put down and dehumanize others without offering anything positive.
29y/o CEO? Sociopath.
Coworker that's been promoted ahead of me? Idealist, just mere token seniority.
I'll earn more money than him by job hopping a few times anyways.
If you get a reputation for being checked out, it gets hard for you. There are plenty of people who check out without getting a reputation, and who do just fine.
If you stop showing up for standup and you're not a top performer, you get in trouble. (You may even get in trouble if you are a top performer for "setting a bad example".) If you know how to make it look like you're a middling performer while you're actually doing very little, you can get away with it for a few years, which is long enough to figure out what you really want to do.
Checked-out-ness, I'd guess, is more often a transient state than the notion is given credit. Strategic slacking while you figure out what you really want to do, network internally to find transfer options and future leads/co-founders, and build skills that are relevant to the next job if not the current one, is a necessary career-planning skill. You may not be able to carry it on for 5 years, but no one intends to.
If you've been at a job for less than 4 years or held your current title for less than 1, it can make sense to stick around if you're checked out, for the sake of your CV. If neither applies, you're best to get out. You don't want to be a job hopper, but if you're 3-4 years in, then you don't really get more gain from a longer stay and slacking (beyond a few months to recharge) makes no sense from a career perspective; you should just move on.
Also, I've gotten into detail about this in my Gervais/MacLeod Series (starting here: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-prin... ). Companies tend to oscillate between rank cultures and tough cultures. A rank culture is one where subordinacy is all that matters; don't piss off your boss, don't create the appearance of slacking (which will cause problems for your boss) and you'll be fine. Rank cultures tend to decay, and then the company has to bring in HR brownshirts who impose stack ranking and calibration curves and the like. That's not stable, though, and the people who figure out the system and can extend protection become the new holders of rank and, they, like their predecessors, care more about loyalty than individual performance. So you get a new rank culture after a couple years.
If you've got 4 years in, there's no good reason to stay post check-out unless you absolutely can't find something better.
However, the job hopper stigma can start to rape you in the ass if you have too many short jobs. Let's say that you take a new job and things are going well, but you're demoted at the 6-month mark. After you're demoted or passed over, there's really no good reason to put in high levels of effort. In an ideal world, people could just leave whenever that happened. In the real world, it can catch up with you.
If you don't have any short-term jobs, you can probably start looking, because one short job isn't that bad. If your last two jobs were under a year, you should probably phone it in, do the minimum for a while, and get a 2- or 3-year job on your CV before you move along.
So ask yourself: how do bloggers that rant about such companies get this wisdom?
It's always the people that play the game and fail that loudly blame the game.
I remember having a conversation with a relatively new programmer who was ranting they were "fed up with all the political BS and just wanted to write code and be left alone." That is a sentiment I completely resonate with, but in this case the "political BS" was folks trying to help this person become more effective in the organization.
What was impairing their efficiency was that this individual wrote code in a vacuum. people trying to integrate with it were frustrated when this developer decides on Friday night that they don't like how they structured the APIs with an opaque handle and convert everything into a callbacks which appears as the new API to the rest of the organization on Monday. It wasn't "political BS" that was causing these folks to be angry with this individual, it was that this individual was actively making their job harder than needed.
But when it became clear that more people where being hindered than helped, I was asked to step in and see if I could help this person see what the real issues were. I was only 50% effective, they understood the issue but decided to leave rather than slow down to listen to the needs of the other engineers. To this day they assert they were 'forced out' but nothing could be further from the truth.
Off-topic rant: For the love of God, will everyone please STOP with the use of they as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. History shows us a better way: Decades ago, feminists coined the term Ms., which has all but totally replaced the old-fashioned Miss and Mrs. Those concerned with gender neutrality should do likewise, instead of inflicting ambiguity and inaccuracy on the rest of us by (mis)using they.
</rant>
Since that time, I've paid more attention to whether or not I can share an example at all given how easily the Internet allows one to deduce such things. Not surprisingly, the Internet doesn't like obviously fictionalized examples either so it limits my sharing to things about me and things which I can make reasonably opaque.
That's certainly a valid concern. Another approach would be simply to keep repeating "the person" instead of they, as in: I was asked to ... see if I could help this person .... the person understood the issue but decided to leave .... To this day the person claims to have been 'forced out' .... That's a bit jarring, granted, but at least it doesn't promote linguistic abomination <g>.
On a related note, I was recently at a church service where the prayers had been changed to eliminate any pronoun for God. EXAMPLE adapted from Psalm 103: Bless the LORD, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless God's [vice His] holy name.
But disapproved by most style guides, school English teachers, etc., because it's inaccurate.
Imagine that your doctor wanted to bleed you to cure an infection, on grounds that bloodletting was accepted medical practice in Jane Austen's day. [1]
(This is also a reply to Thomas's up-thread shoot-at-the-king comment, which has no Reply link for me.)
I cite Jane Austen here not so much because her English was seen as exemplary in her time, but because we widely hold her as a premier role model today.
Not according to Stephen Pinker, who I believe is considerably more authoritative than either of us when it comes to grammar and etymology.
The singular you is seldom used as such in written language intended to be read by numerous others, so it's far less likely to be jarring or to cause confusion.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.h...
(I'll stop now; we've hit diminishing returns.)
People may not have noticed that at the time, but we do now for obvious reasons, which is why singular they has made a comeback, not that it ever went away. It's just idiomatic English reasserting itself. Soon we'll forget it was controversial.
It's not progress to revert to a previously-fixed inaccuracy solely because of changing tastes. We wouldn't admire it in programming unless it were clearly necessary, or at least a useful kluge on balance. Here, it's neither.
The better approach would be to coin another word, along the lines of Ms. vice Miss and Mrs., as I suggested above. Quoting Wikipedia: "For example, abbreviated pronouns have been proposed: 'e (for he or she) or 's (for his/hers); h' (for him/her in object case); "zhe" (also "ze"), "zher(s)" (also "zer" or "zir"), "shi"/"hir", and "zhim" (also "mer") for "he or she", "his or her(s)", and "him or her", respectively; 'self (for himself/herself); and hu, hus, hum, humself (for s/he, his/hers, him/her, himself/herself). [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...
As a programmer, I'd want an office just to have some space where I can get work done. That's not because I'm a true believer or a corporate man. It's entirely selfish: my career will be better if I succeed than if I fail, and these terrible open-plan offices do enough damage to day-to-day performance that I'd rather not be in one. Though I'm a Sociopath/opportunist I generally find that it's usually in my interest to work hard, do my best, and play fair. In a conflict, I'll favor my interests above almost anyone else's, but I also avoid such conflicts as much as I can.
Other than that, I think that the carnival cash metaphor is spot-on. Moreover, I think the spawning issue (i.e. that sociopaths/opportunists don't usually start at the top) is worth note in technology because it's such a young industry. The age discrimination and the Scrum nonsense are all about creating a permanent culture of the clueless/idealist mindset-- at all levels. The VC-funded ecosystem is one where the Sociopaths get to play multiple companies (as investors, advisors, and executives placed into successful companies after the fact) and the checked-out MacLeod Losers (pragmatists) are shut out by the time they wise up. The goal is to produce monochromatically Clueless/idealist companies that the Sociopaths/opportunists in VC can manage from a distance and discard if they become inconvenient.