Reddit CEO Says 'Idealism' Masked Poor Work Ethic in Company's Early Days (businessinsider.com) 68
Reddit's Steve Huffman isn't mincing words about what he found when he came back as CEO in 2015: a company full of idealists who weren't exactly killing themselves with hard work.
"We were really idealistic, and that's been good in many ways, but we were also idealistic about not being a business," Huffman said on the "Prof G Pod" podcast. "Wrapped up in some of that idealism was also not working very hard," he added.
Huffman sees this as a Silicon Valley disease: "It's almost an entitlement of, 'I work at these companies, but I don't have to work very hard and I'm here for myself.'"
"We were really idealistic, and that's been good in many ways, but we were also idealistic about not being a business," Huffman said on the "Prof G Pod" podcast. "Wrapped up in some of that idealism was also not working very hard," he added.
Huffman sees this as a Silicon Valley disease: "It's almost an entitlement of, 'I work at these companies, but I don't have to work very hard and I'm here for myself.'"
And it was better! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And it was better! (Score:4, Insightful)
It means that when there is crunch time for a release of a "product", in this case technical updates to an existing platform, you are expected to work after hours and be ready on a moment's notice to do some hardcore coding for extended periods, which can in fact be considered working hard.
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Why not do all that work on a regular schedule, instead of forcing it all into a last-minute "crunch time"?
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Why not do all that work on a regular schedule, instead of forcing it all into a last-minute "crunch time"?
Depends how literally you're asking this question. In a sense it's because, within current organizational, cultural, and economic constraints, this is the most efficient way to do things, but that's a truism.
Some of the factors:
Estimating projects is hard / inexact and software teams are almost always doing something that's "new" or "new to them" which makes it somewhat harder.
Most people tend to procrastinate and are motivated by deadlines (some real, some artificial and a lot of project management in p
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It means that when there is crunch time for a release of a "product", in this case technical updates to an existing platform, you are expected to work after hours and be ready on a moment's notice to do some hardcore coding for extended periods, which can in fact be considered working hard.
Say this to any junior investment banker, and watch them laugh in your face. Neither is right, staff your fucking companies properly, but coders aren't working hard if crunch time isn't all the time.
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In many cases, especially for game developers, crunch time *is* all the time; The industry is replete with stories of folks needing to work 60hr weeks or more for months on end.
And those coders would laugh right back at your junior investment bankers if you tell them they aren't working hard.
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right until the point the bankers showed them the paycheck.
ok to work if you are getting paid.
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Say this to any junior investment banker, ...
"junior" is important there. Def (some / many) i-banking associates work longer hours and for less pay than their classmates who did software eng at FAANG (or equivalent ) engineers but only for maybe 2 or 3 years. But after that, if they stay in it/ are retained, i-banking pay really goes up.
In tech, unless you get lucky w/ equity, things tend to top out a lot faster comp wise for most and the hours also don't get that much shorter. But still there's a huge
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t means that when there is crunch time for a release of a "product"...
"Crunch time" is usually a symptom of serious dysfunction.
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Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
don't forget that I cared not of the users and killed their 3rd party apps too so I could monetize everything.
But this isn't to be talked about, I am not the problem.
retention, churn (Score:1)
Re:retention, churn (Score:5, Insightful)
People love the stories where the CEO started in the mail room 30 years earlier. It doesn't really happen but it makes a great story.
Killing yourself for your company makes no sense in an era where the company offers no loyalty to employees. At this stage of capitalism, I think every workers needs to organize and protect themselves through collective action. And I don't think my view is all that extreme, it's a compromise in my opinion. We'll still have capitalism, and people can still own things.
But why should we accept that a contract between an individual and a multinational corporation is fair? And that one between a union and a corporation is unfair? We've been completely backwards for far too long. Negotiate from a position of strength, even if you have to do it collectively. Agreements made between parties that are on even footing are mutually beneficial. (a corporation is a kind of collective)
Not everything is a business or needs a CEO (Score:3)
You get to vote for your union governance, and members can run for office positions in most unions. It's democratic, unlike a corporation.
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I'd rather vote with my dollars.
Voting with your dollars is undemocratic. It creates a stratification of classes based on wealth, and the vast majority of citizens have little to no wealth. (income isn't wealth, a mortgage on your house isn't wealth). Realize that one person can afford $25 and another can afford $25 million [newsweek.com]. Should one person carry as much weight as a million others? That stinks of feudalism to me.
Your idea of using our buying power to decide things is an assumption that we all play by the same rules in the free market. W
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A lot of union leaders should be given the first class Hoffa treatment.
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Other than that- ya, totally the same thing.
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Well I think there's a whole lot of auto workers that have a new contract as of about a year ago where they're getting paid way better, and have better benefits due to collective bargaining. So please reconcile how those tens of thousands of workers have been "raped" by a "second CEO" exactly?
Or, just take your anti-union horseshit and shove it up your own ass where you pulled it out of. If corporations weren't run by greedy bastards that treat labor like a fungible resource, then maybe labor wouldn't hav
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People love the stories where the CEO started in the mail room 30 years earlier. It doesn't really happen but it makes a great story.
It happens all the time. There's a long history of companies either started by guys at the bottom, or run by guys that began their career at the entry level [businessinsider.com]. Wal Mart's CEO started off as a truck loader. GM's CEO started off on the assembly line. The guy running Planet Fitness started at the reception desk. Those are just the modern guys. In the past there are even more. Sidney Weinberg was a high school dropout that was hired as a janitor at Goldman Sachs. Twenty years later, he was running the company. He
Re:retention, churn (Score:4, Insightful)
First, most of those didn't work their way up through the company to do that. They happened to work a job at the company as a teen or to make beer money for college, then through happenstance ended up hired as an executive after graduation, possibly after working at other places after graduation. You're not going to see the mail room guy gets promoted to lead mail room guy, to mail room manager, etc all the way up to CEO very often.
Next, for every one of those cases, condensed into one neat dreamer article in a magazine, there's a few million others who worked just as hard as mail-room guy or similar and got the heave ho after the CEO gave a speech about a leaner more agile company and cashed in some inflated stock for a new yacht.
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First, most of those didn't work their way up through the company to do that. They happened to work a job at the company as a teen or to make beer money for college, then through happenstance ended up hired as an executive after graduation, possibly after working at other places after graduation. You're not going to see the mail room guy gets promoted to lead mail room guy, to mail room manager, etc all the way up to CEO very often.
Next, for every one of those cases, condensed into one neat dreamer article in a magazine, there's a few million others who worked just as hard as mail-room guy or similar and got the heave ho after the CEO gave a speech about a leaner more agile company and cashed in some inflated stock for a new yacht.
Yep, for every "mail room" CEO there's millions of mail room workers who die mail room workers.
The problem is, the "mail room" CEO didn't get there through hard work and a "can do" attitude... he got promoted by smooozing and brown nosing his way into higher and higher positions... most often off the back of the hard work of others. Most CEOs are promoted because they cultivated enough contacts to be appointed to a board... not via hard work.
The rags to riches stories are just there for suckers who ar
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The heart warming tale of a Wal Mart CEO. Just work a summer job unloading trucks in high school, then go to college, get an MBA. Then with your MBA, make some calls and get a job of an assistant manager, and you just walk right up the corporate ladder from the bottom. Well from the middle.
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>But why should we accept that a contract between an individual and a multinational corporation is fair? And that one between a union and a corporation is unfair?
Because we've seen the game play out with unions before. It isn't year zero, you know.
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It doesn't work that way for the blue collar set either. Overworked people get less done and make mistakes that cost more than the extra time-served ever gains you. It doesn't matter whether the mistake is forgetting to check a corner case in your online shitposting website code or dropping an artillery shell.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/a... [bbc.com]
Oh no... (Score:5, Insightful)
But they are there for themselves. (Score:5, Insightful)
The companies do not follow the golden rule, so why should the employees? The job of the employer is to get as much "production" out of the employee as cheaply as possible. Why should the job of the employee not be the same? To get as much money from the employer while working as little as possible?
Remember folks: The employer does not care about you.
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Re:But they are there for themselves. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just a look into how businesses report things. This sort of unnuanced messaging might be comforting for shareholders because it seems like a simple problem to solve.
Productivity not at the pace you want? It's not the fault of our business model, project planning, etc. -- the worker bees are just lazy and we need to fix their entitled work ethic.
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Remember folks: demand equity, so you are the employer too!
What a shit head (Score:5, Interesting)
Now Do Yourself (Score:3)
probably worked only 9 hour days (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, CEO's that make millions and have bonuses that are 10x their salary expect people to work 12 hour days, 6 day a week for 5 figure salaries that have no overtime. After all, they do that, so why shouldn't everyone else.
The fact that a CEO says his employees had no work ethic says more about the CEO than it does about the employees.
Work is a trade. I give you work in exchange for money. If you do not think I work hard enough that almost always means you do not pay me enough money.
Anyone that does not understand this trade is not a capitalist. They might be a communist, an oligarch, a fascist, or some other idealogue, but not a capitalist.
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Anyone that does not understand this trade is not a capitalist. They might be a communist, an oligarch, a fascist, or some other idealogue, but not a capitalist.
Anyone who does not have investment capital is not a capitalist. They might be a worker, a victim, a prisoner, or some other unfortunate, but not a capitalist.
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Re: probably worked only 9 hour days (Score:2)
Depends, what if you're forced to have the pension plan and don't have any say over how it's invested?
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I've got PERS and they're invested in all kinds of shit I wouldn't, I have no choice about having it, and it doesn't even vest for five years assuming it survives.
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I wish you the best of luck with that.
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No, that kind of crap is why CEOs act like the poor are greedy bastards. Do not confuse a philosophy for the people most likely to have it.
Capitalism is an economic philosophy, not the state of having capital. If you believe in the philosophy you are a capitalist, regardless of how much money you have. You can be a broke capitalist, you can be a wealthy and be a communist.
Mostly it depends on whether you think people should have the freedom to make money or not. That is the true heart of capitalism.
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In my experience, CEO's that make millions and have bonuses that are 10x their salary expect people to work 12 hour days, 6 day a week for 5 figure salaries that have no overtime. After all, they do that, so why shouldn't everyone else.
I would generally agree, except for the part where the CEO is actually working 12 hours a day 6 days a week themselves. I mean, there's the CEOs that work 12 hour days, but 8 hours of that are spent at the golf course where they're "working" by answering a cell phone now and then. More than that though, I think a lot of these guys do actually work hardcore hours some of the time, but a lot of their self-image regarding work is like the guy who sits around on the couch with a huge beer belly, but still think
ceo chimo (Score:4, Insightful)
Huffman’s salary was raised to $550,000 with the bulk of his $193 million compensation package tied to stock.
“They did this to simplify things for both the company and me and align my performance with the company’s performance,” Huffman explained.
This entitled moron wants you to believe he did 1290X the work of a salaried employee at 150k.
Re: ceo chimo (Score:2)
Apostrophe.
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This entitled moron wants you to believe he did 1290X the work of a salaried employee at 150k.
That's not how pay works except on an assembly line.
Re: ceo chimo (Score:2)
IIRC, Huffman was a moderator on the jailbait subreddit. So your assessment isn't wrong.
Re: ceo chimo (Score:2)
If Aaron Schwartz was still alive spez would have to kill him.
It depends.... (Score:2)
Like someone else posted here, the salary has a lot to do with things. I'd agree Reddit should maybe "go back to the old days", except it's a fair complaint if your staff was all well-compensated and yet not getting much done out of arrogance they were "irreplaceable" or entitled to the money because of where they worked.
The idea you're going to start a company and then deny it's really a company? That's just foolish idealism.
At the end of the day, you either have a business entity or a non-profit / charity
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it's a fair complaint if your staff was all well-compensated and yet not getting much done
They built one of the most popular sites on the interwebs, which the person who's telling us how lazy they were is ruining. Therefore it's not a fair complaint and he can get bent.
Workers = Resources (Score:1)
One project I was on, the planner died (heart attack) leaving site. We were working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week. They had a new planner 10 days later.
On another project, a company called me asking if I'd like a job on a different project. Less than 2 hours later, national news announced the death of 2 engineers in an explosion. HR had called me to replace a guy who was literally still smouldering.
Not working hard e
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shareholders' boats don't magically polish themselves.
They might... and if not, they're probably not far from it. These people aren't idiots. Every wage slave you get near you can just as easily cut your head off.
Nobody cares (Score:2)
Reddit has had 3 major stages:
1: Hidden gem, imperfect, mostly unprofitable, driven by people who care
2: Liberal rabbit-hole, still unprofitable, but much better at censorship
3: Corporate, liberal rabbit-hole. Most interesting people left long ago.
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Now I'm talking about administration actions and site bans, but when it comes to subs intensely hostile t
Good for you, Steve (Score:2)
Wait... why weren't they working hard? (Score:2)
Idealism doesn't make people work less hard. Lots of idealistic people kill themselves to get work done.
"He recalled telling employees: "Look, we have to work really, really hard. We're in a competitive space.""
Working really hard doesn't equate to making money. You can work yourself to death and still fail.
"The CEO said that he, too, didn't like being rushed as an engineer but that setting realistic deadlines was part of his maturation as a leader."
You know what else is a part of mature leadership? Inspiri
Good work ethics now but (Score:2)
Ummmm....yeah. (Score:3)
> "It's almost an entitlement of, 'I work at these companies, but I don't have to work very hard and I'm here for myself.'"
You have to be shitting me.
Can he be any more out of touch?
Of COURSE they're there for themselves. That's the ENTIRE definition of a JOB. To MAKE MONEY.
And if he's concerned about morale, telling them they shouldn't want money, while cashing in immensely (OFF THEIR WORK) is fucking lunacy.
And he's the goddam entitled one, just saying this.
What a fucking maroon.
CEOs like this can kindly all fuck the hell off.
Why you work (Score:2)
If you are very lucky, you make enough to get by in your chosen life and enjoy your work. Some people enjoy what they do enough that they'll go above and beyond what they're paid for just because they want to. I've been like that about one or two projects.
1) Never underestimate the value of loving your work
2) Never imagine that you owe your employer one more drop of sweat than you are contractually bound to give.
3) It's OK to go beyond your contract to demonstrate you're worth a raise or promotion, but do