We are about to grow our tech team at Urban Connect. But as a person responsible for it I refuse to take it lightly. We could just go out there, post our position description, put some price tag on it and start interviewing people. With reasonable amount of money and clear expectations we would definitely succeeded. However, I think that there is much more in it what we should communicate to the world clearly in order to get it done right.
Hiring is a long term game for me and side effects of our choices done on that stage will have an effect on our future as a company in 5-10 years from now. Our current decisions will determine if we are going to survive and prosper in the future. If you think about it, success of such great companies as Netflix, Apple or Tesla was not built by recent hires. This is a result of a hand picking done much-much earlier on a timeline. People, who joined the team years ago are actually in charge of what happened recently. And those who joined recently will demonstrate their results delivered only in the future. There is a "healthy lifestyle" vibe in it. One eat some shit in twenties - and reap the result in thirties and forties. You stick to hard every day exercises from early on - good, the payback from your body is scheduled in 30 years.
For a long time programming is considered to be a very much "hiring" market. There are not so many programmers around. There are even less of them who can actually do something good. This is a big problem even when you need to hire only a few people. Imagine how desperate it looks at huge scale? And the strategy here was to chase every single one of those golden unicorns and make them happy at all cost. And we have seen it all! Salaries rocketed up into the sky. Free food, free drinks, unlimited vacations. Bring it all here and give them more!
And nothing has changed recently.
But what if I say you that there is something job market could offer which beats all possible monetary and non-monetary compensations by far?
Work is what you do around 8 hours a day. Assuming that one has a good habit of sleeping at least 8 hours, - which I would personally strictly recommend, - it leaves an average person with only another 8 hours a day for everything else: family, traveling, reading, wondering around, whatever. That's quite a big chunk of a human life, no? Multiply it by years and it becomes clear: work takes one third of your total life span. In other words, math says that 90 years old person spent around 30 years working. Quite scary math if you think about it. But what do we do with that fact?
One answer could be that you don't want to work or you would like to minimize amount of time working and trade it for the maximum amount of money. Well, reasonable. But let's say you take work off the table at all. What would you do with those 8 hours a day? One could think it is easy to enjoy life without work, but actually it makes you empty very-very fast. Same way as doing useless job for 8 hours takes away pleasure of other 16 hours you have outside of it. Simple math doesn't reflect human's physiology: we have to do something meaningful to be a happy human being.
So, the big missing thing here is called "meaning". And I would also add "results". Because even just physically speaking we can get our dopamine only once result is achieved. Doing something for the sake of doing never made anyone feel better. You can find in a history quite some examples of people who spent their life chasing some goals just to die a few years or even months before that goal was achieved by someone else. This is a honorable way to spend your days, no doubt here. Yet it is very sad to read such stories.
Taking into account that meaningful work is so important we can make a conclusion that working in a company which actually does something interesting and have some impact is a huge benefit and a privilege.
Realizing those trade offs early in my career made my choices much simpler and my life much better. I could always easily trade a lot of things for having meaning and actually achieving my goals. Convincing others meanwhile was always a problem. You know, to build something you need a good team. But it turned out that people prefer to run for status and big pay checks early on just to hit this wall of internal emptiness later on. Which in a way was quite optimistic in the same moment all way long. If you know this is a matter of time then you just need to wait long enough. It doesn't make sense to stop eating well or exercising every day if others won't do that, right? Patience and persistence are you best friends when it comes to life long decisions. And now it turns out I'm finally in the position to get some leverage from my early bets. Quite satisfying feeling to be honest 😅
Well, going back to a hiring question...
So far we managed to build an organization which can actually deliver the results. Through all problems and pain we manually hand picked people who are capable of making things happen. It not always was a pleasure, of course. We made mistakes. We struggled. We suffered. But all of it was a part of the deal. Every next step made us better in what we do. Personal and professional growth was behind every corner for us. Whatever problem we solved in our team it made us better or life of many people around easier. We made it work so far. Yay, only sky is a limit now! Gosh, we just got a good deal for our new office in the biggest and fanciest place of Zurich! And we have planned things to do for a team of 2-3x amount of people to what we have at the moment!
In other words, now we are on a critical stage where it would be easy to trade this meaningful work we have done so far for money or status in the future, as others do. And, as far as I can see, not so many teams managed to get through this challenge and solve this puzzle. There is only small amount of companies we could directly learn from. Most of the market is all fake, smoke and mirrors. In the moment of weakness, doubt or excitement it'll be easy to misstep. Every choice is important. Now probably more than ever.
We won't take it lightly.
We won't play it safely.
We won't make this process meaningless.
We won't trade quality for quantity.
We won't exchange impact for status.
We won't tolerate our own weaknesses.
We won't fake it. We will make it.
We will make it up and running.
We will grow it and we will improve it.
We will stay true to ourselves.
Working with us is a chance, a privilege and an opportunity.
It is true.
Or we will make it so.
Hiring is a long term game for me and side effects of our choices done on that stage will have an effect on our future as a company in 5-10 years from now. Our current decisions will determine if we are going to survive and prosper in the future. If you think about it, success of such great companies as Netflix, Apple or Tesla was not built by recent hires. This is a result of a hand picking done much-much earlier on a timeline. People, who joined the team years ago are actually in charge of what happened recently. And those who joined recently will demonstrate their results delivered only in the future. There is a "healthy lifestyle" vibe in it. One eat some shit in twenties - and reap the result in thirties and forties. You stick to hard every day exercises from early on - good, the payback from your body is scheduled in 30 years.
For a long time programming is considered to be a very much "hiring" market. There are not so many programmers around. There are even less of them who can actually do something good. This is a big problem even when you need to hire only a few people. Imagine how desperate it looks at huge scale? And the strategy here was to chase every single one of those golden unicorns and make them happy at all cost. And we have seen it all! Salaries rocketed up into the sky. Free food, free drinks, unlimited vacations. Bring it all here and give them more!
And nothing has changed recently.
But what if I say you that there is something job market could offer which beats all possible monetary and non-monetary compensations by far?
Work is what you do around 8 hours a day. Assuming that one has a good habit of sleeping at least 8 hours, - which I would personally strictly recommend, - it leaves an average person with only another 8 hours a day for everything else: family, traveling, reading, wondering around, whatever. That's quite a big chunk of a human life, no? Multiply it by years and it becomes clear: work takes one third of your total life span. In other words, math says that 90 years old person spent around 30 years working. Quite scary math if you think about it. But what do we do with that fact?
One answer could be that you don't want to work or you would like to minimize amount of time working and trade it for the maximum amount of money. Well, reasonable. But let's say you take work off the table at all. What would you do with those 8 hours a day? One could think it is easy to enjoy life without work, but actually it makes you empty very-very fast. Same way as doing useless job for 8 hours takes away pleasure of other 16 hours you have outside of it. Simple math doesn't reflect human's physiology: we have to do something meaningful to be a happy human being.
So, the big missing thing here is called "meaning". And I would also add "results". Because even just physically speaking we can get our dopamine only once result is achieved. Doing something for the sake of doing never made anyone feel better. You can find in a history quite some examples of people who spent their life chasing some goals just to die a few years or even months before that goal was achieved by someone else. This is a honorable way to spend your days, no doubt here. Yet it is very sad to read such stories.
Taking into account that meaningful work is so important we can make a conclusion that working in a company which actually does something interesting and have some impact is a huge benefit and a privilege.
Realizing those trade offs early in my career made my choices much simpler and my life much better. I could always easily trade a lot of things for having meaning and actually achieving my goals. Convincing others meanwhile was always a problem. You know, to build something you need a good team. But it turned out that people prefer to run for status and big pay checks early on just to hit this wall of internal emptiness later on. Which in a way was quite optimistic in the same moment all way long. If you know this is a matter of time then you just need to wait long enough. It doesn't make sense to stop eating well or exercising every day if others won't do that, right? Patience and persistence are you best friends when it comes to life long decisions. And now it turns out I'm finally in the position to get some leverage from my early bets. Quite satisfying feeling to be honest 😅
Well, going back to a hiring question...
So far we managed to build an organization which can actually deliver the results. Through all problems and pain we manually hand picked people who are capable of making things happen. It not always was a pleasure, of course. We made mistakes. We struggled. We suffered. But all of it was a part of the deal. Every next step made us better in what we do. Personal and professional growth was behind every corner for us. Whatever problem we solved in our team it made us better or life of many people around easier. We made it work so far. Yay, only sky is a limit now! Gosh, we just got a good deal for our new office in the biggest and fanciest place of Zurich! And we have planned things to do for a team of 2-3x amount of people to what we have at the moment!
In other words, now we are on a critical stage where it would be easy to trade this meaningful work we have done so far for money or status in the future, as others do. And, as far as I can see, not so many teams managed to get through this challenge and solve this puzzle. There is only small amount of companies we could directly learn from. Most of the market is all fake, smoke and mirrors. In the moment of weakness, doubt or excitement it'll be easy to misstep. Every choice is important. Now probably more than ever.
We won't take it lightly.
We won't play it safely.
We won't make this process meaningless.
We won't trade quality for quantity.
We won't exchange impact for status.
We won't tolerate our own weaknesses.
We won't fake it. We will make it.
We will make it up and running.
We will grow it and we will improve it.
We will stay true to ourselves.
Working with us is a chance, a privilege and an opportunity.
It is true.
Or we will make it so.