Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Jobs at elite firms

Work Policies May Be Kinder, but Brutal Competition Isn’t
By NOAM SCHEIBER
New York Times
AUG. 17, 2015
These firms do have many high-IQ employees, but only some gifted people will want to work in them. The long article on Amazon is Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace . Competition to get into elite colleges also causes some aspirants to study and participate in ECs for long hours. The elite firms that prefer students from elite schools are choosing young people who have excelled in prior competitions. I don't think the competition is zero-sum. Amazon, for example, may be a tough place to work, but its employees have created much value for consumers.

Yes, one workplace termed this deep need for competition "work hard, play hard".

I read the NY Times article about Amazon when it first came out. I also read the highly predictable comments, which almost uniformly condemned Amazon. It is very likely that Amazon is a horrible place to work, for most people. But part of me thinks it might be a great place to work for some people, particularly the knowledge workers there, as opposed to the warehouse workers.

Amazon sounds like some of the startups I worked in--an intense and highly focused work atmosphere where laggards are quickly thrown out. If you have a good management team, the employees that remain are mostly quite smart and hard working, and the productivity is very high. In the right company, the opportunities for advancement are incredible. I was in one such startup in my mid-20s, and I was in charge of designing some of the world's largest computer networks simply because we were growing so fast that there was nobody else to do the job.

People who have never worked in such a fast growth atmosphere simply don't understand the incredible high you can get from the intense work. And when you go home, you go home happy. I don't remember anybody getting divorced for example. The right startup environment is like an addictive drug that startup people go back to again and again, typically until they reach their 40s and naturally slow down a bit.

This startup mentality also typically goes away once the company gets beyond a few thousand people. Only a few companies seem to manage to keep it after growing much bigger.

As a follow-up to the Amazon article, the NY Times public editor, Margaret Sullivan, has criticized the Amazon article for several possible flaws:

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/was-portrayal-of-amazons-brutal-workplace-on-target

There was a comment to this article that also resonated with what I wrote above:

"Recent Hire Seattle"'s perspective is based on a short term view of "a few months" employment and may be different than a long term, careerist view of 5+ years.

Based on her shared observations/experiences of "colleagues... never too busy to help me; manager... incredibly flexible with respect to my work schedule... open and responsive when I’ve brought up issues pertaining to race and gender in the workplace", this individual may not yet have experienced competition in the workplace. Competition can call for great sacrifice of personal time and private life. For example, she may not have had vacations cancelled, missed weddings/funerals/birthdays/kids' games and recitals... or been required to stay at the office and work 48-hours straight through to resolve a disaster-recovery issue.

Over time, some individuals may find a measure of challenge, reward, and exhilaration from pursuits in their free time outside of work, such as start-ups, vacations, travel, friends, family, and volunteer causes (paying it forward and/or giving back). There may be something to be said for balance in one's life.

Often in life we get to choose our competitions... as well as the option to sometimes forego competition in favor of collaboration.

Well, I never ran into any of those issues you mentioned, at any of the four startups that I worked in. Once I was forced to miss a class I was taking to help with a sales call, and my boss took the salesperson to task for it. It never happened again.

You make it sound like it is one or the other. Just like people have different levels of intelligence, people also have different levels of energy. In my younger days, I could easily do 60 hours a week of productive work and still have plenty of energy and time left for outside activities. But more than that and my productivity and happiness went down rapidly. The good managers I had understood this. When I had bad ones, I stopped working for them.

Point well taken. Anecdotes will vary. Readers may benefit from success stories of different kinds.

I have a friend who worked at Amazon at a high level for some time and she felt the portrayal was on target. She left the company with a lot of money but many bitter feelings.

Exactly. On one hand, the world needs all kinds of people with various strengths, skills, and talents. On the other hand, what a person is drawn to at one phase of their life may be different than what they seek at another time. As in choosing schools, extracurriculars, colleges, etc, it is about assessing the right "fit".

A few comments coming from person living in the heart (brain?) of Silicon Valley. I've worked at big law firms, a couple start-ups and am now at a huge tech company. And these comments have some broad generalizations not intended to excuse some notably bad behavior by SV execs:

1. The start-up culture, and its translation into a quasi start-up mentality in big tech companies, arose from small groups of individuals who worked ridiculous long hours for minimal to no pay because they wanted to - no HAD to. Most of these guys (yes - almost all guys) are grown-up versions of our own kids - intense, driven and most of all perseverative to the nth degree. You already know what this looks like. Your kid will fall down stairs because she's reading while walking, right? Your kid won't eat, sleep or even go to the bathroom until they absolutely have to. These are the "kids" that are at the base of the startup culture.

It makes no sense to them that their colleagues aren't likewise perseverative. They have "no-limit-on-vacation" policies, because who the heck wants a vacation anyway? In another time and place, they'd be scientists who never make it home from the lab, or writers who can't put down their pens. It's not that they don't love their families, their hobbies, etc. It's just that they honestly can't put down their work.

And competitive? You bet. But mostly not out of an "I'm better than you" thing. Remember - in the start-up culture, most folks are getting minimal pay/promotions anyway. It's about a gut level need to make it right. The merit goes to the one who solves the problems. And that person is the one that finally gets to scratch his brain itch.

And yes - the press has made much of the get glittering possibilities ($$$) a successful start-up presents. But 'round these parts, we've seen that (a) a start-up that isn't driven by somebody who NEEDS to make it work JUST RIGHT is almost certain to fail before anybody gets rich and (b) most start-ups fail even if they do have these sorts of folks. The pets.com style free-flowing millions are far in the past.

The trouble arises when the successful start-up needs to scale up. There simply are not enough of the persevartive people to populate a huge company. But lots of folks want to jump on the pre-IPO start-up bandwagon or into the hot tech company of the year, seeking excitement or $$$ or both. Thus - housing prices around here .... sheesh!

But most of these folks aren't wired the same way. They don't have the same NEED to be at work, the same need to pick at everything until it's JUST RIGHT. So the hours and the competition and the whole workplace environment is awful to them in an incomprehensible way. From their point of view - the culture is needlessly intense. They may try to fake the same level of intensity until they burn out. Or they may demand change, forgetting the source of the company's success in the first place .... The people that rise to the top of these companies have to be that sort of perseverative person, because that's inherent in what makes the company tick.

I'll freely admit that I'm not one of those perseverative start-up founder types. I love going to work with them, and I can hang with the culture for a while. It's exhilarating, but exhausting. After a while I have to step off and catch my breath. But I don't expect them to change to accommodate me. It's their essence, and changing it would kill the company. [Caveat - excepting of course the need for the culture to improve with respect to discrimination issues, and the need to be humane to their employees. But my experience has been that these folks actually want to change this. They just don't have any understanding of what it takes to make it happen.]

2. Does anybody but me think it's funny that Netflix keeps getting listed as one of these "Top Tier" firms. I love Netflix, think they have a brilliant future, realize they are a S&P 500 component, and don't mean to offend anybody who works there. But it seems they are in this discussion just because of their new maternity leave policy, which - see above re "who wants to take vacation anyway?" But anyway - bravo to the Netflix marketing/HR departments. They've surely upped Netflix's recruiting power!

3. I don't know how any of this would translate into the NY/Goldman Sachs/finance part of the world. I don't know a thing about what drives those folks. It must be something more than money, though, right?

Fun philosophizing with you all,
Sue

You are overthinking this .

snork

Agreed. Money. Perhaps a bit of prestige and ambition thrown into the mix, and sometimes, a love of numbers. Especially numbers involving money. Circular...

The essence of entrepreneurs... and sharks.

Agreed. Learn a lot and move on... many do.

I agree with most of what Sue wrote. To elaborate further:

1. A good startup culture is highly collaborative, not competitive. Everyone has the same goal which is to make the company successful. In contrast some of the larger companies I have worked in had huge issues with corporate fiefdoms and inter-group backstabbing. Only a fraction of the people who have worked in large companies can make the transition to a startup, and the reverse is probably true as well.

2. This combination of highly talented and intense individuals, and a common goal, is what allows a startup to (sometimes) do what a larger company cannot do with 10x the people and 100x the budget. It is very much David vs Goliath, and if you succeed, that high permeates your life. The lows are also worse--you may fail, or run out of money and be forced to find another job. That terrifies some people.

3. Most people, having never experienced #1 and #2 above, really don't get startups and why anybody would want to work there.

4. In my most successful startup, it was right around employee #1000 that I noticed a big change in the applicants. These applicants were more accustomed to 40 hour work weeks, 3-4 weeks of vacation, and fussed that we didn't spend money on the Aeron chairs they were used to.

5. Amazon seems to be trying to keep that startup culture even though they have 100K+ employees. Reinforcing what Sue ways above, I'm not sure there are 100K+ employees across all companies that fit the right mold. That is why most people look at Amazon and immediately consider it to be torture.

Where I differ with Sue's account is that my base salary at the startups were about the same as the more established companies. Health benefits were also generous. Where startups skimp is on vacation (2 weeks a year) and no bonus, because you are working for the stock options. And of course, on a per-hour basis, you get paid less at a startup because you put in more hours.

Even though only one of the four startups was very successful, I have no regrets. It was a great time in my life, but not one I would go back to now that I am in my 40s.

Just goes to show that, as with college, "elite" employment is for suckers. The only way to win the game is not to play.

Also,:


By "best" in the underlined selection, the author means, "most socially/morally compromised." Because at this sort of competition, ability is a small part of the ultimate outcome... abandonment of family ties is a minimum requirement, and an ability to manipulate in the workplace counts for more than results.

So you have no interest in working in a collaborative environment, where almost everyone is quite bright, and where employees sometimes get to work on problems that nobody knows yet how to solve?

What environments do you like to work in, Dude?

I never knew that such workplaces were the sole purview of "elite" employers. Hmm.

I think that maybe DH and I have been doing it wrong, in that case.

I had to laugh at the reference to 80 hour work weeks because, in my final month or two of pregnancy with DS, I worked several weeks with 100+ hours, and none less than 80. The mindset associated with such intense and unidimensional living is exhilarating-- being immersed in and leading highly relevant and avant-garde projects, knowing that nobody (or few!) in the world has (have) done what you are doing, that feeling is phenomenal. With a husband in a similarly paced field at the time, and given that DS wasn't yet born, it was ideal. We'd reconnect at home and treasure our time together, knowing that the breakneck pace was one that would be short-lived.

As with anything, work environment selection has its seasons in life. I had DS when I was relatively young and, while I would strongly prefer to opt for a predominantly family-centric lifestyle during DS' childhood and adolescence, I would return to the fast-paced work I was in previously in a heartbeat once DS is away at university. When you truly love your "work", it becomes a vehicle to self-actualization.

What such firms, recruiters, and firm alumni must do is convey an accurate representation of the demands and limitations of such work to prospective hires so that the people who would self-select into profoundly demanding careers are able to make well-informed decisions on where to work and when. There is, IMO, far too much misinformation about the capacity of workers to "have it all". The idea that one can have everything one desires at all times is preposterous. At every point in time, at least one desire or need will be subjugated to another which is temporally more urgent. These firms won't be appealing to most people for that reason, but that's fine. Not everyone must live the same life or value the same experiences equally.

Both my husband and I have each worked for Amazon for over a decade (he 12.5 yrs, myself 15yrs). I worked at a startup before going to work at Amazon. I have seen the culture change as the company has grown but at its core it remains an organization focused on customer satisfaction. I started there when I was 37, old for working in a still start up mentality company. I have also had the opportunity to work in many of the different divisions of Amazon (outside of the warehouses). I think the NY Times article was intentionally inflammatory. Friends I know who were interviewed had either their comments edited significantly or were not included if there was more positive than negative. Amazon is like any other company, it has its share of flaws. I have witnessed them. Thankfully they were few. I don't work 100 hours per week. Sometimes I will work 60 when we have a big project going to be released. However, that is rare. The same is true for my husband. I have 10 year old twins and no nanny. There is no way I could work that many hours, nor would I want to. I am mature enough to insist on a work life balance that my managers have respected. I took ownership for that and no one has given me any grief. Could there be managers that are cold and heartless? Absolutely. However, when key long term employees leave your team, your management starts to wonder why. Keeping great employees happy so they remain on your team is a key requirement for managers to be successful. After 15 years, would I take a job any place else like Google, etc? Well, they have offered. And I always turn them down. My MBA isn't from an Ivy league school but that hasn't prevented me from being successful. Working effectively and efficiently, along with standing up for what is important to me at that point in my life has allowed me to be successful in my career.

I saw this article at the Hacker News forum, created by Paul Graham of YCombinator, a successful seed fund for start-ups.

Work Hard, Live Well
by Dustin Moskovitz
Graham himself has a different message:

How to Make Wealth
I wonder who is right (maybe both, to some extent). In addition to being places where gifted people should test their intellectual limits, college and graduate school may be places where they can test their intellectual stamina.

None, actually. They call it "work" for a reason. If it was called "fun," there wouldn't be a problem. "Work" is what I do in order to make the rest of the things I want in life to happen, happen. If work is taking up so much of my life that there's no room for anything else, then it has to go, plain and simple.

The 40-hour work week is a myth, because it doesn't take into account lunch, it doesn't take into account the commute, and it doesn't take into account the time spent in off hours performing activities that prepare one to go to work. Depending on personal circumstances, the number is a lot closer to 60 than it is to 40.

And then there are people like me who are on call, and who have to do work during odd, non-office hours, and the number gets even bigger.

Thankfully, I have worked for employers who recognize that work isn't the most important thing in people's lives, and that if people are being asked to work overtime too frequently, that's not a YOU problem (as in, YOU need to work later, YOU need to work harder, YOU need to work faster) so much as it is a WE problem (WE need to prioritize better, WE need to allocate resources better, WE need to plan better).

Oh, and I also get to work in a collaborative environment, many of my peers are quite bright, and we're working on problems that nobody is quite sure how to solve. And then I head home sharply at 5:00, where I get to actually participate in my own family, eat a healthy dinner, etc.

Re: Mithawk, and Dude's reply.

I don't recall reading some rule that the only way to solve difficult problems is to work on them for 80 hours a week. Sure, one can WORK for that long, but I'm not convinced about double-time as the best route to the SOLUTION. I suspect (as the studies Bostonian quoted imply) that the route to the solution is to be well-rested, relatively free of stress, and properly nourished as a general rule, with occasional bursts of extra hours (and concomitant increase in stress, tiredness, and/or poor nutrition) as needed. Creativity is typically a critical part of solving a difficult problem, and I believe that being tired and stressed interferes with creative (and general cognitive) ability.

Someone needs to tell those folks at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, though, because this was recent news: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/17/us-goldmansachs-interns-idUSKBN0OX1LA20150617


Note the minimal, inconsequential nature of the efforts being made by both organizations.

I've detected what I believe must be a typographical error.


There. That's better.

One more fix, above.

I have been in a trading environment and don't think people in sales and trading on Wall Street work that much on the weekends or late into the night -- the markets are closed. Someone who is gifted in math and interested in being a trader should understand that the cultures in investment banking and trading differ.

When someone writes a paper that 40-50 hours a work is optimal, it ignores the fact that people vary in in physical and intellectual stamina the same way they vary in IQ. Ford was interested in hiring large numbers of people on an assembly plant. The law of large numbers meant that he needed to tune his work hours for the average worker.

But many times, intellectual problems can best be solved with small teams and don't scale well with many additional people. And for smaller teams you may well be able to find people who remain highly productive for considerably more than 40-50 hours a week. I could do ~60 hours a week in my younger days, but fell apart quickly with more than that. I knew people who could do more, and many people who were able to do less.

Finance is a huge field. The hours vary as much as it does in medicine. In both industries there are a small fraction of people that work crazy hours, and many more that work 9-5 style jobs. Many traders basically work the hours the US market is open: They get in about 9AM and leave as soon as they can after 4PM. My current field, money management, has relaxed hours as well. My typical work day is anywhere from 7 - 9 hours.

The lifestyle calculator may be of interest when discussing elite employment and/or elite colleges.

It told me that my average household income needs to be $10,875.