How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?

This topic is going to explode across the blogosphere this weekend! There’s already plenty of discussion at the original post, TechCrunch and 37signals.

Duncan Riley has Twittered:

Duncan Riley hmmm @jasoncalacanis isn’t happy with my post. Jcal, I’m not happy that you insult me by saying I should work at Starbucks.

And:

Duncan Riley Having read the [TechCrunch] comments I’ve confirmed that half the people in the Valley are immoral and lost.

Someone called Morgan has said:

I have not seen any very successful startups where the developers weren’t at least a little monomaniacal about their work.

On the contrary, I’ve been at two successful startups (defined here as wildly successful IPOs) where having those fanatic developers was a core reason of why they were successful.

The people who were putting in overwhelming hours at those companies weren’t doing it because they’re workaholics. They were doing it because they were true believers. Both in the company itself and the product they were building.

It’s not about the workaholics making the company successful, it’s about the company being one that the employees can believe in, to the point of wanting to be there, wanting to be making it better.

In those cases, you don’t fire the people who are passionate about building your company. You support them, and accept that they’re going to crash occasionally, and try to nerf the crash some…

In my experience, it’s the fervent employees who are the core of successful startups. This was true at McAfee Associates (went public in 1992), and PayPal (went public in 2002), both successful startups that I was part of.

You also need people who aren’t as fervent, who can see a wider view, so it’s always a balance. So you can’t really ‘fire’ either of them, out of hand.

Wow. A long enough comment from me for now. More soon…

Cool, interesting comments came in overnight. I’ll respond to this page’s comments now, then read the other’s and also see what’s happened at TechCrunch and 37signals, then post a comment to my follow-up post. You get to see my thoughts evolve, O Lucky Readers!

@Snarky Platypus: I agree re the Occupational Health & Safety aspect, and touched upon that in my other post as part of the “dangerous employer” discussion. I don’t think it matters whether the workers think it’s OK to keep going hour after hour, the employer has a duty of care to ensure they work with their long-term health in mind — just like they have to make a scaffold worker or miner wear safety equipment even if that worker reckons “She’ll be right, mate.”

@John Walker: Welcome. Here in Australia we have what’s traditionally called “a more robust standard of public debate”. Americans are often shocked by the language we use. A former Prime Minister called the Senate “unrepresentative swill”, and another senior opposition politician referred to the government as “a conga line of suckholes”.

Even the f-word and the c-word can be used un-bleeped on network TV after 9.30pm, and in context they can be used any time of the day apart from specific G-rated hours. It’s amusing to see visiting comedians shocked when panel-mates on a show first use the words — and then they self-consciously try dropping one themselves. It’s so sweet. But I digress…

You ask:

In a “Startup” scenario, don’t you think it’s fair to say that you need people working for you who are dedicated and willing to put a tremendous amount of effort out for the good of the company.

Perhaps, but that’s rather different from requiring everyone to be a “workaholic” — the latter having a quite specific meaning beyond “working hard”:

Colloquially, a workaholic is a person who is addicted to work. This phrase does not always imply that the person actually enjoys their work, but rather simply feels compelled to do it. There is no generally accepted medical definition of such a condition, although some forms of stress, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder can be work-related. Although the term “workaholic” usually has a negative connotation, it is sometimes used by people wishing to express their devotion to one’s career in positive terms…

A “workaholic” in the negative sense is popularly characterized by a neglect of family and other social relations. The term has no clinical definition, however.

Workaholism in Japan is considered a serious social problem leading to early death, often on the job, a phenomenon dubbed karōshi.

I assume people use the generally accepted-meaning of words — I mean, communication is impossible otherwise. So when Calacanis said, specifically, to fire anyone who wasn’t workaholic…

@Emma McCreary and @xavier watson: Welcome to you too. You raise much the same point, I think: the entire tone of Calicanis’ list is penny-pinching. Little tricks to shave off 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there — many with the underlying assumption that a worker isn’t “working” unless they’re inside the building and at their desk.

In all of this, too, there’s an unspoken assumption: that “the start-up scenario” (i.e. the specific infotech methodology of faster-faster business construction leading to venture capital and an IPO with untold riches at the end) is the preferred or only way things should be. I challenge that, and will explain further a little later.

@Marcos Gonzalez: Wow, you’ve hit quite a few blogs with that comment, eh?

@Bill Moore: Your first paragraph is a bit confusing, I can’t quite make out the “three groups” clearly. However in my case you’re wrong: I don’t lack knowledge of the “reality” of start-ups — been there, done that, have the medical bills — I just think that “reality” is very, very wrong.

“Dedication” is not the same as workaholism or exploitation, as 37signals’ DHH has explained.

As for not being happy with 15% of $100M, I’ve worked that into my follow-up piece.

@George Jilivik: A cheap shot.

@Beto: That is precisely it! Thank you. I have no issue with people being passionate about what they do, because at one level it confirms their sincerity. Both Jasons have passion, certainly.

What concerns me, and what triggered my follow-ups, is that JCal seems to confuse “passion” with “relentlessness”, “determination” with “disregard for humanity”. Yes, he focuses on that goal of the IPO, but at what cost? He’d say that’s the cost of going for the goal. I’d say that if that’s the case, and that all you get at the end of it is money and heart disease, then it’s not worth it.

I accept that he’s wired differently, and as he himself said in a comment somewhere, that’s the way he is. He’s compelled to it. Passion = compulsion, after all. But then serial killers and pedophiles say that too.

As I say, thank you for clearly describing the difference between the two attitudes.