Agreed—I had a mixed reaction, having worked for a FAANG. There are nuggets of truth there, the biggest one being "A recruiting team that looks like a college admissions office is certain death for a startup." That is undoubtedly true IMO. But toward the end it goes off the rails, with the stuff about working 5-hour days revealing a lack of commitment and indifference. The reason why Google engineers can work 5-hour days is because they are a large company, not a startup, and they can direct resources more efficiently than a startup and devote engineering hours to core problems instead of startup-style "all hands" processes. So IOW, if engineers are working 5-hour days, does it really surface not giving a shit? I'd say "it depends." It depends on whether you are a startup or a Big Corp, and it depends on the company culture and workflow. I don't think it's an A/B indicator of passion for the company or the product.

Overall though, this post left a bad taste in my mouth, and I could only keep thinking that I'd never want to work at Scale.

There's a weird cargo culting of hours worked vs productivity. Reminds me of Asian business practices (especially in Japan). Yet that should be a warning, not a model to imitate (remember how Japanese tech took over American one? I don't either).

He's right that a company should hire folks that care about their work and the company. The way to do that is with a stock comp. I still see tier 2 markets complaining they are getting tier 2 devs that don't care. But when I ask about stock comp they suddenly get defensive.

I wouldn't brag too much about "working harder than Google". Because that invites the comparison between the two companies at an equal stage in their respective growth (time, number of employee or funding rounds) and that doesn't really make Scale look good. He's really bragging that what Google can get out of an engineer in 5 hours, he has to do in 10+.

Agreed. Not to mention expecting people to work 60+ hours a week is direct discrimination against people who give a shit about their {mental health, diet, cardiovascular health, family, friends}.

A further problem for those of us who are adults with at least a decade or more of experience in this industry is that Wang is practically a child, and that means 100% certainty that he does not have the leadership experience to either convincingly swagger or lead a company. He needs to dial down the attitude on posts like this and learn from startup leaders who understand what success and healthy work/life balance looks like.

That article is a big red flag. Do not work for this man. He doesn't respect you only the perceived effort you put in.

I hear he loves meetings. That's another huge red flag for me. This is a guy who demands late-stage employees be committed to his startup even though their shares will never vest (if they receive shares at all), and he promotes a culture of wasting the productive hours of the day on meetings. Run away, run far, far away.

Some people would always produce crap code, because they simply don't care. But for others, it may be a reaction to how they are treated by the company. Making the code nice takes some time, and if the project is understaffed and people work overtime... you just want to get it done and go home, not take additional overtime to refactor it nicely.

Definitely. I've been watching Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares in the last week or so (the less sensational UK version), and one thing that struck me is that in a number of cases you have decent or even good chefs who are demotivated, bored, have little or no responsibility, and have given up and produce crap results.

Sometimes even just a little injection of responsibility can revive the enthusiasm.

I've never seen people produce crap code because they don't care; it's always a lack of education, a last minute fix, or it's just declared crap code because it doesn't meet the reader's threshold for maintainable code, which is very subjective.

Exactly. Passion may be indicated by that time you stepped up for a 60 hour week in a given situation, but I'm not seeing anything where the author expects such strict dedication at all times. I simply read it as a plea to reduce the job-hopping culture of tech (and perhaps of other industries that are following suit because of tech).

I don't know what it's like to work at Google but can guess there is a preponderance of disengaged paycheck-grabbers. You want to avoid hiring people that are just in it for the money and will jump ship when something better comes up.