https://news.ycombinator.com/jobguide.html
I don't think anyone is flouting these rules deliberately. It's just hard to get people to behave differently than they're used to. Founders gonna found.
And the response, even on HN was was "whoa, these guys are so cool" and "more companies need CEOs like this who are innovative and hustlers like this guy". It was their entire schtick.
This isn't to say they didn't have interesting things to share, but the PR/Code-bro-speak was turned up to 11 and it was a huge turn off.
So maybe not that surprised they use words like "grit" in their job postings. I personally would reserve such a word for things like fighting in a war or doing a solo trek to the South Pole, but hey, apparently Flexport thinks their job is at the same level?
I mean, yes, grit, determination and tenacity are all great things to teach a child who doesn't know what they are (or at least what they're called).
But an adult? Looking for a job?
Asking for "gritty people", sorry, I'm not sandpaper
If their first task was to create a new conferencing platform, this would explain a lot of things.
https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/why-googles-high-turnover-rat...
Whether we IPO’d and got 7-fig TC was more due to market forces, our exec team, and some other noise. Whether the engineers got something delivered in 3 months instead of 4 didn’t really have a sizable impact. Besides - I found most companies that burned their engineers down to the wick were just spinning wheels more often than anything. Using up all their engineers when they hadn’t thought their product or market strategy through almost at all.
I’m not convinced 70+ hr work weeks are justified at almost any stage of company except pre-seed/seed.
You should consider changing your about text, it seems outdated :)
Honestly, I can think of two things.
1) They're bad, looking for smart people to grind them down with 70-80 hour workweeks, with no end in sight, with the illusion of small stock grants that will be diluted a few more times before IPO.
2) They just needed a short title for the job posting (HN limits titles to 80 characters), and they tried to summarize the fact that they look for people who are motivated, willing to work hard. But it doesn't say much about their attitude, their desire to exploit workers, vs simply trying to find good hires to add value to the company.
I don't know if it's #1 or #2, or a #3 that I can't think of right now.
A wise prospect employee will do the homework to understand what's the company culture, what's the cap table situation, etc. There are plenty of resources to get a better sense of whether it's a good idea to work for a company or not.
[0]: https://www.flexport.com/company/careers/
[1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flexport