The Great Silicon Valley StartUp Workhorse

WARNING: This article was written under the influence of ten OREO cookies

*******This article is one recruiter’s perspective. It is not based on a particular current situation or specific past experience, but is an overview of seven years of observations.

Ukrainians

“Work hard.” — said with thick Russian accent from a 5’ 2” plump Ukrainian mother, an immigrant to the United States. She’s a former Ukrainian pediatrician turned American social worker.

“Okay.”-me, an acclimated immigrant turned U.S. citizen; a child thrown into the scorches of the American public school system.

“Work hard and you will succeed.”-the mantra of most immigrants coming to the United States, especially from Soviet Eastern Europe.

“Okay, but you worked hard and…”-me, pausing.

“What is that supposed to mean?” My mother.

“Well…”

“You’re right. I forgot to add work smart. We did not learn that in USSR. We work hard in the USSR, but in America you should also work smart. You should work smart first, and hard at the same time.”-same Russian accent with a bit of head nodding.

“That doesn’t make sense.”-me. Maybe I don’t understand her accent. “Work smart first and then hard at the same time? The sequencing is off.”

“You know what I mean.”-my mother.

The conclusion of that conversation is UC Berkeley, which I attend like a lot of “good” Soviet immigrants for university. I nearly go into medicine and investment banking, but choose to major in Economics and Psychology instead while dancing around a Theater minor. There were a lot of sleepless nights during high school that got me into UC Berkeley. But then, during my first year of college, my hard work begins to take a nosedive. My peers are excelling at school and they’re not just working hard; they’re working smart and often times that means less hard than I am. What the heck? So, I throw in the towel and decide I’m going to try this working smart thing too.

Work Ethic

Work ethic is a value that applauds hard work and effort. The definition of work ethic, according to friendly Google, is “the principle that hard work is intrinsically virtuous or worthy of reward.” Those who value work ethic tend to believe that it defines someone’s character. They believe that hard work, whatever the results, is an honorable pursuit. Whether you fail or succeed, the fact that you put your all in it makes your effort worthy. If you work hard, you are a good worker. Afterall, most successful people point to their hard work as means by which they attained their achievements. A good work ethic tends to lead to success because persistence and commitment help to overcome challenges to it. No one is arguing here. Want to run a marathon? Then you’ve got to put in the hours to train, committing to weekly if not daily exercise.

So, are hard working employees then good employees? What if they work hard and deliver zero results? Sure, successful people who worked hard to achieve their dreams should be applauded for their effort. But how about those who work hard and don’t get anywhere; are they still good workers? If someone works hard but is less productive than someone who works smart, who are you going to hire? Promote?

Working Smart

Everyone wants to be happy. The Declaration of Independence proclaims that “the pursuit of happiness” is a constitutional right. Most people who like what they do, respect those with whom they work, and receive recognition for their achievements are generally happy. If people believe that they can achieve their goals, move up in their careers, get validated for what they do while helping others along the way (like their peers), they will achieve their “happy place”. But the magic behind all of this is that happy people who have this sort of work don’t see their work as hard as other people. The hard work just doesn’t feel as hard. These happy people tend to get their work done faster, solve problems more creatively, and manage to lead balanced lives outside of their careers. Some happy people love their careers so much they don’t mind work taking up all of their time because work feels like fun. For these special sorts, work is life. But mostly everyone else engages in pursuits outside of work, (like family, friends, exercise and hobbies) that make them happy.

Yet, we have a crisis; happy-good employees are in danger. There’s something that stands in the way of having happy employees in the era of Silicon Valley and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. Work ethic has become synonymous with drudgery, late hours, and busy work. Work ethic means that work should feel hard, difficult, and not very fun. If you’re having fun, are you working hard enough? The Work Ethic Police would shake their heads and say that you’re not; you should be in the office, red-eyed, and overwhelmed to be a good worker. Work ethic has become synonymous with the way of life during my mother’s Soviet past; burdensome labor. This philosophy runs counter to working smart.

This is not implying that we should throw up our hands and sit on reclining chairs demanding margaritas and a four-hour work week. There’s no way things could be achieved with at least some effort; but that effort has to be directed, relevant, and effective. That effort also has to be enjoyable and recognized so that we move our working experience forward (and not backward into the industrial times). Working smart simply means being able to find better ways of being more efficient in order to be more productive.

Oh BABY, we’re halfway there!

Life

“Woof!” That’s my alarm. Two big dogs in a one-bedroom apartment need their morning walk at 7:30 AM. Either I or my significant other (usually me…just kidding in case he reads this) get up and take the rascals (one psychotic rescued German Shepherd) to the park for 45 minutes. Then, it’s a mad race to get ready and commute to work, where I look forward to hiring some great people, engaging my direct report in becoming a better recruiter, and streamlining a few interview processes. After interacting with people all day and getting bombarded with all sorts of various interesting personalities, it’s time to destress and close out the day with some exercise. Around 6:00PM I go for a four mile run (usually this is the last thing I want to do), walk the dogs again (ugh), and get ready for dinner. By the time we eat dinner at home (with my significant other and two gigantic bark machines) it’s around 9:00PM, and it’s usually while binge-watching another episode of “ The Walking Dead.” The evening would be wasted without some creative outlet, so I sit down for 45 minutes and write; I’m trying to accomplish my life dream of finishing a fiction novel. It gives me a sense of purpose. It’s around 11:00PM when I succumb to tiredness, acknowledging my writing doesn’t make sense anymore. This leaves me with hopefully 20 minutes to call my sister on Facetime before passing out. There’s no way I could get to bed before midnight. Fact: this is my life as a result of being able to leave work at 6:00PM (like normal people) and I don’t even have children! Dogs are one thing, but kids are a whole other thing. I’m actually able to have a life (albeit an action packed one). With experience and being efficient at what I do, my ability to lead this life is partly working smart and partly a company that respects that ability. ( I’m still hungering to take salsa dancing lessons I’ve been meaning to take for years, but I don’t have space for them right now. So, I dance in my dreams).

But this life is NORMAL. Going to work and then going to a life after work is a normal part of life. Yet, startup culture encourages companies to disbelieve that people have normal lives; instead their lives should be centered around the company. Employees (or “good workers”) should be squeezed out of any drop of energy and dedicate their blood, sweat and tears to the corporation for which they work. If not blood, sweat and tears, then at least their time. There are many people who stay late at work (either working or watching cat videos, I’m not sure.) Whenever someone leaves work “early” (i.e. at a reasonable hour) those who stay late (every night) observe this behavior suspiciously. But, are those people staying late productive? Are they producing as much work as they were at say, 10;00 AM? Probably not. Are they just sitting in their chairs socializing with coworkers to make it seem like they stay late at work? Or are they watching cat videos? Or, are they so overwhelmed by all the tasks that they have to do that it simply implies the company is being inefficient by not hiring a second person to maximize productivity output? All of the above. Sure, some people can be productive for longer periods of time than others. Sure, sometimes (not all the time), it’s imperative that we work late; there’s just critical sh*t that needs to get done, but long nights are unsustainable. Productivity is a bell-shaped curve (it increases, hits a peak, and declines. It resumes its upward trajectory after some time, or what normal people call a break). So, why don’t we let people go home? Take a break?

Startup Workhorse Ethos

Let’s go back to working hard; it’s important. People need to be disciplined, committed, and contribute to any organization for which they work. But, this doesn’t mean pushing work ethic to create an industrial worker’s experience in our day and age. We’re supposed to be progressing right? Improving work conditions? Sure, during Soviet times and Industrial times things really sucked. Nowadays, things are way better. But, we’re comparing apples to oranges. If we can improve as organizations, why don’t we? We first need to admit to the Startup Workhorse Ethos in the Bay Area.

The Startup Workhorse Ethos (a term I coined, and hope becomes just as much of a buzzword as Wolf of Wall Street….. of course I’m joking) goes something like this:

• hire young
• hire childless and single
• hire junior employees because they are hungry workhorses
• if you have kids and commitments, man it’s going to be tough for you
• push push push
• we’re always behind, so you have to stay late
• work 10x (this is great) but a better term here is just initiative
• so, you work smart? well, that doesn’t matter because working hard is all that we see
• it doesn’t matter that we don’t know that you’re watching cat videos; if you’re at work at 8:00PM still at your desk we applaud you (because you’re just sitting there and that makes it better than being productive the next morning)
• this is your tenth startup? how are you not dead yet? even a cat only has nine lives.
• we don’t have time to give you a high five for all the good work you’re doing
• you wore many hats and had five titles and saved the company from ruin, but we aren’t going to give you a pay raise because we’re going to hire a new executive instead
• you have too much work? you’re overwhelmed? no, we don’t care about quality, we care about quantity so that when a shitty product ships. Oops, let’s talk about quality. maybe we should hire someone else to increase the output as well as the quality.
• we don’t have time to train people and invest in management training because we need to focus on product and sales
• people are quitting because their managers aren’t effective? we should have invested in training
• sick days? come to work and infect us.
• I’m not supposed to know that you have children; it’s illegal for me to judge you for that, but you’ll have to leave work early? I’m f*cked

Now, slow down tiger! Not all companies and startups run this way. This is an over generalization (and maybe a slight exaggeration). But, for a LOT of companies, some of these statements are awkwardly true. I feel like Chris Rock during his Oscars speech (maybe not quite). But, I even feel afraid to talk about this topic (and maybe I have a very unusual perspective) mainly because this topic is actually true. The reason I care about this topic is because I care about creating a good working environment and a productive workforce.

That means it’s time to get married! What? No, I mean marry work ethic with the working smart ethic. It’s time that we reward both mentalities and let the two philosophies balance each other out to create effective and happy employees.

Why the Startup Workhorse Ethos is Destructive:

Hard work is good. Yes. But working smart is just as important. If we have employees who actually work hard but don’t get anywhere or appear as if they’re working hard just to put in facetime at work, then Houston there’s a problem. We need employees who work smart and complete tasks quickly (they want to go Salsa Dancing) because those people create better processes, solve problems in innovative ways, and are healthy employees who will be more productive than burnt out sick ones.

Here’s when the Startup Workhorse Ethos becomes a problem (when we overemphasize working hard over delivering effective results):

• Burn out (eventually, going at 110% doesn’t work anymore). Employees burn out, get sick, and sometimes quit (or go find themselves on Yoga Retreats to Bali). In any case, you’ve just lost yourself a very productive worker.
• Creates Inefficiency: When you reward facetime or simply output without regulating its quality you’ll have people doing stuff with lots of effort for no reason. This reminds me of a story about Soviet Russia: A factory made red plastic boots. No one bought them. So another factory was built to melt the unbought plastic red boots. A for effort. A+ for stupidity and inefficiency.
• Facetime doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes people are truly working when they stay late. Sometimes they are productive, but not all the time. Either they didn’t estimate their workload completely, are not doing their work efficiently, or they are watching cat videos. Just because someone is sitting at their desk past a certain hour doesn’t mean they get a cookie. I don’t give my dog a treat every time he poops. (Okay I do).
• Kills creativity and innovative problem solving. When employees are overwhelmed and overworked they tend to view time reserved for creativity and “white space” as wasted time. They should be producing output. When in fact, they could pause and become better at producing that output. Abraham Lincoln said that if he was given four hours to cut down a tree, he would spend the first three hours sharpening his ax. We need to let our workforce get better at problem solving by creating space for them to think. We need to reward this.
• Unsustainable: this ethos is unsustainable. Eventually, things will crack. Either quality is falling, employees are grumpy from being overworked and underappreciated, or no one has taken a moment to become a better manager, leader or employee because they have their head down in the weeds all the time. Eventually, the company will suffer and crack.
• That crack is usually people quitting. People will quit. That means you’ll have to spend more money on recruiting, hiring, and retraining. This is a cost that’s unnecessary if you hire correctly and retain employees proactively.
• You are not making the world a better place; We have a choice at how we run our companies. Of course we are prisoners of time and revenue, but we still can be proactive at creating productive AND happy employees. Happy employees get sick less often, lead better balanced lives, don’t quit, and solve problems better. That means the world is a better place. Isn’t that the whole point? To make the world a better place?

What’s the solution?

Here’s some ways to solve the Startup Workhorse Ethos problem. For one, uniting work ethic with the working smart ethic is the first critical step. We need to be self aware when we honor busy work versus actual results. Next, we should stop awarding busy work and focus on results (even if those results, accomplished faster and better, allow the whole company to go Salsa Dancing with all the extra time left over). This will help guide an effective acknowledgement of the right kind of effort.

Here are a few ways we can do that:

• Reward results: if it takes someone 2 hours to close 10 deals versus 5 hours to close 10 deals, we should reward the employee that gets quality work done in less time. They are either 1) more experienced 2) more talented 3) or both, which allows them to accomplish more in less time. We shouldn’t expect that person to work 10–12 hours a day. We should expect that person to contribute a ton in a reasonable framework of time. We should reward results. When we start making the efficient worker stay longer than they need to in order to be a good producer, their efficiency will turn into grumpiness and the worker will become a busy body like everyone else.
• Hire senior people (and when you can’t hire senior people then hire junior people with high potential); Senior people have more experience (usually). Most of the time that means they are able to do things quicker in a more effective and efficient way. They will probably need less ramp up time (having a smaller learning curve than junior people). They’ve also seen many situations before, allowing them to act proactively when those same situations arise. But, when we can’t afford to hire just senior people, the best alternative is to find junior people with high potential and initiative. This will be harder to do. Initiative is harder to evaluate in someone with limited work experience. The hiring process will rely exclusively on personality and behavioral assessment.
• Trust the people you hire; When you hire someone for a job, trust that they will do it. Sure, more junior people will need more oversight, but give employees the space to succeed. It’s like a relationship: if you’re dating someone you don’t trust, why are you dating them at all? So, okay, you trust your employees. But, if they’re not succeeding, then train them.
• Train employees; providing training, whether it’s skill based, behavioral, or management related, empowers employees to get better at what they do. When people learn how to improve their skills whether that refers to leadership, time management, or orderliness, the company will benefit in the long run. Training is a necessary and critical investment that startups should implement from nascence.
• Reward efficiency rather than feigned commitment: Don’t reward facetime. Butts in seats does not equal productivity. Remember to reward true results rather than the facade. This is not Universal Studios folks.
• Invest in employee health: A healthy employee is a productive employee. Allowing employees to lead balanced lives will make them healthy. They will have time to exercise, spend time with friends and family, and unwind. That means they will take less sick days and need to see a doctor less often. That also means they will be less tired when they are actually at work.
• Practice the preaching: So, you expect people to arrive early and leave late. GREAT! Then you, the leadership and management, have to do that too. Sit with your team and practice what you preach. You cannot ask for behaviors that do not exist within the executive leadership. People will not work for people who are not there with them in the trenches. Instead, set the standard. If you are an executive (or manager) that values a balanced life (we can’t all be superhuman like Marissa Mayer), then expect your employees to value balance in their lives as well.
• Encourage creativity: By encouraging people to lead balanced lives, we are also empowering them to pursue interests outside of work. These interests will add value to the employee by giving them inputs and experiences that will contribute to their creative thinking and problem solving capabilities.
• Do better: Just because everyone is doing it, doesn’t mean you have too. Don’t we all want to change the world? You can, by creating the type of work environment YOU’D want to work in.

The caveat:

There is a caveat here: people who are experienced and masters of their work tend to not have to work very hard once reaching their level of expertise. These masters have already put in the hard work and practice that was necessary to get them to this esteemed level. That means, when you hire experienced people they’ll naturally be smart workers. They know what they’re doing. Most junior people (and especially new grads) will need to work a bit harder than these experienced employees. They’ll have to learn more, ramp up more, and build experience under their belts. That’s the caveat: if you hire masters, let them work smart. Don’t expect them to do busy work and prove themselves by faking facetime. They know what they’re doing and if they produce results, reward them for it.

If you hire junior people, well, they’ve got a ways to go. You can help them along the way. Yes, they’ll have to work hard and figure out how to work smart to make that hard work more effective. But, the good news is that you can help! Hire great managers above them and implement the right training tools to make the “catch up” gap between masters and apprentices smaller.

Conclusion:

My mother is always right.

But seriously, we should work hard, but make sure we do it in a smart way. Busy work, like making red boots to then only melt them, is unnecessary and detrimental to personal development and the organization as a whole. Work ethic is not only the honorable process of grinding away, but a journey of getting better at what we do. We live in a new Renaissance, where people are expected to be generalists and learning sponges. People are expected to wear many hats and have many remarkable abilities. The most important ability of today is being able to learn new things quickly. The only way to do that is to consistently expose oneself to experiences by engaging in projects outside of work; like building mobile apps at home for fun, taking new dance classes, or reading books that challenges your perspective. (Darn it, Keeping Up With The Kardashians doesn’t fit into any of this.)

These all improve employee health and overall well-being. Happy people make productive employees who get sick less often, don’t quit, and use innovative approaches to solve problems better. They are not just replaceable workhorses. They are not dilly-dalliers either sitting in their seats in order to get rewarded for presence and facetime. We need smart employees. We should therefore hire for results and hire people who know how to work smart and continually improve processes along the way. Some of the laziest people are the smartest workers because they figure out how to make processes efficient and get things done quicker so that they can go on doing all those other things that interest them. (Sleep?)

We need smart workers and should create cultures that reward them. Being a good worker shouldn’t always feel difficult, sad, and awful; it should feel fun, rewarding, and challenging. There’s a difference between challenging and overwhelming. That difference is the productivity approach we reward; let’s stop rewarding busy work and feigned commitment applauded under useless facetime. Let’s reward progress and efficiency instead. Let’s truly invest in the health and happiness of the workforce.

Let’s also remember this is America, after all. Not the Soviet Union.

*****This article is one recruiter’s perspective. It is not based on a particular current situation or specific past experience, but is an overview of seven years of observations.