Solace In Random Lines

I just read a post by Shalin listing 5 reasons to hire freshers. The #5 reason which he states is "They're in-expensive".

My story till-date: graduated a month-and-three-days before the date of this blog post. Work remote for a startup in San Francisco and completed a month at my first job two days back. My pay is above average considering Indian pay scales for freshers. (I had to strike "above" after reading about the pay-scales at Amazon/Google in India)

Freshers come in 2 flavors (mild joke in a serious post) ones with the flair for programming (has programmed before, created stuff) and the others who can type out a bunch of random lines (you'll find a lot of these people).

I do not know which of these people Shalin was referring to. But if it's the ones with the flair for programming, I beg to disagree. You've got to give people a reason to join your startup. IMO, monetary incentives are under-rated, however interesting the work is.

Like some really nice guy stated a few days back - "Hiring is selling not buying". You are selling your idea/product to your potential hires, so that they join your cause. Ideally your new hires (referring to freshers) won't be getting any equity. So why not just pay them better than average and keep them happy? It isn't possible to mind-read and find out if that guy values monetary details of a job. Or you've got competition - startups that pay better for the same hire. I'm all for paying well.

Quoting one of my previous post:

And if you are trying to hire people to work for your startup for below-avg-pay, it shows that you are selfish and you want to taste success, without even wanting to thank those who led you there.

This post assumes that you are hiring only when you actually need to.

If someone said recession, I'm already crying. There was never a recession for the valuable employees/hires.

P.S: This post is in all faith a good discussion and totally my opinion.

In the last part of the video, Ronald says.

Take your time with your music!!
It doesn't have to be complicated...
It doesn't have to be perfect...
It just needs to be fun (most of the time)

What he says applies not just to music but to everything else.

Take your time

Anything requires patience. Startups especially take time to mature to a level when they can become profitable. Very few startups or their founders hit the jackpot in the first fortnight.

It doesn't have to be complicated

The ideas for these startups don't come by sitting under the peepal tree. They can be as simple as helping people create form (Wufoo), helping people find indie music (TheSixtyOne) or just a simple game that lets you build what you like (MineCraft).

It doesn't have to be perfect

I don't have to tell you what an MVP is or why most startups insist on an MVP. MVPs are supposed to be half-a-product not half-assed product.

It just needs to be fun or useful.

Yammer might be fun for businesses. Facebook or Google+ maybe fun for people. Salesforce isn't fun. Some businesses just find Salesforce useful and so they pay for it.

Thanks to @kevzettler I found out about Ronald Jenkees and his awesome music.

On a topic that has been discussed a lot in recent years, Susam Pal nails it. 

I've read a lot of blog posts on the culture at large services corporations, and most (including me) share the same view, that they provide a very bad learning environment for curious engineers. Susam differs by pointing out certain things which not many have done and he does it in detail. When I group companies under the label "traditional services corporations", I don't mean the new services startup like C42, whom I've observed, maintain a very nice environment like that of a startup.

About training provided by these organizations, Susam says,

People think that these organizations are good for freshers because they get a lot of training which they wouldn't get in other organizations. I must remind such people that attending trainings is not equivalent to learning.

He then moves on to talk about other stuff on training. But I would love to expand on the above sentences and add my views to it.

I strongly believe that what the new-comers are taught as trainees, is what is useful from the organizations point of view. The training provided at these organizations is only to ensure that the new guys stay productive from the organization's perspective. The trainees aren't taught with the intention that they are to be moulded as good engineers who can think, ask questions and feed their curious self. They are taught to be code monkeys who type out code according the spec provided and don't even bother to know, if the given spec or architecture is right or requires improvement or hell, it's even worse if you don't know the reason why something is being built in a particular way.

A startup-like culture promotes innovative thoughts, which lead to interesting implementations of ideas. That is one reason why a lot of startups who have gone on to become huge corporations, are striving hard to maintain the startup culture even to this day. Wearing formal attire and producing a bunch of clearly typed documents don't mean good software is being produced. These organizations are walled gardens of technical knowledge for avid tinkerers and like Susam says, they promote mud slinging in different forms. Engineer! Build! Create! (and whatever other verbs that are synonymous). Stop treating them as the only places to work at. You can teach a high school kid Java in a month and comfortably push him to such places.

P.S: If you have constructive ctirique or something to add to this topic, you are welcome. Else don't bug me with corporate nonsense. Feel free to rant about me on your blog!