An acquaintance of mine calls their system, “Two-Do.” They figure out 2 things that must get done each day and then do those 2 things and sometimes repeat if time and their energy allows.
I’ve been using a personal variation of this system for over 4 years now and it’s outstanding for me. I firmly believe that for the vast majority of people (myself included), working without a plan is one of the dumbest things they can do.
Of course they should be fired if it’s been made clear that behavior is unacceptable (which it should be). Culture is what you let people get away with.
But seems like the company (and you) thought that was acceptable so who knows.
You play the hand you're dealt, or you get out of the game. Getting out of the game is always an option, of course. But you don't always have the ability to choose or change your cards.
You’re the one who dealt the cards! You’re the alleged (self-described) manager here. No wonder you got pushed around by somebody who was able to do their work. You seem to see yourself as the victim of circumstance rather than in control of anything.
They should probably have promoted the guy who was reading the book. 0% chance he'd let one of his reports make him do work that the report should've been doing themselves.
Of course you can't know that without knowing how valuable the employee's contributions are. If they're good, a good manager will walk by their cubicle a few times a day instead of firing them.
The kind of person who gets pushed around by their reports like this will end up walking by everyone’s cubicle a few times a day because they’re afraid to tell the bad employees why the good employee gets special treatment.
Read the guys story again. He wasn’t a manager. He was at best a babysitter.
If the guy reading novels is that valuable, fire the pushover manager and pay somebody $10/hr to walk by his cubicle.
Sorry, I was replying to the person who said, “Since when was HN about venture capital?” The answer to that is obviously since its inception. It’s like watching those weird flying contraption contests and asking, “Since when is Red Bull about energy drinks?”
I may have overthought this and wandered into territory I don’t actually have strong convictions about. My original impulse was simply to show some love for Woz.
Marketing budgets can fund stuff whose authenticity is independent of who’s writing the check, right? Especially when their audience is extra-contrarian and sensitive to authenticity. Xerox can be an evil megacorp and also be sugar daddy to the PARC.
If the fun maze is taking YC’s money and using it to start a company, sure, I see your point. I’d say (right here on YC’s digital estate!) probably don’t do that.
If the fun maze is the community that’s emerged on this site, which is indeed something the VC firm sponsors (surprisingly cheaply)…
Then in my case, it’s different because I frequently walk through the fun maze for as long as the maze is fun, then I wander back out to my fields. If the maze stopped being fun, or started requiring me to set aside my values, I would stop coming, and the farmer knows that.
The farmer doesn’t prod me, much less sneak up on me with a captive bolt. He doesn’t try to milk me while I’m walking through his maze. If I’m ever considering selling my steak, I’ll probably apply commercial reasoning to my choice of abattoir, regardless of how fun the maze was.
I contribute voluntarily, I enjoy the voluntary contributions of others. It’s a maze where people want to come.
I’d like this to be true, so I contribute to it being true, and I observe others contributing to sustaining its truth too. Intersubjective belief creates reality!
> Marketing budgets can fund stuff whose authenticity is independent of who’s writing the check, right
I think “follow the money” is the cliche that applies here.
> Especially when their audience is extra-contrarian and sensitive to authenticity.
I think you mean that the audience likes to think of itself as extra-contrarian and sensitive to authenticity?
The audience will talk until they’re blue in the face about why this marketing project (HN) is so much different from and so much more authentic than other marketing projects.
The marketing seems to be working on this supposedly contrarian and sensitive to authentiity audience!
Cool that you bet your ability to pay your mortgage on something that is only good for the simplest throwaway code and things that can’t be relied on or maintained by others.
Doesn’t seem like the vibecoding mandate is the problem?
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