Hire workaholics fire folks who have a life

In general I would tend to disagree with Jason Calacanis, he says and does things that make Gordon Ramsey (Kitchen Nightmares) look good, I could not and would not have him as a boss, nor would I hire him as employee.

But when he is right, especially when it comes to startups, you have to give him his due.

Jason is right that you want to hire high producers. Jason is right about many other points in otherwise pointless manifesto on how he is an old school kind of boss. There are some good things there, the thing that worries me as an academic, as a leader, and as a worker, is that he is coming off as entirely Machiavellian.

I am not a high producer although I produce a lot in comparison to my other slacker peers. I love the people I work with because they care, they love what they do. They might not be the high of the high producers, they may be learning things, they may annoy me at times, but I still love them.

I owe them loyalty, passion, and support. In an organization this is gold, it makes for effective teams, teams that produce good stuff.

I have a life, one I have worked on for many years to create, it is my source of balance and inspiration, it is where I get some of my best ideas for work, it is my “sanity check”. To give that up to feed the maniacal Machiavellian egotist as boss, I’ll give that a pass, been there done that, and he is now accused of killing his entire family in an SUV. You can read more about that happy episode here on my other blog.

I will not work for Jason, he would not hire me, its a good trade off. I have a life, I love it, and that would interfere with Jason’s startup mentality.

The problem is the equation that people who have a life are slackers in some form or another. But you also have to take this with a grain of salt, it is easy to slip into Machiavellian management, management by fear and intimidation that will also destroy your startup as well.

Jason also told me about two employees who’d be outside smoking while the rest of the company was working hard during lunches. He fired those two. Why? They weren’t team players. Source: Scobleizer

Jason is right, Scobleizer is also right, if you hire a slacker, someone who does not drink, breath and eat the cool aide that you are producing as a startup, you have someone who is not carrying 120% of their load. Slackers are people who can bring a high power organization down, but this has to come at a balance.

The balance of knowing that there are real people behind those ugly bags of mostly water (thanks star trek the next generation) that are occupying your cost saving cube farms, with no phones, 600 dollar chairs but cheap 100 dollar desks.

The real point to a startup is to do something wonderful. If people are having fun, doing something they believe in, you will get tons of support, hours, commitment, and work out of people. Is it about free sodas in the fridge, yes, free coffee, yes, being fired for having a smoke? No, some of the best ideas come from people who are out socializing while they are smoking, Jason missed the point on that one, world problems have been solved in smoky rooms.

No matter how you run your company, it is your company to manage. No matter how you count pennies, define the culture, if you go towards the Machiavellian style of leadership, you will loose. You not only loose when people walk out the door of your company and bad mouth it, people do not want to work for and in many cases do business with a Machiavellian boss. You lose trust, you lose companionship, you end up alone in an empty hall. You might have riches, but missed on the greater more fun things in life.

Work has to be fun to be productive, it has to satisfy Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs, if you want top producers you want actualized people. People who have been driven into the dirt, seldom are actualized, seldom exceed, and seldom work out in a workaholic environment.

Jason is right on somethings, but extraordinary wrong on so many other levels that it is best to call it a day. He is who he is, but I would not hire him, can’t afford it, need more team orientation, need more people skills, need more empathy, and an understanding that not all people are created equal. There are some we have to help lift to greatness.