Agreed—I had a mixed reaction, having worked for a FAANG. There are nuggets of truth there, the biggest one being "A recruiting team that looks like a college admissions office is certain death for a startup." That is undoubtedly true IMO. But toward the end it goes off the rails, with the stuff about working 5-hour days revealing a lack of commitment and indifference. The reason why Google engineers can work 5-hour days is because they are a large company, not a startup, and they can direct resources more efficiently than a startup and devote engineering hours to core problems instead of startup-style "all hands" processes. So IOW, if engineers are working 5-hour days, does it really surface not giving a shit? I'd say "it depends." It depends on whether you are a startup or a Big Corp, and it depends on the company culture and workflow. I don't think it's an A/B indicator of passion for the company or the product.

Overall though, this post left a bad taste in my mouth, and I could only keep thinking that I'd never want to work at Scale.

There's a weird cargo culting of hours worked vs productivity. Reminds me of Asian business practices (especially in Japan). Yet that should be a warning, not a model to imitate (remember how Japanese tech took over American one? I don't either).

He's right that a company should hire folks that care about their work and the company. The way to do that is with a stock comp. I still see tier 2 markets complaining they are getting tier 2 devs that don't care. But when I ask about stock comp they suddenly get defensive.

I wouldn't brag too much about "working harder than Google". Because that invites the comparison between the two companies at an equal stage in their respective growth (time, number of employee or funding rounds) and that doesn't really make Scale look good. He's really bragging that what Google can get out of an engineer in 5 hours, he has to do in 10+.

Agreed. Not to mention expecting people to work 60+ hours a week is direct discrimination against people who give a shit about their {mental health, diet, cardiovascular health, family, friends}.

Some people would always produce crap code, because they simply don't care. But for others, it may be a reaction to how they are treated by the company. Making the code nice takes some time, and if the project is understaffed and people work overtime... you just want to get it done and go home, not take additional overtime to refactor it nicely.

I've never seen people produce crap code because they don't care; it's always a lack of education, a last minute fix, or it's just declared crap code because it doesn't meet the reader's threshold for maintainable code, which is very subjective.

Exactly. Passion may be indicated by that time you stepped up for a 60 hour week in a given situation, but I'm not seeing anything where the author expects such strict dedication at all times. I simply read it as a plea to reduce the job-hopping culture of tech (and perhaps of other industries that are following suit because of tech).

I don't know what it's like to work at Google but can guess there is a preponderance of disengaged paycheck-grabbers. You want to avoid hiring people that are just in it for the money and will jump ship when something better comes up.