Even good honest motivated people can become checked out without even being aware of it.
The alternative is to lay off people as soon as they hit 1.0 (with a severance bonus on the scale of an acquisition). This would obviously be worse, as you can’t take advantage of their institutional knowledge.
You can go the hatchet way - I am strongly unconvinced it is indicative of anything resembling good management, mind - but most people and companies cannot rely on banks or investment firms loaning them 40 billion dollars and accepting passively a mark down of their mone~ to 1/4 of the value they loaned down the line. CEOs are ousted by investment firms for a far smaller drop in value all the time.
If you’re an exec who’s taken it upon themselves to evaluate, could use the hatchet, or you take some amount of time to figure out how things work. Whether this is okay depends on who is suffering the externalities. If it’s a private corporation, legally it’s the execs + employment law. If it’s a public service that measures toxin levels in water, uhhhhh.
Congratulations, you’ve invented the HR department in corporate America.
The better the pay, the more you will attract the people who are there for the pay first and making good products ... second or third or never. How do you combat that?
No one works for any BigTech company because they think they are making the world a better place. They do it because a shit ton of money appears in their bank account every pay period and stock appears in their brokerage account every vesting period.
I personally don’t have the shit tolerance to work in BigTech (again) at 50. But I suggest to all of my younger relatives who graduate in CS to “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG” and tell them how to play the politics to get ahead.
As the Dilbert author said, “Passion is Bullshit”. I have never been able to trade passion for goods and services.
It's always the same. People trying to make things better for the next developer, people prioritizing delivers instead of ego-projects or ego-features by someone playing politics, developers wanting a seat at the table with (dysfunctional) Product teams, people actual good intentions trying to "change the world" (not counting the misguided attempts here).
You are 100% correct, you gotta play the politics, period.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who work at big companies for precisely this reason (or at least, with that as _a_ reason among many).
Yes, much of the prestige has worn off as the old guard retired and current leadership emphasizes chasing AI buzzwords and cutting costs. But still, big companies are one of the few places where an individual really can point out something they worked on in day-to-day life. (Pull out any Android phone and I can show you the parts that my work touched.)
And it takes a while for a young dev to register that the goals that the larger organization pursues are going to win out in the end anyway.
Case in point: Tesla/SpaceX meets your first criteria: "I want a tech company where people are there to make good products first and get paid second."
Google meets your second criteria: "And the pay should be good. The lifestyle comfortable. No grindset bullshit."
Other than small time boutique software firms like Fog Creek Software or Panic Inc(and thats a BIG maybe) you are not going to get this part of your message: "But I am confident that if you only employ passionate people working their dream jobs you will excel."
There are tradeoffs in life and each employee has to choose what is important to them(and each company CEO has to set standards on what is truly valued at the company).
Tesla has never been a good product.
https://insideevs.com/news/731559/tesla-least-reliable-used-...
https://www.carscoops.com/2024/11/tesla-model-3-comes-bottom...
https://www.topspeed.com/tesla-reliability-and-repair-costs-...
Not to mention the infotainment system is much worse than CarPlay/Android Auto compatible cars
This is too funny to post alongside saying “Tesla has never been a good product.” Like “everyone that bought it loves it be car expert Joe from South Dakota ranks them very low.”
Common sense also runs very much against this nonsense narrative - you just simply do not sell that many cars, at those prices especially, year after year after year, if the product is subpar. Don’t fall for this “experts” bullshit. The CEO is the biggest tool this Earth has ever seen but cars are awesome
