This is surreal. Even though Steve Jobs is an inspiration for me, I actually agree a lot with Ed Colligan here.
A couple thoughts:
- It's definitely possible for both companies to have awesome teams. No one person is going to make or break either team.
- Employees should have a right to work where they want to. Part of this means that if I am a skilled employee, I'll get offers to come work for other companies. If I engage in a conversation, then it's perfectly alright for the company to actively recruit me. On the flip side, if I decline, they should back off. But, at the end of the day, it should be my choice. Both the company and employee need to win (which might be hard at times).
- Part of living in a free, capitalist, democratic society is the beauty that if an employee tries to leave, you can try to persuade them otherwise. This can be done in a variety of ways, but it comes down to taking the more appealing offer (that doesn't just have to be pay and title, but can also be the values of the company or the employee's lust for working at a particular company or their freedom to have a little less bureaucracy and instead experiment with new ideas, etc. etc.)
- I love the jab at the end, where Ed claims that Palm is not interested in getting or using confidential Apple information and also informs their employees of their duties to their previous employers
I love f.lux. It does take a bit of getting used to, but if you wait it out, you'll enjoy it. And, the research they've done on light is quite impressive too: http://stereopsis.com/flux/research.html
That being said, this has been around for a while, so I wonder why it's trending now. They haven't put out any recent updates afaik
I just wish it would go based on ambient light if you have a webcam rather than what the sun is doing. Where I work, I'm not always exposed to natural sunlight, and I don't always work during the day going into the night where I'm going to want my screen to adjust to me trying to fall asleep halfway through a second-shift schedule.
It's hard to measure ambient light correctly for something like this, because in a dark room, most of the ambient light is actually coming from the screen itself.
This is one of the best lists about employee benefits I've read in a while. IMHO, the best point is about the vacation policy. Startups that I've worked at generally have a flexible vacation policy, but the hardest part is making sure that team members are actually using it. It's easy for the lines to blur and to keep working with no time off.
Another thing that I think startups struggle with is letting people work when they want: ie. if I want to work and am productive late at night or on Saturdays, and I feel like taking the morning off or a weekday off, I should have the liberty to do so. But, this is really hard when you have other employees who all adhere to schedules and you want to have meetings. Perhaps it can only be accomplished at a later stage.
Author here. I didn't mention anything about meetings, but I should have. I don't like them, but I think it's fun to hang out and brainstorm. I think it's important to schedule things in advance, so you don't feel like you are missing something by working from home.
I think flexible work hours are great. It will be our job to make sure we make our employees feel comfortable working the times they work best.
> this is really hard when you have other employees who all adhere to schedules and you want to have meetings.
I think that is what managers are for. The manager's job is to facilitate communication between team members. If one person is more productive during the night, the manager's job is to step in and make the communication burden minimal.
A couple thoughts:
- It's definitely possible for both companies to have awesome teams. No one person is going to make or break either team.
- Employees should have a right to work where they want to. Part of this means that if I am a skilled employee, I'll get offers to come work for other companies. If I engage in a conversation, then it's perfectly alright for the company to actively recruit me. On the flip side, if I decline, they should back off. But, at the end of the day, it should be my choice. Both the company and employee need to win (which might be hard at times).
- Part of living in a free, capitalist, democratic society is the beauty that if an employee tries to leave, you can try to persuade them otherwise. This can be done in a variety of ways, but it comes down to taking the more appealing offer (that doesn't just have to be pay and title, but can also be the values of the company or the employee's lust for working at a particular company or their freedom to have a little less bureaucracy and instead experiment with new ideas, etc. etc.)
- I love the jab at the end, where Ed claims that Palm is not interested in getting or using confidential Apple information and also informs their employees of their duties to their previous employers