A little while ago, Adam Nash – the CEO of Wealthfront – posted a great tweetstorm on why hiring new people was so important for companies. I remember seeing it and retweeting a number of the posts. Today, he posted a simple blog post outlining much of what he said on Twitter, but with more context. It’s a great read.
Every new employee bets on the company, and the company bets on them. It’s one of the most human and yet often overlooked aspects of technology careers at startup companies.
It reminded me to post quickly about a book I recently finished. The book is called The Alliance and is written by Reid Hoffman. Given Nash came from LinkedIn prior to Wealthfront, it’s no surprise that there’s a strong feeling that the post and book are cut from the same cloth. There’s two quotes I want to share that have stayed with me since reading it.
Remember the underpinnings of the alliance: the company helps the employee transform his career; the employee helps the company transform itself and become more adaptable.
Essentially, in the book Hoffman outlines three different buckets that both companies and employees can use to categorize how they’re growing their career at any given time by completing one of three types of Tour Of Duty: Rotational, Transformational, Foundational. This makes a lot of sense to me. This Slideshare is a great primer for the book so check it out in more detail.
As Nash points out, every employee is taking a bet on the company when they join and vice versa. Being honest about that and being cognisant of how much each party is actually risking by working together allows the approach espoused by The Alliance to work.
As the average time that someone spends working at one company continues to diminish, we can no longer risk being unclear about what we’re looking to get from our employees as employers. We must provide more clarity about the important work that needs to be done in our organisation and how our people can help carry that out. In the same vein, as an employee, it’s on us to bring this mindset into our careers and current jobs to express what growth we’re looking to achieve, and have a conversation about how we can do that together. Which brings me to the final quote I wanted to share from The Alliance.
Never before in human history have so many people been connected by so many networks.
Being a member of the ‘Yam-Fam’ I can relate to this one. Networks exist everywhere now. We’re becoming more and more connected, everyday – be it to the people we work next to, to our less immediate colleagues, to our vendors/partners/suppliers, to our customers and finally to the citizens of the world. Connecting with various communities in a relevant way that adds value to all parties is now, I believe, a core skill of any knowledge worker.
There’s subtlety to this point. To me, this does not mean that it’s healthy to jump from job to job because opportunities continue to abound. For me, this means that the time you spend in one place should be determined by how well you feel you’re able to add value to that community. If you’ve only been around a short while, then the value you’ve provided to that community is probably low. However, if you do find a group of people that resonates with you in the present moment that allows you to grow your own skills and consciousness, along with the continued growth of the company, then you’ll have those connections for life. People like to work with great people. And people move on to new opportunities all of the time. If you’ve been a part of a high-performance team then it’s likely that you’ll get to join those folks again at some point in your career, when the stars align again.
Anyways, the book is great as is Adam’s post. I hope you enjoy reading them. In the meantime, we’re hiring here at Yammer in a number of roles in our Engineering and Product organisation. If you want to work in a high-performance team that’s truly looking to help organizations become more responsive to their staff, partners and customers then please do get in touch on Twitter or email me.
The Squiggly Line 