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Probably the latter. In my view, Netflix (IBM, Amazon, Bloomberg etc) should consider what would happen if they were completely honest to their employees: "You

Probably the latter. In my view, Netflix (IBM, Amazon, Bloomberg etc) should consider what would happen if they were completely honest to their employees: "You are a cog in our machine. We do not care for you. We only care for your work. We will pay you insofar as you can execute on our vision. Further, you will be paid according to how hard it is to replace you. If you can be replaced by someone who executes significantly better, relative to your pay, we will tell you to leave." Needless to say, stating that would make many of their employees, especially the weak-minded and insecure (those who defend their terrible culture), unhappy. I imagine even those in charge of the culture, speaking those words, would feel bad. And they should feel bad. While such overwhelmingly negative words should almost never be spoken with authority, these decision makers must at least be able to answer the question "What are we really saying to our people?" truthfully. And if the answer is something along the lines of "you're a cog in the machine", then something has gone very wrong[1] In my non-expert opinion, if a company truly wishes to be a "good" place to work, it should know the distance between their words and the truth, and then focus on minimizing that distance. Spoken more simply: the more dishonest a company is to its employees, the worse the culture. [1] Or right, if the company requires joylessness to turn a profit.

archagon 11y ago
I've said this before, but how I wish software companies based on the cooperative model[1] were more of a thing. It's not healthy for people to be treated like worker bees. Corporations should be a collaborative effort, and the wealth and decision-making should be distributed proportionally. In a way, the structure of our corporations both reflects and influences our society. A recent study has shown that the US is now more of an oligarchy than a representative democracy. Would we be happier and better off if "working for" was replaced by "working with"? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
- monksy 11y ago
  I was with you until that employees are deserving of the proportional wealth. The people who took the risk to found the company are deserving of that.
  - archagon 11y ago
    I meant proportional to their participation. Naturally, the founders should have more of a stake, but certainly not 1000x the stake of Joe Engineer.
    - bmelton 11y ago
      Bit offtopic perhaps, but Netflix CEO pay is something like 15-25 times the salary of Joe Engineer. Worth noting, but the 1000x figure that gets bandied about so often when referring to CEO pay is typically limited only to the Fortune 50 or so, and is in no way the mean pay for the top guy. S&P 500 companies lower the average to less than 400x worker pay, and most businesses have a much smaller gap than that, and across all companies, average CEO pay is something like $157k.
      - archagon 11y ago
        I guess I'm thinking of the traditional startup IPO, where the first handful of employees get "fuck you money" while everyone else only gets a small piece of the pie (despite possibly doing just as much work). But also, more importantly, people outside the C-level rarely get a say in how the company gets run.
        bmelton 11y ago
        That's kind of a different thing altogether though, really. The "fuck you money" generally comes only in the case of a liquidity event, such as IPO, sale, etc. To my ear, there are compelling arguments both ways. Assuming a large company, employees 1-x should probably enjoy some of that fuck you money, but clearly, at some point there's a falloff. If my company sold tomorrow, I would not have in any way been involved in its sale. Same with an IPO. Our company has been around for years, sells expensive software, has millions in revenue, and I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not we've turned a profit yet. Assuming we have, it was probably done only last year, which meant that somebody was footing the bills of a multi million dollar company for a decade or so, and that person wasn't me. If somebody was spending millions on an idea that took a decade to pay off, then absolutely they deserve more money in a liquidity event than I do, and I'd be a fool to begrudge them that. That said, not all companies are created equally, and many get to market / revenue / profitability at different timetables with different employee counts, so YMMV. That said, the notion of 'fair' is so abstract in this scenario then I think it's safe to assume that it is universally convoluted. Hard to pin down exactly what is or isn't fair without internal knowledge I don't have.
- xj9 11y ago
  We are in the very, very early stages, but my startup[1] is working on an open source toolkit for building cooperative companies. [1]: https://infinite.ai https://infinite.ai
  - archagon 11y ago
    That is awesome! I'll be keeping an eye on this.
dublinclontarf 11y ago
Read some stuff from Michael O. Church
- mplewis 11y ago
  I'd rather not.
morgante 11y ago
Netflix does this far more than most. They're very clear that they're paying you to perform and that if you don't you will be kicked out ASAP. You might prefer a company filled with B-players doing B-work for B-pay, but don't hold it against Netflix that they're honest about what they expect.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  I think the problem is more about sustainable effort.
- phlyingpenguin 11y ago
  Which just translates, as many of these Netflix threads do, to constant terror that you're going to be out of a job. I'll take my game, A or B, somewhere else, thanks.
  - aianus 11y ago
    Nobody good enough to get hired at Netflix is "terrified" that they'll be unemployed for longer than a week, come on.
    - randallsquared 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
  - hitekker 11y ago
    Good point on the terror. On the individual level, A/B/C players is your average self-justifying dichotomy: I'm better than those people because I work hard, I work smart etc. Yet on the system level, it's the perfect rationalization for companies too lazy to hire correctly and too impotent to own up to mistakes. "Why couldn't these folks go above and beyond like these other teams? It must be that they are inherently not good enough. Fire them and get a new team in." I would even go so far to say that it's the CEO's and senior management, not the employees, who push this myth the most. In somehow all formulations I've seen, the persons's boss, who is amazing (regardless of context), and her or his bosses who are also amazing, are the judges of all performers in the company. Because the system is perfect or filled with perfect people (read: the top part is), any point of failure must be the employee, by process of elimination. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch (the
samstave 11y ago
If there was a /HN/bestof -- I'd submit this.
- hitekker 11y ago
  Might be a little egotistical for me to say, but I do like it when my writing is appreciated. Thanks!
pessimizer 11y ago
>"You are a cog in our machine. We do not care for you. We only care for your work. We will pay you insofar as you can execute on our vision. Further, you will be paid according to how hard it is to replace you. If you can be replaced by someone who executes significantly better, relative to your pay, we will tell you to leave." Isn't this the ideal of wage labor and the reality of 98% of jobs? I've never even suspected that my corporate employer cares about me as a person aside from how I produce, and have never suspected that I'm being paid by them for any other reason that it would cost them a lot more than they pay me to find somebody to replace me. I don't mean to say I haven't had great friendships and working relationships with management, but to the business, I'm a line item. When I notice a business making decisions contrary to the bottom line, I suspect corruption, not corporate affection. They're a cog in my machine, too. I can only depend on that cog if it behaves rationally.
- hitekker 11y ago
  I agree it's the reality for a majority if not the super majority of jobs. I also think it could be the ideal of hourly wage labor: which is to say that the company wants nothing more than what they can motivate you to do with money, and that you want nothing more from the company than their money. Looking back, I see I made my comment in the context of Silicon Valley behemoths and startups: companies that can both pretend to, and potentially change some fundamental way of doing things. I think the difference in my mind between "creative" companies and normal ones is the "potential", achievements outside of a strictly defined expectations of contract, for both the business and the employee. Maybe a great insight, a new tool... anything that greatly benefits both the business and the employee, especially if the employee uses the product(s) and believes in the mission. When you take away that potential (by saying employees are just cogs in a machine), you might take with it the creative spark that these hopeful companies ostensibly rely on. In my mind, that "potential" is the real joy of a job, which is my reason for the (slightly snarky) comment that "cog in the machine" is only acceptable "if the company requires joylessness to turn a profit". If I could, I would edit that post to be more clear/to take into account businesses which do not require any specialness. At least for my central point, "the more dishonest, the worst the culture"... I believe that stands, especially in circumstances where a person is (somehow) manufacturing toilet paper and their supervisor is telling them they are (somehow) on their way to curing cancer.

archagon 11y ago

I've said this before, but how I wish software companies based on the cooperative model[1] were more of a thing. It's not healthy for people to be treated like worker bees. Corporations should be a collaborative effort, and the wealth and decision-making should be distributed proportionally. In a way, the structure of our corporations both reflects and influences our society. A recent study has shown that the US is now more of an oligarchy than a representative democracy. Would we be happier and better off if "working for" was replaced by "working with"? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

monksy 11y ago
I was with you until that employees are deserving of the proportional wealth. The people who took the risk to found the company are deserving of that.
- archagon 11y ago
  I meant proportional to their participation. Naturally, the founders should have more of a stake, but certainly not 1000x the stake of Joe Engineer.
  - bmelton 11y ago
    Bit offtopic perhaps, but Netflix CEO pay is something like 15-25 times the salary of Joe Engineer. Worth noting, but the 1000x figure that gets bandied about so often when referring to CEO pay is typically limited only to the Fortune 50 or so, and is in no way the mean pay for the top guy. S&P 500 companies lower the average to less than 400x worker pay, and most businesses have a much smaller gap than that, and across all companies, average CEO pay is something like $157k.
    - archagon 11y ago
      I guess I'm thinking of the traditional startup IPO, where the first handful of employees get "fuck you money" while everyone else only gets a small piece of the pie (despite possibly doing just as much work). But also, more importantly, people outside the C-level rarely get a say in how the company gets run.
      - bmelton 11y ago
        That's kind of a different thing altogether though, really. The "fuck you money" generally comes only in the case of a liquidity event, such as IPO, sale, etc. To my ear, there are compelling arguments both ways. Assuming a large company, employees 1-x should probably enjoy some of that fuck you money, but clearly, at some point there's a falloff. If my company sold tomorrow, I would not have in any way been involved in its sale. Same with an IPO. Our company has been around for years, sells expensive software, has millions in revenue, and I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not we've turned a profit yet. Assuming we have, it was probably done only last year, which meant that somebody was footing the bills of a multi million dollar company for a decade or so, and that person wasn't me. If somebody was spending millions on an idea that took a decade to pay off, then absolutely they deserve more money in a liquidity event than I do, and I'd be a fool to begrudge them that. That said, not all companies are created equally, and many get to market / revenue / profitability at different timetables with different employee counts, so YMMV. That said, the notion of 'fair' is so abstract in this scenario then I think it's safe to assume that it is universally convoluted. Hard to pin down exactly what is or isn't fair without internal knowledge I don't have.
xj9 11y ago
We are in the very, very early stages, but my startup[1] is working on an open source toolkit for building cooperative companies. [1]: https://infinite.ai https://infinite.ai
- archagon 11y ago
  That is awesome! I'll be keeping an eye on this.

dublinclontarf 11y ago

Read some stuff from Michael O. Church

mplewis 11y ago
I'd rather not.

morgante 11y ago

Netflix does this far more than most. They're very clear that they're paying you to perform and that if you don't you will be kicked out ASAP. You might prefer a company filled with B-players doing B-work for B-pay, but don't hold it against Netflix that they're honest about what they expect.

mahyarm 11y ago
I think the problem is more about sustainable effort.
phlyingpenguin 11y ago
Which just translates, as many of these Netflix threads do, to constant terror that you're going to be out of a job. I'll take my game, A or B, somewhere else, thanks.
- aianus 11y ago
  Nobody good enough to get hired at Netflix is "terrified" that they'll be unemployed for longer than a week, come on.
  - randallsquared 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
- hitekker 11y ago
  Good point on the terror. On the individual level, A/B/C players is your average self-justifying dichotomy: I'm better than those people because I work hard, I work smart etc. Yet on the system level, it's the perfect rationalization for companies too lazy to hire correctly and too impotent to own up to mistakes. "Why couldn't these folks go above and beyond like these other teams? It must be that they are inherently not good enough. Fire them and get a new team in." I would even go so far to say that it's the CEO's and senior management, not the employees, who push this myth the most. In somehow all formulations I've seen, the persons's boss, who is amazing (regardless of context), and her or his bosses who are also amazing, are the judges of all performers in the company. Because the system is perfect or filled with perfect people (read: the top part is), any point of failure must be the employee, by process of elimination. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch (the

samstave 11y ago

If there was a /HN/bestof -- I'd submit this.

hitekker 11y ago
Might be a little egotistical for me to say, but I do like it when my writing is appreciated. Thanks!

pessimizer 11y ago

>"You are a cog in our machine. We do not care for you. We only care for your work. We will pay you insofar as you can execute on our vision. Further, you will be paid according to how hard it is to replace you. If you can be replaced by someone who executes significantly better, relative to your pay, we will tell you to leave." Isn't this the ideal of wage labor and the reality of 98% of jobs? I've never even suspected that my corporate employer cares about me as a person aside from how I produce, and have never suspected that I'm being paid by them for any other reason that it would cost them a lot more than they pay me to find somebody to replace me. I don't mean to say I haven't had great friendships and working relationships with management, but to the business, I'm a line item. When I notice a business making decisions contrary to the bottom line, I suspect corruption, not corporate affection. They're a cog in my machine, too. I can only depend on that cog if it behaves rationally.

hitekker 11y ago
I agree it's the reality for a majority if not the super majority of jobs. I also think it could be the ideal of hourly wage labor: which is to say that the company wants nothing more than what they can motivate you to do with money, and that you want nothing more from the company than their money. Looking back, I see I made my comment in the context of Silicon Valley behemoths and startups: companies that can both pretend to, and potentially change some fundamental way of doing things. I think the difference in my mind between "creative" companies and normal ones is the "potential", achievements outside of a strictly defined expectations of contract, for both the business and the employee. Maybe a great insight, a new tool... anything that greatly benefits both the business and the employee, especially if the employee uses the product(s) and believes in the mission. When you take away that potential (by saying employees are just cogs in a machine), you might take with it the creative spark that these hopeful companies ostensibly rely on. In my mind, that "potential" is the real joy of a job, which is my reason for the (slightly snarky) comment that "cog in the machine" is only acceptable "if the company requires joylessness to turn a profit". If I could, I would edit that post to be more clear/to take into account businesses which do not require any specialness. At least for my central point, "the more dishonest, the worst the culture"... I believe that stands, especially in circumstances where a person is (somehow) manufacturing toilet paper and their supervisor is telling them they are (somehow) on their way to curing cancer.