4 ms·

Because the company is actually made up of the people that work for it, it’s not the shareholders/owners keeping the company alive and giving it “personhood” st

Because the company is actually made up of the people that work for it, it’s not the shareholders/owners keeping the company alive and giving it “personhood” status, it’s the employees. So it only seems natural that when some of the employees think that something is “wrong” with said company that they’d want to take the necessary steps to fix said wrong thing (with varied degrees of success). Google without its employees is nothing, the same as Facebook or Microsoft without their employees are nothing.

onlydeadheroes 7y ago
The problem is that the "something" that is "wrong" is wrongthing.
dan-robertson 7y ago
I think this just isn’t true and a corporation gets it’s legal status from an act of incorporation, and not from having employees. But on the other hand I’m not a lawyer so maybe I’ve been wrong about this my entire life. On the other hand there are reasons an employer may want or be required to allow this behaviour that have little to do with what a corporation is
- paganel 7y ago
  Yeah, I know the de jure way of how a corporation is defined, but it is my understanding that de facto things have started to change, especially for the companies I mentioned above for which the fixed capital they posses (servers, HQ buildings and not that much else) is dwarfed by the value of their human capital.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    de facto has not changed except in your bubble of friends.
    - paganel 7y ago
      I have no friends that work in SV, but from half a world away I did notice that almost a one trillion dollar company (Alphabet) recently decided to remain out of a very lucrative market (web search in China) mostly because of the pressure coming from some of its employees. From what I've read similar moves have happened at Microsoft (with less degree of success related to its DoD contracts). I'm pretty sure this was not a fact of life back in the days when industrial conglomerates were ruling the Western industrial world.
koheripbal 7y ago
Google "fiduciary duty"

onlydeadheroes 7y ago

The problem is that the "something" that is "wrong" is wrongthing.

dan-robertson 7y ago

I think this just isn’t true and a corporation gets it’s legal status from an act of incorporation, and not from having employees. But on the other hand I’m not a lawyer so maybe I’ve been wrong about this my entire life. On the other hand there are reasons an employer may want or be required to allow this behaviour that have little to do with what a corporation is

paganel 7y ago
Yeah, I know the de jure way of how a corporation is defined, but it is my understanding that de facto things have started to change, especially for the companies I mentioned above for which the fixed capital they posses (servers, HQ buildings and not that much else) is dwarfed by the value of their human capital.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  de facto has not changed except in your bubble of friends.
  - paganel 7y ago
    I have no friends that work in SV, but from half a world away I did notice that almost a one trillion dollar company (Alphabet) recently decided to remain out of a very lucrative market (web search in China) mostly because of the pressure coming from some of its employees. From what I've read similar moves have happened at Microsoft (with less degree of success related to its DoD contracts). I'm pretty sure this was not a fact of life back in the days when industrial conglomerates were ruling the Western industrial world.

koheripbal 7y ago

Google "fiduciary duty"