4 ms·

Businesses aren’t your friends. Employers aren’t your family. Be wary of either group selling them as such.

javajosh 6y ago
Businesses aren’t your friends. Employers aren’t your family. No, but its a helpful fiction as far as it makes everyone more convivial and agreeable. It forms a kind of shared illusion, not unlike the kayfabe of professional wrestling.
- rob74 6y ago
  Yeah, you should be wary of trusting your employer too much, but if you go through your (professional) life with an attitude of "don't turn your back on anyone, they're all out to get you" the quote above will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy...
IgorPartola 6y ago
This isn’t untrue but it’s also an absolutist statement. There is a big difference between Canonical and Oracle, between Zappos (before Amazon bought them) and Walmart, between Starbucks and McDonalds. Your experience working for these will be vastly different. Your experience dealing with them will be also different. And some will behave closer to “good citizens” than others.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  A company isn’t a “citizen”, it isn’t even a “person”. Also why do we even give credence to ideas such as good corporate “citizenship”? Thank you for not destroying the economy or societal fabric..? Way to be a good for profit entity that probably still isn’t raising wages or helping with the homeless crisis..? There should be strong laws and regulations that bind companies and jail their execs if they step out of line. We shouldn’t depend so heavily on so called good corporate “citizenship”. I didn’t vote for these executives, their boards, or their investors. This isn’t what democracy looks like.
  - mrkstu 6y ago
    Corporate citizenship lasts as long as you have a CEO that values it and the CEO has a highly profitable company that they can afford to be generous w/o pissing off the board. Look at someplace like Costco- highly profitable, pays well above average for the sector, employee and community friendly policies... which would all go in the trash if Sams Club starting eating their lunch and their margins disappeared.
  - simonh 6y ago
    The people who own and run companies are citizens though, with all the rights and freedoms that come with that. The fact that they are exercising those as employers or employees should make no difference. In face we all take advantage of our rights as citizens while employed or employing people all the time. Fundamentally Capitalism is simply the exercise of basic property rights and individual freedoms. As fro democracy there's no reason you should have any say in how these people exercise their freedoms under the law, beyond your say in government and the law. If you have a problem with anything they do, then that's a matter for the law and regulation, applied equally to everyone. An idealistic view I accept, but it's what we should be aiming for.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    Relax. That’s why I put “good citizen” in quotes. They aren’t citizens but the term “good citizen” means acting in the best interest of society. I am not talking in any way about corporate personhood, just the idea that a company may do things that are a net positive or a net negative and some do more net positive things than net negative things.
- bartread 6y ago
  > There is a big difference between Canonical and Oracle, between Zappos (before Amazon bought them) and Walmart Right up to the moment where there isn't. Some companies have great values, a great culture, an inspiring mission and they'll be relatively consistent in maintaining these things for quite extended periods of time: years, sometimes even decades. That's really easy to do during the good times: when you're hitting your numbers and all the trendlines are pointing upwards. However, when things get more difficult - when there's a downturn, competitors move in, or the market simply moves on - that equation changes a lot. Sooner or later under those circumstances every business has to start making hard calls that will make it very clear to all involved that it is not a family. We can all point to examples of businesses that have gone out of their way to look after their employees during the pandemic. But even they can't do so indefinitely (hopefully they won't have to try if the vaccination programmes work as well as we all hope). Sooner or later the values of a business will become subservient to commercial reality even if that doesn't happen to our values as individuals.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    Right. A person is good and moral until they are starving. Then thing change a lot. The person may steal, rob, even murder. Therefore all people are murderers and we should get rid of them. QED. I am not saying businesses should have a carte blanche to do what they want. Far from it. But in the sense that some corporations tend to behave better than others, just like some individual people tend to behave better than others, we should recognize that it is better to push all to behave better than to get rid of all of them on the grounds that the worst ones are beyond redemption.
- akudha 6y ago
  That is like saying robbery is better than murder. Yes, it is true that Canonical is better than Oracle, but they are all businesses in the end. I've had a dozen jobs so far, some were better than others, even fun. But the one common thread in all of those jobs is - none of them gave a shit about me, however hard/smart I worked for them. I've experienced the same as a paying customer. Customers, employees, partners etc are all means to one end, and one only - making someone rich
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    No it isn’t. You are using reductionist logic. Because some corporations will sell out their employees and customers under specific circumstances must mean that all of them are doing it all the time, right? Robbery and murder have no upsides to a society. Organized labor to create something bigger than a single person can build is foundation of society. You can argue which system of organization is better (government owns and dictates everything like communism, corporations and government own and some specific categories of things and dictate what’s in their purview like capitalism, the royalty and nobility own and dictate everything like monarchy, or no organized labor exists like anarchy). But the reality is that we as a species tend to organize into tribes and work in groups and whether you call those tribes/groups corporations, government work forces, peasantry, guilds is just about what trade offs you want to make. I will be really impressed if you can show a proof that a corporation is like murder.
- lumost 6y ago
  The mistake people often make is mistaking a "fun" or "caring" atmosphere and demeanor of the company and assuming that that actually means the company cares about "fun" or cares for their employees. If there is anything that poses a risk to the company, interferes with an employees ability to serve the company, or in any way reduces productivity... there will be no difference between canonical and oracle or even canonical and McDonalds. The difference between your experience working at these companies is largely window dressing on the same corporate employer/employee model.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    So to you there is no difference working for McDonalds or Canonical or Oracle? And what is your solution? Work for the government? Everyone should work on the family farm because families always treat their members better than anyone else and nobody gets exploited? Do not work at all? Again, this is like saying that if you push a person hard enough they will commit violence which immediately implies that all people are violent criminals. It’s simply not how that works, and equating all current and past behavior to what someone is capable of is silly.
    - lumost 6y ago
      I vastly prefer working at a company that pays well and will attempt as far as a company can to care about me as an individual. My point was that it's a common error, particularly amongst people new to the workforce to mistake the impression of caring for actual caring.
      - IgorPartola 6y ago
        Ah OK that makes sense. I have experienced working at companies that will go to greater lengths than others to accommodate their employees in lieu of profits or even profitability, but yes they all have their limits, just like individual people have limits on their altruism. It certainly is easier for an individual to be more altruistic than for a corporation.
mrkstu 6y ago
You may have friends at work but yes, don't confuse that with the employer organization itself being your friend. The business will 99.999% do what's better for itself (as defined by the executive team, which is incentivized by the policies of the board) rather that what is best for any employee and sometimes for all employees, though there has to be some agreement with what is best for 'all employees' in order to attract any decent ones.
wtetzner 6y ago
> Employers aren’t your family. Unless you work for the family business ;)
mynameisash 6y ago
I am hopeful that the idea of a B-Corporation[0] will catch on. While not perfect, my impression is that it would confer more benefit to their workforce and society as a whole than traditional S- and C-corps. For the uninitiated, B-Corps "must receive a minimum score from an assessment of 'social and environmental performance', [and] integrate B Corp commitments to stakeholders into company governing documents". Patagonia, for example[1][2], seems to be a trailblazer in being transparent about and actively improving their business in terms of logistics (monitoring "the cost of materials that have the potential to be Fair Trade Certified against the volume of materials that are purchased in a Fiscal Year"), corporate culture ("[encourage] work-life balance, as well as a focus on an individual’s physical and mental health"), end products (their "criteria for the best product rests on function, repairability, and, foremost, durability"), and so on. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification) [1] https://bcorporation.net/directory/patagonia-inc https://bcorporation.net/directory/patagonia-inc [2] https://www.patagonia.com/stories/benefit-corporation-update-patagonia-passes-b-impact-assessment-improves-score-to-116/story-17871.html https://www.patagonia.com/stories/benefit-corporation-update...
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  I like the B Corp model but would greatly prefer worker ownership.
  - pabs3 6y ago
    Igalia are a good example of a worker owned company in the open source space (and they are hiring): https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/jobs/ https://www.igalia.com/jobs/
    - adamcstephens 6y ago
      Thanks :)

Businesses aren’t your friends. Employers aren’t your family. No, but its a helpful fiction as far as it makes everyone more convivial and agreeable. It forms a kind of shared illusion, not unlike the kayfabe of professional wrestling.

rob74 6y ago
Yeah, you should be wary of trusting your employer too much, but if you go through your (professional) life with an attitude of "don't turn your back on anyone, they're all out to get you" the quote above will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy...

IgorPartola 6y ago

This isn’t untrue but it’s also an absolutist statement. There is a big difference between Canonical and Oracle, between Zappos (before Amazon bought them) and Walmart, between Starbucks and McDonalds. Your experience working for these will be vastly different. Your experience dealing with them will be also different. And some will behave closer to “good citizens” than others.

randmeerkat 6y ago
A company isn’t a “citizen”, it isn’t even a “person”. Also why do we even give credence to ideas such as good corporate “citizenship”? Thank you for not destroying the economy or societal fabric..? Way to be a good for profit entity that probably still isn’t raising wages or helping with the homeless crisis..? There should be strong laws and regulations that bind companies and jail their execs if they step out of line. We shouldn’t depend so heavily on so called good corporate “citizenship”. I didn’t vote for these executives, their boards, or their investors. This isn’t what democracy looks like.
- mrkstu 6y ago
  Corporate citizenship lasts as long as you have a CEO that values it and the CEO has a highly profitable company that they can afford to be generous w/o pissing off the board. Look at someplace like Costco- highly profitable, pays well above average for the sector, employee and community friendly policies... which would all go in the trash if Sams Club starting eating their lunch and their margins disappeared.
- simonh 6y ago
  The people who own and run companies are citizens though, with all the rights and freedoms that come with that. The fact that they are exercising those as employers or employees should make no difference. In face we all take advantage of our rights as citizens while employed or employing people all the time. Fundamentally Capitalism is simply the exercise of basic property rights and individual freedoms. As fro democracy there's no reason you should have any say in how these people exercise their freedoms under the law, beyond your say in government and the law. If you have a problem with anything they do, then that's a matter for the law and regulation, applied equally to everyone. An idealistic view I accept, but it's what we should be aiming for.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Relax. That’s why I put “good citizen” in quotes. They aren’t citizens but the term “good citizen” means acting in the best interest of society. I am not talking in any way about corporate personhood, just the idea that a company may do things that are a net positive or a net negative and some do more net positive things than net negative things.
bartread 6y ago
> There is a big difference between Canonical and Oracle, between Zappos (before Amazon bought them) and Walmart Right up to the moment where there isn't. Some companies have great values, a great culture, an inspiring mission and they'll be relatively consistent in maintaining these things for quite extended periods of time: years, sometimes even decades. That's really easy to do during the good times: when you're hitting your numbers and all the trendlines are pointing upwards. However, when things get more difficult - when there's a downturn, competitors move in, or the market simply moves on - that equation changes a lot. Sooner or later under those circumstances every business has to start making hard calls that will make it very clear to all involved that it is not a family. We can all point to examples of businesses that have gone out of their way to look after their employees during the pandemic. But even they can't do so indefinitely (hopefully they won't have to try if the vaccination programmes work as well as we all hope). Sooner or later the values of a business will become subservient to commercial reality even if that doesn't happen to our values as individuals.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Right. A person is good and moral until they are starving. Then thing change a lot. The person may steal, rob, even murder. Therefore all people are murderers and we should get rid of them. QED. I am not saying businesses should have a carte blanche to do what they want. Far from it. But in the sense that some corporations tend to behave better than others, just like some individual people tend to behave better than others, we should recognize that it is better to push all to behave better than to get rid of all of them on the grounds that the worst ones are beyond redemption.
akudha 6y ago
That is like saying robbery is better than murder. Yes, it is true that Canonical is better than Oracle, but they are all businesses in the end. I've had a dozen jobs so far, some were better than others, even fun. But the one common thread in all of those jobs is - none of them gave a shit about me, however hard/smart I worked for them. I've experienced the same as a paying customer. Customers, employees, partners etc are all means to one end, and one only - making someone rich
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  No it isn’t. You are using reductionist logic. Because some corporations will sell out their employees and customers under specific circumstances must mean that all of them are doing it all the time, right? Robbery and murder have no upsides to a society. Organized labor to create something bigger than a single person can build is foundation of society. You can argue which system of organization is better (government owns and dictates everything like communism, corporations and government own and some specific categories of things and dictate what’s in their purview like capitalism, the royalty and nobility own and dictate everything like monarchy, or no organized labor exists like anarchy). But the reality is that we as a species tend to organize into tribes and work in groups and whether you call those tribes/groups corporations, government work forces, peasantry, guilds is just about what trade offs you want to make. I will be really impressed if you can show a proof that a corporation is like murder.
lumost 6y ago
The mistake people often make is mistaking a "fun" or "caring" atmosphere and demeanor of the company and assuming that that actually means the company cares about "fun" or cares for their employees. If there is anything that poses a risk to the company, interferes with an employees ability to serve the company, or in any way reduces productivity... there will be no difference between canonical and oracle or even canonical and McDonalds. The difference between your experience working at these companies is largely window dressing on the same corporate employer/employee model.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  So to you there is no difference working for McDonalds or Canonical or Oracle? And what is your solution? Work for the government? Everyone should work on the family farm because families always treat their members better than anyone else and nobody gets exploited? Do not work at all? Again, this is like saying that if you push a person hard enough they will commit violence which immediately implies that all people are violent criminals. It’s simply not how that works, and equating all current and past behavior to what someone is capable of is silly.
  - lumost 6y ago
    I vastly prefer working at a company that pays well and will attempt as far as a company can to care about me as an individual. My point was that it's a common error, particularly amongst people new to the workforce to mistake the impression of caring for actual caring.
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      Ah OK that makes sense. I have experienced working at companies that will go to greater lengths than others to accommodate their employees in lieu of profits or even profitability, but yes they all have their limits, just like individual people have limits on their altruism. It certainly is easier for an individual to be more altruistic than for a corporation.

mrkstu 6y ago

You may have friends at work but yes, don't confuse that with the employer organization itself being your friend. The business will 99.999% do what's better for itself (as defined by the executive team, which is incentivized by the policies of the board) rather that what is best for any employee and sometimes for all employees, though there has to be some agreement with what is best for 'all employees' in order to attract any decent ones.

wtetzner 6y ago

> Employers aren’t your family. Unless you work for the family business ;)

mynameisash 6y ago

I am hopeful that the idea of a B-Corporation[0] will catch on. While not perfect, my impression is that it would confer more benefit to their workforce and society as a whole than traditional S- and C-corps. For the uninitiated, B-Corps "must receive a minimum score from an assessment of 'social and environmental performance', [and] integrate B Corp commitments to stakeholders into company governing documents". Patagonia, for example[1][2], seems to be a trailblazer in being transparent about and actively improving their business in terms of logistics (monitoring "the cost of materials that have the potential to be Fair Trade Certified against the volume of materials that are purchased in a Fiscal Year"), corporate culture ("[encourage] work-life balance, as well as a focus on an individual’s physical and mental health"), end products (their "criteria for the best product rests on function, repairability, and, foremost, durability"), and so on. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification) [1] https://bcorporation.net/directory/patagonia-inc https://bcorporation.net/directory/patagonia-inc [2] https://www.patagonia.com/stories/benefit-corporation-update-patagonia-passes-b-impact-assessment-improves-score-to-116/story-17871.html https://www.patagonia.com/stories/benefit-corporation-update...

adamcstephens 6y ago
I like the B Corp model but would greatly prefer worker ownership.
- pabs3 6y ago
  Igalia are a good example of a worker owned company in the open source space (and they are hiring): https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/jobs/ https://www.igalia.com/jobs/
  - adamcstephens 6y ago
    Thanks :)