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Literally the point of a job at a for-profit company is to make money, yes, primarily for yourself and secondarily for the business. This is by no means moral o
by geofft 5y ago
Literally the point of a job at a for-profit company is to make money, yes, primarily for yourself and secondarily for the business. This is by no means moral or virtuous. But it is true, and because it is true, the people who admit the truth of it will be more successful in the sense that they will be working with the system, and the people who act as if it is somehow untrue and there is some greater virtue behind it will be frustrated in the sense that they will never be able to work against the system enough to unseat it.
Why did the startup get acquired by the large company in the first place? To make money for the shareholders (mostly the founders), partly through an exit event, partly through the ongoing value of their shares. Sure, they wrote an internal email and a blog post about the "next stage of their journey" and how the big company "shares their vision" or whatever, but that's not the real reason - the reason is money. Why do employees get equity? To incentivize them to care about the money the company makes, because otherwise they wouldn't care sufficiently about the secondary goal of making money for the company (i.e., making more money for management, who sets the equity policies). Why do employers compete on salary in the first place? Because that's what being employed is about - making money.
If you want to do good work, to change the world for the better, to have fun, or whatever, you have two options. One is to secure your place within the system of being successful by making money - i.e., to show management that you will make them money if they keep you around and keep you happy - and then find some room to maneuver within it. There are a lot of people who are happy and fulfilled with their jobs because they can do this. The other is to leave the system (retire, work part-time, join a convent, etc.).
But refusing to admit the rules of the game will work about as well as trying to play a game of chess by bowling a ball at the pieces and knocking them down. You might say you don't care to win, which is fine, but that's hardly the problem - everyone involved, including you, will end up upset.
- csdvrx 5y agoIt's both funny and sad you've got to remind that to people who post on HN of all places...
- achillesheels 5y agoThe end of a for-profit company, I will agree, is to profit, but what end is that for humanity? You imply that moral corruption toward profitable ends is of no difference to those where righteousness in action creates profitability to the owners of the business firm, e.g. honest income. What if the managers you advise working for are evil? You seem to affirm that it is not your problem so long as you are succeeding at making money. That there is no difference in profiting at a usurious bank than a charitable one, indeed to participate in the usury because it temporally rewards more, when in fact there naturally is.
- geofft 5y agoI think you missed the part where I said this was not moral or virtuous. Don't go looking for virtue. You won't find it. If the managers you advise are working towards evil (say, they're having you find zero-days to deploy against human rights advocates in the service of murderous autocrats), by all means, stop working for them! But that's very different from the managers not being able to process your feature request until Q2 and asking you to fill out a Google Doc. This is not evil, nor will it benefit humanity to send in some patches to the other team's code and get it shipped tomorrow. Don't go looking for virtue there, either. To reiterate my point - I'm not saying it's good that the things I'm claiming are true. But I'm saying they are true, and you'd better start by acknowledging the world as it actually is if you want to effectively improve the world as opposed to just ineffectively keeping your conscience clear. Expecting to find virtue at a for-profit business that isn't deliberately opting out of the system (and a startup that decided to be acquired is deliberately opting in) is misjudging reality. But in the same way, so is expecting to create virtue by making your employer a little more efficient at migrating VMs.
- achillesheels 5y ago>I think you missed the part where I said this was not moral or virtuous. Don't go looking for virtue. You won't find it. That's like, your opinion, man. There are plenty of businesses that run with integrity as a necessary motivation to sustain their future profitability. This ends up causing a more virtuous society where people do not need to tolerate evil in order to survive. I don't buy into your argument for "effectively improving the world", i.e. one can keep a clear conscience and do extraordinarily well in life, metabolically speaking. And that's the point: the goal in life is not measured by temporal goods. But that's like my opinion, man.
- mekkkkkk 5y agoWhat do you mean with "securing your place within the system of being successful"? Just keeping your job? Or are you talking about abandoning other goals than monetary success? I'd say that getting a win/win is more than a achievable within the "system". I.e. I get to do something I enjoy doing, while also getting payed for it. The company gets the output of my labor for a reasonable price. Everyone wins and no one is sacrificing anything.
- geofft 5y agoI just mean keeping your job, but to the post above, I mean realizing that because there is no inherent virtue in a for-profit job, there is also no "corruption" simply because there's too much bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is typically in service to a functioning large organization being able to remain large and reliably make money; it's fine. If you want to do some good in the world, it's a lot better to put up with the bureaucracy and instead direct your energy to some worthy local political cause or something. Trying to make your employer a force for good is a poor plan, because as an organization whose goal is profit, it will never be sustainably motivated by the desire to do good.
- mekkkkkk 5y agoOr quit and find a workplace with a level of bureaucracy that you are comfortable with. Surely that's an option as well?