4 ms·

A guy who mows your lawn a few times is not an employee. You can argue for decades over what precise threshold makes you an employee, but in general employees a

A guy who mows your lawn a few times is not an employee. You can argue for decades over what precise threshold makes you an employee, but in general employees are like groundskeepers who are with you long term. Yes, it is good to involve groundskeepers in big decisions that affect them and their work. If you want to sell the mower for cash, the groundskeeper says “well if you do that I can’t cut the lawn and everything will look terrible and you will then fire me for failing to keep the lawn looking nice” then you should listen. A lot of discussion of this only happens at the end of that cycle, when the CEOs start firing the groundskeepers for failing to keep the lawn etc., so it seems futile to add them to the conversation at the exact point when you know what they’re going to say (“you shouldn’t fire us, you should buy a new mower so we can do our job”). The trick is to do it earlier and incorporate the knowledge embedded in your workforce into your decision making. If you have a hundred people working for you who can see and experience the problems you have first hand, you should find a way for their brainpower not to go to waste. Giving employees regular input into big decisions is a good idea in the long term. Giving them stock is a way to motivate them to be less inward-looking and think about the company as a whole, and a convenient mechanism to formalise and fine-tune the power balance. If you have a bunch of stock (initially 100%), you can think of the voting power it entails as a resource that you can spend on people who are going to vote well with good information and the right kind of interest in making the company sustainable. Giving it to employees is a good way to spend that resource. They know more than regular shareholders and are empowered to change the course of the company from within. If you can’t bring yourself to give away any stock due to unstoppable greed and a belief that employees are dumb lawn mower operators who would never know what’s good for them, then basically… good luck. There is a reason so many law firms operate as a partnership to buy into, so many investment firms give out units of a trust, so many startups and megacorps alike give out equity (usually as options). Of those, it’s usually only law firms that are giving out voting power. All people are saying here is that we should not shy away from giving out voting power as well as the economic interest that this practice is usually restricted to.

ericd 4y ago
Not necessarily disagreeing, leadership should certainly try to get feedback from those on the lines, but from everything I’ve heard, law firms are intensely political, more so than your average corporation. I’d be curious to hear more about how it plays out in German companies, but it seems like distributing power might broaden those power struggles and might draw away from the ability of the company to focus and adjust quickly. There’s a reason that in wartime, the Roman Republic would (temporarily) become a dictatorship by handing power to the Consuls. Companies that don’t have market dominance are essentially in a state of war and need the ability to be nimble, including firing large portions of their staff to reallocate their resources when needed, it’s only the sleepy giants with heavily entrenched power that can afford to relax and focus on spreading the spoils of rent seeking to all interested parties, and even they can only do it for so long until a disruptor comes and tries to break them, somehow. I don’t think we should seek to require that employment be more stable, because down that route lies moribund companies and an ossified economy, and at some point, that can no longer sustain the standard of living that Westerners are accustomed to, because companies in places that don’t have that will eat their lunch. I think we should just seek to make the penalties of not being employed less severe, with much improved social safety nets. Let people continue to compete hard, let them continue to associate and dissociate freely, but don’t let the penalty for dissociation be financial ruin for employees. If we achieve that, we’ll likely make the economy more dynamic, as risk taking is no longer so personally risky - it would give everyone the ability to operate from a place of security and rationality rather than fear and anxiety (from “a position of fuck you”, if you’ve seen that clip from The Gambler) and do what they should do rather than just trying to tread water.
- cormacrelf 4y ago
  My answer to that is basically that these are the same things people say about autocracies vs democracies and it doesn’t really play out that way in practice. The argument goes that autocracies have a big advantage in agility through top down control. But somehow when you mobilise them for wars, democracies are much better at it. Somehow they keep winning, but only when the citizens agree with the aims of leadership. The huge information flow in an open society producing better analysis and better technology, and the enablement of distributed effort through distributed power, amounts to a better machine. Even if democracies have a tendency to become more centralised in wartime, because to some extent there is an optimal balance for each scenario like you say. But the underlying forces of democracy stick around, and leaders still act in a way that’s constrained by it lest they get thrown out. Modern democratic wartime politics is not much like the Consuls at all. Back to companies, if you can find a goal that your employees support, then they will similarly be a better machine at working towards that goal. If your response to challenges as a company is to shut out your employees and tell them to obey, you are missing out on this machine’s power. The only reason you would want to miss out on that power is if you had no other choice, because you were unable to frame the challenge in a way the employees can respond positively to. Democracies have a way of correcting that (among other things), which is called getting voted out; companies don’t by default, so at best you’re usually running a shitty version of democracy and yeah, bad democracies sometimes perform pretty poorly.
  - ericd 4y ago
    Thanks for the well thought-out response. Good point, if you can get people to feel real ownership of the company, that’s extremely powerful (I’ve experienced that in my own small company, but I don’t think I’ve seen it in a large company, maybe somewhat at Apple under Jobs). I think my main argument is to not mandate structure with law, I’ve seen a number of people calling for that. I think that if we strengthened social safety nets, this sort of thing would become more common, as people became more free to leave workplaces they didn’t feel invested in, and more companies would try to foster it to attract employees.
    - 4y ago
smcl 4y ago
I keep looking at this and the original comment and it saddens me. It took about 2 minutes for WalterBright to type out his original (IMO awful) analogy then disappear from the conversation. This comment however was carefully written and thoughtfully provides a thorough rebuttal of the analogy while also contributing a lot to the discussion raised by the original piece. But it's not going to get the attention it deserves and doesn't look like it'll get a response from Walter :-/ Apologies for adding a slightly empty comment but clicking the little "upvote" button didn't feel like it was enough.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  This is just par for the course on HN. Only engage with the weakest responses to your comment. Do not engage with anything providing a decent rebuttal. Makes your thoughts look more solid and the “opposition” look worse as the thread develops.
- Marrand 4y ago
  At least you and I read it :)
- cormacrelf 4y ago
  Don’t worry, I am used to it. When the Walters of the world run off, that’s fine, I have people like you to get through to. Thanks for your kind words.
WalterBright 4y ago
Nowhere did I say that management should not gather input from employees. Nowhere did I say that it was a bad idea to give employees stock. I said that being paid for a job does not imply ownership. > If you can’t bring yourself to give away any stock due to unstoppable greed and a belief that employees are dumb lawn mower operators who would never know what’s good for them That rude comment doesn't deserve a reply, but I wrote one anyway.
- cormacrelf 4y ago
  I suppose I did speak a bit accusatively with the word “you” instead of impersonally, sorry, but this is how some people think of their employees, it’s an attitude you almost outright expressed with your analogy, and it was worth addressing. Obviously what you said is the legal position, nobody was saying otherwise. But it could imply ownership if you wanted. That’s a plausible change you could make to either the law or company structures. It’s something that can change over time simply by publishing information on company regulators’ websites that people look at when they start companies, if you want. Are you open to that kind of change? That’s the question, and you didn’t seem very open to it at all. Some people, especially labour activists who have been trying to give workers more rights since forever, would probably respond positively. You don’t have to have an answer.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > nobody was saying otherwise The parent I replied to wanted to use the government to force the issue. You and anybody else are free to set up and run a corporation the way you please. If it works better, others will copy it. You can even set up a collective, or a commune, or a workers' cooperative. It's not illegal in the US. Whether I am open to your vision of how a company should operate is irrelevant. In a free market, you get to choose how your company will operate. And the best structure will win. Company owners are not so stupid they will turn down a corporate structure that will be more profitable. Tech companies are famous for handing out stock options like popcorn. Back when I ran Zortech, which was privately held, we gave each employee a cut of the monthly sales. When I worked at Boeing, I bought Boeing stock out of my own pocket. It paid off handsomely.

ericd 4y ago

Not necessarily disagreeing, leadership should certainly try to get feedback from those on the lines, but from everything I’ve heard, law firms are intensely political, more so than your average corporation. I’d be curious to hear more about how it plays out in German companies, but it seems like distributing power might broaden those power struggles and might draw away from the ability of the company to focus and adjust quickly. There’s a reason that in wartime, the Roman Republic would (temporarily) become a dictatorship by handing power to the Consuls. Companies that don’t have market dominance are essentially in a state of war and need the ability to be nimble, including firing large portions of their staff to reallocate their resources when needed, it’s only the sleepy giants with heavily entrenched power that can afford to relax and focus on spreading the spoils of rent seeking to all interested parties, and even they can only do it for so long until a disruptor comes and tries to break them, somehow. I don’t think we should seek to require that employment be more stable, because down that route lies moribund companies and an ossified economy, and at some point, that can no longer sustain the standard of living that Westerners are accustomed to, because companies in places that don’t have that will eat their lunch. I think we should just seek to make the penalties of not being employed less severe, with much improved social safety nets. Let people continue to compete hard, let them continue to associate and dissociate freely, but don’t let the penalty for dissociation be financial ruin for employees. If we achieve that, we’ll likely make the economy more dynamic, as risk taking is no longer so personally risky - it would give everyone the ability to operate from a place of security and rationality rather than fear and anxiety (from “a position of fuck you”, if you’ve seen that clip from The Gambler) and do what they should do rather than just trying to tread water.

cormacrelf 4y ago
My answer to that is basically that these are the same things people say about autocracies vs democracies and it doesn’t really play out that way in practice. The argument goes that autocracies have a big advantage in agility through top down control. But somehow when you mobilise them for wars, democracies are much better at it. Somehow they keep winning, but only when the citizens agree with the aims of leadership. The huge information flow in an open society producing better analysis and better technology, and the enablement of distributed effort through distributed power, amounts to a better machine. Even if democracies have a tendency to become more centralised in wartime, because to some extent there is an optimal balance for each scenario like you say. But the underlying forces of democracy stick around, and leaders still act in a way that’s constrained by it lest they get thrown out. Modern democratic wartime politics is not much like the Consuls at all. Back to companies, if you can find a goal that your employees support, then they will similarly be a better machine at working towards that goal. If your response to challenges as a company is to shut out your employees and tell them to obey, you are missing out on this machine’s power. The only reason you would want to miss out on that power is if you had no other choice, because you were unable to frame the challenge in a way the employees can respond positively to. Democracies have a way of correcting that (among other things), which is called getting voted out; companies don’t by default, so at best you’re usually running a shitty version of democracy and yeah, bad democracies sometimes perform pretty poorly.
- ericd 4y ago
  Thanks for the well thought-out response. Good point, if you can get people to feel real ownership of the company, that’s extremely powerful (I’ve experienced that in my own small company, but I don’t think I’ve seen it in a large company, maybe somewhat at Apple under Jobs). I think my main argument is to not mandate structure with law, I’ve seen a number of people calling for that. I think that if we strengthened social safety nets, this sort of thing would become more common, as people became more free to leave workplaces they didn’t feel invested in, and more companies would try to foster it to attract employees.
  - 4y ago

smcl 4y ago

I keep looking at this and the original comment and it saddens me. It took about 2 minutes for WalterBright to type out his original (IMO awful) analogy then disappear from the conversation. This comment however was carefully written and thoughtfully provides a thorough rebuttal of the analogy while also contributing a lot to the discussion raised by the original piece. But it's not going to get the attention it deserves and doesn't look like it'll get a response from Walter :-/ Apologies for adding a slightly empty comment but clicking the little "upvote" button didn't feel like it was enough.

the_only_law 4y ago
This is just par for the course on HN. Only engage with the weakest responses to your comment. Do not engage with anything providing a decent rebuttal. Makes your thoughts look more solid and the “opposition” look worse as the thread develops.
Marrand 4y ago
At least you and I read it :)
cormacrelf 4y ago
Don’t worry, I am used to it. When the Walters of the world run off, that’s fine, I have people like you to get through to. Thanks for your kind words.

WalterBright 4y ago

Nowhere did I say that management should not gather input from employees. Nowhere did I say that it was a bad idea to give employees stock. I said that being paid for a job does not imply ownership. > If you can’t bring yourself to give away any stock due to unstoppable greed and a belief that employees are dumb lawn mower operators who would never know what’s good for them That rude comment doesn't deserve a reply, but I wrote one anyway.

cormacrelf 4y ago
I suppose I did speak a bit accusatively with the word “you” instead of impersonally, sorry, but this is how some people think of their employees, it’s an attitude you almost outright expressed with your analogy, and it was worth addressing. Obviously what you said is the legal position, nobody was saying otherwise. But it could imply ownership if you wanted. That’s a plausible change you could make to either the law or company structures. It’s something that can change over time simply by publishing information on company regulators’ websites that people look at when they start companies, if you want. Are you open to that kind of change? That’s the question, and you didn’t seem very open to it at all. Some people, especially labour activists who have been trying to give workers more rights since forever, would probably respond positively. You don’t have to have an answer.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > nobody was saying otherwise The parent I replied to wanted to use the government to force the issue. You and anybody else are free to set up and run a corporation the way you please. If it works better, others will copy it. You can even set up a collective, or a commune, or a workers' cooperative. It's not illegal in the US. Whether I am open to your vision of how a company should operate is irrelevant. In a free market, you get to choose how your company will operate. And the best structure will win. Company owners are not so stupid they will turn down a corporate structure that will be more profitable. Tech companies are famous for handing out stock options like popcorn. Back when I ran Zortech, which was privately held, we gave each employee a cut of the monthly sales. When I worked at Boeing, I bought Boeing stock out of my own pocket. It paid off handsomely.