4 ms·

Personally I have never seen that level of singular agreement in any group of people that large. Especially to the level of sacrifice they were willing to take

Personally I have never seen that level of singular agreement in any group of people that large. Especially to the level of sacrifice they were willing to take for the cause. You maybe see that level of devotion to a leader in churches or cults, but in any other group? You can barely get 3 people to agree on a restaurant for lunch. I am not saying something nefarious forced it, but it’s certainly unusual in my experience and this causes me to be skeptical of why.

psychoslave 3y ago
>You can barely get 3 people to agree on a restaurant for lunch. I was about to state that a single human is enough to see disagreements raise, but this doesn’t reach full consensus in my mind.
- kcplate 3y ago
  I was conflicted about originally posting that sentence. I waffled back and forth between, 2, 3, 5… Three was the compromise I made with myself.
panragon 3y ago
>Especially to the level of sacrifice they were willing to take for the cause. We have no idea that they were sacrificing anything personally. The packages Microsoft offered for people who separated may have been much more generous than what they were currently sitting on. Sure, Altman is a good leader, but Microsoft also has deep pockets. When you see some of the top brass at the company already make the move and you know they're willing to pay to bring you over as well, we're not talking about a huge risk here. If anything, staying with what at the time looked like a sinking ship might have been a much larger sacrifice.
lxgr 3y ago
Approval rates of >90% are quite common within political parties, to the point where anything less can be seen as an embarrassment to the incumbent head of party.
- kcplate 3y ago
  There is a big difference between “I agree with this…” when a telephone poll caller reaches you and “I am willing to leave my livelihood because my company CEO got fired”
  - from-nibly 3y ago
    But if 100 employees were like "I'm gonna leave" then your livelihood is in jeopardy. So you join in. It's really easy to see 90% of people jumping overboard when they are all on a sinking ship.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    I don't mean voter approval, I mean party member approval. That's arguably not that far off from a CEO situation in a way in that it's the opinion of and support for the group's leadership by group members. Voter approval is actually usually much less unanimous, as far as I can tell.
  - zerbinxx 3y ago
    But it’s not changing their livelihood. Msft just gives them the same deal. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to the telepoll - people can just say whatever they want, there won’t be big material consequences
dahart 3y ago
This seems extremely presumptuous. Have you ever been inside a company during a coup attempt? The employees’ future pay and livelihood is at stake, why are you assuming they weren’t being asked to sacrifice themselves by not objecting to the coup. The level of agreement could be entirely due to the fact that the stakes are very large, completely unlike your choice for lunch locale. It could also be an outcome of nobody having asked their opinion before making a very big change. I’d expect to see almost everyone at a company agree with each other if the question was, “hey should we close this profitable company and all go get other jobs, or should we keep working?”
- kcplate 3y ago
  I have had a long career and have been through hostile mergers several times and at no point have I ever seen large numbers of employees act outside of their self-interest for an executive. It just doesn’t happen. Even in my career, with executives who are my friends, I would not act outside my personal interests. When things are corporately uncertain and people worry about their working livelihoods they just don’t tend to act that way. They tend to hunker heads down or jump independently. The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that these folks know that AI is hot right now and would be scooped up quickly by other orgs…so there is little risk in taking a stand. Without that caveat, there is no doubt in my mind that there would not be this level of solidarity to a CEO.
  - dahart 3y ago
    > at no point have I ever seen large numbers of employees act outside of their self-interest for an executive. This is still making the same assumption. Why are you assuming they are acting outside of self-interest?
    - kcplate 3y ago
      If you are willing to leave a paycheck because of someone else getting slighted, to me, that is acting against your own self-interest. Assuming of course you are willing to actually leave. If it was a bluff, that still works against your self-interest by factioning against the new leadership and inviting retaliation for your bluff.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cellar_door 3y ago
There are plenty of examples of workers unions voting with similar levels of agreement. Here are two from the last couple months: > UAW President Shawn Fain announced today that the union’s strike authorization vote passed with near universal approval from the 150,000 union workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. Final votes are still being tabulated, but the current combined average across the Big Three was 97% in favor of strike authorization. The vote does not guarantee a strike will be called, only that the union has the right to call a strike if the Big Three refuse to reach a fair deal. https://uaw.org/97-uaws-big-three-members-vote-yes-authorize-strike/ https://uaw.org/97-uaws-big-three-members-vote-yes-authorize... > The Writers Guild of America has voted overwhelmingly to ratify its new contract, formally ending one of the longest labor disputes in Hollywood history. The membership voted 99% in favor of ratification, with 8,435 voting yes and 90 members opposed. https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-ratify-contract-end-strike-1235749253/ https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-ratify-contract-end-st...

psychoslave 3y ago

>You can barely get 3 people to agree on a restaurant for lunch. I was about to state that a single human is enough to see disagreements raise, but this doesn’t reach full consensus in my mind.

kcplate 3y ago
I was conflicted about originally posting that sentence. I waffled back and forth between, 2, 3, 5… Three was the compromise I made with myself.

panragon 3y ago

>Especially to the level of sacrifice they were willing to take for the cause. We have no idea that they were sacrificing anything personally. The packages Microsoft offered for people who separated may have been much more generous than what they were currently sitting on. Sure, Altman is a good leader, but Microsoft also has deep pockets. When you see some of the top brass at the company already make the move and you know they're willing to pay to bring you over as well, we're not talking about a huge risk here. If anything, staying with what at the time looked like a sinking ship might have been a much larger sacrifice.

lxgr 3y ago

Approval rates of >90% are quite common within political parties, to the point where anything less can be seen as an embarrassment to the incumbent head of party.

kcplate 3y ago
There is a big difference between “I agree with this…” when a telephone poll caller reaches you and “I am willing to leave my livelihood because my company CEO got fired”
- from-nibly 3y ago
  But if 100 employees were like "I'm gonna leave" then your livelihood is in jeopardy. So you join in. It's really easy to see 90% of people jumping overboard when they are all on a sinking ship.
- lxgr 3y ago
  I don't mean voter approval, I mean party member approval. That's arguably not that far off from a CEO situation in a way in that it's the opinion of and support for the group's leadership by group members. Voter approval is actually usually much less unanimous, as far as I can tell.
- zerbinxx 3y ago
  But it’s not changing their livelihood. Msft just gives them the same deal. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to the telepoll - people can just say whatever they want, there won’t be big material consequences

dahart 3y ago

This seems extremely presumptuous. Have you ever been inside a company during a coup attempt? The employees’ future pay and livelihood is at stake, why are you assuming they weren’t being asked to sacrifice themselves by not objecting to the coup. The level of agreement could be entirely due to the fact that the stakes are very large, completely unlike your choice for lunch locale. It could also be an outcome of nobody having asked their opinion before making a very big change. I’d expect to see almost everyone at a company agree with each other if the question was, “hey should we close this profitable company and all go get other jobs, or should we keep working?”

kcplate 3y ago
I have had a long career and have been through hostile mergers several times and at no point have I ever seen large numbers of employees act outside of their self-interest for an executive. It just doesn’t happen. Even in my career, with executives who are my friends, I would not act outside my personal interests. When things are corporately uncertain and people worry about their working livelihoods they just don’t tend to act that way. They tend to hunker heads down or jump independently. The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that these folks know that AI is hot right now and would be scooped up quickly by other orgs…so there is little risk in taking a stand. Without that caveat, there is no doubt in my mind that there would not be this level of solidarity to a CEO.
- dahart 3y ago
  > at no point have I ever seen large numbers of employees act outside of their self-interest for an executive. This is still making the same assumption. Why are you assuming they are acting outside of self-interest?
  - kcplate 3y ago
    If you are willing to leave a paycheck because of someone else getting slighted, to me, that is acting against your own self-interest. Assuming of course you are willing to actually leave. If it was a bluff, that still works against your self-interest by factioning against the new leadership and inviting retaliation for your bluff.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cellar_door 3y ago

There are plenty of examples of workers unions voting with similar levels of agreement. Here are two from the last couple months: > UAW President Shawn Fain announced today that the union’s strike authorization vote passed with near universal approval from the 150,000 union workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. Final votes are still being tabulated, but the current combined average across the Big Three was 97% in favor of strike authorization. The vote does not guarantee a strike will be called, only that the union has the right to call a strike if the Big Three refuse to reach a fair deal. https://uaw.org/97-uaws-big-three-members-vote-yes-authorize-strike/ https://uaw.org/97-uaws-big-three-members-vote-yes-authorize... > The Writers Guild of America has voted overwhelmingly to ratify its new contract, formally ending one of the longest labor disputes in Hollywood history. The membership voted 99% in favor of ratification, with 8,435 voting yes and 90 members opposed. https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-ratify-contract-end-strike-1235749253/ https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-ratify-contract-end-st...