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> "Do you think more employee ownership and control, a "seat at the table," would've prevented technically competent leadership from testing customer hostile bu

> "Do you think more employee ownership and control, a "seat at the table," would've prevented technically competent leadership from testing customer hostile business decisions?" Employee control doesn't reduce investor pressure for increased profitability. Employee ownership just means that the employees are now the ones exerting the investor pressure and if anyone thinks employees will be willing to take less total compensation (why? "Loyalty to the company"? "Solidarity"?) instead of hopping to a new job, well, good luck with that.

walkabout 1y ago
Careful about reading too much into "employee ownership". It can be and at least sometimes (I suspect usually, at least in the US) is structured such that it doesn't really work the way you might think. 1) The shares can be non-voting shares. LOL. 2) Only a relatively small portion of the overall "pie" has to go to employees for them to be able to say they're "employee owned". There can still be non-employee owners involved to a large degree. 3) That slice of the pie will tend to be weighted so heavily toward those near the top of the org chart that in practice it may be more like "upper-management owned" anyway. I think the main reasons companies in the US choose it are: 1) Propaganda. "You're an owner!" It's a way to trick unwise employees into working harder for (effectively) nothing extra, and even into exhorting others to do the same. 2) Probably some kind of tax-avoidance reasons. 3) As a vehicle for a kind of stock-compensation system without having to take the company public or do occasional odd maneuvers with investors for that stock to be de facto liquid for employees. IME there's zero percent more meaningful "ownership" involved than, say, Google folks who receive stock as part of their comp (and nobody calls Google "employee owned"). It's a misleading name for the structure.
- taneq 1y ago
  As a self employed business owner I should definitely start billing us as “employee owned”. I’m unaware of any tax avoidance advantages but I should ask my accountant (pretty sure he’ll say no though. :D ) I’ve actually considered various ways of assigning non-voting shares in the past as a way to grant employees some skin in the game without ceding control or permanently diluting ownership. It’s not a ‘startup’ in the HN sense so handing out shares willy nilly doesn’t make sense.

walkabout 1y ago

Careful about reading too much into "employee ownership". It can be and at least sometimes (I suspect usually, at least in the US) is structured such that it doesn't really work the way you might think. 1) The shares can be non-voting shares. LOL. 2) Only a relatively small portion of the overall "pie" has to go to employees for them to be able to say they're "employee owned". There can still be non-employee owners involved to a large degree. 3) That slice of the pie will tend to be weighted so heavily toward those near the top of the org chart that in practice it may be more like "upper-management owned" anyway. I think the main reasons companies in the US choose it are: 1) Propaganda. "You're an owner!" It's a way to trick unwise employees into working harder for (effectively) nothing extra, and even into exhorting others to do the same. 2) Probably some kind of tax-avoidance reasons. 3) As a vehicle for a kind of stock-compensation system without having to take the company public or do occasional odd maneuvers with investors for that stock to be de facto liquid for employees. IME there's zero percent more meaningful "ownership" involved than, say, Google folks who receive stock as part of their comp (and nobody calls Google "employee owned"). It's a misleading name for the structure.

taneq 1y ago
As a self employed business owner I should definitely start billing us as “employee owned”. I’m unaware of any tax avoidance advantages but I should ask my accountant (pretty sure he’ll say no though. :D ) I’ve actually considered various ways of assigning non-voting shares in the past as a way to grant employees some skin in the game without ceding control or permanently diluting ownership. It’s not a ‘startup’ in the HN sense so handing out shares willy nilly doesn’t make sense.