
The Company Isn't a Family - milesf
https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-company-isnt-a-family-d24f26c3f3fe
======
alberth
Reid Hastings (Netflix founder) uses a different analogy.

He compares a company as a high performing "sports team". With the idea being,
you're working towards a collective goal. You each have you're own role. But
if you're not performing, you get cut. Just like any athlete would get cut.

The problem with the "family" analogy is it implies "unconditional love"
regardless if you're messing up, failing, not performing.

~~~
adamzerner
I challenge the idea that people in a company are working towards a collective
goal.

\- The goal of those with lots of equity, like the founders and investors, is
that "collective goal" of company profit.

\- The goal of one employee may be to keep their job, provide for their
family, and spend as much time with their family as possible.

\- The goal of another employee may be to learn as much as possible.

\- The goal of another employee may be to get promoted up as high as possible
(for social and/or financial gains).

\- The goal of another employee may be to do as much social good as possible,
regardless of what the effect is on the bottom line.

If a company is like a sports team, then I think it's like one that is thrown
together in gym class where each student has a different goal.

\- One student may actually be competitive and want to win.

\- Another may care a lot about their grade, and only try when the teacher
glances over at them.

\- Another may just be concerned with not getting sweaty and ruining his/her
hair.

\- Another may be selfish and want to, in basketball for example, be a ball
hog and take every shot.

\- Another may just be having fun, and not be too concerned with winning.

I understand that executives may _want_ their employees to act as if they are
on a competitive sports team - working really hard together towards a common
goal, and then heading home at night to relax and recharge. But the fact that
executives want it doesn't make it an accurate description of reality.

~~~
hirsin
Some sports execs want to increase their stadium attendance. LeBron wanted a
trophy. Some play to get paid, some focus on staying healthy.

I think it's a fine analogy even when you add the nuances. Not all companies
are good teams though - sometimes you have the marching band deciding what
plays to run so they can play their favorite song, to mix analogies...

------
grandalf
I look at it like a company is a group of predator birds who happen all to be
flying together in formation for a while.

Individuals temporarily have self-interest that aligns beautifully and lends
itself to pattern flying. Individual incentives and goals will inevitably
change over time.

Maybe one person will veer off in a different direction if the startup doesn't
get A-list funding, maybe another will get bored after the prototype is
finished, maybe another will fly off in chase of a relationship, etc.

Even large companies are like this. The CEO may be putting 150% into it for
two years but will rationally give up and move on if things don't turn around.
Someone may have tried hard to get hired right out of school, but after two
years of experience fully plans on quitting to attend a PhD program.

I like to be very upfront with would-be hires about their goals. I don't
expect someone to fly with the pack out of loyalty, there has to be something
about their overall life plan that makes flying in this pattern a big win for
some period of time.

I do want to talk about that life plan. How can time with my company help you
get where you want to get and also help us get where we want to get? My goal
of course is to make the experience of working there so incredible that you
change your life plan to allow more time flying in our formation.

Some people don't have kids or spouses and would rather be the best indoor
soccer player they can be or the best at spoken word night at the local coffee
shop. When someone is at work I want them to be focused on goals that matter
to them and that are meaningful to the company, but I also want them to switch
gears and live their life whatever it is, since I know that they will do that
anyway if they have any sort of independent, inner drive.

------
corybrown
> Because by invoking the image of the family, the valor of doing whatever it
> takes naturally follows. You’re not just working long nights or skipping
> vacation to further the bottom line, no, no, you’re doing this for the
> family.

Same trick used by college fraternities to do all sorts of crap.

~~~
Kevin_S
I totally disagree.

College fraternities exist as a framework for social contracts between
strangers alone in a college environment. Each member is incentivized to
support/protect/uplift the other members (just like a family) as they will be
able to expect it in return. You can somewhat make the argument for each
chapter's national org, but I really don't think the incentives are really
that out of line between them, Nationals just tend to be poorly run.

Companies, as the article discusses, don't.

~~~
komali2
Agree, and with all those benefits that come from a functional family, so too
do dysfunctional fraternities suffer in the same way dysfunctional families
do.

------
unsignedint
It's not that I have problem with this notion itself personally, but when it
is used with a subtext of excuse for the problems, that's where I have issues.

e.g. The company is going through great hardship, so we will have to mistreat
you. You are part of our "family" so you understand and put up with that,
right?

I've been in that situation many years ago and was frustrating.

~~~
Clubber
I agree. I don't think always (or mostly) malicious or devious, it's just the
owners and management are proud of having a good working environment. Hey, I
much prefer good working environments than bad ones.

Having said that, the article is correct in that it doesn't really treat you
like a family. If you did something they didn't like, they would more likely
fire you than cut you a break like a family would. I mean take it for what it
is, a description of a comfortable, good working environment and not a place
that won't hesitate to fire you for the usual reasons.

I think calling it a family is slightly disingenuous or maybe hyperbole, but
unless they are using it as power over you, I don't worry about it much. Like
I said, it sure beats some alternatives.

------
ThrustVectoring
The real problem with "The Company is a Family" is enmeshment and the
resulting lack of boundaries. The company has an issue, so _you_ need to make
sacrifices to resolve it.

I'm not opposed to spending time and effort - even extraordinary amounts of it
- to helping the company. But as an employee, I make _trades_ , not
_sacrifices_. Sacrificing for the company makes my working conditions worse,
and so I will look elsewhere if I'm not fairly compensated for it (which
wouldn't be sacrifice now, would it?)

------
Johnie
This post is very simplistic. A company is defined by its culture. There are
many different models for building the culture of a company.

Different cultures prioritize different things. For example, Netflix
prioritizes the individual Star culture. Zappos prioritizes the commitment
culture.

So whether a company is a family or a team or business transaction depends on
the founder's imprint.

A good read is:
[https://cmr.berkeley.edu/documents/sample_articles/2002_44_3...](https://cmr.berkeley.edu/documents/sample_articles/2002_44_3_4776.pdf)

------
scarface74
We had project managers come in and say "the business" has set a deadline of X
on the project. I wasn't involved in setting the deadline even though I'm the
architect responsible for leading the dev team to get it done.

I said I wouldn't commit the team to a date that I had no role in setting.
They asked me when do I think it could get done, I told them I didn't know.

Then when we estimated our first sprint and based our capacity on a realistic
5 hour days per dev based on meetings, tickets, etc. they tried to push back.
Agile sounds all good until you start talking about a "sustainable pace" and
40 hour work weeks.

All that to say, my job is not my family. I set the expectation of 40 hour
work weeks. Even if I do end up working extra because I'm on a groove or doing
something challenging or interesting, I don't let anyone know I'm working
extra.

------
Alacart
Ok, here's a strange analogy, but hear me out. Think of a company as a hostel
rather than a family or a sports team.

For example:

The owner is trying to make a profit (rather than a hard salary) and it's
probably best if they're fairly detached or things go haywire, but a good
hostel owner wants the hostel to be beneficial and enjoyable for the guests
(regular employees) because it benefits everyone.

The hostel staff are management. They are much more involved with everyone,
but still try to remain detached somewhat, since they might have to kick a
guest out for bad behavior. Often they were previous guests, and those people
often make the best staff (managers) because they know all sides of it. They
get direct orders from the owners and try to make that work.

Guests are the equivalent of a company's employees. They are all there for
different reasons and get all different kinds of things out of it. Some want
to spend most of their day hanging out with other guests and staff. They're
not in a hurry to leave and they get a lot of their satisfaction from the
comfort of the hostel and the people they're with. Seeing the area is sort of
tangential to them. Others are trying to see everything they can, they don't
care about making friends, they have a plan and goals. On the extreme end,
they might do something like cut in line to make sure they make the list for
the next tour. In fact if they can't, they're probably going to another
hostel.

Anyways it's a loose analogy, but everyone is there for different reasons that
overlap at different points. They're not really all working towards the same
goal, but again, their goals likely overlap. Nobody bats an eye that the goal
of a guest isn't to make the owner the most profit, or vice versa. You can
reasonably expect that most people are going to move on sooner or later.
People may or may not become really socially involved, depending on what they
want. Some hostels are large and less sociable, others are tightly knit and
cozy. I can draw parallels for days.

I mean, obviously a hostel _is_ a type of company, but I still think it works
as a helpful analogy. Most of the things I roll my eyes at or that people
don't like about companies, you could try to apply to the hostel analogy and
it will break the illusion of that thing being good. If people thought of
their work more in that context, there might be a little less company koolaid
being pushed around these days and a little more satisfaction for everyone.

------
ShabbosGoy
I would argue that the first paragraph is a critique of capitalism itself.

The implicit assumption of capitalism is that you have a perpetual debt that
cannot be repaid, much like the Christian "debt" that cannot be repaid to the
Abrahamic God.

Capitalism is as much an economic system as it is a moralistic and religious
system.

~~~
nerdponx
_The implicit assumption of capitalism is that you have a perpetual debt that
cannot be repaid_

What? Care to clarify?

~~~
ShabbosGoy
The goal of capitalism is to produce _more_ than one is capable of consuming
(i.e. market economy where one produces and sells to multiple people instead
of just themselves).

There are various equilibrium states between supply and demand, but utility is
infinite. If utility is infinite, then the goal of production is to satisfy an
equally infinite debt to maximizing utility.

~~~
nerdponx
_The goal of capitalism is to produce more than one is capable of consuming_

This is the goal of any economic system as far as I can tell. I don't see how
ownership of the means of production matters.

 _If utility is infinite, then the goal of production is to satisfy an equally
infinite debt to maximizing utility_

Sort of. This is why we have sympathy/empathy, social mores, the rule of law,
and finally the threat of Malthusian apocalypse. Each of these, in order of
increasing severity, exists as a budget constraint on greed in service of
utility maximization. And again, this has nothing to do with capitalism
specifically -- it would be true in any economic system. Socialist and
communist governments in the 20th century went to great lengths in order to
remind us of that.

~~~
ShabbosGoy
> Socialist and communist governments in the 20th century went to great
> lengths in order to remind us of that.

Fundamentally, I think it comes down to power relationships. The market
economy is a proxy for power relations. Communist (and fascist) governments
removed the market economy and replaced it with authoritarian servitude. God
shifts from the Economy to the State.

------
zucchini_head
About the article specifically, it's rather insubstantial and doesn't provide
any more insight into company dynamics other than heartfelt paragraphs. Still
a healthy reminder though.

But anyway, about the subject matter, from the several tech companies I've
been at now I can see that this kind of "exec brainwashing" _does_ happen, and
it always seems rather on-the-nose in it's indifference and facelessness.
Where I work currently we even have paragraphs like these on our toilet doors!
The thing is, people work better when it's "for" something. Something bigger
than themselves, such as the "family" or "team" (it's probably something to do
with our hunter-gatherer evolutionary genes). Execs, or rather HR and "Worker
Performance Consultants" know this, and they (ab)use it to make workers
produce more wealth for the company.

I think however that both companies and workers are to blame for past-shift
hours, pressures to finish, and such, and both maybe partially for the same
reason - a race to the bottom. In terms of companies, this can be for example
when company X pushes their workers harder than company Y to undercut their
prices. You definitely see this in things like ~[UK reference warning]~ Sports
Direct International Ltd, which treats workers rather poorly [1][2][3], just
to make their shoes a bit cheaper than that fancy hipster shop down the road
who's staff work only their shift hours. In terms of workers, you see the
exact same thing, where worker X will over-propose on project A to undercut
Worker Y's realistically-proposed project A. So you see that if you don't work
crazy hours to finish that big project, then you can definitely bet on
somebody else doing it.

In the end it's not always "the evil company and their grubby execs" who are
asking too much of their workers to get that good quarter result, but workers
themselves asking too much of themselves to get that freelance project, job,
promotion, raise, good reference, or whatever, over their job-market or worker
peers.

I think maybe the little post misses a few parts of the picture, but like I
said, a good reminder of the topic.

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/08/inhuma...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/08/inhumane-
sports-direct-mike-ashley-workforce) [2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how-
sports-...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how-sports-
direct-effectively-pays-below-minimum-wage-pay) [3]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
derbyshire-36855374](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-36855374)

