Many people think that they live in a free democracy.
In reality, something like 50% of all working people are employed in a strict hierarchical organisation that is essentially feudal in its nature.
Most employees are the equivalent of serfs, overseen by lords, with a king in charge. The common employees don't get a vote. Their managers are not elected. They don't get a say in policy. The managers in turn form a strict hierarchy, much like in feudal times, with a top-down structure. A junior manager cannot say no to a senior manager. Nobody can say no to the CEO.
In this picture HR is essentially the inquisition. The inquisition was most certainly not the friend of the common man!
If you buck the system, if you step out of your place, if you're a commoner upsetting a lord, then you will be treated much like your ancestors would have been treated long ago: You will be put to the question. The inquisition will spare no pain to determine exactly why you stepped out of line and upset the natural order of things.
Why do you want to view the world like this? This kind of mindset puts you in a very weak position.
I look at it like this: I work for a company because it's a win-win. They need some work done, and I need money.
In fact, as a coder, the company is the one in the weak position. If I leave for another company, I can get paid the exact same amount instantly. They will have to get a new person, pay them the same, but first have to get them up to speed to get to the same productivity level as me. They lose, and I even might gain a raise. So they better make sure they don't piss me off.
If you have this kind of mindset, people can't fuck with you.
Take for example a manager that says "Hey, this customer expects it to go in production on Monday, so make sure you finish it this week, maybe do some weekend work". Now the problem is in your lap. What you do is you push that shit right back, so you tell your manager "Why did you promise this customer it will be finished on Monday? You're going to be in a lot of trouble when it isn't. Maybe next time check with the developers first about the time schedule, then you don't end up in situations like this again."
You have to educate your managers a bit.
I know that some people will respond "not every employee is in this position to make demands". Well, it's all about how valuable your skills are. Make sure you can do things that other people can't, and you put yourself in a position where you always have the option to go work for another company.
A company selling services to other companies, is not that different than a person selling services to companies.
Some of us remember successfully saying "no" well before we became coders.
Even for supposedly low skill minimum wage jobs, finding reliable employees that show up on time, don't steal, don't get high at work, stick around and get things done, and otherwise aren't a pain in the ass to work with - can be a time sink and cost. Even the most selfish manager may tolerate some pushback and some "no"s if it means they don't have to go through all the work to hire someone "better" (which might require hiring and firing a lot of unknowns to arrive at, even if there's plenty of applicants.)
The vengeful and dysfunctional might fire you anyways, even if it's more work for them, if only to flex their power. The downsizing might not want to replace people. Life circumstances might mean you can't be reliable and are already on the fence (or - to put it another way - you might already be saying "no" to too much to say "no" to more without getting fired.)
So, sure, there are people without power. But - perhaps it's not quite as bad as jiggawatts is making it out to be either.
1. If I didn't have my brain, I would be a plumber. These guys start earning when they are 18 or younger, and make a shitload of money because we have a shortage here. So even if you work with your hands, you can choose something that is in high demand.
2. Coders in US and EU are doing OK. Coders in Ukraine and the likes (I have multiple colleagues in that region) are absolutely killing it. They earn about 2x less than us, but 10x more than their neighbors. They don't borrow money to buy a home, they just buy it.
3. No idea about that one. But in US it's so hassle free to start your own business.
4. Yeah, then it's up to you what your options are, and how much you are willing to put up with.
> 2. Not everyone who codes is in the US, or a small number of other countries, where salaries for coders are high.
I don't have much stats, but this is true in countries that I know of: US, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, India
So I wouldn't expect other countries to be much different, it might depend on company you work for, if you stay in small < 10 people places, you won't get much salary as a coder.
Is it possible that the entire reason that you know about the coding salaries for these countries is precisely because the salaries for coding are high there?
Like, I live in the US, and I knew someone who transferred to Switzerland and got a pay raise for cost of living increase. So when you mentioned Switzerland I was thinking, "Well, yeah. Zurich is an expensive place to live, and there are some big engineering offices there." But I've also met software engineers who seemed pretty miserable when I've traveled to other countries.
Anyone can have a voice in the outcome of their life and society around them. When you give up on this belief, you relinquish power and control to others. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Stop focusing on the power of others, and obtain your own power and influence, and then govern with empathy for others.
Are you saying that people without power do not exist? Or are you saying that when someone does not have power, it is their fault? I am not sure you are saying either of these things, but I am finding it difficult to make any kind of charitable reading of this comment.
Positive thinking only gets you so far. When taken TOO FAR, positive thinking becomes a delusion. We with loving families can thoughtlessly & brutishly suggest to a friend that they “should definitely reconcile with their father”, because the idea of abusive parents is outside our experience.
Same applies to things like companies. I can easily tell people to “obtain power and fix problems” at work, but it is not necessarily possible. If we pretend that conflict does not exist, or can always be solved by the right actions, we’re just hurting people.
I am saying that assuming or accepting you have no power or less power than others is a sure way to create that reality. Are there limits. Sure. But there are countless examples of people that created more than society would have “allowed”.
Put another way. Ignore inequality as it effects you, assume you can overcome it. But acknowledge its existence with respect to others and do everything in your power to create equality.
> Ignore inequality as it effects you, assume you can overcome it. But acknowledge its existence with respect to others and do everything in your power to create equality.
This sounds hopelessly inconsistent to me. Why should I hold myself to a different standard than I hold other people to? If acknowledging inequality elsewhere is required to be kind to other people, that means that ignoring inequality when it affects me is being unkind to myself.
If you assume you can’t do something you definitely won’t. If you assume you can, you may not succeed; you may be blocked by some external cause, but not by something you could have controlled.
In the case of helping others, you may play a role in clearing an obstacle that, not withstanding their own effort and belief, would have blocked them.
In both cases you are assuming you have power. Power to help yourself and power to reduce inequality by empowering others.
It's a good rule of thumb. It's the difference between accepting and acknowledging. You can acknowledge the hardship of others but still fight against your own.
I don't tolerate inequality, but I do know it exists. It will continue to exist if we don't fight it.
If you get the reputation of being a difficulty employee, they don't hire you, doesn't matter how good you are.
They make a cost-benefit assessment and as long as your benefits outweigh the costs, they'll bear the costs, otherwise you're gone. Feudal system at its finest.
Well, I'm also making that same assessment for them. If they give me too much shit for the pay, I'm going to work for someone else. It's all about negotiation and win-win deals, no?
IMO this is why it is so critical to get to a position of having fuck you money as quickly as possible. This includes something having a side hustle that's ramen profitable so you won't starve to death when you get the boot for not working on weekends.
Make it much easier on yourself: Micro fuck you money. 6 months of living expenses saved up, ready to go in an emergency or to say fuck you. Even if you were to get assistance from the state where you live, you want to be able to say fuck you to the state as well.
Along with being able to minimize the lifestyle your probably accustomed to when getting a decent wage (this is another hurdle even if you have micro fuck you money), mondays will never feel dreadful again.
You're constructing a giant mountain to climb if you require a side hustle or actual fuck you money (1 mio.+). 99,999% of people will not achieve that, look at how much people save for retirement. Micro fuck you money is very achievable though.
> I know that some people will respond "not every employee is in this position to make demands". Well, it's all about how valuable your skills are. Make sure you can do things that other people can't, and you put yourself in a position where you always have the option to go work for another company.
I think GP was talking about workers in general, not just software developers. Software developers are in a super entitled position when it comes to this. Not every grocery store cashier, McDonald's worker, taxi driver, etc. can be expected to "do things other people can't".
The overwhelming majority of people have whatever job they can get. They don't get to be selective, because they have bills, and kids, and rent to pay.
The overwhelming majority of people don't live in the US. In Europe, you have access to free healthcare, unemployment and education. It's not a silver bullet, but it significantly reduced your vulnerability to eating shit from your current employer.
Why the US doesn't value safety nets and collective action is beyond me.
Continuing that line of reasoning, the overwhelming majority of people don't live in Europe either. They live in India, China, Africa, South America where free healthcare, unemployment, and education are not always available.
This reminds me of this article [0] where more than 50% of world population lives inside of the circle compared to outside; which is fascinating as it covers only 20% of land-area.
Unemployment benefits are bit tough sell when you don't have enough savings and you don't get it for quite a while when you leave on your own... And educations isn't always that simple matter either.
You know we live and work in some sort of dream land and 99% of people in other jobs don't have anywhere near this level of freedom and bargaining power.
You will sell yourself short by forgetting this. Coding isn't guaranteed to stay like this - as tooling gets better and better and more people get into it we will be seen less and less like wizards.
You can get the same level of freedom with manual labor. I don't know where you live, but here, contractors make a shitload of money. Especially plumbers are in high demand.
Plumbing is skilled labour and requires school/training - proper apprenticeships take four years, though there are fast-track options.
Any "manual labour"? Certainly not true. Unskilled manual labour is a race to the bottom in most places and usually done by immigrants who can afford to work for peanuts.
In my experience just as often the manager asks for an estimate, get one and plan accordingly. When the developer inevitably does not finish on time they have multiple excuses, but the manager is getting the heat. Which is exactly why the developers are part of the team that plan and set deadlines. And let me let you in on a little secret. There is still delays - we're working on that.
The feudal analogy still works. The difference is that the Black Death has swept the place, and you are now the only pawn left on the field, and suddenly you are in a negotiating position with your local lord. Which is actually something that happened during the Black Death.
I agree with your point but ultimately, why not have the engineer document how long the last cycle took to get into production. So when the manager asks, hey do this in 70% of the time, you have reference to live recent data that it’s impossible.
Or even simpler.
Manager asks to finish something and have it live in Y
days.
You will finish it in Y days because the last project needed an additonal 3 days and you communicated that immediately back then, so your manager already has provided a solution by the time you’re ready for the next development cycle or sprint. Hence Y days should be computed with feedback you already communicated from the last cycle.
>> You have to educate your managers a bit.
Ironically, this could come off as feudal since a manager is “senior” in terms of time and experience at the same company. In which you are currently a junior. How often will a manager be like “so glad you educated me on my own delivery and timelines, you were right!” Versus hey, that’s my job, you worry about yours and I got mine.
I think the word “synchronize” (delivery times for production, ie) applies better than educate.
Why worry about educating them if you’ve set a self-expectation to communicate immediately when something is not as expected. Or as initially agreed between the employee and their team or manager (s).
Majority of these empathy gaps b/w managers and engineers is actually the byproduct of failed communication protocols that both parties can maximize upon assuming consistent internet service (unfortunately still not the case or available with examples of significant gains. The moment you start caring about how another feels or thinks towards your execution, work, or biz strategy, gg.
You are now thinking about what others are thinking, and planning all these scenarios to ensure you act accordingly + optimally. This whole hr analogy shouldn’t even exist - it reminds me or read receipts on iMessage. Back in the old day, you didn’t have the information of when someone actually opened your mail indoors.
All I’m saying is to forget about the hierarchy + roles and just crisp clean communication up front.
Any gaps in understanding means that you needed to communicate much clearer, earlier. Versus, omg hr might be out to get me or something.
So when the manager asks, hey do this in 70% of the time, you have reference to live recent data that it’s impossible.
All the data in the world won’t sway a manager - and his manager, and his manager - if they need a scapegoat. This is something engineers only figure out when it’s too late.
Yeah that’s not a powerful move, that’s the equivalent of leaving the country. What happens if they’re all run along the exact same lines? You can start your own I guess, which is not feasible for most people.
That’s why we require the democratically elected leviathan to limit the power these people have over others.
I think you are taking your job and skillset security and demand for granted to some degree potentially. Wage slavery is real for a majority of people whos responsibilities and inflexibility of skills dont allow for the leverage you describe
Unlike the serf, I can go find another Lord. I can pit the lords against each other for a better deal. I can try and become my own lord. HR has a lot fewer tools than the inquisition. Fear of lawsuits reduces their toolkit even further.
Very true. Unless you have a sick family member. Until the ACA, you were 100% trapped. Now, you’re not officially trapped, only trapped in practice, because when you switch health plans, the providers who have been working with your kid for the last few years are no longer in your network, and... you get the picture.
Yes exactly. In my country (Australia), the majority of employers don't pay for health insurance. Either you rely on the public health system, or you pay for private health cover yourself. So, losing my job, or changing jobs, has no direct impact on my health insurance (beyond the impact on my ability to afford private health cover if there is any reduction of income)
In the 1950s, employee benefits became non-taxable. Prior to that, employees would get health insurance as individuals and their plans would never be tied to a particular employer, kinda like how it currently works in Switzerland. So that one law drove our entire health insurance system to where it is now.
> Once America became embroiled in World War II, there was great concern that rampant inflation would threaten America's military effort and undermine its domestic economy. The concern was valid, as Americans had witnessed what inflation had done to war-torn Germany, devastating its economy and giving rise to Hitler's regime.
> To combat inflation, the 1942 Stabilization Act was passed. Designed to limit employers' freedom to raise wages and thus to compete on the basis of pay for scarce workers, the actual result of the act was that employers began to offer health benefits as incentives instead.
> Suddenly, employers were in the health insurance business. Because health benefits could be considered part of compensation but did not count as income, workers did not have to pay income tax or payroll taxes on those benefits. [0]
You can also read about this in a 2017 NY Times article [1]
You were not 100% trapped, by collapsing the propositions of an argument you destroy a meaningful distinction. It is very different to be a serf in fact and a serf in practice. Serf's were legally defined as property and could be bought and sold with land and killed if they failed to work according to the Lords liking. No company can compel you to work on threat of death. Does employer linked insurance suck and have negative, unintended consequences, yes, but you can quit with two weeks notice and find another job with health insurance. The distinction does matter.
That's not entirely true. If you had a "gap in coverage" e.g. you were without insurance for too long (about 30 days?) then limits on pre-existing conditions, etc. might be an issue when you get insurance again. But if you were just changing jobs, going from one employer plan to another, it wasn't an issue (at least it wasn't for me, and I changed jobs many times before ACA, including going back and forth between employer and individual plans). And if for some reason there was going to be a gap between jobs, you could pay for gap coverage under COBRA, or get a short-term individual plan.
Haha... indeed. I meant specifically from the perspective that you were in a situation where leaving your job meant you were now uninsurable (in many states, at least). I have an entirely separate rant on how the ACA stuck people with higher deductible health plans outside of employers (like me and my family) with virtually all of the risk of the formerly uninsurable. It was more politically expedient for the Democratic Congress of ‘09 to not really try to fix the problem.
I mean... it was an improvement, and certainly did enable coverage for a lot of people who otherwise would have gone without. But it was such a lost opportunity, and I wish the Dems could just own up to that and push for something more. The problem is that both sides are so deep in the industry’s pockets, that I don’t think real reform is even possible.
> it was an improvement and ... enabled coverage for a lot of people
This is kind of my point. The ACA was designed to benefit the middle class and non-vulnerable. At which point the middle class and non-vulnerable (and the press) stopped caring about who had healthcare.
To drive home that point: A few years ago I ran ACA quotes for typical income levels (typical for non-wealthy regions, 12k-32k) and found that premium cost steeply dropped for each 10k rise in income.
My primary issue isn't that this happened, it's that we weren't told. It's that ACA supporters + the entirety of press compulsively gloss over ACA realities.
> I wish the Dems could just own up to that and push for something more.
I suggest that uncovered Americans don't need something more. They need something.
> The problem is that both sides are so deep in the industry’s pockets, that I don’t think real reform is even possible.
Pols trading law/power for campaign cash is the other thing that news orgs have ~0 interest in.
My family migrated to different employer healthcare with zero changes on the provider side other than premium cost.
Perhaps we’re lucky or the system is already monopsonized in our area. However, sometimes you can also get the same network at your new employer (e.g. Kaiser or other HMOs).
That said it’d be a lot better with single payer and the largest risk-pool of an entire country.
> Unlike the serf, I can go find another Lord. I can pit the lords against each other for a better deal.
For many people that isn't really true. And even if you are in a high-demand profession, and have the necessary negotiations skills, moving between jobs has a pretty high transaction cost.
Then keep working until you are in that position. When you are 1 years old you can't walk, you keep working, when you are 12 you can't drive, you keep working, when you are 22 you probably can't retire of self earned assets, you keep working. Set a goal and work until you get there.
Any different group with a semi-competent lord will absolutely destroy you and take your resources. You'll soon send around resumes begging for a lord to take you.
>> What if we tried to make it so there were no lords? Just a thought.
> Any different group with a semi-competent lord will absolutely destroy you and take your resources. You'll soon send around resumes begging for a lord to take you.
Not really. IIRC, in the French Revolutionary Wars, French troops were more effective because they were better motivated than those who were fighting for some lord.
It's probably necessary to have leaders, but that doesn't mean lords are necessary.
Clearly it's a nice analogy. So there is a need for leadership. There are good leaders and bad (call em leaders or lords) but there is always a hierarchy. Let say there where no hierarchy by rank, there would still be a hierarchy in competence. It may shift as situations shift. Given that. But if someone is a competent leader he will succeed dominating evey hierarchy. That's what leadership leads up to: being a efficient and hopeful a competent leader.
So even if you are in a group of mercenaries you will and want to have a leader who makes a call in critical moments. Even if you vote who the leader might be you will choose the one who makes the best decision (could be yourself) or even persuades you into believing that the decisions he made are good.
On this grounding all the other systems emerge like nepotism, bad leadership, fall guys... and HR
Yes, the social democracies of Europe where governement restrict the rights of corporations for the benefits of people are just a fantasy invented by left-wing media, in reality people living there are all suffering. /s
Honestly, it is still jarring to see people in the US actually believe the system they are living in is some sort of "lessest evil system", not realizing how much easier they would have it in Scandinavia/Germany/France/Switzerland/Netherlands/Belgium/etc. And this is a region with comparable population and resources to the US.
I mean, just think about implementing socialized healthcare, a proper tax system which is short and understandable with few loopholes, a reasonable minimum wage and parental leave for all paid by the federal government. Those are a handful of measures that would significantly improve life for 99.5% of everyone in the US. And there is no plausible mechanism where these measures take away all your freedoms.
Sure you can argue that it's impossible to get American politicians to enact these. But that is just another point of failure of the free market democracy, that elected politicians are most interested in the outcomes for people and organizations who pay them money (literally or indirectly), and not in the people they are elected to represent.
Is someone really your "lord" if you can just choose for them not to be your "lord" and freely choose for them to be your "lord" if they compensate you well enough for your liking? I'd suggest we already don't have lords and the analogy doesn't really hold.
This is always a matter of degrees, and most jobholders have much less freedom to choose than your line of questioning assumes. In general, and especially for those people, maybe this is a good mental model for how to operate in a workplace. Power imbalances may actually be so unequal.
You get that from proper incentives. Capitalism is mostly about creating an environment where people can leverage those incentives as easily as possible.
There's a deep irony that the system set up based on incentivizing and rewarding growth (and occasionally greed) has helped raise millions out of poverty while the systems based on altruism have led to the deaths of millions and massive amounts of suffering.
Where do you think that comes from? The modern CCP leverages market economies to build that wealth. That success is because Xi recognizes the power for capitalism and growth to create wealth. They then try to control that though and the recent disappearance of Jack Ma and the government block of that IPO is more what I'm talking about.
The cultural revolution, hundred flowers campaign, and current Uyghur genocide are some of the classic negative aspects of CCP control. Those aspects are more the standard fare communist policy.
The good that's there comes from their embrace of capitalism and market incentives. The bad comes from the standard communist one party control, it's also what eventually leads to problems.
I thought Deng's principles were the foundation for modern China's economic policy? Is this not true?
"After Chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng gradually rose to power and led China through a series of far-reaching market-economy reforms, which earned him the reputation as the "Architect of Modern China"." [0]
Attributing reduction in poverty rates primarily to Xi doesn't make much sense given the historical trends. See the world bank info[1] for a sense of the long term decline(1990-2016).
That may be for Capitalism, but that's not what we have today. We have Corporate Feudalism. Capitalism makes a bunch of assumptions about the freedom of the market, freedom of information, freedom of capital and labor and so on - most of which Corporate Feudalism has undermined.
Capitalism and Communism has suffered the same fate from the same source, and this will remain true until we move into the age of plenty from the age of want, and probably beyond.
I'm being heavily downvoted in my other comments, but I don't agree.
Today we have more people starting more billion dollar companies more easily than any other time in human history. We have more freedom of movement, more wealth, etc.
There's a staggering amount of growth, a staggering amount of capital investment.
No system is its perfect ideal (and there are obvious issues today), but things are a lot better than they were in the age of a handful of national companies.
Sure, but that growth and investment did not and will not benefit you, or most anyone else. That 'value' gets aggregated into a vanishingly small group of hyper valuable individuals. In fact, at this stage the meaning of GDP for example is fundamentally decoupled from the actual wealth of the people.
I encourage you to research Mark Blyth's work on generational wealth and check out 'Angrynomics'
Growth (when constrained for human rights and environmental protection) is the best way to help the most the fastest.
You see it everywhere, massive reduction of global poverty, infant mortality, etc. Even just things like the ability for almost anyone to have an iPhone and use of Amazon/two day shipping are examples. Inexpensive food is another.
While gp is using slightly emotive language, they didn't at any point say that the feudal structure was bad. A feudal structure is pretty effective in a localised setting where most people know most other people and everyone is happy-enough with the person at the pinacle of the status tree.
The major downsides of old-school feudalism were (1) Doesn't really scale to populations of 200k+ and (2) the We Cannot Get Out problem.
Corporate structure solves both those problems pretty neatly.
A corporation is not a democracy though, and no one is calling it that. Everyone knows this acutely because they know they have a boss to appease. In contrast, in a government, there's really no "boss" to appease, we choose the leaders.
Really the only difference between feudalism and capitalism is the latter’s ability/freedom to fail. Shitty hierarchical structures are replaced by newly emerging better hierarchical structures. Serfs migrate easily.
All this is basically a consequence of companies & people not being defined by / tied to land (as serfdoms were - basically farms). Rising from agrarian to industrial society is what enabled this.
Indeed. I would say though that while you are contrasting, the parent was comparing. It's a very good analogy for the political dynamic within a company.
I'll agree that edge cases can prevent anything from being reasonable or fair, but we can't let perfect be the enemy of good here. I think we're making progress every day towards enabling everyone to have more choice (on average, obviously some days have major setbacks for humanity).
With the major difference that these days a lot of people get to choose their employers. Yes, it's not perfect and not everyone can afford that, but we moved significantly from "you live here, this is your lord".
>With the major difference that these days a lot of people get to choose their employers.
That was true for many in the feudal times too, they could shop around and pledge their allegiance to one or another feudal lord, and even be given a plot of land to cultivate (as long as the lord got their share of the results).
If anything, the feudal lords left them even more to their own devices, and demanded even less of their produce (like 10% was common).
If it wasn't for the lack of technology and modern conveniences and frequent wars and dangers from outside, it would be a pretty good lifestyle...
I can't tell if you're trying to be serious here. It was in no way a good life to be a serf. Life was literally nasty, brutish, and short - even putting aside armed conflict and external dangers.
Lords would extract what they could. A huge part of life for serfs was figuring out how to survive without producing an easily-extractable surplus (because of it could be extracted, it usually would be extracted).
>It was in no way a good life to be a serf. Life was literally nasty, brutish, and short - even putting aside armed conflict and external dangers.
That's the "old wives tale" version.
Life wasn't particularly nasty or brutish, modern scholarship has re-evaluated the Middle Ages, and the "short" part was similar to 19th century levels due to infant mortality (and otherwise similar to 19-century standards), and has little to do with serfdom per se, and all to do with lack of 2-3 things we take for granted (running water, sewage systems, understanding of microbes, etc.).
For most of history, there was a certain standard. Lords didn't take "all they could", but closer to 10% or so. If they got too greedy the people could align with another lord, and that would mean trouble. Medieval history has lots of such examples.
>even putting aside armed conflict and external dangers.
Which I already covered:
"If it wasn't for the lack of technology and modern conveniences and frequent wars and dangers from outside, it would be a pretty good lifestyle..."
Yes, and in many case the 'civilians' were not affected, it was mostly professional armies and mercenaries.
The "popular/people's army" (armies of common folk) come later (though, of course, we have examples of it in the ancient world too, as well as examples where common folk to the short end of the stick during conflict. It was just not that common in feudal times).
And if you are willing to buck the system completely, which as you point out is not compulsory as it was before, you can leave and go live off the land. Unfortunately almost everyone has lost the skill to do this.
> And if you are willing to buck the system completely, which as you point out is not compulsory admit was before, you can leave and go live off the land. Unfortunately almost everyone has lost the skill to do this.
Huh? Whose land? The frontier has been closed for a long time.
Everybody can say 'NO' to the CEO. What you cannot do is agree to exchange your work for his money, and then when he asks you to work, say 'NO'. If you do not wish to work, simply cancel this arrangement.
And the inquisition could BURN YOU ALIVE. HR cannot even physically touch you for fear of the lawsuit.
This comparison is such an insult to the people who had laid the foundation of a modern society, and to those who actually died fighting to defend and maintain such societies, that you should seriously reconsider your position.
Perhaps the analogy works better for graduate students. Advisors often control a Ph.D. student's academic progress and financial support, and it's very hard to change advisors without starting over from scratch.
I'm vastly ignorant on the subject, but that makes me wonder if there were any serfs moving to other regions or countries back then, and if so, how that worked out for them.
Oh, give it a rest. You're not actually outraged, you're just jumping on an opportunity to call him a hypocrite. The guy fumbled an analogy. I don't buy that you're that apoplectic about serfs from the 1500s. You get it, I get it, he gets it. It's fine.
I am not angry or outraged. I didnt call him a hypocrite.
People simply lose sight of the luxury and freedom that we have in modern societies. It takes active reflection and a study of history to really appreciate the things we have.
While an improvement to the economics system or the lives of the common man is possible, you cannot do it if you don't have an honest vision of what the current condition is.
So much work has been done to build the modern society. You wouldn't call linux a waste of time because it has bugs, would you?
Make your comparison against an average working american in a poor town with a family. I bet they look closer to serfs than you would care to admit.
Absolute freedom has gone up, but that does not mean we don't have 'modern serfdom' for people who can't leave their job for fear of going bankrupt when their medicine costs 2,000 per month.
My friend and I (both females) one the CEO of a tech company and me a Staff Engineer, have talked about how to do HR right and we came up with an idea but havnt done anything with it.
Since HR is clearly biased towards the companies and this has proven to cause a lot of problems, they will never side with you over the company if the company is indeed wrong.
HR should ideally be an independent third party and all issues treated the same way a legal audit would. An org comes in promises to keep things confidential. Objectively assesses the situation, inquires for more info (emails, convos etc) and determines the outcome. If someone needs to be fired and it's a male superior, then so be it.
HR is never going to tell their boss that they should be fired for mistreating another employee for example, if they do not also want to lose their jobs.
In reality it makes sense to have an internal HR for all things like hiring recruiting etc etc etc but when it comes to managing deteriorated relationships between employees it will never be done right unless an independent third party comes into asses.
It's a nice idea, but in practice what would likely happen is the "third party" HR contractors would still generally side with the company, because the company is the one paying them, and if the company doesn't like their decisions, they may stop paying them.
The crux of this hinges around (perceived) "ownership" of the HR service.
It needs to be jointly owned by both the employer and the employee for there to be any chance of an equitable balance between conflicting interests of the company who's paying the bill and the company who's providing HR services, with that of the employee, as outlined in some of the other responses you've received.
Based on the inherent complexity of the above, I think the simplest model would be where an employee is also the employer, ie. ownership of the company by the employee.
This allows for the greater good, the future of the whole company, against the rights of the employee to be balanced within the company.
There are plenty of examples of companies owned by their employees.
Unions are not impartial - their power in the company is proportional to the number of unionised employees, so they have an incentive to take your side if you are a member - and against you if you are not. It's more complicated in practice, but impartial they are not.
Arbitration may be impartial ("sometimes"), court system may be impartial ("sometimes") - but you still have to be represented by someone who can navigate these systems.
At least in Italy, your work contract always falls within the general rules established with the unions. At the end of the day, you are somehow unionized. If there is a dispute you can always call an union representative for arbitration. I saw it happen several times, and more or less they were siding with the employees.
I know the issue has 1000 shades of color, but if somehow, someway, in a sunny day, with all the possible luck in the world, someone sides with you in a dispute (and is not a lawyer you are paying), that will be unions.
> At least in Italy, your work contract always falls within the general rules established with the unions. At the end of the day, you are somehow unionized.
That is true in many countries - though there are some (US being one) where non-union employees are ostracized or pushed away from being employed, especially as the law allows exclusive union representation in about half of the states [0]. The unions have been known to argue for union members and sacrificing non-members as part of exclusive bargaining with the company.
> I know the issue has 1000 shades of color, but if somehow, someway, in a sunny day, with all the possible luck in the world, someone sides with you in a dispute (and is not a lawyer you are paying), that will be unions.
That's not being impartial - that is being on your side. Yes, there are conditions in which unions may be on your side (in which case: great, but still bring a lawyer) - but the claim in grandparent post is that they may be impartial, whereas they very rarely are.
I would love to work for a place like this, but I can't imagine a company choosing to pay for this HR service unless forced to by law. They can already get the version of HR that will side with them every time. Why pay money for a version that might rule against you?
That said, I can see an eventual path for this. The "problem companies" definitely won't be interested, at least at first, and the only companies that would choose this are the ones least likely to need it. Given time and publicity, these companies may have an easier time hiring, until eventually there is sufficient pressure on the "problem companies" that they feel they have to change to this to continue to hire.
That might have an okay shot in industries like tech, where you could argue that employees still have a lot of choice in employer. I don't see it working in other industries (that could probably use it a lot more), like the legal industry or food production.
Do you think companies want to waste money on 401k matching or healthcare benefits? They don't. They do it because it's either required by law in some capacity and for when it isn't it's because it's such a uniform standard for any nonfledling startup company who wants to hire someone full-time they would look like idiots for not only providing these benefits but providing them from respectable third parties. Over time these things became standardized and highly regulated and that's a good thing.
You're right, if we had to rely on the goodwill of a company this most certainly would not happen. I don't think it would happen overnight but I do believe the best and brightest will go for places who offer competitive advantages and others will follow suit.
If it garners high quality employees then make the company profitable in the same way every startup wants to pretend they are like google with video games and playrooms and brightly colored walls and provided lunches, actually not treating your employees like crap if they have an issue with another employee is also a competitive benefit that could become a trend for any company who wants to be competitive.
Good point but if this went mainstream it could be considered a requirement the same way a good growing company behind a fledgling startup will never get away with hiring people full-time unless they supply a healthcare plan and other standard benefits most employees at respectable companies receive, to the point there is no chance they could not be competitive with out them.
And that's the thing really. They could be required to have them, so then it's just a matter of which ones are competitive to the employees.
I would love to apply to a company, ask who their third party HR is and say oh man that one SUCKS and everyone knows it. Sorry, gonna take a job at this other company who had external HR with much better rankings, the same way I might for more competitive healthcare plans or benefits between to equally competitive jobs.
Of course companies do not want to spend money on things like 401k matching healthcare and the otherwise but they will if enough companies do it to the point they look sketchy if they do not only provide these benefits but provide these benefits through respectable third parties.
Yeh bit arbitration is something that has to be escalated to, and something one employee is not well versed or capable of paying the fees for in relation to the company. I wouldn't say arbitration is the equivalent of my idea which is access to external legal help by default with a fair assessment.
There are definitely metrics by which these parties could be ranked but sure there would be issues with gaming these metrics. For example if there as a legal requirement to accurately report across many companies how many times during an internal issue the person not in the superior position was fired vs the superior despite reporting something like sexual assault or racism or something like this, and the company says 100% of the time we agreed the superior did nothing wrong and 75% of the time the complainant magically failed their performance review and is no longer with the company within 6months of this.
Well that is a pretty bad metric.
There are definitely ways to report metrics anonymously and the results and legally can inquire if they reported the outcome accurately.
Carts is stating to do this with money. They are reporting how much money women and minorities have in equity vs white males, and eventually will break it down by position which means yeh if most women work in HR and I'm a senior engineer yeh probs women will have less equity, but next yr they will expand and show things like all staff level software developers, this is the breakdown of men vs women equity in tech companies....
That's a number I would love to see. And it would say alot.
So there are ways to make this better even if it's not an easy fix. Requiring companies to provide healthcare and 401k plans did not happen overnight Im sure, but noone would take a company seriously without these benefits for long.
In the Netherlands, where I am, it's a requirement of companies over a certain size to have a "works council", which is something like, but not quite, a union. It's made up of employees and they are legally empowered to be a go-between between employees and the company if required.
This year, for example, the council members where I work have been very busy ensuring that company plans for layoffs were as fair to employees as it was possible to be, by doing things like ensuring that if someone could be moved to another role they were, that the voluntary layoff system was suitable, and so forth.
There are also unions which are cross-company and were involved to a lesser degree in this process, providing advice and specialist support, consulting with members, and so on.
I was fired once in one of the worst ways possible. It came as a total surprise.
My boss and my boss’s boss booked a meeting with me at 17:00 in an external meeting room. My boss’s boss did the actual firing. My direct boss just sat there like a sad puppy.
They handed me a piece of paper and I signed it. I was still in shock. I was escorted to my desk to collect my things and then taken to the head of HR for my “exit interview”.
I told her the whole story and she actually seemed shocked herself. I think I spent over an hour with her, holding back tears, explaining “I wasn’t even told what I did wrong. What am I supposed to do now?”
She told me that she thought what the company was wrong. It didn’t change anything but it meant something at least, considering the state I was in.
I noticed from her LinkedIn that she left the company a couple of months later as well.
Oh yeh for sure. I've had an HR women on the phone with me crying because she's so disturbed ny what happened but she had to pretend like she wasn't infront of my boss. She even told me 1:1 the man who refused to let me speak also refused to speak to her it was beneath him and he had another male deliver the message to her to fire me.
In the end she was useless to me and powerless and had as much power ad a caged parrot.
If they are not evil they are simply in control of determining nothing and just a euphemistic liaison for corporate abuse.
I have many war stories from companies like these. Never sign the paperwork right away. I was once given 23minutes to sign a severence agreement and found out later they violated state law: 21 days plus a 7 day walk back, and broke federal law by saying I couldn't have cobra health insurance if I didn't promise to shut up.
Typically a shut up you little bitch document also known as a separation agreement holds severence pay hostage, not healthcare. They also fired me days before I vested my equity and didn't tell me why. In my state you can fire anyone for any reason. They don't have to tell you why. Yeh it's really messed up.
Corporations are like small abusive dictatorships. Just try to find a decent one with good work who is successful enough to be focused on good engineering or whatever it is you do they don't need to bully and tear people down to protect themselves and get by in life.
Although, it does remind me of reading about the rush to judgment that killed Nortel. While not totally related, the inciting incident is something along the lines of something appeared a little weird in a financial statement. To avoid even a perception of impropriety, nortel hired a top outside firm to investigate whether there was anything wrong.
The resulting investigation according to the author led to a chain of events and witch hunt that led to the downfall of Nortel and needless criminal prosecution of executives.
Anyways, probably not so much a comment on the idea itself, but more just a thought on possible outcomes when the process goes wrong, whether internal or external.
I think it's better than the current state of things which is: if the company is wrong and covering it up requires some disadvantage to you vs doing the right thing. 100% of these times you are screwed as an employee.
It also wouldn't be a witch hunt anymore than current HR investigations. Just performed by an objective third party.
I would very much recommend Private Government by Elizabeth Anderson (specifically, chapter 2).
It's a relatively short read, and very relevant to your comment. Personally, I found the book quite enlightening, it gives a very different perspective to the jobs landscape than the one we usually have. An uncomfortable perspective, but one I feel one that is much more accurate.
CEO: Board of directors are your bosses. Shareholders too.
Investors: Are they the real boss!? No. ROI is the boss. All the variables that make them successful are their bosses.
Bootstrapped Startup?: Customers are the boss. PR is the boss. Ask founders how tied up and enslaved they are after they've invested time and effort into building a product or service.
Everyone has a boss: At the end, nature is your boss. Can’t escape death.
This is how the society works.
We are under a crazy tyranny of nature as replication machines mindlessly optimizing for resources.
On lower levels all the higher ups are still your bosses to some exteny, you just have no visibility into how their decisions affect you. The lower you are on the hierarchy, the more bosses you have, and the less you have to show for it.
Come on, this is counterfactual hyperbole. In actual feudalism, if you disagreed with the king he could arbitrarily kill you or jail you.
Sure, corporations are lame and if you work for one you're a cog in a machine, I agree it can suck. But it's crazy to suggest that this somehow invalidates democracy.
The first job of a functioning government is to establish a monopoly on violence and prevent it from being used against the people. Sure there are times when modern democratic governments fail at this but they do a pretty good job of making sure that Jeff Bezos can't literally murder his lowly serfs when they get out of line. He can take their jobs but he can't take their lives and that's a far cry from how things worked in the Inquisition.
When you make spurious claims like implying that we don't live in a democracy, you're dishonouring the millions of people throughout history who wrested power away from the kings and warlords of the past, bit by bit, and built a system which at least places a few limits on its most powerful members.
At least in some countries, if you have a life-threatening medical condition and you lose your job, you're at a significant risk of death.
Just because you have it easy, doesn't mean everyone does. Billions of people are terrified of losing their jobs, because that means starvation or a slow painful death from a disease they can no longer afford to treat.
I worked with an Indian woman that was worked so hard that she had a spontaneous abortion. On a Sunday. And was made to go back to work that same day.
I think you place too much emphasis on violence. As there are things worse than death or physical harm. Just as the face of war changed from a physical one to an economic one.
Democratic nation with a strong Oligarchy. Who over years forged q corpocracy that obfuscate such via citizens united. The basis in which we operate is democratic, but popular public policies are rarely enacted.
As to why you put too much emphasis on violence. Think of labor the united states has thanks to corporal punishment. Why waste labor?
In the end it doesn't matter too much as even the beginnings of a GAI would derail such a system. Think on the idiocy at the capital the other day and the post truth aspect that spurred it on.
Something about opinions being treated as facts is part of a post truth society. I don't like what you said, therefore is false. It's a trend that to me is worse than death when it comes to discourse.
> But it's crazy to suggest that this somehow invalidates democracy.
I wouldn't say it's crazy. Your employer can just schedule you to work on election day, forcing you to choose between participating in democracy and not starving. Heck, I would go so far as to say that Covid elected Joseph Biden. If mail voting wasn't made so widespread, it's entirely possible that not enough people would have gone to the polls and we would be stuck with the fucking angry orange for another 4 years.
Are we talking about work or life? Sure, private companies aren't democracies, but why should they be? Democracies are extremely inefficient. Imagine if Linux or Python projects were run as democracies and not lead by BDFLs? I can't imagine them being nearly as effective because democratic processes to get new features would always be gridlocked. Benevolent dictators are 10x, maybe even 100x more efficient than democracies.
Outside of work I certainly live in a free society. I can walk up to a rich person ("a lord") and insult him to his face and nothing will happen.
>Are we talking about work or life? Sure, private companies aren't democracies, but why should they be? Democracies are extremely inefficient.
Isn't the common argument of economists that democracies are more efficient? (I do believe they're just paying service to their own governments, and just say what gets them grants and such, but in any case, that's the conventional wisdom).
Plus, democracies are "less efficient" compared to what dictatorship that did better than a democracy?
The main counter-example that comes to mind is China, and even them are mainly effective because of huge population and low labor costs, by being the place to outsource production by those democracies that can pay for it.
>I can't imagine them being nearly as effective because democratic processes to get new features would always be gridlocked.
Grid-locked by what? The purpose of voting in a democracy is to remove gridlocks. You don't even have to vote for everything, you can vote on a platform, and can delegate power for a certain time to someone to make the decisions, and then judge how they performed, and vote again after the period ended.
>Outside of work I certainly live in a free society. I can walk up to a rich person ("a lord") and insult him to his face and nothing will happen.*
You'd be surprised.
Plus, they can crush your neighborhood (e.g. to throw the tenants out and build some monstrocity), cajole with your lawmakers, fuck your working life, pollute your city/countryside/water supply, and usually nothing will happen.
And if they really cared, they could trivially have you killed, with nothing happening. It's just not worth the small risk of them being tied to it. But they hire legal teams and detectives to throw dirt at their enemies all the time..
> Grid-locked by what? The purpose of voting in a democracy is to remove gridlocks.
Well I suppose in a "pure" democracy where voting decides everything there is no gridlock, but those types of systems usually suck because there are no checks or balances, and whoever buys up the most votes wins. Most western nations are not governed by pure democracies. USA is a federal republic with 3 systems of government that check and balance each other and they get gridlocked all the time.
> And if they really cared, they could trivially have you killed, with nothing happening
I wouldn't say "with nothing happening". Something would definitely happen. If you're OJ Simson and the prosecution botches your case, then sure "nothing happened" (besides the millions you spent on lawyers and bad PR). But even OJ wasn't untouchable - he spent around a decade in prison later for other felonies. What about Jeffery Epstein? Harvey Weinstein? Yeah, their money buffered them for decades, but justice eventually caught them in its jaws.
>I wouldn't say "with nothing happening". Something would definitely happen. If you're OJ Simson and the prosecution botches your case, then sure "nothing happened"
OJ did it himself. A millionaire/billionaire could outsource this in tons of different ways, including totally untracable.
In some historical cases (including in western countries, never mind a place like e.g. Mexico) they could even get the police to do that for them...
That was 1997 at a conference. There was no social media or cancel culture.
My point is that you can be fired for insulting the wrong rich or the wrong anybody if it’s caught on camera and gets enough views and it brings shame to your lord. You’re not free when you clock out or leave the office. As an employee, you’re a representative of your company 24/7 whether you like it or not.
Linux and Python are both projects where people can vote with their feet, though. The projects themselves are not a democracy, but they're certainly not the same sort of ballgame as employment. If I decide my management chain is doing the wrong thing, there's a huge personal cost to finding another job, and little guarantee it will be better. If I decide Linux is doing the wrong thing, I can just stop using it or contributing to it.
That is - the fact that Linux and Python have BDFLs is not the reason for their success. The fact that they have effective BDFLs who make sound decisions that actually work is the reason for their success. And the BDFLs only have power insofar as the community still believes in them - Guido stepped down and Linus has faced significant opposition.
BDFLs and traditional corporate governance are quite efficient, yes. But democracy doesn't aim to be efficient; it promises to be pointed in the right direction. There's no sense in going at 100x speed in the wrong direction. Democracy isn't the only way to get there - if you have tangible data about leadership and where they're pointed and how they make decisions, and the cost of switching is fairly low (so that you can keep pressure on leadership), that works too.
When was the last time you had any data about how effective your management chain would be when you started your job?
(I'm happy in my current job because I asked hard questions about management at each place I interviewed, and I found one where my own management chain seemed to have good people - but even so, only one person in my management chain is still the same as when I interviewed, so I still took a gamble, and I had far less data on any of them from a bit over a day of interviews than anyone has on Linus or Guido.)
It's obviously true that being banned from contributing to an important project can be saddening and in rare occasions harm your career, but it happens very rarely.
OTOH losing your job can be way more serious consequences and happens way more often, even without any blame on the employee (e.g. a company shutdown)
And on top of that, a project BDFL cannot order inactive contributors to do some work under threat of banning them.
I would love to know where you're pulling the 10x or 100x efficiency stats on dictatorships, and what exactly are the sectors of the dictatorship that are more efficient?
Also, it seems like your definition of freedom has no responsibility attached to the actions. Yes, you may be able to do as you wish, but so can others onto you(especially if they have more leverage).
> Outside of work I certainly live in a free society.
Only if you define freedom as the capacity to do whatever is allowed or at least not expressly prohibited by the state without legal consequence. Fortunately no one defines it that way. You cannot be simultaneously free and subject to state power. Companies simply add another layer atop the restrictions to freedom imposed by the state. You might feel freer outside of work, but don't make the mistake of thinking you are free.
Being satisfied with temporary respite from greater restrictions imposed at work is hardly something you should celebrate. Slaves in antebellum America enjoyed free time as well, presumably many were intelligent and self-aware enough to resent their situation despite this.
It is not defined as such, but it certainly only seems possible in the absence of the state. One well known dictionary phrases the relevant definition as "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action". Many nation states (although the US is the worst offender in this regard) and those whose interests a given state protects, have quite successfully convinced their citizenry to celebrate the limitations placed upon them and further to mislabel these limitations as freedom.
There are degrees of democracy (as I think your comment rightly points out).
Maximum democracy in this case might be, the RFCs are written by anyone, work on features is started when people vote to start it, and there is widely distributed veto/filibuster power.
A bit less democracy might be that the maintainers select the ten proposals they feel are best, and put them to a vote for people to choose.
I just read a really good book on this topic called "10% Less Democracy". I'd highly recommend it. It shows how "maximum democracy" usually isn't the best setting, at least for governments. Their proposal for tax is interesting: write a 4-page bill in Congress that outlines the % of income to be collected, and maybe some amount each decile should pay, and an unelected tax body (like the IRS) figures out how to make that happen, as cheaply and transparently as possible.
I wouldn't describe the Rust processes as democracy. The team members are the ones to decide on RFCs, and they are not elected. Their "appointment" is more a meritocracy.
A less dramatic way to put this might be: the person who is paying the bill is the person who gets to decide. In a large company this may be some manager who controls the budget your compensation comes out of. If you’re an independent contractor this is your client. If you’re hiring a person to paint your apartment, this is you.
Arguably, this is as it should be. Taken to its logical conclusion the alternative would mean that nobody is entitled to make a decision about anything without taking a referendum on the matter.
Reasonable people will be interested in informed input from the people they employ, but it should not be surprising that in the end the painter you hired doesn’t get a vote on the color you want your bathroom.
>the person who is paying the bill is the person who gets to decide.
Paying the bill with money made by who? Sure, in the case of independent contractors the money is coming out of someone's pocket, but in most structured companies (which is what GP is talking about), the money comes from the people making and pushing the product. In real terms, the employees are the ones paying the bill.
>Taken to its logical conclusion the alternative would mean that nobody is entitled to make a decision about anything without taking a referendum on the matter.
That's literally just an argument against democracy, which we have, as a society, come to the conclusion is a generally good thing. (Well, fascists disagree, but society also has opinions on them.)
>Reasonable people will be interested in informed input from the people they employ, but it should not be surprising that in the end the painter you hired doesn’t get a vote on the color you want your bathroom.
You're conflating the relationship as a client and the relationship as an employer. You get to tell them what color paint to use, but not what type of ladder or brushes to use, or whether they're allowed to use the bathroom, sit while working, or eat lunch.
>A less dramatic way to put this might be: the person who is paying the bill is the person who gets to decide.
Well, the reason they're "paying the bill" is because they have the money and you don't.
Which is as good as the King having gold and army, and you, the serf not.
>Arguably, this is as it should be. Taken to its logical conclusion the alternative would mean that nobody is entitled to make a decision about anything without taking a referendum on the matter.
If only we weren't forced by the laws of nature to take things to their "logical conclusion" (i.e. their exaggerated slippery slope ending), but could instead use some moderation and judgment, but still come with something better than strict hierachical dominance in companies...
> Taken to its logical conclusion the alternative would mean that nobody is entitled to make a decision about anything without taking a referendum on the matter.
I think a much more generous reading would be that taken to it's natural conclusion this would mean that leaders in the workplace would govern more by consent and not by fiat based on their ability to wield economic power within the corporate structure as lever to coerce workers in to faithfully executing their commands no matter how ridiculous or counter-productive.
Corporations are constituted entirely by laws which evolve under democratic processes and those laws have already been used to limit, structure, and shape the power that corporate managers hold. They cannot defraud investors, they cannot imprison or lash their employees and so on. So is it really unimaginable that there might be some kind of democratic legal reform that would place other limits on their powers without requiring death by a million referenda? I don't think so.
In fact, I think there's probably every reason to believe that, if anything, shareholders would be even better served by preventing executives and middle management from building fiefdoms loyal to them personally which are often not really in-line with the goals of the institution.
Very on point. We have democracy on a government level and have 1 day in 2 years to select our representatives. For the rest of the time we have to please our boss, that we have not much say about and that has a lot of power about economic circumstances.
Yes, we can always find another boss, but mentally on day to day basis it is not that different to dictatorship.
A recent observations my co-founders and I also made are that companies are basically authoritarian regimes. This is probably necessary during the startup phase, but perhaps less so as the company matures.
Is there a precedent for moving from dictatorship/authoritarianism to democracy for company governance as it grows? One movement that shows up on the radar are zebras (vs. unicorns).
An analogy for this comes from the founding fathers of the USA. Washington had a lot of power as effectively the "CEO" of America, but gave up his power after 2 terms and further encouraged democratic governance and peaceful transfer of power.
This is not an inevitable outcome. As company's get bigger they often find that checks and balances and democratic norms will be necessary and effective. Command and control is really effective as some scales and breaks down at others. As Aristotle said, all forms of government have a good and corrupt form. Select the right form under the circumstances and strive to make it operate well.
Serfs were literally bound to the land. They could be bought sold and conveyed and were not allowed to leave.
Say what you will about companies and inequality or lack of representation; that may have merit, but you can quit with two weeks notice. Serfs were not afforded those rights.
Democracy exists or should exist outside the companies, creating the laws that constrain contract law.
Companies are basically one person (at the top) trading money for work with the people doing what they are paid for. The person doing the work could of course say hey I don't want to do this job I want to do something else instead but I want you to still pay me the same amount, or more. That wouldn't really be about democracy would it?
Employee protection laws are a different matter and are possible because we live in a democratic society, if we do.
One huge step towards democracy would be universal healthcare, which would make it easier for people to quit the job they don't think they should be doing.
Corporations are legally constituted. A society should be allowed to decide whether they want to grant corporations a license to operate or not and, if so, then under what conditions. After all, you can freely chose to accept the limitations of your corporate charter, or you can take a lovely hike without being granted one at all.
I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting that employees be able to do whatever they want without limit and still be entitled to a pay cheque from a corporation.
Just as nobody would suggest that some despicable organisation be granted a legal charter to perform some anti-social, destructive, or massively wasteful activities... (sarcasm alert!) :)
But I think that, despite taking different routes, we arrive at the same conclusion that, yes, there are also positive legislative actions that could be taken (healthcare, UBI, others) which would effectively incentivize decent corporate behaviour without needing to set specific new rules or limits.
If anything, the modern corporation is modelled after military with squad/platoon/company structure. You have people in the trenches, you have HQ rats/architects. Sometimes you have commissars ;)
What I wonder: is a well run feudal system more successful business wise than a democracy? A democracy sounds nice but I have experienced that it slows down a business because everybody wants to participate and speak their mind. No decision is accepted but constantly challenged. Progress is slowed down. Maybe we just did “the wrong way”. But still.
On the other hand the most successful company on this planet Apple is clearly not run as a democracy. So, I really wonder if a hierarchical system works better if you want to have a successful business.
There's a wealth of statistical data that shows that cooperatives are more resilient and stable than classical owner run enterprise, here's a Stanford paper citing a lot of good sources on it[1].
Largely the reason so few businesses are cooperatives is because if you are an active participant in the founding of a business its in your own self interest to retain as much power over it as possible, which leads you to want to establish a dictatorship rather than a democracy - even if you aren't the founder / owner / CEO, being a first generation "lord" of the company will net you much greater bounty if it succeeds than if your compensation was dictated by a majority of your peerage.
That and absolutely nobody knows what cooperatives even are. Establishing a complex managerial democracy is way excessive for mom and pop shops or businesses with less than a half dozen employees and then those dictatorships scale up into larger and larger enterprises with no incentive to transition away from top down power structures. The benefits are largely for those who, under the current regime, have no power or say anyway, and thus the utility of more stable, productive, or resilient businesses is lost when it would cost the founders and owners their potential for ludicrous wealth and unquestionable power.
Largely the reason so few businesses are cooperatives is because if you are an active participant in the founding of a business its in your own self interest to retain as much power over it as possible
There is no reason a software company couldn’t operate like a law firm or architecture firm with “partners”. It just doesn’t because software developers are too focused to the technical aspects and ignore the bigger picture.
Thanks. These almost all either agriculture or grocery companies. I was looking for a list of tech companies since that’s what I’m interested in and what’s usually discussed here.
It is important to understand that in a lot of ways, corporations are completely contrary to how we like to see the world. We want democracy, but corporations are often essentially feudal, like you say. We like the free market, but internal economies of corporations are entirely plan-economy.
I often wonder if we shouldn't just ban large corporations. Make everything small business.
Not sure where to draw the line between big and small, but instead of the current notion of employment which for wage slavery is a very apt term, society should look into worker owned businesses and/or collaboratives.
You know, now I wonder why hiring isn't bottom up. Most companies have higher levels find lower levels, but what if it was the other way around? Could this actually create more profitable companies? Ones that would be better run?
Luckily we do have freedom to quit and change our jobs, whereas feudal serfdom was essentially trapped by debt and servitude. The history of the ever-evolving common worker is fascinating! How far we've come!
Work isn’t life anymore. That’s where the serfdom analogy breaks down.
I am utterly subservient to those to whom I report. I obediently tug my forelock to HR all the way from 8am to 4:30pm but at that point I turn off my company devices and am my own person.
If you draw a $200k salary and work until bed-time in a shared flat with no garden then I suppose it’s a different story — one of the chattel post-grad SWE — but at least you have $300 a day on which to live.
> If we believe in democracy, then allowing the economy to run by a patchwork of private command structures, with no internal democracy or accountability, should make our stomachs turn. Alexis de Tocqueville once asked; “can it be believed that the Democracy which has overthrown the Feudal system and vanquished Kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?”. The question he poses requires an address, and not all are shy to the challenge.
Difference is that for most of the serfs, it is possible to switch feudals and kings much more easily than in the olden days. And even in the last decades this mobility especially worldwide, has increased. This is very hopeful I think as in the coming century this should slowly move people to a more positive place, all things considered.
Coming from the startup world, I used to investigate those issues quite deeply, as in “how do you run an organization that would be different, better”. One of the most interesting works in that area for me was “Reinventing Organizations” by Laloux. (https://www.reinventingorganizations.com) it kinda studies if this is even possible and what would organizations like that look like. TLDR it is possible and there are quite a few real world examples. Hopefully more and more each decade.
You can quit your job, though. And you can negotiate with management. The only reason you are a serf is because you choose to be one. (Spare me the "many people can't afford to quit their job" comments - save money, or look for a better job)
By that argument our government is also a feudal system because there's a king (the president, prime minister, etc.) in charge. Most people would argue that the ability to choose the "king" and replace the "king" provides a key distinction. Likewise with an employer you can change your employer which provides a key distinction from a feudal system.
Changing your employer is more akin to emigrating in your feudal example. "Choosing a new king" - the way we do it in democracies - corresponds to voting for a new CEO. Some democratic/worker owned companies do that.
In reality, something like 50% of all working people are employed in a strict hierarchical organisation that is essentially feudal in its nature.
Most employees are the equivalent of serfs, overseen by lords, with a king in charge. The common employees don't get a vote. Their managers are not elected. They don't get a say in policy. The managers in turn form a strict hierarchy, much like in feudal times, with a top-down structure. A junior manager cannot say no to a senior manager. Nobody can say no to the CEO.
In this picture HR is essentially the inquisition. The inquisition was most certainly not the friend of the common man!
If you buck the system, if you step out of your place, if you're a commoner upsetting a lord, then you will be treated much like your ancestors would have been treated long ago: You will be put to the question. The inquisition will spare no pain to determine exactly why you stepped out of line and upset the natural order of things.