This post rings eerily true. Recently had a company all-hands where the CEO said basically the exact same lines. The whole "if you don't love working here, then you should leave" bit made me cringe. Easy for you to say when you've got a significant equity share in the company.
The saddest realization I've had working at companies is how power-hungry people are, how little respect the people in power often have for those "below" them, and how important politics is even in a field like engineering that you'd expect to be meritocratic. Sweeping decisions are often made in a small room of a few "higher-ups" without any input or regard for those "below" them. Providing counter-arguments that question the decisions of the executive caste is often seen as a threat (how dare you question your leader?). The shy and humble rockstar coder who kicks ass gets little recognition while the smooth-talking sycophant gets accolades and climbs the ladder.
Corporations are authoritarian tyrannies with strict hierarchies. America was founded on the principles of democracy, but we tolerate tyranny in our workplace. The only way to change this is to remove the asymmetric dependency of the employee on the employer (eg. UBI).
I'll take the unpopular position of supporting a small room of a few "higher ups" making decisions. This is exactly what you want: a small number of people with a lot of skin in the game making important decisions. Good leaders gather feedback and counter-arguments beforehand, but then make a firm decision, and it's diminishingly rare for that decision to please everyone. The people who are not pleased should still follow their lead, despite thinking the decision is wrong. Sometimes the decision is wrong and sometimes the people who think the decision is wrong are the ones who are wrong. There's no way of knowing a priori, and someone needs to be empowered to take the leap on doing what they think is best, and it makes sense for that person to be a "higher-up". Decision by committee or by democracy is too inefficient for a business.
In my professional experience, every time higher ups made a decision without input from worker bees, the project failed, delayed, or cancelled.
I personally love it when higher-ups make a decision without consulting me. Because then I have zero skin in the game. I don't work ridiculous hours. When I am involved in decision making, then I make sure project succeeds. Sometimes that means working late hours, taking pro-active steps to remove blockers etc.
But if I am told what to do without consulting me, then I don't care. There is a lot less stress on me. If it appears decision was stupid and project will not meet deadline, I make sure everyone knows and rarely ever put in more than 40 hours on such projects.
> But if I am told what to do without consulting me, then I don't care. There is a lot less stress on me. If it appears decision was stupid and project will not meet deadline, I make sure everyone knows and rarely ever put in more than 40 hours on such projects.
I envy people who can change into "I just do what I have to do"-mode when they don't have 'skin in the game' ... I always feel as if I have skin in the game and get stressed even on the most ridiculous projects where I knew (and stated) from day 1 that this just won't work the way it has been envisioned by higher ups.
I think you need to learn this ability, otherwise you might suffer a burnout.
You need to remember, whether you put 40, 60 or 80 hours p/w into a death march project, won't be recognised. Everyone will be too busy to tally who's working more. By sacrificing more of your free time, you are just working for free for the people driving the project, who may be doing this purely for political reasons. You will also make it more likely for similar projects in the future.
I maintain it's better to not overstretch yourself and let the project fail. Better for your health, and better for the company, so they manage the next project better and have workers who aren't burnt out.
You say you envy them but I'm not sure you really do. Working without feeling involvement or purpose in what you do is mind-numbing. Of course lots of people have to endure it, and some find solace in hobbies/family. But if you are the type of person who always feel you have skin in the game, I don't think you'd last a month in a position where you don't care :-D
That's an odd viewpoint. Work hands me money, some projects are interesting others less so. But, doing a good job is enjoyable even if you don't care about the end result. Like playing a sport without paying attention to the score.
It's odd only if you have not tasted it. Once you have the experience of work with a sense of purpose, working without it (if you're skilled enough to be in a position to choose) looks like an odd life choice.
I have done work I though was important, as in saving lives etc. But, it's not like I am the only person that can do this stuff. Really when someone else is paying you they could pay thousands or possibly millions of other people to do that job. The fact you happen to be the one doing it is not really important other than a sense you should not mess up.
There's a difference between having A Decider and having your decider make all the important decisions.
Yes, there needs to be a captain of the ship, and when she tells you to do something, you fucking do it because that's what captain means and you can kvetch about it when you're back on land.
But if the captain is making all of the important decisions, something has gone terribly wrong and your boat will not function. The captain is there to
1) make small changes necessary to stay on a long term course
2) push decisions through in moments when speed is critical
3) break conflicts that can't be resolved
They are not the chief achitect or the chief strategist or the chief anything really.
And if you are both the captain and the chief strategist, you need to recognize that you're playing two roles in one body and you need to be very aware at all times of when you're wearing the captain hat and when you're not. You don't get to boss people around when you're doing strategy.
I agree with you, but I'm not arguing for a single "Decider", but rather a small group of what the comment I replied to referred to as "higher-ups" being responsible for making decisions in their areas of responsibility. I think this works in your ship analogy as well, but I don't know enough about sailing to say what those people are called - mates? In any case, you get the drift :-)
If anyone wants to be part of the decision making process, they really should strive to get in that room. And when they get there, they will appreciate the absence of noise from people who think their voices automatically matter. If a company doesn't have a way to gather important feedback from its workers, then that is a failure. But that does not equate to everyone needing to be in that room.
When I started out, my goal was to have a meeting every week and to include everyone. It was a waste of time. People would throw out ideas they had no intent to pursue, and when they were not talking would start fiddling with their phones.
You'd be surprised how many people don't value other people's time, or even other people's ideas. It's easy to imagine you could make a difference or be that difference, but if you truly believed you should have a say, then you should make it known, and either prove yourself, or find a job that comes with the satisfaction you desire. Like, maybe a more team oriented environment.
The truth is, especially at a large tech company, you are replaceable. No one is asking for your personal touch be it at a Foxconn assembly line or an engineer at Cisco. Unless of course, your job title includes "designer" or "architect" etc. But otherwise you're there to do the impersonal work you agreed to do for the impersonal money they're paying you. That's all a job is. You get more for better skills and more experience / less risk. All they are looking for is a guarantee that the work will get done.
This isn't to say you shouldn't have fun or that you shouldn't make the most of it. It's just saying that if fun or "most" entails being heard by execs or barking up the tree, then you will pay for it one way or the other; either with your emotional well being, or with lower pay due to greater overhead for being noisy and needy.
Managers are paid human sound barriers that permit lower quality hires for less pay. This is an important role, as are those being managed. But to think you can get past the manager who's very job is to silence you is the wrong approach. Don't raise your voice or kick harder. You need to become a manager. Either that or go work at a smaller company where the CEO sits across the room.
> The truth is, especially at a large tech company, you are replaceable.
This will sound harsh to many, but I believe it's basically true. At large companies, the innovation has already happened; they found a market and are now mining it. Very few large companies can continue to innovate (Apple being the main example), but the rest just ride off into the sunset. Sometimes the market they're in evaporates, and they die, but usually they muddle along.
Venkatesh Rao[1] wrote a series of blog posts on this that are frightenly accurate and jive perfectly with my experience.
Everything is replaceable, even and especially the large tech company. The constant reminder sure kills productivity though. People are more productive when they think companies actually give a shit about the hard work they put into the company.
Yes. And this is where it gets sociopathic. Large companies will hire "good" managers to make people feel they make a difference, that they are being heard, and that the company gives a shit. But of course, this is business as usual. Worker satisfaction is just a number on a spreadsheet that execs in a room move up and down with pirks, with corporate philosophy, with company events, and with dangling carrots.
This isn't to say it isn't important. It is, and that is why they will spend time and money on it. But if, say, the cash is low, these are things that go, and rightfully so if it's to stay in business.
And the kicker is, the guys that run the show, the guys that start businesses and come to work with a mission, the guys everyone seems to want to be -- they don't need anything. They're already as motivated as can be, take on all the responsibility, and even sign the checks to pay everyone AND pay for the things they believe they will make them happy.
And this truly is the paradox. There is nothing cushy about an executive job, especially at a tech company. And I'd say never at a startup. It's cut throat as fuck. If you can't deliver, you're out. You should be out. Everyone is watching you, and everyone will complain. But you have no one to complain to. Having someone to complain to, having excuses, these are all pirks.
But if you can deliver, then you have professional freedom and high reward, at least in a capitalist economy. Then you get to make life cushy for yourself if that is what you desire.
You like people telling you what to do and having no control over those decisions? Personally I absolutely loathe such environments, especially when the decisions are made haphazardly without proper rationale, which they often are (executives are human too).
At the end of the day, the "subordinates" are the ones actually doing the far majority of the work, and they far outnumber the managers. I don't see why the workers shouldn't at least have a seat at the table when the decisions are being debated that would affect them. Often the managers are so removed from the work that they lack a lot of the insights from the front lines.
The most common rebuttal I hear when I bring this up is, like you said, "too many people makes things inefficient". Bullshit. Sure a decision ultimately needs to be made, but there's no reason one shouldn't be allowed to provide input.
And in my experience, I do think it's more about people wanting to feel powerful, and fear of losing this power (eg. like the other commenter who mentioned fear of "power inversion"). The people in power are generally the most sycophantic, and thus have the least interest in interacting with or relinquishing power to subordinates because it doesn't personally benefit their position of power or ladder-climbing question.
If a bunch of executives make a bad decision, then "oh well, there's no way we could've known". If a bunch of executives make a bad decision after a meeting with subordinates who questioned their decision, then it makes the executives look bad and threatens their judgement and position of authority. So from a selfish perspective, it's better to keep the minions out.
That would be the idea behind a technical lead no? Having a voice for the tehcnical team.
Everyone should have a voice but not everyone needs to literally be at the table. Seeing companies go from small to larger and seeing how the flat structure begins to show caveats as a team grows, I agree everyone should have a voice, but ultimately a decision needs to be made and a big group of people are never going to agree on everything. You can bikeshed all day on which CI platform to use for example but ultimately a decision gets made by someone that there has been enough discussion and this is the platform to use.
That process can be horribly perverted and have the wrong people making terrible decisions but that is a separate problem, not a problem with the idea of consolidating many voices into a decision.
Of course a decision ultimately has to be made, and I'm not claiming that every decision must garner unanimous agreement from everyone. That's impossible. I'm just advocating for more democracy and inclusion. Although it might be a hit to the ego of a lead higher up in the foodchain, ultimately I think it improves decision-making and increases employee engagement.
Tyrannical is a bit extreme. You should still get a voice, it's just communicated through someone else who is your advocate and has your best interests in mind. Hopefully he still works along side you or at least understands your concerns.
Not every business decision requires every single persons input either, and although you may be affected that doesn't mean your input was as valuable as everyone elses. The CI team's choices might affect my branching structure. Tough, that is their responsibility. If it's extremely detrimental then you can raise concerns, talk to people, get out of your seat and work with the humans around you.
We don't need another revolutionary management fad, where a hundred employees sit around a satiricaly large table and vote by show of hands. That works amazingly at small companies and it's why I prefer to work at them. But let's get real, management at scale is hard.
Ultimately though, if you feel like you don't have a voice where you are, work to get a voice, or find a company with a structure that works for you.
> You like people telling you what to do and having no control over those decisions?
It honestly depends on how much skin I have in the game.
The founder of my company spent years using his own money and getting personal loans to fund it. So the decisions that he makes directly impacts him.
A lot of the managers here also grew with the company and have invested years of time and money.
For me, this is just a job. It's a good job, but I wouldn't really be willing to sacrifice anything for it. I would leave for another job before it came to that.
I think a more fair way might be how law firms set up partnerships. If you want to be a decision making member, you have to put in a substantial amount of money.
It's the feedback and counter arguments that are often lacking, and being unwilling to admit the decision was wrong.
I've been in this situation a few times and it's very hard to push back on a decision that's been 'made' even if it's not appropriate for the team you're on.
Our CEO has flat out told us that it's incredibly hard for him to get honest feedback from anyone (except for maybe the board and investors), and another executive echoed this. Nobody wants to question the almighty CEO to his face.
Nothing against the CEO. He's an extremely friendly and approachable person. Most people just fear questioning authority and power, and the CEO in a modern day corporation is revered similar to a king in a monarchy. It's always been like that at every company I've worked for.
Your CEO may be an exception, but every time I've seen some given honest feedback after a CEO asked for it, and it was against the CEO's position, they had their career at that company tanked. Most of the time when a CEO asks for feedback in a meeting it feels like that speech Saddam Hussein gave where all his detractors we're dragged out of the building. At this point a CEO would have to make a concerted effort to publicly get corrected and take that advice just to get past the culture that all of his peers have built in the US. Even then people are going to be hesitant because there is no protection for an employee who speaks up
It's not possible to implement some type of anonymous feedback system?
My company sends out periodic anonymous surveys as an attempt to garner feedback from the employees.
The only problem I see is if employees, for whatever reason, don't believe such a system is truly anonymous and thus refuse to give honest feedback. I don't see that being a common trend though.
If so, it probably signals more serious problems between employees and the higher-ups ...
I live when we are emailed "anonymous" surveys with a query string. It's even better when they are engineering specific surveys because at that point you have to question if they even think you can do the job if they thought they could get blatant tracking like that past any engineer
I saw such everytime too. These tracking params are to guarantee that the survey is filled only once by a person. But tracking is possible if email and the survey match is stored somewhere. It is all up to trust.
My favorite is where there is a remote team and it asked for team and location. That pretty much uniquely identified everyone. I made sure to give stellar reviews and praise for all things there :-)
it is possible, but most of the times it's not anonymous.
I.e. after an anonymous survey for some ridiculous "company of the year" award (by a third party mind you..) it was identified that some women didn't vote the place as meritocratic or equal opportunities. They were dragged into a meeting room to "discuss" about their views.
This served as a lesson to all these women and all of their colleagues to never trust "anonymous surveys" in the workplace, ever.
I never trust claims that any given survey is anonymous. To me that's a lie to gently coerce employees to tell the truth.
Not that I give a crap anyway, I still tell the truth knowing full well it might be used against me. If they can't handle honesty, they need to surpass 16-year old mental age. And I can find another job before my notice period expires.
When I worked at Google we did "Googlegeist" (our anonymous feedback system). Many of my peers would hold back because they thought management was keeping tabs on what feedback we gave...
There's a good reason it's hard to un-make a decision that has already been made: the thrash is usually more damaging than the decision. A sub-optimal strategy is better than a series of changes in the strategy.
It's like in chess, when people talk about making "principled" moves. It means playing the move that best fits the plan you have been pursuing, rather than a tactically more tempting move that is less consistent with your overall strategy.
That is the same argument kings and emperors used. But over time the abuses, and the frequently stupid decisions, became too much. It's faster in an business but no different.
Democracy is coming to the last bastion of dictatorship in modern western world. It won't be pretty - but it will lead to better companies
Public companies are somewhat a democracy of ownership; they publish accounts and the board is accountable to the owners - the shareholders. Privately held companies are quite different, and there is a strong argument that they simply should not be allowed above a certain capitalisation - say $40m because they create an uncontrolled risk to the economy. For example; if five of the top 10 unicorns fail in the next three years due to Enron style lying this will implode the venture market choking investment for a long, long, long time.
But public company democracy is hugely problematic; modern shareholders think as a herd and work on 60 day time scales. Fortune 500 companies need diverse signals (and sophisticated risk management) and visionary management - creating processes, people and markets over decades. This is the model of the private market, but sans the potential for fraud and collapse.
I worked in a company selling equity research to large pension funds - and one thing that I tried to push was it was possible to give everyone of their pension-holders a vote at every AGM (sonfor exampleninstead of one investment manager block voting 10% of coca-cola shares, the 10 million fire fighters of America could decide for themselves which way to have their 1.4 shares voted).
It still is a feasible idea imo. And would lead to an lot of new agm items !
Yes - it's now a lot more feasible. I'm not sure it'll work though as my guess is that this will lead to end-game democracy quite quickly a-la activist investors vs bunches of equity managers now. I would prefer measures that increase the diversity and long term stake of the decision making groups and diffuses the complexity of the individual decisions that they make. Most of all I would like the short term benefits of financial engineering (and financial engineers) to be better balanced against the long term impact of reduced investment and loss of capability. People capital and data assets should be on the balance sheet.
Fantastic tip - thank you I will read his work. Amusingly I am watching a documentary called "The Mayfair Set: part 3" by Adam Curtis which is describing the idea of technostructure as developed by JK Galbraith as a response to the robber barons of the depression and how it was dismantled in the 1980's...
But businesses aren't states. If a business makes the wrong decisions, it can fail and be replaced. It is too dangerous for states to go through failure and replacement, but as you note, it's also bad for there to be no mechanism to punish of bad decisions. The goal of a republic is to bring the fail-and-be-replaced mechanism to state governance, but in a controlled way. But this is less efficient, so if it's ok (with respect to society at large) for an organization to fail, it makes sense to just use that mechanism directly.
There's definitely a loophole with "too big to fail" companies. Maybe those should be run more democratically. I'm not sure, I've never worked for a company that couldn't just fail if it persistently made the wrong call.
Interesting comparison of business vs states. The thing is there are an awful lot of businesses larger than states.
Just take simple comparisons of population (I know I know) and the smallest states like islands have tens of thousands - of the 233 nations in the UN we reach only 100k people at 200, and companies like Bank of America employ more people than "real I have heard of them" places like Iceland.
So I like the idea of just letting companies fail - but putting half a million people out of work is pretty bad.
a small number of people with a lot of skin in the game making important decisions
The problem is exposure. Those people will capture all of the upside if they get it right, and their subordinates will take the downside when they don't.
Not many at the ordinary-worker level have a meaningful equity participation or bonuses. 10% of your salary at most at most companies if an impossible set of conditions are met, or laid off when the company needs to save some money, versus executives who will pocket millions whatever happens.
> The whole "if you don't love working here, then you should leave" bit made me cringe. Easy for you to say when you've got a significant equity share in the company.
In this field, we can in fact move, so "love it or leave it" is not a hollow demand. People in some other fields are far more stuck. A military officer's career is over if he says no to the hierarchy he is part of. He may find work after the army or navy, but it will be very different work, effectively the start of a different career. We on the other hand can move pretty much down the street and do very similar work.
Avoidance of power inversion is, IMHO, the greatest contributing factor to this state. Management have little to no incentive to assisting the upwards mobility of their subordinates as it is, but the social stigma of someday possibly answering to those you have authority over can drive individuals to undermine the aspirations of others.
A colleague at a former company asked his then manager about the track for promotions. Said manager basically laughed and said "if you got that promotion, then you'd be competing with me". This was a company that had bands that were lumped together for purposes of evaluation.
AFAICT, the best route to promotion is a transfer to a separate administrative unit altogether, and so avoid this situation; and the best route to a raise is to leave to another company.
Relying on your loyalty to be rewarded is a fast track to being played for a sucker.
I am in a quickly growing mid-size company which has reduced this problem. The co founders are cool, considerate and have respect for new developers. They provide opportunities to shift across teams and roles based on the principle that not everyone would find right fit in the start. And the CEO answers even mundane questions anonymously. I find it one of the main reasons to stay there even though I have been working there for 2 years now from my graduation.
Yeah, the people doing the work usually know the most about how it should be done. Even without UBI, collective ownership is a strategy worth considering.
I read somewhere - possibly here on HN, but I am not sure - of a Russian who migrated to the USA after the end of the Cold War, who remarked that in the Soviet Union, the state had been very authoritarian while the workplace was relatively democratic, and that in the USA, it was the exact opposite.
And sadly, I believe that even with UBI, people will still play their power games, do politics, all that. There might be less of it, but either that is part of human nature (if there is such a thing), or else it would take a massive change in society to make petty turf wars and office politics disappear.
> in the Soviet Union, the state had been very authoritarian while the workplace was relatively democratic
Probably if we're talking engineering bureaus in late 1980-es. But even then the setting is quite Dilbert-esque. At best, the democracy was like you can go to hair salon at working time, but not like you can affect any management decisions or working process in any way.
It can be in part explained by the fact that there was no relationship between how productive or hard-working the bureau or individual is and how good payment is. In fact, at the salary was most of time constant for any given profession, the situation didn't incentivise hard working, so it's not a surprise if there was little production pressure at workplace. Which leads to one of reasons of failure of the USSR.
> Providing counter-arguments that question the decisions of the executive caste is often seen as a threat
The key to have an impact is not to pose critical questions, but to make constructive suggestions. Instead of saying "you are doing this wrong", suggest how to do better. Good leaders appreciate and encourage this, in particular if the request comes in an actionable format, i.e. "I suggest to do X in order to achieve Y" is much better than "decision Z is stupid".
I don't find it very comforting that the people who are compensated the best have to be treated with kids gloves just so they can listen to the information coming from their people. I understand that may be how it _is_ but it's not how it _should be_. Additionally, people lower in the management chain are just going to avoid volunteering information if they are not 100% certain that the bosses are gonna take it well
It's not kid gloves so much as laziness. A good leader can listen to the problem, and just turn it back on the staff for a solution without wasting their brainpower, but many leaders can't... They hear the criticism and think they need to go into "formulate appropriate response" mode. That leads nowhere because there's no space left in their brain, and even if they come off sympathetic the net result is they're not really listening.
In those cases, as the underling, it's better to offer a suggestion because they can run with that.
Of course, it's easier said than done. Especially if you're busy, you know, doing your job, it can be hard to find the time to sit down and find solutions to what is probably a pernicious problem if it's being elevated to leadership.
The parent advice works exactly the same way whe you talk with people under you or with peers. Altrought they have less power to retaliate visibly, they will listen better when you do what parent suggested.
I believe in that instance, he did give stock to early employees, but left one of them out (probably because he wanted to be a dick). The rest of the early employees felt bad for the guy since he had been there since the beginning and Woz offered him some of the shares.
the point that strangely even being a douchebag and treating employees like crap he managed to achieve great perceived success and for some people success it's all that matters.
The saddest realization I've had working at companies is how power-hungry people are, how little respect the people in power often have for those "below" them, and how important politics is even in a field like engineering that you'd expect to be meritocratic. Sweeping decisions are often made in a small room of a few "higher-ups" without any input or regard for those "below" them. Providing counter-arguments that question the decisions of the executive caste is often seen as a threat (how dare you question your leader?). The shy and humble rockstar coder who kicks ass gets little recognition while the smooth-talking sycophant gets accolades and climbs the ladder.
Corporations are authoritarian tyrannies with strict hierarchies. America was founded on the principles of democracy, but we tolerate tyranny in our workplace. The only way to change this is to remove the asymmetric dependency of the employee on the employer (eg. UBI).