It's fairly normal among workers' cooperatives to assign equity to people in proportion to how much work they currently put into the company. This is the basic premise, not some kind of new innovation. If you object, may I humbly recommend considering the alternate diagnosis, that it is you who is a parasite leeching off the workers?
A document to help you start a tech cooperative
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Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love to read about this. Been trying to create this kind of worker owned firm in the media space for many years now. Am close to getting it but it's been tough for the reasons that you are talking about: people who aren't fully in it.
It's taken Sander, the CEO of the company I'm referring to a decade and several iterations to get it right. What's even more amazing to me is that their company culture is improving over time rather than getting worse (and that's with an increase in headcount).
I'd be interested in reading about this as well. I've been keeping an eye on Buffer for a while now because I'm fascinated by their culture and business philosophy, and I've been watching the development of B Corps to see if eventually they'll prove viable. However idealistic, OP's headline caught my attention for the same reasons. I think the bottom line (P&L) is important, but I also feel that current corporate structures can elevate its importance to an unhealthy degree, leading to negative externalities and short-term-ism. If and when I start a company, I'd like to follow a holistic approach to value creation that takes these things into account, but there is precious little out there about how to do it successfully. It'd be great to have more info out there about these approaches!
Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#13It's fairly normal among workers' cooperatives to assign equity to people in proportion to how much work they currently put into the company. This is the basic premise, not some kind of new innovation. If you object, may I humbly recommend considering the alternate diagnosis, that it is you who is a parasite leeching off the workers?
That must be why this cooperative reserves the right to hire others to do their work and making a profit on that, and requires a year of 'apprenticeship' after which the current cooperative members will decide your fate. After all, some workers are more equal than others.
Or did you in your haste to put in a veiled insult skip that bit of TFA?
Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's taken Sander, the CEO of the company I'm referring to a decade and several iterations to get it right. What's even more amazing to me is that their company culture is improving over time rather than getting worse (and that's with an increase in headcount).
I'd be interested in reading about this as well. I've been keeping an eye on Buffer for a while now because I'm fascinated by their culture and business philosophy, and I've been watching the development of B Corps to see if eventually they'll prove viable. However idealistic, OP's headline caught my attention for the same reasons. I think the bottom line (P&L) is important, but I also feel that current corporate str…
25+ employees and growing, solid revenues, solid year-on-year growth. If they manage to keep this going another 2 to 3 years at the present rate I'd see that as total validation of the concept. On a longer time-scale you still have all the other corporate pitfalls but that's business as usual.
I'll ask the company for permission to write it up.
Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love to read about this. Been trying to create this kind of worker owned firm in the media space for many years now. Am close to getting it but it's been tough for the reasons that you are talking about: people who aren't fully in it.
It's taken Sander, the CEO of the company I'm referring to a decade and several iterations to get it right. What's even more amazing to me is that their company culture is improving over time rather than getting worse (and that's with an increase in headcount).
I too would love to read about a "hybrid" solution such as this (esp. muistakes made between iterations).
Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#16As interesting as this idea is, there isn't something under this most people would call a serious cooperative. Feel Train a 2 employee wife-husband mom and pop that does random contract work.
They moved to Portland a couple years ago. Amazingly in that short time, they already have a well established reputation of hostile and abusive behavior towards people in the Portland tech community that don't share their extremist political views. I've heard no less than 3 accounts from people documenting their generally hostile, harassing and abusive behavior. These aren't "the other side" political people telling me this, they're warm, friendly, moderate, generally apolitical people. I'm hearing this in passing, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were even more incidents I havent heard about.
Portland tech used to be a uniquely wonderful, well knit community, but it's gotten a lot more toxic over the last few years. The result has been a lot of people leaving out of both disgust of the politics and genuine fear that they will be singled out for a political witch hunt. These two exemplify the absolute worst of it.
Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#17Back in 19th century USA, during industrialization, the idea of working for someone came across to many as a form of wage-slavery. Going from farming or trade-skills to factories working, one gave up any control in their own worker rights and planning of their business.
It seems fundamentally unfair that in most industries you don't have any real share of the company, or any say in the direction of it. People who control those companies are solely executives or wall street share holders, not the people who spend countless hours making the company run and function, thinking about it for even a moment reveals how messed up our system is. Things have only gotten worse recently too with the decline of unions, workers rarely even get a say in their own rights, wages, or working conditions!
In short, sharing information like this is great, I'm all for more co-ops!
Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#18If you somehow automated organization and payment through blockchain contracts and had a way to describe requirements by code, I think it would be killer.
Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#19From one of the annotations: > I'm fundamentally opposed to making people buy their way into the company, it feels like a scam to me. You don't have to demonstrate your value "to" the company -- we each as individuals hold far more value than this taxable structure that can be dissolved when it no longer benefits the members. Also, whatever value a person has is being brought by their skills, thinking, and experience…
Among others, I'd love to read this as well. If you're taking emails - matt at engn.com please or sign me up for a newsletter if you have one? Also, http://mattheij.com/ triggers a dangerous malware warning from Google Safe Browsing.
Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative
#20From one of the annotations: > I'm fundamentally opposed to making people buy their way into the company, it feels like a scam to me. You don't have to demonstrate your value "to" the company -- we each as individuals hold far more value than this taxable structure that can be dissolved when it no longer benefits the members. Also, whatever value a person has is being brought by their skills, thinking, and experience…
Among others, I'd love to read this as well. If you're taking emails - matt at engn.com please or sign me up for a newsletter if you have one? Also, http://mattheij.com/ triggers a dangerous malware warning from Google Safe Browsing.
That is because there is no web server on that domain.
My website is at http://jacquesmattheij.com/ and my email is jacques@mattheij.com
But thanks for the warning, I'll set up a redirect.