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The Company Isn't a Family

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Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#11

Post by Danihan »

bykovich2 wrote: post #9
alberth wrote: post #5

Reid Hastings (Netflix founder) uses a different analogy. He compares a company as a high performing "sports team". With the idea being, you're working towards a collective goal. You each have you're own role. But if you're not performing, you get cut. Just like any athlete would get cut. The problem with the "family" analogy is it implies "unconditional love" regardless if you're messing up, failing, not performing.

You know how much players on professional sports teams make?

Time to start a "National Programming League"

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#12

Post by specializeded »

bykovich2 wrote: post #9
alberth wrote: post #5

Reid Hastings (Netflix founder) uses a different analogy. He compares a company as a high performing "sports team". With the idea being, you're working towards a collective goal. You each have you're own role. But if you're not performing, you get cut. Just like any athlete would get cut. The problem with the "family" analogy is it implies "unconditional love" regardless if you're messing up, failing, not performing.

You know how much players on professional sports teams make?

It really depends on the league. There are lots of soccer players in America only making 60k or so a year despite playing at the highest level of soccer and being fully professional.

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#13

Post by Johnie »

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

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

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

A good read is: https://cmr.berkeley.edu/documents/sample_articles/2002_44_3...

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#14

Post by [deleted] »

alberth wrote: post #5

Reid Hastings (Netflix founder) uses a different analogy. He compares a company as a high performing "sports team". With the idea being, you're working towards a collective goal. You each have you're own role. But if you're not performing, you get cut. Just like any athlete would get cut. The problem with the "family" analogy is it implies "unconditional love" regardless if you're messing up, failing, not performing.

[deleted]

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#15

Post by zucchini_head »

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

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

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

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

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

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/08/inhuma... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how-sports-... [3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-36855374

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#16

Post by adamzerner »

alberth wrote: post #5

Reid Hastings (Netflix founder) uses a different analogy. He compares a company as a high performing "sports team". With the idea being, you're working towards a collective goal. You each have you're own role. But if you're not performing, you get cut. Just like any athlete would get cut. The problem with the "family" analogy is it implies "unconditional love" regardless if you're messing up, failing, not performing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#17

Post by ShabbosGoy »

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

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

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

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#18

Post by trjordan »

alberth wrote: post #5

Reid Hastings (Netflix founder) uses a different analogy. He compares a company as a high performing "sports team". With the idea being, you're working towards a collective goal. You each have you're own role. But if you're not performing, you get cut. Just like any athlete would get cut. The problem with the "family" analogy is it implies "unconditional love" regardless if you're messing up, failing, not performing.

I worked at a company that had this framing, and it works especially well around peer-to-peer relationships:

- If a teammate is doing something wrong, give them feedback. I don't try to improve my family.

- If a teammate is doing well, have them share what's working. I don't try to get every detail out of family.

- If a teammate is going in the wrong direction, I remind them of our shared goal. I don't try to change the goals of my family.

- If a teammate leaves, I change I relate to them. I don't try to distance myself or hide things from family deliberately.

Being part of a team is great. It's just different than family, or friends, or strangers at the bar.

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#19

Post by nerdponx »

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #17

I would argue that the first paragraph is a critique of capitalism itself. The implicit assumption of capitalism is that you have a perpetual debt that cannot be repaid, much like the Christian "debt" that cannot be repaid to the Abrahamic God. Capitalism is as much an economic system as it is a moralistic and religious system.

The implicit assumption of capitalism is that you have a perpetual debt that cannot be repaid

What? Care to clarify?

Re: The Company Isn't a Family

#20

Post by sriram_sun »

alberth wrote: post #5

Reid Hastings (Netflix founder) uses a different analogy. He compares a company as a high performing "sports team". With the idea being, you're working towards a collective goal. You each have you're own role. But if you're not performing, you get cut. Just like any athlete would get cut. The problem with the "family" analogy is it implies "unconditional love" regardless if you're messing up, failing, not performing.

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

On the flip side, the family analogy is used by the companies to their advantage as well. If working for "family", we all might accept less pay (for the good of the "family") and would do shitty work (underemployment; someone has to take out the "trash").

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