191–200 of 471 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You can move countries too. It’s meant to be difficult for most (easier for the elite).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What if we tried to make it so there were no lords? Just a thought.
In larger power/lordship(?) tends to accumulate. Why this is, I don't know. It would make and interesting study topic.
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 str…
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…
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.
[1] https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/...
I get the impression this author is dancing around some particular bad experiences they’ve had, which is the real subject of this post. Without understanding those details it’s hard to get where this comes from. There’s certainly a lot of unspoken expectations of what HR is. I’ve worked with HR in many capacities, and find them to be supportive and helpful of both employees and managers. However, what you will not fi…
All her posts are like that. She wants to rant about something, but she doesn't give enough details for you to actually know what she is ranting about. Probably because she doesn't want to 'out' anyone by giving away too many details of the incident. Which is fine, but then why blog about it in the first place if no one outside your circle is going to know what the hell you are talking about? Easily one of my least f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. And nor does anyone have a 'career'. You have a job. When you lose that job, you may not get another one. It's an illusion. One minute you think you are a high profile manager with budgets and power. The next you are packing your desk up into a box and rethinking your entire life. We are not our careers!
I am always terrified of losing my job. It's a fear I've had even though I've been a top performer the entire five years I've been professionally working. Maybe it's because I grew up poor or because I think things are too good in tech and about to crash any day. My antidote? $100k in liquidity. Preferably not invested in the NASDAQ. If tech crashes, you can take your liquid $100k and move to Thailand, Spain, Portuga…
HR is not your friend, but sometimes incentives can align. One of the goals of HR is employee retention, and in that incentives do align. I’ve seen HR really go out of their way to accommodate for personal situations during covid times for example. A lot of it is not seen by the typical employee, but they do happen.
Also, HR is more your friend if you are a key IC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is more a problem of the US american healthcare system than one of the nature of the employer-employee relationship.
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 str…
https://newsyndicalist.org/2017/09/30/union-cooperative-stra...