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Company, Team, Self

lethain.com

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Re: Company, Team, Self

#61

Post by TomSwirly »

Brigand wrote: post #43
zug_zug wrote: post #39

Company, Team, Self is backward, but not in the way you think. It's backward because it's advice given to employees, when it needs to be given to be given to management. Employees will and should do self-interest. It's the EXECUTIVES's duty/problem to ensure that they make workers' self-interests clearly aligned with Customers/ Company/Team/Self. It's an interesting exercise to consider how to make it in an employee'…

There is no way for executives to create a well working company if the employees think of nothing but themselves.

Anyone who's spent any time working in the work world knows that 90% of companies simply don't care about their workers, particularly at the lowest level.

If I put the company and then the team first, and the team and company think the same way, who is there to look out for me?

Only a sociopath, and a stupid one, would put their company ahead of their family. And there aren't that many sociopaths in society.

Loyalty must be earned, and most companies have earned not loyalty, but resentment and deep distrust.

(I have been lucky that I have mostly avoided such companies, because I have a fairly rare talent, but not entirely. Oh, boy.)

Re: Company, Team, Self

#62

Post by kqr »

wenholmes wrote: post #33
kqr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not just about people being different. It's also about how not everything people do has to be valuable to the customer. It can be valuable in the sense that the person stays in the organisation for longer if they get to do it. This realisation hit me when I was in a heated debate with my (then) product manager about what did and did not provide value for our customers. Then suddenly he said, "I'm pretty sure…

The thing that brought the same idea home for me is the idea that optimization is a destructive process. A business is a complex thing with many, many variables influencing its success. If you truly optimize "customer value" then you must give up everything else. A much more nuanced approach is to do what you did, and balance off various values against each other. Unfortunately this is very difficult to measure or "l…

Thank you for that recommendation! It ends up quite high on my to-read list!

Re: Company, Team, Self

#63

Post by kqr »

wenholmes wrote: post #33
kqr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not just about people being different. It's also about how not everything people do has to be valuable to the customer. It can be valuable in the sense that the person stays in the organisation for longer if they get to do it. This realisation hit me when I was in a heated debate with my (then) product manager about what did and did not provide value for our customers. Then suddenly he said, "I'm pretty sure…

The thing that brought the same idea home for me is the idea that optimization is a destructive process. A business is a complex thing with many, many variables influencing its success. If you truly optimize "customer value" then you must give up everything else. A much more nuanced approach is to do what you did, and balance off various values against each other. Unfortunately this is very difficult to measure or "l…

Sorry, I keep coming back to this comment. "Optimisation is a destructive process" is such a good way to put it. We frequently focus on the thing being optimised, not enough on all the things being sacrificed.

Re: Company, Team, Self

#64

Post by snug »

jmk123 wrote: post #25
smcleod wrote: post #21

This feels like pretty typical capitalist rhetoric on the surface at least. Ignoring income - Do you go to work to make the company you work for more wealthy? Or do you go to work to enjoy what you do and make friends? Or do you go to work to learn new skills and better yourself? - In which order do you place the statements? (Yes, it's a false trichotomy.) Unless you're the company founder or a major shareholder I wo…

> health > family > work 100% agree. I would've flipped the thesis of the post in reverse order: yourself, your team, your company.

That's not a controversial heading though.

I probably wouldn't have read the article, because no shit, that would be obvious

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