Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also this is not about a dystopian village with one single employer that exploits workers that cannot move. Startup employees agree with free choice to work somewhere for the agreed upon profit share, be that % based or fixed, or mixed.
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Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
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Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#122He is implying that founders can create a lot of value without employees, and that the claim that employees also create value is false. If that's true, then what about a social experiment: If you are a solo founder, you get all your profits for yourself. But if you have employees, you have to share your profits with your employees. If employees don't produce any value, easy, fire them all, you get everything. But if…
How much of the profit do I share with the employees? What does the society deem fair in the case where founder comes up with the product, identifies the problem and works with the customer to configure the product? Do I get to take 5 salaries or 1 salary?
Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#123He is implying that founders can create a lot of value without employees, and that the claim that employees also create value is false. If that's true, then what about a social experiment: If you are a solo founder, you get all your profits for yourself. But if you have employees, you have to share your profits with your employees. If employees don't produce any value, easy, fire them all, you get everything. But if…
> if you have employees, you have to share your profits with your employees
Needless to say, this already happens via equity and options. There's a reasonable debate to be had over what constitutes "fair" profit-sharing. But the market clears where it clears, and individual tech employees definitely have meaningful leverage even under current macro conditions.
Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#124Instagram in 2012 had 30 million active users and zero revenue. That's $0 value earned per employee; these days it's just under $2 million per employee. The scale is vastly different and they couldn't still be running with so few employees. And let's not forget that Instagram was bought as it was seen as a threat to facebook. That it was seen as worth a billion dollars is exactly the problem that many people are referring to about creating overnight billionaires but overvaluing digital companies, which would be worth much less if they were brick & mortar companies.
That said, there are a lot of great tools out that that allow people to run companies with off the shelf software and no code applications, which I think have the potential to make a bigger impact on software development than AI. Companies using new technology to become more efficient is nothing new, it's as old as work itself. The steam engine automated a lot of work but still required workers, just like automation tools require another company's employees to build. Growth creates more employment and automation moves those roles elsewhere. The problem is more that those employees that the enriched founder does need working for them are disrespected and paid badly as they are seen as just cogs in the machine who should be happy for the breadcrumbs tossed to them. Doesn't matter how many employees you have, if the founder is getting rich they can afford to pay their staff well.
Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#125This is this thinking of "Automation reduces workforce". The next argument then is always "We need Basic Income" because of this. But this is ignoring the fact that automation never replaced workforce as such. It moved the focus of the workforce. At the end more automation even required more workforce. The thing is, you cannot engineer the process to be automated. You need to keep maintaining the automation. This inc…
But it actually did. "Workforce participation", which might be the closest metric of what we actually mean here, keeps declining. In addition to that, we have the era of "bullshit jobs".
Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
You misunderstand their intentions. “I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding things out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it - those are the real things, the honors are unreal to me.” -Richard Feynman
Did Richard Feynman struggle to pay rent?
Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#127He is implying that founders can create a lot of value without employees, and that the claim that employees also create value is false. If that's true, then what about a social experiment: If you are a solo founder, you get all your profits for yourself. But if you have employees, you have to share your profits with your employees. If employees don't produce any value, easy, fire them all, you get everything. But if…
What's with that obsession about "billionaires"? If somebody can make a nice living with their business, isn't that good enough? Personally I think we are perfectly fine without billionaires.
Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#128Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#129He is implying that founders can create a lot of value without employees, and that the claim that employees also create value is false. If that's true, then what about a social experiment: If you are a solo founder, you get all your profits for yourself. But if you have employees, you have to share your profits with your employees. If employees don't produce any value, easy, fire them all, you get everything. But if…
Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees
#130This is fine as long as this type of automation and less dependence opens up more founders making more products doing more for humanity.