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Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

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Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#281

Post by Kalium »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #14

It just occurred to me that so many people were laid off, we could start the world's largest software co-op (and arguably one of the largest tech orgs, period). We could build software products that every industry needs, that every worker owns a part of and can vote on org-wide decisions. Literally everyone you need was laid off... Tech people, business people, marketing, sales, etc. We just need a forum and some vol…

I suspect you may quickly run into the basic problem that your worker-owners like getting paid. Which will be challenging to start with, given a lack of products and a sharply limited ability to raise funds.

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#282

Post by NetOpWibby »

djmips wrote: post #230
NetOpWibby wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, I had no idea. When did they stop?

I think it was always so, ie cliques of power happened almost right away and a de facto power hierarchy manifested organically. This is what I've surmised from ex Valve people but until we have a book or documentary that reveals what really went on we may only speculate.

Ah, thanks for the info.

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#283

Post by Kalium »

whatshisface wrote: post #241
drexlspivey wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain with some detail how would this work? Because I can’t make it work in my head. Say you find 100 tech people that can afford to put $100k each to start the company. Then what? Do they put up money and work for free? If you have to give the money back in 1 year as a salary what about the second year? How about marketing budget, office space, equipment etc?

In a startup with investors you have money coming from the investors and equity going to them, expenses leaving the company, and money going to and work coming from employees. For a co-op you draw that diagram but have the equity and money arrows that were connected to the investors connect to the employees, with some of the money cancelling out (working for equity, not for free.) As for why the employees would work…

Equity is valuable to investors in no small part because they have the expectation that they'll be able to sell it should the enterprise become very successful. That isn't usually available to a cooperative - there generally isn't a liquid market.

Something is only worth what you can sell it for. If you can't readily sell your equity to anyone but your fellow worker-employees, how sure are you that it'll be worth the same to them as it might be to investors?

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#284

Post by whatshisface »

Kalium wrote: post #283
whatshisface wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a startup with investors you have money coming from the investors and equity going to them, expenses leaving the company, and money going to and work coming from employees. For a co-op you draw that diagram but have the equity and money arrows that were connected to the investors connect to the employees, with some of the money cancelling out (working for equity, not for free.) As for why the employees would work…

Equity is valuable to investors in no small part because they have the expectation that they'll be able to sell it should the enterprise become very successful. That isn't usually available to a cooperative - there generally isn't a liquid market. Something is only worth what you can sell it for. If you can't readily sell your equity to anyone but your fellow worker-employees, how sure are you that it'll be worth the…

It depends on the business. For one with steady recurring revenue and a predictable future, they could value it on a risk-discounted basis. I agree that the unicorn model wouldn't work well for someone who was going to put most of their money in a single opportunity. Fortunately, any given business is virtually guaranteed not to be a unicorn.

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#285

Post by [deleted] »

zx8080 wrote: post #279
robertlagrant wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having managers who are collectively answerable to those ten employees through the share ownership structure has been tried How does that work? As in the employees are owners but the managers aren't?

But are those 10 professionally qualified to check the manager's work quality during those 10 years? (Or do they buy some audit service from another division?)

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#286

Post by Kalium »

whatshisface wrote: post #284
Kalium wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equity is valuable to investors in no small part because they have the expectation that they'll be able to sell it should the enterprise become very successful. That isn't usually available to a cooperative - there generally isn't a liquid market. Something is only worth what you can sell it for. If you can't readily sell your equity to anyone but your fellow worker-employees, how sure are you that it'll be worth the…

It depends on the business. For one with steady recurring revenue and a predictable future, they could value it on a risk-discounted basis. I agree that the unicorn model wouldn't work well for someone who was going to put most of their money in a single opportunity. Fortunately, any given business is virtually guaranteed not to be a unicorn.

Yes, you're right. I think that's the problem here. Worker-owners can't value their equity for the same reasons investors would. Those reasons aren't available in this hypothetical context. I think you need a different explanation for why worker-owners would value equity if they can't expect to be able to sell it for a profit.

Might I suggest avoiding the question of equity and financial value entirely? Successful worker-owned coops seem to handle it mostly by making shares the thing that gets you voting rights with the rest going into wages.

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#287

Post by chitowneats »

Panzer04 wrote: post #239
asdff wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAG doesn't require a degree in screen acting. It's a little convoluted but they basically operate mainly on proof of work. That sort of system would probably give self taught engineers who spent their years from 18-22 doing actual work a huge leg up compared to those who were in school during that time doing no work on any projects for any company.

You don't think school has any value? There's a reason we have higher education - Work-based learning is somewhat prone to leaving significant gaps in a person's knowledge. Not to say working has no value, but neither does schooling have no value.

It has approximately zero value for doing the job of software development vs. equivalent time spent with actual work experience. It has value otherwise, but I'm really not concerned about that when hiring my future coworkers. There are other ways to acquire the skills you learn in college. This credentialist bias of yours is exactly what I'm arguing against. Guilds tend to promote this mindset, when they're not too busy promoting nepotism.

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#288

Post by engineer_22 »

hankish wrote: post #139
marcusverus wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to imagine such an organization working out over the long term. The incentives are all wonky! The more you contribute, the more you sacrifice by joining a coop. The less you contribute, the more you gain. I for one can't think of a less attractive idea than taking a product idea that I love and turning ownership and creative control over to a group of strangers. And that's probably why these things are so r…

The coop that I'm a part of (Quorum1) has been using game theory to play out just those scenarios. We've been at it for two years and you're right it's been like 10x as difficult as starting a normal company (I'm a serial entrepreneur and have started lots of traditional companies too). But we think the payoff is worth it, plus doing things differently is just straight up more fun, so there's that. What we're finding…

-> What we're finding is that if you start with the right culture and balance the incentives very carefully you can basically create a magnet-like mechanism where the more people join the network/coop, the greater the value derived for all members and the greater the opportunity cost for the remaining hold outs to not join.

Well, now you owe us a blog post

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#289

Post by epicureanideal »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #14

It just occurred to me that so many people were laid off, we could start the world's largest software co-op (and arguably one of the largest tech orgs, period). We could build software products that every industry needs, that every worker owns a part of and can vote on org-wide decisions. Literally everyone you need was laid off... Tech people, business people, marketing, sales, etc. We just need a forum and some vol…

I think most people are scrambling to find a stable source of income. Unless they have a quarter million dollars in cash, or a paid off house, the cost of living in major metro areas means they don't have the time and capital to start a startup with any reasonable chance of becoming profitable or raising money before they go bankrupt.

I can imagine the news will say "aha, see, there weren't really that many who were capable of being entrepreneurs who were working at FAANG", but really it's just the same old lack of access to capital, and if they did have capital many of them certainly would and could.

Re: Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?

#290

Post by jefftk »

mxkopy wrote: post #211
peyton wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not call a degree requirement extreme gatekeeping.

When your hire can prove your algorithm runs in O(1) amortized time but has trouble setting up ssh and always commits to master, and you turn down a candidate who got stumped on rederiving Bellman-Ford but maintains several projects, I'd say that's gatekeeping

dajtxx claimed 'extreme' gatekeeping while describing some employers having either a degree requirement or higher standards for employees without degrees. In the US, to the extent that this is 'extreme' it's in the 'less gatekeeping' direction.

(I agree that there's some gatekeeping, and I'd rather see the industry pay less attention to degrees.)

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