Bending Spoons strikes again.
When we get Komooted
41–50 of 275 posts
Re: When we get Komooted
#42> Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose. Many had accepted below-average salaries and uprooted their lives to commit to the outdoor lifestyle and the dream job. Suddenly, they were left scrambling for new work and visa sponsors with just a few months’ pay as severance. The six bosses, meanwhile, pocketed an estimated 20 to 30 million euros each. That’s why, and call me unethical, I never…
I'm gonna copy paste a comment I wrote yesterday that I think fits perfectly here:
As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good reasons to do it are:
1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some other thing that's more important to you than work.
2. You really enjoy the pure engineering side and find meaning in the technical artifact you're creating. Probably it's open source and has some value/community outside of your employer.
3. You're gaining valuable experience that you can later leverage into something else. Probably you're in the first 5 years of your career.
If the main thing driving you is growing a business, and you don't directly own (not options or RSUs or whatever, actual real equity) a significant slice of it, you are very likely misdirecting your energy.
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It sounds like the staff here thought they were in case 2, but they were not. I think that the article explains the reason why nicely: the thing they were building was not part of the commons.
Re: When we get Komooted
#43Other than entirely community-driven projects (like https://wanderer.to/ mentioned in the article), are there company "forms" that legally protect against this kind of sell-out? Like non-profit or public-benefit-corporation?
If users are contributing the content of the app, it seems they should have a way to hold the owners accountable.
Re: When we get Komooted
#44Next years article: When We Get Bikepacked Never believe a company that you are part of a community if the content you create for them cannot be exported and published somewhere else. I am especially sceptical if someone says they never sell.
bikepacking.com doesn't look like it's a for-profit company, in their about page.
Re: When we get Komooted
#45Re: When we get Komooted
#46Bending Spoons strikes again.
From the article:
> I’ll argue that Komoot is neither a moral failure nor an outlier but the capitalist system of value extraction working exactly as intended for the platform owners.
If it wasn't for Bending Spoons it would have been another private equity firm. It's not about them being particularly evil, it's about living in a system that makes their existence inevitable.
Re: When we get Komooted
#47> Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose. Many had accepted below-average salaries and uprooted their lives to commit to the outdoor lifestyle and the dream job. Suddenly, they were left scrambling for new work and visa sponsors with just a few months’ pay as severance. The six bosses, meanwhile, pocketed an estimated 20 to 30 million euros each. That’s why, and call me unethical, I never…
There is nothing unethical about: you are doing the only sane thing in this system and economics. Morons, who work themselves to death believing bosses shit-talk about “our mission” and “we are in this together” will learn it the hard way.
Try saying that on LinkedIn and watch the reactions. There is a huge difference between what you can feel and do, and what you can say.
Re: When we get Komooted
#48Just yesterday there was a thread about startups, compensation and what happens to promises when real money enters the picture. Your best bet to keep a social platform for a long time is a coop. You’ll never get investors, which is the point, but you also aren’t a foundation or a nonprofit with shackles (unless you get to OpenAI levels of creativity.)
Somewhat related: How bankruptcy laws mean many promises like "we won't misuse your data" become void in the name of extracting value for creditors. (The potential outcome affects decisions even if bankruptcy doesn't happen.) So there's a system that needs to be reformed, it's not so much a matter of executives' personal attitudes.
Sounds like some kind of GDPR law is required so that companies don't get to treat people's private data as their own. It's ridiculous that in a bankruptcy they can sell off the data that belongs to others - companies should be treated as merely protecting PII data and can never own it.
Re: When we get Komooted
#49> Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose. Many had accepted below-average salaries and uprooted their lives to commit to the outdoor lifestyle and the dream job. Suddenly, they were left scrambling for new work and visa sponsors with just a few months’ pay as severance. The six bosses, meanwhile, pocketed an estimated 20 to 30 million euros each. That’s why, and call me unethical, I never…
I'm gonna copy paste a comment I wrote yesterday that I think fits perfectly here: As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good reasons to do it are: 1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some other thing that's more important to you than work. 2. You really enjoy…
This is a shame though. We should work towards a world where most people can find meaning in what they do.
For now it can work better to be a contractor and have your 'meaning' be a positive reputation in your industry.
More like being a medieval blacksmith. You don't mind what you're making, but you're known in your village by the quality of your work.
Re: When we get Komooted
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is nothing unethical about: you are doing the only sane thing in this system and economics. Morons, who work themselves to death believing bosses shit-talk about “our mission” and “we are in this together” will learn it the hard way.
Try saying that on LinkedIn and watch the reactions. There is a huge difference between what you can feel and do, and what you can say.
If you are in a game of smoke and mirrors, you play the game according to the rules.
I don’t post on LinkedIn. Got better games to play.