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Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

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Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#101

Post by moe »

thebigredjay wrote: post #92
verysimple wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that many entrepreneurs just keep failing and then trying again and again and again it doesn't make much sense to me at all. There is no risk. I used to work for a web design shop. My fellow programmers and I hated the fact that our bosses were making money on our backs. They would bill clients these huge fees for our hours and pay us 10% of that amount. What did we do about it? We complained to each other duri…

I've always found that nothing ever happens unless I do it myself. That's generally how I treat problems, and it has left me in a better place because of it. On the rare occasion I meet someone else with the same drive I'm usually just thankful for their company. Thanks for doing what you do!

I've always found that nothing ever happens unless I do it myself.

I share this experience. Over and over again.

I've come to call it the 9-5 attitude. As a freelancer it's always a sobering experience to churn through a time-critical project (critical for them) and then have the remote guy drop out of skype at 6:00pm, every day, as if it wasn't their servers that are going to blow up if we don't get this done before the marketing-campaign on friday...

Of course not all companies are like this, but I've observed it even in (funded) startups where it's especially irritating.

I think it has a lot of do with a perception of ownership. As a freelancer I am my business and do my best to deliver high quality work.

As Employee #17 in someone else's company it seems to be more common to gravitate towards the path of least resistance; do just enough to keep those paychecks coming.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#102

Post by natnat »

gamble wrote: post #67

People are over-moralizing this. Why do CEOs get paid so much? Why are salesmen often better paid than engineers? Does a ditch-digger deserve less money than a lawyer? The market is basically amoral. People get what they can get, not what they 'deserve'. Founders get more money because they have ownership, and in a capitalistic system profits accrue to capital. There's no point in constructing an elaborate moral arch…

I totally agree that people are paid what they can get. The problem is, a lot of the people who justify their enormous salaries by saying that the market is amoral then try to argue that they 'deserve' every last penny they made come tax time.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#103

Post by antihero »

gamble wrote: post #67

People are over-moralizing this. Why do CEOs get paid so much? Why are salesmen often better paid than engineers? Does a ditch-digger deserve less money than a lawyer? The market is basically amoral. People get what they can get, not what they 'deserve'. Founders get more money because they have ownership, and in a capitalistic system profits accrue to capital. There's no point in constructing an elaborate moral arch…

> The market is basically amoral.

Yet people support it and sleep at night. The world is not fair, people are unfair, and it's a damn good cause to try to make it fairer.

Sure I expect there's a serious correlation between putting effort in, but a huge part of how valuable your efforts are to your life is decided by where you were born, who your family are, who fucks you over and how you are parented.

I'm sure there are Muslim women in Saudi, or prostitutes in Liberia, or Chinese farm workers who'd (aside from cultural bias) work twice as hard and have just as many good ideas as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates given the education and upbringing they have, but they simply don't have the opportunity.

Many socialists I talk to have it wrong in that they don't recognise that yes, effort is a factor in your life's success, but many of the capitalists I talk to fail to acknowledge that effort is simply one of many factors that influence it.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#104

Post by antihero »

natnat wrote: post #102
gamble wrote: post #67

People are over-moralizing this. Why do CEOs get paid so much? Why are salesmen often better paid than engineers? Does a ditch-digger deserve less money than a lawyer? The market is basically amoral. People get what they can get, not what they 'deserve'. Founders get more money because they have ownership, and in a capitalistic system profits accrue to capital. There's no point in constructing an elaborate moral arch…

I totally agree that people are paid what they can get. The problem is, a lot of the people who justify their enormous salaries by saying that the market is amoral then try to argue that they 'deserve' every last penny they made come tax time.

Well they're greedy. No two ways about it. Sure they probably do want to look after their employees and probably do give money to charity, but when you're making more money than most of us could conceivably ever dream of (and 700x more than their bottom rung employees) and shoving it in offshore account so the country they made it in can't tax it, they're fucking assholes.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#105

Post by antihero »

jshen wrote: post #9

When I was a kid my mom would complain about how the world was out to get her. She didn't frame it that way, but that's essentially what she was saying. One time she was complaining about lawyers because she was charged $300/hr or something like that. I asked her, "why don't you become a lawyer?" It made sense to me as a 12 year old and still does.

Probably too busy raising you.

It's nice to have a simplistic 12 year old's attitude in thinking you can just do stuff if you want, but life is full of so many factors. Right wingers especially seem to have this child-like mindset.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#106

Post by jshen »

jessedhillon wrote: post #80
jshen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I care, I'm happy with my life. Anyone that learns to program a computer and is decent at it can get a good job if they live in america barring a few extreme examples.

I don't understand how someone who has overcome so much -- and knows how hard it was to do that -- can be so glib and flippant when talking about other people who have failed to rise above the same circumstances. You obviously care, since you're going out of your way to post comments dismissing those people.

The only thing hard about it was changing my mind set. This is a really hard thing because you don't get it until you've crossed over to the other side. There was one point in time when I was working full time and going to school at night that I almost quit. This was when there was a lot of talk about most programming jobs going to india and when I was really unsure if I was good enough to get a job when I finished. All these people on the Internet seemed so much smarter than me, etc. I doubted and almost quit, but I didn't.

Now that I've been hiring programmers for years I understand that most programmers are not that good and the smart people on the internet are probably the top 5%. growing up I didn't know someone that was successful that could tell me these things from experience.

So the two biggest challenges in my eyes are the mindset of the underprivileged, and I have no idea how to fix that. And, most people simply don't put in the effort and make the sacrifice. They'd rather play video games.

So I believe the two biggest

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#108

Post by derefr »

antihero wrote: post #103
gamble wrote: post #67

People are over-moralizing this. Why do CEOs get paid so much? Why are salesmen often better paid than engineers? Does a ditch-digger deserve less money than a lawyer? The market is basically amoral. People get what they can get, not what they 'deserve'. Founders get more money because they have ownership, and in a capitalistic system profits accrue to capital. There's no point in constructing an elaborate moral arch…

> The market is basically amoral. Yet people support it and sleep at night. The world is not fair, people are unfair, and it's a damn good cause to try to make it fairer. Sure I expect there's a serious correlation between putting effort in, but a huge part of how valuable your efforts are to your life is decided by where you were born, who your family are, who fucks you over and how you are parented. I'm sure there…

If you could choose your DNA, your parents, your upbringing, your interests, and your talents, the market would be the perfect arbiter. The problem is that people, for social signalling reasons, cannot internalize that they are not in control of these things, or that they matter. Thus, through the lens of our cognitive biases (hiding all these influencing factors from us), capitalism looks like the best system we've tried so far, and all the other systems don't "feel" right (because, for example, they force those of low social status to acknowledge that fact.)

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#109

Post by nitrogen »

rue wrote: post #71
gamble wrote: post #67

People are over-moralizing this. Why do CEOs get paid so much? Why are salesmen often better paid than engineers? Does a ditch-digger deserve less money than a lawyer? The market is basically amoral. People get what they can get, not what they 'deserve'. Founders get more money because they have ownership, and in a capitalistic system profits accrue to capital. There's no point in constructing an elaborate moral arch…

There's no problem moralising it while keeping in mind that the current system indeed is amoral. I think the point is whether it should be. Personally, I'm of the opinion that no job worth doing is worth less than any other job, but I recognise there's “some” ways to go before that thought becomes in any way mainstream again…

I'm of the opinion that no job worth doing is worth less than any other job...

Following this reason would end up with a world in which no job is worth doing. The value of a job is in how much value it provides to others. If one person's 8 hours produces 100 times as much value for others than another person's 8 hours (e.g. 100x time saved, 100x food produced, etc.) then the first person's job is worth 100x more than the second, and by your logic the second person's job isn't worth doing. But if there's nobody or no machine to replace the second person, then that job doesn't get done. If the second person's job was originally worth doing until the 100x person came along, why would it no longer be worth doing if it's now worth relatively less to others?

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#110

Post by pyre »

cookiecaper wrote: post #88
gamble wrote: post #67

People are over-moralizing this. Why do CEOs get paid so much? Why are salesmen often better paid than engineers? Does a ditch-digger deserve less money than a lawyer? The market is basically amoral. People get what they can get, not what they 'deserve'. Founders get more money because they have ownership, and in a capitalistic system profits accrue to capital. There's no point in constructing an elaborate moral arch…

Word, it's all about bringing in the money. If you can convince people to give you more money, you get that money, and if you can't, you don't. Sales guys are well-respected in most corporate hierarchies because the sales guys are the people going out there and actually getting customers that bring in cash. It doesn't matter if you write the most beautiful program ever, the reality is there has to be a way to monetiz…

  > It doesn't matter if you write the most beautiful program ever,
  > the reality is there has to be a way to monetize that program if
  > you want to run a business off of it (and obviously, your
  > employer does)
On the other hand, you could have all the charisma in the world, but you'll have a hard time selling something that doesn't exist (unless you want to cross onto the wrong side of the law and dabble in fraud / being a conman).

Not really commenting on 'who deserves more,' but I just don't think that you're logic really stands up.

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