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You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

paulgraham.com

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Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#101

Post by mempko »

As someone who has been a startup founder across several and who has basically been under-paid for the last decade as a result I am constantly thinking if I should have went to work at big tech again as many of my peers are much richer for doing it.

But Paul Graham is right, you weren't meant to have a boss. In fact this is not unique to programmers either. Nobody is meant to have a boss.

I encourage everyone to read "The Dawn of Everything" by David Wengrow and David Graeber to understand the kinds of human organizational structures that are possible and have existed in the past.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#102

Post by mempko »

dentemple wrote: post #34

Without a firm proposal of what a company can or should do instead, this just becomes another example of complaints being easier to make than actual solutions. We all know that large corps are structured in a way that eliminates individual initiative. So what can we do about it? I've heard of "hierarchy-less" company structures being attempted before. I've also heard that each and every one of those attempts always e…

There are firm proposals. Read the Democracy and Work effort lead by Richard Wolff.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#103

Post by xboxnolifes »

marssaxman wrote: post #68
dentemple wrote: post #34

Without a firm proposal of what a company can or should do instead, this just becomes another example of complaints being easier to make than actual solutions. We all know that large corps are structured in a way that eliminates individual initiative. So what can we do about it? I've heard of "hierarchy-less" company structures being attempted before. I've also heard that each and every one of those attempts always e…

> So what can we do about it? For starters, you can understand that working for a large corporation will make you miserable, and choose to work in a small organization instead.

Individually, one can try to choose for a small org. Collectively, there isn't enough small org work to go around.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#104

Post by jimbokun »

antipurist wrote: post #50
dentemple wrote: post #34

Without a firm proposal of what a company can or should do instead, this just becomes another example of complaints being easier to make than actual solutions. We all know that large corps are structured in a way that eliminates individual initiative. So what can we do about it? I've heard of "hierarchy-less" company structures being attempted before. I've also heard that each and every one of those attempts always e…

I'm not aware of any relevant research, but to answer the "So what can we do about it?" question I have a wild idea: invert the power structure, with cooperative of workers hiring their managers instead of managers hiring workers. And no, this doesn't automatically lead to the same tree, just inverted, it could form a much flatter structure. I imagine that a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value genera…

Like hiring a personal trainer to yell at you to do 5 more pushups or whatever.

Closest thing I can come up with of one party having the authority of paying another party to act as if they were in a position of authority over tre first party.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#105

Post by foobarian »

rexpop wrote: post #90
foobarian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, you know how communism was supposed to be this nirvana where a central authority would collect all the information and dictate all operations for the good of the people? I.e. centrally planned economy? And in practice it didn't work out because of corruption and information bottlenecks and such? I wonder if a corporation type org could actually make this work by going all in on AI deeply integrated into eve…

> You know, you know how communism was supposed to be this nirvana where a central authority would collect all the information and dictate all operations for the good of the people? Was it? Really? Doesn't sound like a commune to me. Sounds more like Walmart[0]. Marx did not specify a particular planning strategy; in fact, his co-author Engels said that "the time of... small conscious minorities at the head of masses…

TBH I don't know where that meme came from, it's something they used to harp on in Yugoslav schools before the breakup. But as a concept it certainly exists and I will beg your forgiveness for mixing it up with the history of socialism ideas salad. The point still doesn't change, can central planning finally succeed with smart enough technology such as new crop of AI seems to be? With fewer greedy/corrupt humans in the loop?

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#106

Post by jimbokun »

voakbasda wrote: post #53
antipurist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any relevant research, but to answer the "So what can we do about it?" question I have a wild idea: invert the power structure, with cooperative of workers hiring their managers instead of managers hiring workers. And no, this doesn't automatically lead to the same tree, just inverted, it could form a much flatter structure. I imagine that a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value genera…

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

Probably need to motivate people to vote in local elections before you can convince them to risk their lives in a bloody struggle.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#107

Post by jimbokun »

YZF wrote: post #80
antipurist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any relevant research, but to answer the "So what can we do about it?" question I have a wild idea: invert the power structure, with cooperative of workers hiring their managers instead of managers hiring workers. And no, this doesn't automatically lead to the same tree, just inverted, it could form a much flatter structure. I imagine that a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value genera…

Want to find out? Start a new company with this idea. I worked at a tech company where the founders wanted to do things differently so they did. Not exactly what you describe but generally more power to the individuals vs. management. It worked reasonably well until the company grew large, acquired another large company, and was eventually acquired by yet another company.

Yeah a lot of management isn’t just a desire for power and control over others, but just the unglamorous and boring work of tracking what everyone is working on and how it fits into the bigger picture. In large organizations it becomes harder and harder for individual contributors to see how their work fits into the larger organization.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#108

Post by jimbokun »

weakfish wrote: post #78
Nasrudith wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is making a big assumption that is completely counterfactual. That a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value generated per worker/item and agree upon compensation readjustment. Humanity tried that with Gosplan. It worked pretty terribly. We've had plenty of intelligista think that it would just go perfectly we followed their 'rational' plans. It has been without an exception an exercise in hubris. T…

Someone should coin a law that any time something vaguely cooperative or worker-focused is proposed, someone will inevitably reply that it will fail because the Soviet Union did something sort of maybe similar once.

It certainly has to be considered.

China and the Soviet Union are the largest scale attempts to implement a cooperative system and they failed in spectacular and tragic ways. So you certainly need to consider why the new plan will be different and won’t meet the same fate.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#109

Post by jimbokun »

weakfish wrote: post #86
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can work, but ultimately it depends on the culture. Europe has some corpo-sized co-ops, and while they're not perfect they seem to function better than anything in the US. It won't work in the US at scale, ever, because US business culture is fundamentally hierarchical, competitive, entitled, selfish, and extractive. Cooperation at scale is a completely alien concept in the US. Expedient synergies can be workable,…

Gonna write a shorter reply because I’m on my phone and frankly too hungry to think, so hopefully it makes sense :-) TL;DR I agree with you re: US culture being too selfish and independent for that kind of thinking. It’s something that has had my curiosity for awhile and lends to another argument I’ve tried to make - that when people say collectivist economic systems won’t work because humans are “inherently selfish,…

You would need an explanation for how every single culture in human history conditions people in this way, if it’s not connected to human nature.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#110

Post by jimbokun »

EA-3167 wrote: post #61
Nasrudith wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is making a big assumption that is completely counterfactual. That a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value generated per worker/item and agree upon compensation readjustment. Humanity tried that with Gosplan. It worked pretty terribly. We've had plenty of intelligista think that it would just go perfectly we followed their 'rational' plans. It has been without an exception an exercise in hubris. T…

Rationalists struggle to understand just how irrational people are at scale. In fact they think up these big utopian plans as a way to reinforce the notion that we’re just one good rationalist away from paradise. Edit spelling

Also an unwillingness to examine their own irrational biases, seeing them only in other people.
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