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Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

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Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#131

Post by yogthos »

kybernetyk wrote: post #125
leethaxor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand... I work as a software contractor in EU. I don't see a single thing I'm missing by not being in a coop. 5% of my income is a lot of money. For that money I can buy all the accounting and tax advisory services I need with enough money left over to get a Wework All Access membership and even then I'd have a significant portion of the 5% left. Why does it make total sense that people are interested?

>Why does it make total sense that people are interested? Because that way you can finance a bunch of useless moochers who "administer your coop". Smells like typical rent seeking.

If you're worried about rent seeking wait till you find out how a traditional business works. The owner of the company takes all the profit, and then pays out a small portion of that profit to the workers doing the work in form of wages.

On the other hand, in a coop the profit is shared fairly amongst the people actually doing the work. It's frankly incredibly that somebody thinks this is a worse model of compensation.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#132

Post by therealdrag0 »

Jensson wrote: post #24
akvadrako wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked on this idea too, except a little inverted. Everybody is a full member of the coop, but those who bring in more earn credits which can be used to fund new projects or bump up salaries to a point. You don't need to reach a consensus, you can just have an internal marketplace, like kickstarter. If you want something done, you can help fund it, perhaps getting some benefits in return, like a best-effort ROI.

> those who bring in more earn credits which can be used to fund new projects or bump up salaries to a point. So the solution to the problems with cooperatives is to introduce capitalism? Why not just make a normal company with normal money instead?

I’ve found the comments on this article interesting partly because of the discussion of specific implementation details without bandying about broad bucket terms like “capitalism”.

So maybe you can be more specific and avoid trigger terms like that. What’s wrong with having a coop that still rewards for performance?

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#133

Post by satisfice »

I have worked in a consensus environment and I know it can work. The concern I have is when it doesn’t work.

It doesn’t take many sneaky sociopaths or psychopaths to subvert a system built on assumptions of good faith and good will. And even among good people, strong visions arise which may clash with other strong visions.

I need to know there is a clear method of resolving conflict, otherwise I am confident that all those smiling people are going to be carrying concealed knives.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#134

Post by nanomonkey »

leethaxor wrote: post #120
nanomonkey wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that the benefits are in having coworkers that fill in the gaps in your own business skills. For example: finding clients, invoicing, server maintenance, customer service, training, documentation, implementation consultants. There are a variety of job skills that one person will not have or want to contribute 100% of the time that are valuable jobs for junior or more senior coworkers. If you are paying…

> finding clients, invoicing, server maintenance, customer service, training, documentation, implementation consultants Clients find me, not the other way around. Documentation and implementation are my own lines of work. I have an accountant, tax advisor and lawyer as subscriptions. I also have a coworking pass. These cost me about 1.5% of my annual income. Trainings are given for free in coops? I can't imagine myse…

>Trainings are given for free in coops? I can't imagine myself or my friends working for free, are you forced to work for free in a coop? As in, would I be forced to give trainings too? I value my time too much for this. Of course I do the occasional free tech talk for my friends/the public, but that's not in any way comparable to a "full" training.

No one said anything about training for free. This was an example of work that needs to be done for a client that you may not want to do yourself. A junior level member of your coop could travel to the client's site and train them on how to use your software, learn from the experience and make valuable ties, while you stay at home and work on more appropriate tasks.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#135

Post by leethaxor »

nanomonkey wrote: post #134
leethaxor wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> finding clients, invoicing, server maintenance, customer service, training, documentation, implementation consultants Clients find me, not the other way around. Documentation and implementation are my own lines of work. I have an accountant, tax advisor and lawyer as subscriptions. I also have a coworking pass. These cost me about 1.5% of my annual income. Trainings are given for free in coops? I can't imagine myse…

>Trainings are given for free in coops? I can't imagine myself or my friends working for free, are you forced to work for free in a coop? As in, would I be forced to give trainings too? I value my time too much for this. Of course I do the occasional free tech talk for my friends/the public, but that's not in any way comparable to a "full" training. No one said anything about training for free. This was an example of…

Ah, okay, that makes more sense. Sorry I misunderstood. This is not really something applicable to my line of work (standard software development tasks on a larger project in an agile team managed by the client) but I can imagine some of my friends doing this.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#136

Post by therealdrag0 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #107

I like the idea of a co-op, but I'm always worried about "in a perfect world," not happening (like Communism sounds like a great idea, but human nature screws it all up). For myself, I'm not competitive. It's a life choice. When we compete, we win, and winning always means that someone else loses. I've spent my entire adult life, in an environment, where I help "losers" to get back on their feet, and it has had quite…

How do you help losers?

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#137

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #136
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #107

I like the idea of a co-op, but I'm always worried about "in a perfect world," not happening (like Communism sounds like a great idea, but human nature screws it all up). For myself, I'm not competitive. It's a life choice. When we compete, we win, and winning always means that someone else loses. I've spent my entire adult life, in an environment, where I help "losers" to get back on their feet, and it has had quite…

How do you help losers?

Long story, and one that I'm not really at liberty to share in public (press, radio and film, thing).

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#138

Post by solardev »

spuz wrote: post #66
dogma1138 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common mistake, actual functioning cooperatives operate like any other enterprise with an set executive structure a CEO and a board of directors. The big difference is the ownership model so shareholder meetings are basically employee meetings so a successful cooperative simply runs like any other business just one where the employees are treated as the shareholders they are when it comes to decision making…

What is the difference between a cooperative like you describe and a startup where employees are given shares?

A coop is one person one vote.

A employee stockholder plan is one dollar one vote.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#139

Post by timbit42 »

willbudd wrote: post #9

I've been interested in forming this kind of organizational structure for a while. However, I have doubts about how to ensure sufficient levels of trust between individuals involved, given the different dynamics in terms of monetary compensation and "hiring processes" compared to traditional top-down companies. In that light, I wonder if perhaps a better alternative is for each individual to remain independent as the…

I would want to work in a couple of cooperatives before forming one myself.
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