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Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

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Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#141

Post by pwinnski »

yreg wrote: post #132
pwinnski wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bank loans and venture capital.

Banks are handing out game studios now? Did you get one as well?

Perhaps you forgot what you asked? You said:

> How did this person become the sole shareholder of a 100 person game company producing wildly successful game without any work in your story?

Steve Jobs somewhat famously never wrote any code for Apple. So the answer to how a person becomes the sole shareholder without doing any work is that they focus on things like bank loans, which enable the hiring of people to do the "work" that leads to the company's success. Same as any company.

Many, many, many companies are headed by people who have never engaged in the low-level work done by that companies. Many of them are there because they deal with finance.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#142

Post by pwinnski »

refurb wrote: post #127
pwinnski wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably the CEO bring something to the table - capital, fundraising ability. I mean why else have him/her? You're so close! In fact, there's an expectation that the more you pay a CEO, the better they perform, and that those making the most must be the best. This seems to be a largely-unexamined assumption that "just makes sense," but it turns out when you try to see whether it's true, it's not[0]. By and large,…

Why did you completely ignore the capital part I talked about? Instead of raising $10M for a business through a CEO (either their own money or through road shows), there is nothing stopping a company of 100 employees from ponying up $100,000 of their own money and reaping a share of the rewards (or losing it all). Are you really that surprised that workers prefer a risk-free salary instead? I mean I have the option o…

So one of us produced a link to supporting research, and other produced hypotheticals and dismissive insults.

Okay.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#143

Post by pwinnski »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #133
pwinnski wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably the CEO bring something to the table - capital, fundraising ability. I mean why else have him/her? You're so close! In fact, there's an expectation that the more you pay a CEO, the better they perform, and that those making the most must be the best. This seems to be a largely-unexamined assumption that "just makes sense," but it turns out when you try to see whether it's true, it's not[0]. By and large,…

> By and large, highly-paid CEOs are a drain on corporate profits. As the research paper I linked shows, even those highly-compensated CEOs who win awards end up performing worse than their non-award-winning counterparts. You're forgetting who decides CEO pay - the board / shareholders. They are aware of this. And despite that, they keep these pay packages. Is it fair? I dunno. I personally don't think CEO's should b…

Instead of focusing on distributing CEO pay to the rest of the company--where I think your math is off--consider things like annual bonuses for employees that are affected by company performance. Something like "you get $20k, or a little less if you or the company is doing poorly, or a little more if you and the company are doing well." Pretty common among developers.

When those come in at 90% or 95% of target based on company performance, and yet the CEO still takes home tens of millions, that's when what seems like a tiny thing on a raw number basis, a matter of $2k for a single employee, can seem like a large thing. As an employee who performed well is still feeling the impact of company performance that fell short of expectations, probably on the basis of nothing the employee did, probably more attributably to the CEO (who helped set the expectations, and is more likely to have had a material impact on the result), it's natural for employees to at least wonder why the impact seems to be falling more on them.

That kind of thing is very common, not a super-rare case.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#144

Post by alexb_ »

lr4444lr wrote: post #134
alexb_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not read the part where thousands upon thousands of people trying to unionized were murdered?

I condemn violence, but that's not what I meant: nothing stops the people from quitting and forming their own worker-owned company.

Maybe in America...

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#145

Post by sershe »

vladharbuz wrote: post #4
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #3

> Only a radical change in how work is done and who controls this can make labor once again an integral part of life, one through which we can fully develop our capacities as thinking, acting human beings. uhh. The article appears to suggest that we change who controls our labor... #1 - we do, we can quit anytime we want and find another place to work for. #2 - I assume they are railing against private individuals an…

Why do you assume the only options are being controlled by a different self-serving employer, or having the government regulate everything? After all, shouldn't those who actually form the workforce of a company and shape the products and services it offers be in control? Why not have those who actually do the work collectively control the fate of the company, instead of having to hand over that power to someone else…

It's not like this hasn't been tried.

First, do you know what Soviet stands for? The relevant meaning of the word in Russian is "council", and it refers to "worker councils", "soldier councils", etc. that made the revolution happen (the Petrograd Soviet, or council, in St Petersburg was the main alternative power structure to Provisional Government that took over from the czar), that were supposed to "democratically" run things like factories, and send delegates to higher levels to democratically run things there. Somehow, this all ended up a dictatorship, as it did pretty much every time something like this has been tried.

Then, economically, co-ops are perfectly legal in the West. There are some successful ones, like REI. I shop at REI a lot, and I really don't give a damn if employers are wage laborers or co-op members - I doubt most people do. If anything, some people might prefer co-ops because they would give them the same warm fuzzy feeling as green-washed products do, so a co-op would start out with a competitive advantage at least among the well-off liberals. Why not go build a coop to replace your local restaurant or a laundromat; or Exxon, or Google, or whatever? Perhaps because generally, it doesn't work so well? Heck, I don't know how much of a "real" co-op REI is anymore, at this scale.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#146

Post by interfaced »

matwood wrote: post #50
vladharbuz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! Maybe they are, maybe they're not, and you're right that this should influence how the company is structured. But our current system goes quite a bit past simply "solving" this problem with investor shareholders, because that sole shareholder is entitled to any future profits the company makes, regardless of whether it makes a completely different game, and regardless of the massive contributions futu…

It's the same argument if someone should take options in lieu of salary in a startup, and the answer is almost always no. Options tend to end up worthless as most startups fail. IMO, a better question is to ask what allowed the single investor to become an investor to begin with. The nature of investing means the investor must be able to also lose all their capital. What can we do as a society to make easier for the…

The challenge is that the company you work for is almost never the best investment on its own. That's why retirement funds are diversified. I would worry about giving everyone the ability to bet 99% of their wealth on a single company. The reason there are investors is because they've previously invested their money in a risk appropriate way. Now there's a whole argument around intergenerational family wealth which skews everyone's starting point, but it's probably better than concentrating that wealth in a single point of failure (the state who gives you UBI). Probably the right approach to wealth inequality is more tax on non-beneficial uses of money(yachts), and more incentives for mutually beneficial pursuits (cheaper energy).

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#147

Post by nunez »

matheusd wrote: post #63
vladharbuz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very interested in this point! Do you think there is something about the structure of co-operatives that intrinsically makes them less attractive to investors? Or do you think that the fear you mentioned is just a result of them being currently unconventional, and this problem will be fixed once we culturally become more open to alternative ways of organising work?

We could ask! This is HN, which a non-insignificant cohort of various types of investors (angels, VCs, maybe bankers?) visit. So let's open a couple of Ask HN/Pool HN: Are you an investor? Did you invest in a coop-like startup? Would you invest in a coop-like startup? Under which conditions?

Would the fact that the capital held by a lot of investors is provided by companies that are not co-ops limit their ability to invest in co-ops?

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#148

Post by nunez »

m0llusk wrote: post #81

This is missing a lot of history. There was a lot of Anarchist violence in the 30s that led to things like the Inheritance Tax, now repealed. Up until Reagan it was possible to live reasonably well and even raise a family on a minimum wage. Now even middle class people can barely make it and are vulnerable to large medical bills. The past was not impossible. It actually happened. And we should be able to use that exp…

> Up until Reagan it was possible to live reasonably well and even raise a family on a minimum wage. Now even middle class people can barely make it and are vulnerable to large medical bills.

This feels like an oft-repeated trope to me. Do you have books or stats that back this up?

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#149

Post by [deleted] »

matwood wrote: post #50
vladharbuz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! Maybe they are, maybe they're not, and you're right that this should influence how the company is structured. But our current system goes quite a bit past simply "solving" this problem with investor shareholders, because that sole shareholder is entitled to any future profits the company makes, regardless of whether it makes a completely different game, and regardless of the massive contributions futu…

It's the same argument if someone should take options in lieu of salary in a startup, and the answer is almost always no. Options tend to end up worthless as most startups fail. IMO, a better question is to ask what allowed the single investor to become an investor to begin with. The nature of investing means the investor must be able to also lose all their capital. What can we do as a society to make easier for the…

[deleted]

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#150

Post by nunez »

matwood wrote: post #50
vladharbuz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! Maybe they are, maybe they're not, and you're right that this should influence how the company is structured. But our current system goes quite a bit past simply "solving" this problem with investor shareholders, because that sole shareholder is entitled to any future profits the company makes, regardless of whether it makes a completely different game, and regardless of the massive contributions futu…

It's the same argument if someone should take options in lieu of salary in a startup, and the answer is almost always no. Options tend to end up worthless as most startups fail. IMO, a better question is to ask what allowed the single investor to become an investor to begin with. The nature of investing means the investor must be able to also lose all their capital. What can we do as a society to make easier for the…

Bolt (the 1-click payment) company tried this, and immediately after (justified) layoffs you saw articles about people taking out (relatively) massive loans to buy now-worthless options: https://www.wired.com/story/bolt-stock-loans/amp

Had Bolt made it, those employees would have become investors...

It's all about luck IMO

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