Every company should be owned by its employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#141

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:50 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #89

xmprt wrote: post #18

I think the most surprising thing about trends in modern executive class pay is just how steep it is compared to the median employee. It makes me wonder why shareholders outside the company are happy with it. For example, the Boeing CEO made 22M in 2022 and 32M in 2023. I'd argue that he did a much worse job in 2023 than in 2022 but somehow got paid almost 50% more. Even Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is "only" being p…

I doubt they are happy as much as disinterested. The economy has been heavily financialised, interest rates have been at 0% [0] and a big chunk of economic activity is government spending. Shareholders don't appear to be worried about how the company actually runs in the details. What matters is that the CEO is positioning them to tap in to the money printing and borrowing game. IE, the wages suggest workers don't re…

> The economy has been heavily financialised, interest rates have been at 0% [0] and a big chunk of economic activity is government spending.

If you want to be dramatic: we had negative real interest rates for a long while.

Nominal interest rates were close to 0% and inflation was positive.

> Shareholders don't appear to be worried about how the company actually runs in the details.

And shareholders who are interested get vilified as activists or short sellers.

> IE, the wages suggest workers don't really matter because they don't.

The labour share of GDP has been mostly stable for the last few decades between 55 to 65%-ish See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG

Profits have also been fairly stable as a share of GDP at around 5-10%-ish: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W273RE1A156NBEA

Just to be clear: going up or down by 5% of GDP is a lot in absolute terms, but not enough to justify hyperbole about "workers don't matter".

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#142

Post by Gooblebrai » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:50 AM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #94

Employee stock options are not a new idea, obviously. If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a good business plan. The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Your barista at Starbucks is not going to…

> they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit

That this a "con", says something worrying about the values that, as society, we have decided are more important

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#143

Post by Jensson » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:51 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #115

glandium wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the company lays you off, the stock may be down too Don't most layoffs make the stock go up?

Layoffs generally imply the company is contracting rather than expanding.

Depends on if you are cutting fat or cutting muscle.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#144

Post by foreigner » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:51 AM UTC

Does nobody remember Enron? They encouraged their employees to invest in company stock, and when the company collapsed those employees were doubly screwed: no more job and no more savings. Too many eggs in one basket IMO. Investing in your own company is only for people who can tolerate very high risk.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#145

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:51 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #76

creato wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring a Boeing CEO must be pretty hard right now because whoever takes the job is signing up for some miserable work (like testifying to a hostile congress and dealing with criminal liability on behalf of Boeing), and is likely to be blamed for decades of mismanagement coming to the surface now. Said another way: I’d demand a lot more in compensation to be CEO of Boeing than NVIDIA (or any other role for that matter…

> because whoever takes the job is signing up for some miserable work I'm ready to do it for a mere 5 mill/year (less than a sixth of the incumbent), and I'll happily take all the blame for all my predecessor's failings, and more. Will I do a worse job than the incumbent? Maybe, maybe not, how the hell will anyone know?

Please feel free to make your pitch to whoever is in charge of hiring CEOs at Boeing.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#146

Post by cess11 » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:52 AM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #109

cess11 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if it allows owners to stay in control and keep profiting from the people that perform the labour in the organisation. It's someone you can pin board and shareholder decisions on, as well as changes in market and accidents, that just goes away and lets some other people keep their power and profits instead of being accountable for their mistakes or lack of strategic performance.

I very much dislike these threads where two people act like sockpuppets of a single not-very-advanced llm, agreeing with each other's views which are invariably exaggerated, uninformed and cynical. I've been seeing more of them recently; if you see one, downvote it. American capitalism has lots of problems. The idea that CEOs "almost always" have no real-world experience is hardly worth arguing against: "almost alway…

Sorry, I don't mean for my views to hurt your feelings.

I find it obvious from the context that they were referring to celebrity CEO:s in global corporations and not Mom or Pop in some small mom-and-pop corner store.

When I look at en.wikipedia on Huang it seems he graduated into a managing role and then founded Nvidia. By "real-world experience" I'd mean experience as a worker, but I can't answer for the person you're actually quoting.

However, it's an interesting example. Clearly Huang has managed to promote an image to you that is very different from mine. As I see it, Nvidia is a main supplier of hardware for globally fashionable grifts and scams, like large portions of so called 'crypto' and 'AI'. I also expect Nvidia to be an important supplier in the war industry, and I'm sure it is in surveillance tyranny.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#147

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:53 AM UTC

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #139

konschubert wrote: post #32

How about every employee instead gets money every month, and then can go out an buy shares in any company they want, their own or others?

Shares of the company they work for would incentivize them to care about the company. Shares of other public companies means no skin in the game. A day trader cash out whenever they want and wipe their hands clean of any adverse effects made by the company in the name of growth.

The day trader needs to find a greater fool for that to work.

Shares prices already reflect an estimate of the long running fate of the company.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#148

Post by varispeed » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:53 AM UTC

Funny that in the UK, small business owned by employees is typically associated with tax dodging (basically there is strong anti small business agenda in the government). So we have this legislation called IR35 that very much stops employee owned company from generating profit. This applies to b2b only, but I wouldn't be surprised if strong lobbying from big corporations will get its scope expanded. After all why someone should run their own shop if they could work at a supermarket? Big corporations are worried that the most skilled people engage in running their own business rather than being available in the employee market, so there is strong push to stop it.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#149

Post by Arainach » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:53 AM UTC

vrotaru wrote: post #134

stavros wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe "taking over the market" is a bad metric, and we should be optimizing for making a company that makes the workers' lives better. The US cultural bias is showing here, as it's assumed that profit is above all else, and a company that forgoes profit to make workers happier must thus be less good. The vast majority of people in companies are workers. Let's stop optimizing for owner wealth and start optimizing…

Stop optimizing for consumers, start optimizing for producers. Maybe, you want to rethink that.

Stop optimizing for financial leeches sucking value out of the system and externalizing all the societal consequences, start optimizing for the vast majority of the population.

....sounds better when you elaborate on the categories you selected.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#150

Post by rendaw » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:53 AM UTC

sgammon wrote: post #75

rendaw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What risk does Jensen Huang take and why can't he leave whenever he wants?

Are you kidding?

IIUC you think it's obvious but it's possible it's not obvious or that different people have different views on it, all of which they consider obvious.