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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

#21

Post by leereeves »

Jensson wrote: post #16
altras wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no extensive research on this topic. I really doubt coops are paying more than FAANG and if the only thing that you're after is money then coops are surely not your thing and that's OK ;) In tech though, money is not the main unique value proposition and I would suggest getting curious about investing in happiness[1] so one can increase it's baselines[2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNZk-N6uDcg [2] htt…

Working at Google for a few years made me lots of money so now I don't need to work for many years. Working a lower paid job means I would need to waste more time working and less time doing what makes me happy.

I think coops are meant to be the thing that makes you happy. Obviously it's not for everyone, but a lot of people really want that sense of community.

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

#22

Post by Jensson »

stareatgoats wrote: post #18

> Decision-making in cooperatives can be very daunting for beginners. Having 13 years+ of experience in cooperatives I can tell you that it is daunting even for old-timers. We started off with most decisions being made in weekly meeting (that sometimes dragged on for most of the day), and ended up with having monthly meetings for the large decisions, but weekly meetings in smaller groups instead. In short, meetings e…

> But making fast about turns that you sometimes need to do in a business setting is nigh impossible, which is actually hazardous to everyone in the cooperative. This might even be the primary reason cooperatives (being an old idea) hasn't survived other than as a fringe phenomena.

There are large cooperatives, but only in "solved" industries so there aren't many hard decisions left to make. Programming is not one of those fields yet.

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

#23

Post by samtho »

mypastself wrote: post #13

It’s high time I stopped reading Medium articles shared here. I got the distinct feeling I was being sold something while reading it, and the last paragraph confirmed it. It’s filled with vague, corporatey platitudes about ego and altruism, and there’s almost nothing in it about how this concept applies specifically to tech . The supposed “cons” sound like the ad equivalents of leading questions: > The relationships…

> I got the distinct feeling I was being sold something while reading it, and the last paragraph confirmed it.

I have this feeling medium is being kept alive on the shoulders of other companies’ marketing teams in an attempt to write thinly-veiled sales pitches disguised as blog posts from a “neutral” 3rd party.

Coupled with the zero-life-experience blogger trope, the signal to noise ratio on medium is practically nil.

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

#24

Post by Jensson »

akvadrako wrote: post #17
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'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?

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

#25

Post by KingOfCoders »

jasfi wrote: post #8
KingOfCoders wrote: post #3

Tried to found one 25+ years ago. In the end not enough people were left of those initially interested and we founded a startup. Should have gone through with the cooperative even with 5 people.

Why do you believe a cooperative would have been better?

The startup went bust during the dot com bubble bursting when our series B fell through (like everyone else). I think a cooperative would be more future proof and not having a binary result.

In general I prefer cooperative work and have experienced too much antogonistic work in startups.

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

#26

Post by bitwize »

Jensson wrote: post #6

Nowhere did he mention salary levels. The main reason we work is to make money, if worker cooperatives makes you less money then that would be the biggest reason to not join one. I really doubt there are many cooperatives paying more than FAANG, so why not just join one of those instead?

I agree it should've been added to the list, but you might not like the form it would take: "Are you a moneygrubbing asshole who's only concerned with compensation? Maybe a co-op isn't for you. Go work for an oil company or something instead, you fascist."

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

#27

Post by fimdomeio »

I'm currently part of the administration of a co-op. It's in Portugal and it's a Multisectorial co-op, meaning instead of being focused on one type of activity we do anything as long as we have a member with that skillset. We are an agregation of freelancers and small businesses that go from small scale farming, to web development or architecture. The coop serves as a way to have a lot of the nice things of a bigger corporation like someone to help you with burocratic processes while allowing people to keep their independence. People can be very involved in the decision making or just financially contribute to the central structure. We have both general assemblies where all members vote in a very horizontal process but the day to day work has hierarchies to keep processes going smoothly

The biggest thing I've learned from being part of this process is that co-ops vastly destroys competition among peers and replace that we the mindset of "what's the best way to benefit the collective". Best thing to make it work is that it's not just altruism, benefiting the collective benefits yourself. Kind of like OSS works.

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

#28

Post by dogma1138 »

stareatgoats wrote: post #18

> Decision-making in cooperatives can be very daunting for beginners. Having 13 years+ of experience in cooperatives I can tell you that it is daunting even for old-timers. We started off with most decisions being made in weekly meeting (that sometimes dragged on for most of the day), and ended up with having monthly meetings for the large decisions, but weekly meetings in smaller groups instead. In short, meetings e…

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 the bad ones are the ones trying to run like a commune and reach a consensus on everything.

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

#29

Post by akvadrako »

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?

One difference is the reduced friction of starting new projects. Starting a new company now is major task, from legal to funding starting salaries to developer setup, but in a company you have everything ready to go.

Some other differences are:

1. Salaries are limited, so hopefully more money stays available for new projects.

2. All the source code, docs and databases are shared.

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

#30

Post by bluesign »

dogma1138 wrote: post #28
stareatgoats wrote: post #18

> Decision-making in cooperatives can be very daunting for beginners. Having 13 years+ of experience in cooperatives I can tell you that it is daunting even for old-timers. We started off with most decisions being made in weekly meeting (that sometimes dragged on for most of the day), and ended up with having monthly meetings for the large decisions, but weekly meetings in smaller groups instead. In short, meetings e…

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…

So it is little worse than unions done good.
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