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At this company, we are family

pboyd.io

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Re: At this company, we are family

#221

Post by MandieD »

RestlessMind wrote: post #178
jraby3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not convinced Americans pay less in taxes. When you include state taxes, social security from the employee and employer, then it starts to look like much less of a difference. When you include health insurance and college education, Americans get much less value. I do agree with the first half of your comment. American labor laws make it easier to fire which allows employers to take more risk in hiring.

> college education College education can be had for super cheap in the US via community colleges. Going to an expensive college is a lifestyle choice and I know many people who spend first 2 years in local community colleges and then move to the state college system.

College education at US community colleges can be had for sort of cheap: you still have tuition in the $1000-2000 range per semester, as well as living costs. Example: Austin Community College, where a local resident (but not all Texans!) would be on the hook for about $1800 for a 15-credit-hour semester. If you have the good fortune of living in an excellent community college district, it can be pretty good; if you don’t… sorry.

College education in Germany and most other EU members is truly cheap: you have semester fees well under 500 EUR (when they were raised to that in Germany, massive protests pushed them back), plus living costs, no matter where in the country you went to high school or your parents live, no matter whether you’re sticking around at Eastern Bavaria University of Applied Sciences (a relatively new institution serving a traditionally less-prosperous part of the state, with enrollment open to anyone who got an Abitur) or managed to win one of the competitive computer science spots at Technische Universität München: both have semester fees around 100 EUR.

Re: At this company, we are family

#222

Post by Aurornis »

GuB-42 wrote: post #129

I have seen reports of how things go in "old money" families. It doesn't look at all like the idea we make of families. They have access to vast amounts of resources, but family members don't have free access, far from it. There is council that decides how the funds are allocated, and when family members need some, they need to pitch how they are going to use it, and the expected returns. And if some family members a…

> when family members need some, they need to pitch how they are going to use it, and the expected returns.

If we're talking about money for investment purposes (you mentioned expected returns) then this is what's know as a "family office"

It's not really an old money thing. It's common for ultra high net worth families to establish a Family Office as a privately held company to manage their assets.

The Family Office runs like a business with a goal of maintaining and growing the assets under management. They may have full-time employees who are not members of the family at all, such as a CFO.

This isn't really related to family dynamics, though. Family members would have ownership stakes in the company and, therefore, proportional ownership of the Family Office's assets. If they wanted money they could sell some of their ownership to another family member (within the various stipulations, of course), but family members can't bypass the business and treat the family office like a piggy bank where they can ignore ownership structures and extract wealth for themselves.

This isn't really related to the "we are family" concept that that companies talk about at all. It's just a business structure that happens to be used by families to manage their wealth like a business. Individual's wealth is still their own to deal with as they please.

Re: At this company, we are family

#223

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #133
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with employees free to move around and chart their own destiny What about the European system prevents that for the employee?

>What about the European system prevents that for the employee? From personal experience: 1. Less employment opportunities due to no VC funding, and risk averse mentality of entrepreneurs meaning next to no big EU SW product companies. That's why the best paying jobs in EU tech scene are mostly US companies, which also tend to be clustered in only a few cities in the EU, where housing is now a major issue. 2. Employm…

All those seem fairly reasonable except for the last when comparing Europe and the United States. Though you're not describing general work with #1, you're describing dev work. Unless this whole discussion is only in reference to software devs, but I don't think it is.

Re: At this company, we are family

#224

Post by Aurornis »

When I was young I worked at a company that said things like "we are family" and kind of meant it.

It wasn't really a good thing unless you were a low performer. We had some people who were hired into jobs they couldn't do well, but they got to keep those jobs because it was like their role in the family. People basically never got fired, including the couple guys in the corner who barely did any work but had been there forever.

When money was tight, they didn't do layoffs. They just cut everyone's compensation by the same percentages. Including those people who didn't do much work, because we can't fire family.

Modern companies avoid this phrase because it has become so toxic that nobody wants to be associated with it. It's a holdover from old school management who speak in boilerplate platitudes like "fast paced environment" that don't mean anything.

Re: At this company, we are family

#225

Post by sshine »

kirse wrote: post #206
jedberg wrote: post #156

This is why I always liked Netflix's outlook (both stated and practiced): We are a sports team, not a family. Perform well and you will be paid well, perform poorly and you will get a nice check to go elsewhere. And sometimes you might perform really well but we just don't need someone with your skills anymore, so we'll still give you nice check to go elsewhere, and that isn't a reflection on your abilities.

I like the sports team concept in terms of being a sieve for performance. Similar to HS->College->NFL athletes, elite military SOF groups, etc. You get binned and sometimes that's hard to accept, but that's the point of the filter. It's interesting that despite the high-performance culture though, Netflix is still slowly degrading. This past year I finally realized I could cancel Netflix and not feel like I lost anyt…

> Any thoughts on Netflix's degradation over time?

Netflix both got better and worse at the same time.

With wider audiences and more content, there is both more content for you in absolute terms, and less in proportion to the total amount. So while there's more stuff you will like to see, it gets drowned out.

https://thecorrespondent.com/104/the-great-paradox-of-our-ti...

Re: At this company, we are family

#226

Post by TacticalCoder »

GuB-42 wrote: post #129

I have seen reports of how things go in "old money" families. It doesn't look at all like the idea we make of families. They have access to vast amounts of resources, but family members don't have free access, far from it. There is council that decides how the funds are allocated, and when family members need some, they need to pitch how they are going to use it, and the expected returns. And if some family members a…

> They have access to vast amounts of resources, but family members don't have free access, far from it.

Well they're called "trust fund babies" for a reason. But the trust fund doesn't mean free money is flowing endlessly: it is set up so that they cannot blow it all up in a few years.

Re: At this company, we are family

#227

Post by epups »

anon291 wrote: post #105
epups wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah those were great years. Now in case of a downturn you will lose it all, maybe when you need the most (old age). Let's not even get into the details of your "100% free medical". Rights enshrined by legislation are worth a bit more than individual agreements

> Let's not even get into the details of your "100% free medical". My 100% free medical is enshrined by the law in my state, which sets the eligibility guidelines for medicaid. Please stop parroting misinformation and discouraging people from using the available welfare programs. So many people I've spoken with thought I was crazy for applying to medicaid and didn't do so themselves because they thought they wouldn't…

The thread is a comparison between the US and Europe. You are the one pushing an extreme anecdote - your own personal experience, valid in one US state -, when in reality we know for a fact that on average you can expect much better benefits in Europe, regardless of your employer.

There is a price for that, of course, but to try to claim that the US is better in this particular area is a weak argument. When you use a personal anecdote, it becomes ridiculous.

Re: At this company, we are family

#228

Post by hintymad »

codingdave wrote: post #176
jedberg wrote: post #156

This is why I always liked Netflix's outlook (both stated and practiced): We are a sports team, not a family. Perform well and you will be paid well, perform poorly and you will get a nice check to go elsewhere. And sometimes you might perform really well but we just don't need someone with your skills anymore, so we'll still give you nice check to go elsewhere, and that isn't a reflection on your abilities.

I worked for someone who liked that, too, and after leaving Netflix, he carried it over into a new startup. It was not as great of an experience for any of us (including that founder) as it may sound. Years later, and we still talk amongst ourselves about how weird of an environment it created. Basically, that outlook sounds great on paper, but is not so great to actually live.

A great culture is really hard to reproduce because it depends on the ability of the CEO. The CEO needs to properly evaluate the performance of his team, and reward or punish them fairly to demonstrate the culture. In the meantime, the CEO needs to find the likeminded people to uphold the culture. In the end, culture is not a plaque on the wall but how the company rewards and punishes employees at every level.

A simple example. Netflix promotes Freedom and Responsibility. Their engineers seemingly had freedom to choose their own systems to build with their own designs at their own pace. The company's guideline to their managers used to be "All that a manager does is to set context". But really? How can the leaders avoid catastrophic failures? How can the leaders keep their orgs' schedules and promises? How can the leaders draw the line between empowering and micro-management in such environment? It's not there is a runbook. And things do fail and sometimes someone do take the fall. Then who? How much? How do the leaders do it to avoid sink the culture?

Re: At this company, we are family

#229

Post by the_af »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #187
Arisaka1 wrote: post #51

My first job was with a "we are a family" company, they used stupid names for the employees internally but also in the job post, together with an emoji spam that couldn't say "how you do fellow kids?" any harder, ask to "see yourself like an entrepreneur" and "be the leader of your own ideas" obviously taking far less than the actual company owners. After a while I had to resign due to mental health problem manifesti…

Here is my takeaway from this. This was your first and only job. (Therapy is still on going and a month ago you asked what is happening and got some feedback about someone else quitting.) Which is why you don't understand the 2 weeks notice isn't just for you to be productive but to help hand things over. Realistically, your former colleagues probably had to figure out what you had done and not done. This will leave…

If he was so depressed even brushing his teeth in the morning was an insurmountable task -- that is, clinically depressed -- I think your "learn to force yourself to work" suggestion is seriously misguided.

Like someone else mentioned, if he had been hit by a car you wouldn't be suggesting he force himself to do anything. Clinical depression is your brain being hit by a car. If he had been hit by a car, who cares about whether his coworkers found their work harder as a consequence?

Re: At this company, we are family

#230

Post by the_af »

stronglikedan wrote: post #219
skrebbel wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? GP goes into a burnout at job #1 and your takeaway is “you should’ve worked harder”?

They should have put in the two weeks at least. Not because the company deserves it, but because the world is smaller that you think. A lot of companies won't even take you up on the notice, but it's best to give it, and give the two weeks if they do take you up on it.

> They should have put in the two weeks at least.

And work through two additional weeks without the strength to even brush their teeth? Doesn't seem realistic to me.

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