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On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

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Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#231

Post by brailsafe »

mch82 wrote: post #221
brailsafe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees should never feel like the company is theirs. Unless you have a real seat at the table, you should assume you have no influence over the business. That's what being an employee is (with no actual shares). You give up the risk by being an employee, and your only negotiating power is leaving.

> You give up the risk by being an employee This is not true. Employees carry salary risk. For most people, unplanned loss of salary is catastrophic in the short-term.

In the U.S and maybe Canada, that's true, so you have to be cautious about which company you join. I'm actually facing this right now, but I'm a contractor, and by accepting that the risk of technically running my own business, I can also just stop providing my services if they won't be paid for. Employees can also do this though.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#232

Post by brailsafe »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #157
roguecoder wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like you feel pretty helpless. Personally, I find that I have numerous avenues of negotiating power, even without unionization: 1. Do I recommend the company to my network? I can make it a lot cheaper or more expensive to hire. 2. How do I spend my time? All my technical choices will make certain changes easier down the line, and others harder. I work hard to understand the business context & help those c…

Yhose are all nice when negotiating working from home or something similarly minor - but when it comes to foundamental business model, these things are unlikely to move the needle.

That's pretty much what I was thinking while reading it. The difference between doing your work, and doing your work better than you're expected, is often unrewarded with any measurable security, probably because they're non-functional requirements and it's hard for some manager to sell their boss on the RoI. It's similarly hard to measure, if they'd even let you in on that data, how much of a minor influence you had on the business financially. Sales people meanwhile can just say "I sold this company on a $2m contract for services over the next 2 years"

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#233

Post by simondotau »

Apocryphon wrote: post #212
simondotau wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without access to a parallel universe generator, I don't see how you could. All I'm asserting is that I think that you can't reliably say that management or workers/employees are consistently in a better position to understand the best path forward for a company. Either one can be overly focused on replicating past success; either one can be wrong about opportunities for growth.

It could be put to the test if more industries, such as tech, experimented with unions, or otherwise empowering employees to share in decision-making. It is rather strange that in a field where there are all sorts of autonomous movements such as open source projects or hacker collectives, there is still the hierarchical belief that the managers knows best. Ah, well FOSS always do have their share of Benevolent Dictat…

If you want to look at it that way, then it's already being put to the test. Successful companies succeed, unsuccessful companies do not.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#234

Post by grishka »

brailsafe wrote: post #77
mikl wrote: post #17

> Over the next few years, Mapbox tried to find success in a variety of industries: journalism, social media, travel, ect. We never hit numbers that were big enough for our investors. In the process, we abandoned our focus on Open Source and Open data. Then, as is the case with many mapping companies, Mapbox shifted focus to the auto industry. My fear of loss of control fully materialized at this point. I’m a lifelon…

Employees should never feel like the company is theirs. Unless you have a real seat at the table, you should assume you have no influence over the business. That's what being an employee is (with no actual shares). You give up the risk by being an employee, and your only negotiating power is leaving.

> Employees should never feel like the company is theirs.

Imagine you've put your soul into it, and some years later they tell you that you can no longer pursue your vision and respect your users, and you're now a mere executor. Your opinion no longer matters, and the fact that you have one at all is a nuisance for the new management.

I personally don't work for the money, for me the money is very much a side effect of making the world a better place.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#235

Post by chobeat »

andrewmutz wrote: post #195
cyphar wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having companies be employee-owned (which is commonly referred to as a worker co-op) is absolutely a political topic -- implementing policies to allow more companies to become worker-owned was part of the UK Labour Party's manifesto in 2017. Just because something is political doesn't make it bad.

What government policies are standing in the way of worker co-ops?

free market policies. Proper Co-ops are designed not to exploit workers, local resources or destroy communities in order to create profit therefore have a hard time competing with ruthless profit-oriented companies in most markets. Co-ops create social value and are beneficial to workers and society alike, but they need to be nurtured actively.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#236

Post by M2Ys4U »

erlich wrote: post #185
anamexis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what you find enraging about this article. He clearly didn't want to go join another company – he joined Mapbox because he shared its early vision, and thought that original vision was worth fighting for.

He provides no ideas that would help the company succeed and find profitability. Only vague mention of returning to open source and that focusing on cars is bad because it bad for the environment. The company raised a huge amount of cash and needs to make money to survive. The mistake was probably raising too much money. So somehow, he thinks that the projects his colleagues „believe in“ are going to be more profitab…

>He provides no ideas that would help the company succeed and find profitability.

He didn't provide any ideas in this blog post, but that doesn't imply he doesn't have any ideas.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#237

Post by M2Ys4U »

erlich wrote: post #127
pm90 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not sure that “Unions slow innovation” is true. As a counter: in tech, its the workers that generate a significant amount of value by writing software and building products. Giving them more control and a seat at the table can be useful in encouraging long term investments in lieu of extreme short term thinking that VCs typically promote.

Google tried putting devs in charge and it didn’t work. It’s obvious too. Devs have such different incentives to owners. They want a nice place to work and play with fun tech and pad their CVs. They can leave at any moment too with zero concern for what happens when they’re gone. Employee equity is usually not enough to be worth fighting for. It’s just the ability to pay less salary or get good people.

>Google tried putting devs in charge and it didn’t work.

Putting devs in charge is not the same thing as giving them structured and respected input.

It's a massive jump from "give devs a seat at the table" to "putting devs in charge", and one I frankly find hard to believe is made in good faith.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#239

Post by erlich »

elil17 wrote: post #199
erlich wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if a minimum wage is set but there are people prepared to work for less? Or under lesser conditions? And a company cannot hire as many people because they have to pay them more? Isn’t it fairer to rely on the free market to set wages? There are shortages and surpluses in many industries that vary over time. Unions seem to just distort the market. Reviewing employment contracts can be done by one’s own la…

A free market is only fair if there are many labor purchasers and sellers. But when employers hold power (they are a major employer and they control many jobs in an area, they control your recommendations, the switching cost of changing jobs is too high) they can use that power to deflate wages below their fair market value. Unions create a level playing field to workers to negotiate with companies.

Agree but tech is not like this. Especially with the rise of remote work. Unions can also hold down wages by reducing flexibility in conditions to suit different employees preferences.

Re: On leaving Mapbox after 12 years

#240

Post by erlich »

slively wrote: post #193
erlich wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is paid for the employees backs and the business entity owns all the IP. Employees agree to this and can leave at any moment. They are welcome to start a co-op style company and give that a go. But would a VC want to invest in such a company? Prob not. People like to pretend we don’t live in a cut throat capitalist system and that it has worked out best.

Employees did not agree to the systems of corporate governance we have. There is no real choice, and not working means starving. Nobody is pretending we live in a different system, they are trying to change it. The level of defeatism you are showing is unfortunate. “It has worked out best” is a pretty amazing assertion to make.

Removing the profit incentive was pretty disasterous throughout history. I just can’t imagine a group of employees being able to veto strategic decisions can work. The system for this is startups which is working great. If you don’t like something, setup your own company and do things the way you want.

But if employees always demanded things to be run they way they want, then you couldn’t have this level of experimentation and innovation.

I think the obvious fact is that there are not many co op companies because it doesn’t work. It’s like: stop trying to change someone else’s company, and start your own and build it from the ground up with the governance structure you want.

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