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

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#671

Post by keybored » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #637

keybored wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should have asked her why she came to the US People sometimes have rose-colored glasses about emigrating to the US.

My dad was in the AF, and we rotated back and forth between the US and Europe. A friend of his married a British woman while stationed there, and took her back to the States when the tour was over. She endlessly complained about the US, and how Britain was so much better. Eventually, they were rotated to Germany. As soon as they arrived, she was off to England. 6 weeks later, she was back, and did not complain about…

Legend has it that Walter can smell anti-Americanism in the water, in fact all the way to Germany.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#672

Post by dheera » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #233

dheera wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leaving a toxic workplace means loosing fancy car and canceling expensive vacation. > Loosing job before that wealth threshold means homelessness and poverty. No, it doesn't. Maybe don't borrow money and buy a fancy car and vacations you can't afford? Buy a normal car with cash and go on normal middle-class vacations? If you work in an mid-level engineer capacity at a FAANG or Nvidia in the Bay Area you can easily…

Wow, 60-75% savings rate is incredible. > I can't afford rental properties or any of that Why not? Combine a 10% down payment and a bank loan. You can definitely afford it.

In my book, borrowing money to buy something I don't have the cash for does NOT mean I can afford it.

Back in the days when I didn't have money to buy a car with cash, I just didn't buy a car and used a bike and public transit to get everywhere.

I mean, maybe that's why I have a high savings rate.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#673

Post by xeromal » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #519

stavros wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is spot on. It's just that the priorities are different (even unemployed Greeks scrape enough money to have coffee with their friends), which can seem to Americans like we're lazy.

I was recently in Lisbon and was surprised that an espresso still costs 70 cents despite the influx of tourists and expats. If it's the same in Greece, I can easily see how an unemployed person can afford to hang out.

My buddy lived in greece for a bit and he laughed at how he could order a one euro coffee delivered to his room or office almost anywhere. He couldn't comprehend how it works.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#674

Post by blackhawkC17 » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #303

throwaway4pp24 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone else need to live in a desirable metro area? That sounds infeasible with so few of them. If there was more desirable metro areas, the prices of those few wouldn't be so high.

> Why does everyone else need to live in a desirable metro area Because if nothing else (and there is a lot of else) the tech/lawyer/finance folks want to have restaurants, shops, cinemas, street cleaners, utilities etc etc etc etc

Then they should be ready to pay higher rents for it, because everyone else also wants the same thing.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#675

Post by harhargange » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #645

hemantv wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individuals have visions not committee. We build monuments for individuals not for committee. Having said that no man is island of itself. Current incentive structure works great to motivate individuals to start companies

Seems like confirmation bias. We often than not like to lionize successful individuals, but plenty of visions are false or otherwise fail. On the other hand, we tend not to remember group efforts because it's harder to remember multiple individuals at a time. But surely they do exist. Was there a single visionary behind Bell Labs? Xerox PARC? The traitorous eight? The Apollo program? The Manhattan Project?

I believe there would be a single polymath who has skills in multiple fields, such as Oppenheimer who was great at science and administration who can lead a group for successful execution. For Apollo moon mission, it was the US president vision at the foremost. Even for TSMC and other companies such people exist. I don't want to say that entire credit goes to an individual but leaders with multiple skills are necessary.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#676

Post by xeromal » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

trinsic2 wrote: post #611

jjmarr wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every company should be owned by its employees" is the definition of socialism, which is social ownership of the means of production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism Specifically this is market socialism.

I don't give a fuck with the definition is. Its not helpful to this discussion, move on. Our world is being destroyed by capitalism, maybe its time to try something else.

Your comment seems unnecessarily hostile

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#677

Post by victorbjorklund » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #633

Nifty3929 wrote: post #594

I think it's easy to look at this with an existing, successful business in mind - but things don't always work out that way. How would a business like this get started? Usually the owner is the one who invests a lot of their own time and/or money into the business to get it off the ground in the first place. Would we be asking workers to pony up in those early years when failure is likely? With Central States, the st…

The article is arguing for ESOPs, basically stock options for employees. The examples cited are actually quite tame by tech industry standards: "During Central States’ worst year, employees earned the equivalent of 6 percent of their pay in stock, during their best they earned 26 percent." By contrast, FANG employees routinely make >50% of their compensation in stock, and it can be up to 80% in good years. As for how…

Getting some of your salary in stock options isn't really an employee owned company. How many % of total Google shares are owned by employees (excluding the founding employees)? 0,0000000001%? At least 50% would be required for it to be viewed as an employee owned company.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#678

Post by xivzgrev » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:17 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #656

> “It's hard to build true wealth for yourself if you don't have some type of ownership in something, and it's hard for most people to get ownership in something,” Ruger says. I think this is a really good insight. But it also touches on something that many of the HN crowd, especially in the Bay Area find uncomfortable: home ownership. One of the ownership assets that is most attainable by many Americans is a little…

Homes shouldn't be an investment. They've accidentally become that in the past few decades, and as a result, affordability is getting worse.

The better it does as an investment class, the worse it will become. It's a self perpetuating spiral.

I don't see the market solving this. I only see some regulation helping here - ie any tax filer can at most own 1 SFH (this includes married couples). So no second, third, tenth homes. Corporations and foreign entities also cannot own SFH - bye bye black rock & China.

Obviously some edge cases don't work (ie people who want to put their home in a trust), but generally speaking, people should not be able to own homes as investments.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#679

Post by victorbjorklund » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

nanomonkey wrote: post #626

em500 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to OECD data Greece workers work the most hours in the EU, and in most years also more than American workers[1]. So by that metric they prioritize happiness less than most others? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

I'd assume that is because they take on jobs that they'll be happy with, instead of what ever job makes the most money. If you're content with what you do, you can do it sustainably for the rest of your life, if your only motivation to do your job is the money, then you'll burn out and retire early.

Not the case. People working in say fast food in Greece have 6 workday weeks (their weekends are just 1 day per week). Doubt people are more happy cleaning restaurant toilets in Greece vs the same toilets in US.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#680

Post by dheera » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:19 PM UTC

mnau wrote: post #270

dheera wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize that for the first N years of Nvidia, he probably made less than minimum wage, AND had immense responsibilities on his back to try to get the company to profitability? That's the risk. He's getting a 30M paycheck today only because he built a trillion dollar company from nothing and sacrificed the job opportunities he could have had at other companies for three decades.

Past is irrelevant. He too the risk and got handsomely rewarded for incredible success as he should. But that is his stock he kept from founding the company. Not today. He should of course still be CEO of Nvidia and get the money(stock awards), because unlike others, Nvidia execution is excellent (see market cap) and has been for decades, but that is not really any risk for him personally.

What do you have against him?

I say give him the 30 million dollar package because he's the only guy I can think of that has hope of turning NVDA into a a 10 trillion dollar company in a few years and I can't think of any other CEO that would do better than him.

And sure, maybe at that point his comp will be 300 million, that's fine, my NVDA stock will 10X as well and I'll be more than happy.