Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by BbzzbB » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

fimdomeio wrote: post #67

sitkack wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is neat, so do members barter between each other? Or would that hurt accounting into supporting the central structure, or does it support direct barter?

Members do barter between each other, and members sometimes organize micro-credits between each other the central structure takes no percentage from those transactions. We encourage them to happen even if they are a bit more work with no moneraty compensation to the central structure. Whatever makes projects and cooperators thrive in the coop the management will very likely support it. It makes the whole ecossystem h…

How does it work from a commitment standpoint? Do you have to give something like a full time equivalent once you're in, or you're free to do how many hours you want (I presume with some minimum) while there is available work overlapping with your skillset?

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

#92

Post by adwn » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #22

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…

You think that there are no hard business decisions to make in established – i.e., non-software – industries? It's just smooth sailing along predefined routes?

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

#93

Post by pmoriarty » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

KingOfCoders wrote: post #25

jasfi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

As just another data point, I've had fantastic experiences in startups.

It really depends a lot on the people you're working with, and if you're a good fit.

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

#94

Post by Joel_Mckay » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

Shoue wrote: post #81

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #72

Some of the worst politics I ever saw were in nonprofit entities. Primarily, it was because some with dominant personalities made decisions that were not rational, informed, and or fair. The faithful talent tend to get hurt the most, as they invest more resources being driven by their ideals. I am all for profit sharing, but someone has to take responsibility for risk mitigation. The worst firms are ones where every…

Cooperatives aren't nonprofit entities – they can be, sure, but many of them are profit-driven. The claim that cooperatives act irrationally (and the implication that they're less efficient) requires some factual data to back that claim up, otherwise it's just that – an anecdotal claim. Here's academic data to dismiss those claims: > Labor-managed firms are as productive as conventional firms, or more productive, in…

Many have taken issue with William Forster Lloyd's assertion: "tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use, act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action in case there are too many users related to the available resources."

Rule by consensus is messy, inefficient, and ultimately prone to failure in commercial settings without slave labor.

I am not suggesting you are wrong for interjecting off-topic straw-man arguments, but your naive input lends credibility to the observations on human nature.

Have a wonderful day =)

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

#95

Post by AstralStorm » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

fimdomeio wrote: post #31

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…

My personal theory (I don't think it is very popular amongst my fellow coops) is that co-ops need well defined hierarchies that have the power to take a lot of decisions and the dutty to report on the decisions taken and the resoning behind it but with that also well defined rules to make sure power changes hands via democratic processes every x amount of years.

Your personal theory has what backing? Care to share why you think hierarchy is necessary?

The only semi-valid reason to have a hierarchy in a cooperative is to optimize voting and reduce meetings. That would be less necessary if your cooperative runs in a more digital way and concerns of various members are known ahead of time.

Otherwise hierarchical cooperatives can be literally corrupted by the hierarchy or sold out, turning them into an almost regular company with board of shareholders.

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

#96

Post by AstralStorm » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

onphonenow wrote: post #83

mihaaly wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unsure if fast turns is a thing of hierarchical organizations, especially the successful ones, what I see that the bigger (some say more successful) it is the slower it turns. Period. Also it's will to turn is lower by getting bigger, trying to stick to past success and methods as much as pussible because every change is constly and every change is risky, and the members don't want to risk the livelyhood of thei…

Interesting - so in your view Elon as the top person in Twitter hierarchy will not be able to change Twitter except very slowly ?

My view (not OP) is that Elon will break the company and get it to fail.

He does not understand that Twitter is an ad driven business which also means PR is critical or you don't get advertisers.

Most businesses that tried to pivot from ad driven to subscribers have failed. One that tried to do so in so dramatic a way? Never heard of it.

Elon is not doing a simple management style change, he's changing everything with next to zero money. Unlike a startup, a company the size of Twitter cannot compromise what is feeding them without failing quickly. A startup can survive on small VC funding for a pivot, Twitter eats millions of dollars to just operate.

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

#97

Post by pessimizer » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Time_Store

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

#98

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

bluesign wrote: post #30

dogma1138 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are coops where a union acts as a VC of sorts. Unions are supposed to take over bussinesses and turn them into Coops. Workplace democracy is always the end goal, decent compensation is just a step along that route and arguably even at times a distraction.

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

#99

Post by Jotra7 » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #94

Shoue wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooperatives aren't nonprofit entities – they can be, sure, but many of them are profit-driven. The claim that cooperatives act irrationally (and the implication that they're less efficient) requires some factual data to back that claim up, otherwise it's just that – an anecdotal claim. Here's academic data to dismiss those claims: > Labor-managed firms are as productive as conventional firms, or more productive, in…

Many have taken issue with William Forster Lloyd's assertion: "tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use, act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action in ca…

[dead]

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

#100

Post by carapace » Sun, Nov 27, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

FWIW I'm starting a Mutual Benefit Corporation. (It's non-profit, but not a charity.) It's not a coop, but the board works by a Quaker-inspired consensus model (rather than Robert's Rule of Order or something like that.)

I realized that I didn't want to start a regular startup. I want to do business, but without the pressure of maximizing profits.

We're going to do things like: create extremely simple and elegant computer systems; build robots to collect litter and clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; acquire land and create parks that double as agriculturally productive "food forests"; build fancy hich-tech ecologically-integrated homes and shops; etc...

(If you were to trawl though my comment history you'd find me yammering on about all this for years now. I finally got my hands on a tiny bit of capital. In a rocket metaphor, this is ignition and liftoff. The engine is roaring and I'ma crack the sky.)

Email in profile. :)