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Comment by advisedwang | Hacker News Reader

For profit companies simply don't work on the majority vote of employees, and it's disingenuous for someone who has become wealthy from having the actual reigns to appeal to this when they happen to agree with him.

If a vote of employees actually mattered we'd see more time off, less working hours, more of the profit go to employees, and maybe even less socially destructive companies. You know what, Paul, please have Y-Combinator companies make employee votes binding!

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> If a vote of employees actually mattered we'd see more time off, less working hours, more of the profit go to employees, and maybe even less socially destructive companies.

All the companies I've worked at have had QA session with CEO and this exactly what ppl ask about and ofcourse C level ppl give useless junk "answers" and call it day. Maybe paulg gives employees real answers.

If a C-suite tells you "you miss the big picture" without explaining what the big picture is or "the issue is with partners/investors", then it's usually time to run away as fast as you can.

Office drones settle for junk "answers", and it is disadvantageous to be one.

But of course employees can vote, either individually with their feet, or as groups via unions!

I have to believe he might be willing, if the threshold for a successful vote were 95% of all employees making a credible threat to leave forever en masse!

While organized labor’s history is a mixed bag, it seems to include ample examples of cold-blooded titans of industry (with far more willingness to act with contempt and physical violence) bending to the will of a far lesser proportion of employees taking far milder action.

When employees can vote with their feet, and in this case they absolutely can, yeah they kind of do work that way.

Yeah but for non profits it’s worse than for profits and that’s the point. At for profit companies everyone (the board included) is trying to make money. That’s the end goal, and most decisions go towards that goal so even if employees don’t agree with a decision, they can at least see the decision as coherent towards an agreed upon goal. At non profits the board and the employees desires are much more likely to be in large conflict in my opinion because the board has no financial stake in the company. This OpanAI thing is a huge example of this but it also happens all the time at normal non profits. The board at non profits is randos with jobs separate from the non profit being on the board for fun but they get ultimate decision marking power when the employees actually work there and spend 40 hours a week or whatever doing shit for the company.

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