> the pill to swallow is that most employees including managers are grist to the mill
Businesses exist to make money. If you want a commune instead, join one!
Businesses exist to make money. If you want a commune instead, join one!
Many workers primarily work towards helping the boss grow their head count, or helping the middle-manager with their emotional state.
Hah, this is hilarious. So very "The Office".
This kind of perverse incentive comes up when the rank and file has no meaningful way to profit off the company's success, and so it instead becomes more profitable (in future profits from the inflated resume, or kickbacks/favors from vendors, etc) to act against the company. Just like in security bug bounties, companies should reward their employees more than an external malicious actor would, otherwise they will choose the rational option.
> the pill to swallow is that most employees including managers are grist to the mill
Meaning that employees are disposable, and their only purpose is to produce value for the business.
Your reply:
> Businesses exist to make money. If you want a commune instead, join one!
Thus agreeing with the parent that the sole purpose of a business is to make money above all else.
My reply:
> That's not the only reason why businesses can exist.
Your reply:
> Tell us about a business that does not exist to make money.
This is rhetorical sleight-of-hand to change the counterpoint from "prove me wrong by showing me a business whose purpose is not to maximally exploit employees to maximize the amount of money it makes" to "prove me wrong by showing me a business that does not make money".
I could respond to the latter with an easy "some businesses lose money and exist because the owner finds the process fun", but you could counter with the No True Scotsman of "a business that doesn't make money is a hobby, not a business".
Instead, I will respond to the former, which is the original point, and say that there are plenty of mom-and-pop (or larger) businesses, as well as cooperatives, whose goals are not actually to exploit the worker to maximize the amount of money they make, but is primarily to give the owners a good work/life balance, or to help their community, or to be owned collectively by all workers.
The American-style "walk over anyone to make money" isn't actually the only way to do business, but the kind of person who thinks it is will generally make the tautological argument of "if you aren't maximizing your profits, you aren't a real business".
If you run a business that loses money, who is going to pay for those losses?
Mom and pop businesses definitely do it to make money. They aren't charities. They pay taxes on the money they make. And if they don't make money, what are they going to live on?
Non-profits are not out to make money, but (again) they are not considered businesses.
We're arguing against your "at all costs" because you did imply it. Maximizing money earned at the cost of employees well being and happiness is ONE way of making money, but not the only way. You can earn money but not seek to maximize the money at the cost of burning out employees, for example.
Consider I want to enter a marathon with the intention of winning it. Do you think that implies I want to club the other athletes so I can win "at all costs"?
Others have already explained that while a business must make money, that's not always the most important thing, there are competing goals (not excluding money, but sometimes as important).
And if you didn't understand the original comment by stavros, then he clarified what he meant. So now you have the chance to stand corrected: he meant making money at the expense of all else, including worker happiness. This point has been made more than once already, you cannot have missed it.
I understood his original statement, and did not impute additional meanings into it. None of you have accepted that I did not write "at any cost".
> clubbing other athletes since winning is the most important thing is bad, and that if we don't like it we should "join a commune".
And there you invented YET ANOTHER strawman to bash me with.
Frankly, I'd like you to produce a clever argument that challenges me. Using logical fallacies, like strawmen, is kinda boring. It's easy enough to google the list of logical fallacies, and then you'll be able to avoid them and it'll be much harder to dismantle your argument.
The replies to your comment are push back against your attitude of "biz make money, don't like it join a commune", in the context of grinding up employees.
We're saying there's a middle ground, where some businesses will sacrifice some profit in exchange for taking care of their employees, instead of treating them as disposable.
Definitely, I didn't mean to imply that every business in the US wants to profit at all costs, I just meant that the culture skews towards that. The US culture towards work tends to have a certain response to cases like one where someone has a popular product/service/business but would rather maximize work/life balance than income.
In other cultures, that's seen as much more of a reasonable choice than in the US, where the response tends to be more on the "I can't believe you're giving up tons of profit for more free time!" or similar.
Surely you can give an actual example of a business not formed to make money?
P.S. When you talk about bad faith, I recommend that you do not invent things I did not write, put those things in quotes pretending that I did write them, and then argue with that strawman.
> "Instead, I will respond to the former, which is the original point, and say that there are plenty of mom-and-pop (or larger) businesses, as well as cooperatives, whose goals are not actually to exploit the worker to maximize the amount of money they make, but is primarily to give the owners a good work/life balance, or to help their community, or to be owned collectively by all workers"
Those are not hobbies and will not be categorized as such.
The point is that the goal of making money is not necessarily meant at the cost of crushing employees or considering them disposable. The person you're replying to is saying that's a very US-centric way of looking at businesses (e.g. maximize shareholder value even if it costs happiness) but that's not necessarily the only way of making money. It's very cynical to think it's the only way, because it reinforces the status quo (what are you going to do if you don't like it? That's business, join a commune instead!).
I never wrote that it was.
But as an employee, you and the business sign a contract in advance. The contract spells out the obligations of the company to the employee, and the obligations of the employee to the company. If you expect more than that, negotiate it as part of your agreement.
Also, if the company does not make money, how are the employees going to get paid? The company has to cut expenses, and that means some of the employees have to be let go. Companies also regularly evaluate employees, and if they are not delivering value in excess of what they cost, they'll be let go.
Yes, you can be let go. You'll also get the severance package you agreed to in your employment contract. You can also quit at any time for any reason. It's a fair arrangement. It's not a marriage.
There are other ways to conduct business that are less exploitative without requiring a specific clause in the contract saying the employee will be treated well.
Companies lay off employees for all sorts of evil reasons unrelated to "we will go under otherwise". There's reason to believe the "great layoffs season" of a few years back was at least partly an act of collusion by big tech companies (which it then cascades to smaller companies) which had more to do with regulating down wages than with them risking going under.
Someone mentioned a few weeks back Nadella's memo explaining some big layoffs at Microsoft where he rambled about how it seemed contradictory that the company was doing so well yet they were letting go so many employees "which we've known and learned from for years" yet "the Lord works in mysterious ways" (ok, I made up this last phrase, but what he said amounted to the same). He failed to point out a single specific reason, and in particular he never mentioned "or else Microsoft's profits will go down" or whatever. I guess if Microsoft ex employees don't like it they can go join a commune!
P.S. as an example of how American this is, in some countries companies cannot simply let someone go unless they can provide legal reasons for this (bad performance beyond all fair chances, justified cost cuttings, etc). You can argue whether this is good or bad, but the point is: there is more than one way of conducting business.
It's not necessary to spell out in the contract what the legal requirements are.
The words "exploitative" and "treated well" are very fuzzy words, and everyone has a different idea of what they mean.
> for all sorts of evil reasons
Then the employee can press charges or sue.
> regulating down wages
How that works out in the real world is companies cheat on these cartels. Remember when Jobs complained that Google was violating their "no poaching" agreement? Cartels are unstable and unable to enforce their cartels, so they don't really work.
Nadella does not need to justify his layoffs. If they don't fit into Microsoft's plans, they get laid off. Microsoft does not owe them a job. BTW, I know many people who have left Microsoft for a panoply of reasons. Many went to other companies, many started their own, some succeeded, some didn't, some went back to Microsoft. It's a chaotic, dynamic system. I also know some that made incredible fortunes off of their stock options. How horrible that Microsoft minted tens of thousands of multimillionaires out of their employees! Some even into 9 figures. What a hell-hole! Microsoft is probably the worst example you could mention as an evil employer.
Dummy me that didn't get hired on by MSFT in the 1980s. Or I shoulda invested everything I had into MSFT stock. When I went to the doc for a catscan, I asked the operator to set the dial to 1987 so I could tell my foolish earlier self to buy buy buy MSFT! Sadly, the catscan machine had the side effect of wiping my memory of the trip.
> You can argue whether this is good or bad
It's bad, because it makes businesses highly reluctant to hire people, which makes the economy less prosperous.
Only if his goal is to make money at all costs, which is the stance you're taking even if you protest you are not.
> It's bad, because it makes businesses highly reluctant to hire people, which makes the economy less prosperous.
(I preempted your reply, because it wasn't the point to debate whether employee protection regulations are right or wrong; the point was to show you there are different ways of conducting a business that are not merely about making maximum money).
Again, this (and pretty much everything else you wrote in your last comment) is a very American way of doing business, precisely stavros' point.
Thankfully there are other, more respectful ways, as others have pointed out repeatedly and you insist in ignoring.
> How horrible that Microsoft minted tens of thousands of multimillionaires out of their employees!
Complete non sequitur, since you're so fond of calling out logical fallacies.
> Dummy me that didn't get hired on by MSFT in the 1980s
Yes, I'm sure you'd be a millionaire and would be spared arguing with random guys on HN. Life's a bitch.
Why? That was never claimed. The claim was that businesses can have other reasons for existing in addition to making money. Furthermore, those other reasons can be a higher priority for a particular business.
This implies that this is the primary reason businesses exist. Or did you mean "that's just one reason, it might even be very low on the list of reasons, but it is one"?
Because, if you meant that, I don't know why we're arguing about meaningless pedantry and conversational sleight of hand.
I know of many businesses for which making money is not the primary reason to exist. And the majority of businesses do not try to maximize profit at all costs, even when their primary reason for existence is to make money.
Random example: I know someone who teaches singing. She no longer employs other people, but has done so in the past. The IRS agrees that it is a business. She makes money from it and depends on the money from it. She has other skills that would earn her more money elsewhere. If her business made moderately more money but no longer taught anyone to sing better, she would stop running the business and do something else.
If you're going to say that the business's existence depends on the function of making money, as in if that purpose were removed then it would be called a hobby and not a business, then that's a No True Scotsman argument and it's pointless to discuss.
(Basically, I'm with stavros on this.)
There's that strawman again. The rest of your argument depends on that, and so is invalid.
I know lots of people who started businesses with the intention of making money (including me). None of them were willing to go at it "at all costs". I don't know where you get this strawman.
> the pill to swallow is that most employees including managers are grist to the mill
You can't pretend that this part of the conversation doesn't exist simply because you didn't write those words. You were replying to someone who very specifically said this, you were agreeing with them, and to then basically claim "oh I didn't write it, I merely heavily implied it by agreeing with the parent" is disingenuous.
A lot of the bad behavior in corporate America comes from signalling (for above) and posturing (for below), not from finding ways to make money
(Communes often have the same signalling and posturing problems, but they don't have to additionally worry about shareholders and bonus payments)