[HN Gopher] Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career ch...
___________________________________________________________________
Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech
Author : altras
Score : 204 points
Date : 2022-11-27 08:13 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| Jensson wrote:
| Nowhere did he mention salary levels. The main reason we work is
| to make money, if worker cooperatives makes you less money then
| that would be the biggest reason to not join one. I really doubt
| there are many cooperatives paying more than FAANG, so why not
| just join one of those instead?
| fimdomeio wrote:
| Co-ops are in the first place about shared ownership which is a
| big help in bringing meaningfullness to the work one does. If
| the amount of money earned is the biggest motivation then I
| would say a cooperative is probably not the right fit in most
| situations.
| altras wrote:
| There's no extensive research on this topic. I really doubt
| coops are paying more than FAANG and if the only thing that
| you're after is money then coops are surely not your thing and
| that's OK ;)
|
| In tech though, money is not the main unique value proposition
| and I would suggest getting curious about investing in
| happiness[1] so one can increase it's baselines[2]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNZk-N6uDcg [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTGGyQS1fZE
| Jensson wrote:
| Working at Google for a few years made me lots of money so
| now I don't need to work for many years. Working a lower paid
| job means I would need to waste more time working and less
| time doing what makes me happy.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I have the money and left the shitty organization that
| produced it, and now I don't have to work, and find after
| some time of happy relief, all my hobby interests do not
| provide enough sense of purpose.
|
| I will not voluntarily go back to a bad work culture, nor
| just be a free volunteer somewhere, and this co-op idea
| sounds _very_ interesting now.
|
| If it can pay even merely acceptable, then it would not be
| wasting time to have been doing that all the time, if the
| sales pitch is at all true.
|
| I never chose to work in the huge shitty company, I was
| working in a small but continuously successful company that
| was sold to the big company. For 20 years I was perfectly
| happy making good but not faang money, and I would have
| loved to just keep doing that forever. (and the big company
| didn't even pay well, my money came from being a part owner
| and got part of the sale price)
|
| There is always a chance to find a good fit and a good
| culture like that by specifically looking for smaller
| normal companies I suppose, but it seems to be uncommon. I
| think I just had a rare good gig.
|
| But my rambling repetative point again is just that it's
| not wasting time to make a bit less such that you do have
| to keep working at something useful, because now that I
| don't have to, I want to. The daily life does matter more
| than the cash, even if the cash gets to the point where you
| don't have to work at all. I had a good daily life and a
| good sense of worth and purpose, since the company did
| upstanding boring but necessary and useful to society back
| end work not just any scammy way to extract cash from some
| process, and my part of that work was interesting, required
| me to be good and clever and thoughtful, and was
| appreciated and respected.
|
| I don't have to suffer the bad parts of work, but I also no
| longer have the good parts of work, and even working on
| open source projects doesn't replace it.
|
| Maybe this co-op idea is a way that more people can have
| that ideal life I had instead of just me being very lucky.
| I'm interested in it _now_ let alone as my 25-years-ago
| self who just needs a job.
| leereeves wrote:
| I think coops are meant to be the thing that makes you
| happy. Obviously it's not for everyone, but a lot of people
| really want that sense of community.
| Lutger wrote:
| Regardless of the commercial success of coops, your premise
| that the main reason for work is money does not hold up to
| scrutiny. If merely adequately compensated, money turns out to
| be really low on the list of things that actually motivates
| people.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| If this is true why do well paying companies have their pick
| of employees and less well paying ones have to take their
| left overs? I exaggerate for effect but most companies don't
| have anything like an attractive mission so they need to
| compete on pay, somewhat on benefits, but overwhelmingly on
| pay.
|
| Google and Goldman have no trouble hiring.
| jlokier wrote:
| The well paying companies have no trouble hiring _someone_
| good, but I wouldn 't say they have _" their pick"_ of
| employees. There are a lot of people out there who politely
| decline or ignore every approach from FAANG recruiters, for
| example, because the mission or company are unattractive
| and high pay doesn't make up for it.
|
| So from a statistical perspective you can say that paying
| well means they have a lot of people to choose from. But
| some types of mission are greatly affected by the few
| particular people who are really specialised or inspired in
| some area or another, and those people aren't always
| willing to give up their personal dreams to work for an
| unattractive company just for a larger pay packet.
| OJFord wrote:
| People differ, not everyone wants to work there. Also
| Goldman & perhaps not Google but Amazon have infamously
| high churn - suggesting to me the money's not enough to
| stay (maybe could never be) vs. next best, so they move on
| now they have the badge for their CV.
| jnurmine wrote:
| I see this claim a lot in different contexts, and personally
| have never quite understood who it really talks about.
|
| It cannot talk about everyone, because there are many
| different kinds of people and work sectors. I'd expect the
| motivational priorities to exist on a continuum, on which
| some people are more motivated by money than others. Also,
| the "adequate compensation" varies from person to person;
| some are happy with some level, some are never happy.
|
| I mean, I find it extremely hard to believe that things like,
| say, "respect from co-workers" and "interesting work tasks"
| would factor in as the primary source of motivation for e.g.
| anyone working a low-paying job and living from paycheck to
| paycheck, regardless of who exactly (worker, employer, state,
| someone else) thinks the compensation is adequate. In
| contrast, for someone who already possesses a hefty surplus
| of money, obtaining more money probably plays a smaller role
| in the overall motivation.
|
| However, none of this means that it's generalizeable to say
| _all_ working people _are not_ primarily motivated by money
| (or _are_ primarily motivated, for that matter). One could
| just as well argue the opposite: (for some people) money
| turns out to be really high on the list of things which
| motivates them. Whichever way, it still is weird to claim
| this as an absolute, applying to everyone.
|
| To put this into a more concrete context: a C-suite executive
| of a Fortune 500 company might say "money is not my primary
| motivation, energizing coffee machine discussions, personal
| fulfillment, yada yada" -- they already are on a level with
| plenty of material wealth and opportunities for recreation.
| In contrast, a single parent sanitary worker is unlikely to
| claim motivation comes from "I'm energized by the interesting
| work tasks" or something else than money; certainly they are
| motivated by being able to pay rent and buy food for their
| children and would rather have more money than less.
| zimbatm wrote:
| The C-suite probably does it more for power, influence,
| impact than the money. Of course it's nice to have some
| more money, but that's not going to meaninfully change your
| life at that point.
|
| Of course if you don't have enough to live by, the main
| goal is going to be to earn more or just to survive
|
| Past that, more money helps remove day-to-day problems in
| life, at various levels. But it becomes less important than
| other factors like having a healthy and meaningful life. I
| think it's assumed that the generalization applies to that
| level.
| ilyt wrote:
| Okay but coop also doesn't automatically mean your happiness
| in work will grew.
|
| Some people will be perfectly happy working in a team with
| manager shielding them from most of the office politics vs
| pretty much having to take part in politics in coop
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Autonomy, real ownership, democratic decision making, profit
| sharing, etc are all reasons why someone would want to join a
| cooperative.
|
| As an employee, you are at the whims of your employers when it
| comes to something as important as the way you're able to
| support yourself and your family.
| _puk wrote:
| Because in the current climate that's not a sure thing..
|
| If FAANGs* remove themselves from the equation due to hiring
| freezes or redundancies a lot of people will be left earning
| below FAANG pay in a non co-operative environment.
|
| It is proposing joining a co-operative as a possible
| alternative to that.
|
| That, and it's not always about the money. It's surprisingly
| rewarding working outside of monetisation of attention.
|
| *Or whatever the latest acronym is
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Why don't we all just join FAANG and make the big bucks? That's
| kind of a ridiculous statement on its face. There are multiple
| reasons why someone may not want to work for a FAANG company.
| bitwize wrote:
| I agree it should've been added to the list, but you might not
| like the form it would take: "Are you a moneygrubbing asshole
| who's only concerned with compensation? Maybe a co-op isn't for
| you. Go work for an oil company or something instead, you
| fascist."
| timbit42 wrote:
| I'm sure it depends on what skills you have.
| tenarshins wrote:
| I'm actually part of a founding team of a for-profit tech & other
| consulting cooperative. Not because of any altruistic or
| idealistic thing, but because we have a good team that has
| fantastic ability and wants to try doing some independent work,
| but having shared systems, and a centralized umbrella to do C2C
| under is nice.
| eddyfromtheblok wrote:
| I helped run a housing coop in the US several years ago, not
| something that I ever thought to put on my tech resume, but I'd
| be interested to hear if someone wants to start a digital coop
| near me, I suppose..
| ankaAr wrote:
| The article is ok doing the questions if you wants this or this
| and if you would like to work or build a coop if you wants based
| on that.., and the situation that you has been fired.
|
| Anyway it is very naive at least.
|
| Where the clients come from?
|
| If you has been fired, look for another job.
|
| If you has been fired and you were working with other 10 people
| that are skilled, and you like to work together and you knows
| someone that want your skills or you know how to sell yourself
| and you wants to take your own decisions as a group (like in a
| pirate boat), then yes, a coop is a choice.
|
| It is not the panacea, it is hard, you will deal with things than
| never before faced, and is not like you are with people to face
| that together, you are alone together to face that. I talk for
| myself and coming form IT i hate bourocracy. And you must to deal
| with that every day, or at least you must to know that some
| people must to deal with that, someone. It is a must. Spoiler:
| you can hire people to do that for youyou, but the reason you
| build a coop is that you are a worker and you wants to
| participate in the board. Both.
|
| A coop is not the answer of your lack of employment. It is the
| answer to deal equally with a capitalist model, inside the
| capitalism.., something like that.
|
| Anyway, I love coops, the trustworthy level you needs, the equal
| vote for decisions you have, it is your company, you will take
| care of that. But everyone must to be in the same boat.
|
| No, if you has been fired look for another job. A coop needs more
| from you than that.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Are there any examples? Can anyone post a url/domain of a
| cooperative? Page of comments no proof they exist.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Here is a small list:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cooperatives
| satisfice wrote:
| I have worked in a consensus environment and I know it can work.
| The concern I have is when it doesn't work.
|
| It doesn't take many sneaky sociopaths or psychopaths to subvert
| a system built on assumptions of good faith and good will. And
| even among good people, strong visions arise which may clash with
| other strong visions.
|
| I need to know there is a clear method of resolving conflict,
| otherwise I am confident that all those smiling people are going
| to be carrying concealed knives.
| willbudd wrote:
| 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 their own one-man
| company in a freelancer kind of way, and instead to focus on
| streamlining the process of establishing ad-hoc micro contracts
| whenever collaborative tasks are to be undertaken -- while still
| keeping the community aspect of a cooperative in place somehow.
| At the same time, I guess the reason this isn't done more
| extensively, is simply due to the overhead of having to reach a
| consensus of the worth of contributions on a task-by-task
| basis...
| fimdomeio wrote:
| Trust is built over time. Specially on the trenches when
| dealing with difficult situations. The initial parts of a coop,
| need a little bit of trust but mostly people that can align
| their self interest with a collective interest.
| akvadrako wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Time_Store
| Jensson wrote:
| > those who bring in more earn credits which can be used to
| fund new projects or bump up salaries to a point.
|
| So the solution to the problems with cooperatives is to
| introduce capitalism? Why not just make a normal company with
| normal money instead?
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I've found the comments on this article interesting partly
| because of the discussion of specific implementation
| details without bandying about broad bucket terms like
| "capitalism".
|
| So maybe you can be more specific and avoid trigger terms
| like that. What's wrong with having a coop that still
| rewards for performance?
| akvadrako wrote:
| One difference is the reduced friction of starting new
| projects. Starting a new company now is major task, from
| legal to funding starting salaries to developer setup, but
| in a company you have everything ready to go.
|
| Some other differences are:
|
| 1. Salaries are limited, so hopefully more money stays
| available for new projects.
|
| 2. All the source code, docs and databases are shared.
| timbit42 wrote:
| I would want to work in a couple of cooperatives before forming
| one myself.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Weirdly most large companies are surprisingly similar to co-ops.
| No, seriously bear with me.
|
| hierarchies replace meetings - but there are still awful
| interminable meetings because agreement still needs to be reached
| because work is too complex to allow for total command and
| control because management will screw it up
|
| salaries are held down for the good of the organism (try
| outbidding one line of business for a really good person or team
| and see if that's allowed)
|
| the failure point is equitable sharing but if you took all
| fortune 500 companies and allocated shares to employees it would
| be hard to tell the difference. Especially as the managers would
| be up for election - you tend to get that when your employees own
| the company.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| 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 narcissist thinks they are the CEO. The more money at
| stake... the quicker things tend to turn nasty.
|
| Best of luck =)
| dontbenebby wrote:
| > Some of the worst politics I ever saw were in nonprofit
| entities.
|
| Same.
| Shoue wrote:
| 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 all industries, and use their inputs
| efficiently; but in several industries conventional firms would
| produce more with their current input levels if they organized
| production like labor-managed firms. On average overall, firms
| would produce more using the labor-managed firms' industry-
| specific technologies. Labor-managed firms do not produce at
| inefficiently low scales
|
| Source: Fakhfakh, F., Perotin, V., & Gago, Mo. (2012).
| Productivity, Capital, and Labor in Labor-Managed and
| Conventional Firms: An Investigation on French Data. ILR
| Review, 65(4), 847-879. doi:10.1177/001979391206500404
|
| Similar results were also found to hold in an older study by
| Craig and Pencavel in 1995.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| 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 =)
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| >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.
|
| I find that comment odd, given that they cited papers that
| directly spoke about the functioning of coops. Conversely,
| your comment mentioning the tragedy of the commons seems
| very off topic. Could you explain more how it relates?
|
| Best of luck =)
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| In this case YC is a shared resource, and two accounts
| segued a thread about personal experience in an attempt
| to defend an unrelated issue they presented themselves.
|
| Again, if you have specific examples of functional firms
| outside subsidized communist regimes, it would be more
| relevant.
|
| Have a glorious day =)
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| > In this case YC is a shared resource, and two accounts
| segwayed a thread about personal experience in an attempt
| to defend an unrelated issue they presented themselves.
|
| I'm afraid I don't follow. The commenter above cited
| papers concerning the topic (coops/labor managed
| companies). You made a comment about personal experience
| (nonprofit politics) and then also equated it with the
| tragedy of the commons (which seems as if you conflated
| nonprofits with coops and the commons- i.e., three things
| that appear adverse to private profit). It seems as if
| you are shifting the goal posts now in a way that means
| we aren't going to understand each other, which is a
| shame.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Most coops tend to be registered as nonprofits in my part
| of the world for tax reasons, and others have an elected
| board which distributes earnings though a share structure
| to members.
|
| You have failed to provide data to explain the context of
| your input. Thus, still remain off-topic, and orthogonal
| to the line of observations corroborated with other
| members experiences.
|
| As initially inferred, unaccountable individuals that
| normally get away with cowing people tend to destroy
| shared environments which should be otherwise sustainable
| in theory.
|
| I agree without relevant data your perspective may be
| beyond comprehension.
|
| May you find a path to happiness =)
| greenie_beans wrote:
| did you read the paper they shared?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Off-topic Rhetoric about productivity is unrelated to
| observations of political nastiness from covert
| narcissists responsible for polarizing toxic
| environments.
|
| Talented people with options tend to identify such
| situations, become disenchanted with being exploited, and
| eventually leave.
|
| Enhance your calm =)
| Jotra7 wrote:
| bernawil wrote:
| > Cooperatives aren't nonprofit entities - they can be, sure,
| but many of them are profit-driven.
|
| A tech consultancy cooperative works exactly like most non-
| profits: they don't post a profit and distribute everything
| as salaries. The "non-profit" part is for the entity, not the
| people running it.
| dontbenebby wrote:
| I've been looking for something like that for a long time. I
| still remember someone remarking to me at Schmoo that one day
| I'll need a " _real bank_ " rather than a credit union, and how
| cold they got when I replied "Well, I've got savings, checking,
| they give a good rate on home loans, and while you can't beat the
| market I'm getting about 9% on my index funds. Other than help
| you cheat on your taxes, what specifically does Chase Manhattan
| do that [redacted] does not?"
|
| He replied " _Things like that are why you 'll never find a real
| job._" and stormed off.
|
| (I was trying to escape my PhD at the time, but the world being
| what it was in the Summmer after Snowden, somehow the only offer
| I got was a K Street NGO, and absolutely zero companies that
| would pay me a fair wage for my labor.)
|
| Anyways, if anyone is looking for something with information
| security experience for their co-op feel free to reply -- I'd
| love to log out of this nym, which was supposed to only last for
| a weekend in Las Vegas, forever, but I can not do that until I
| complete my... mission.
| mypastself wrote:
| It's high time I stopped reading Medium articles shared here.
|
| I got the distinct feeling I was being sold something while
| reading it, and the last paragraph confirmed it. It's filled with
| vague, corporatey platitudes about ego and altruism, and there's
| almost nothing in it about how this concept applies specifically
| to _tech_.
|
| The supposed "cons" sound like the ad equivalents of leading
| questions:
|
| > The relationships in a cooperative are adult-adult oriented
|
| > All of those might be very painful if you're not used to
| vocalizing your inner thoughts in non-violent ways
|
| Well jeez, I guess I'll skip it if I'm not allowed to respond to
| assigned Jira tickets with my fists.
| politelemon wrote:
| A not insignificant portion of HN posts are selling something
| and not all are related to tech. It's worth having a similar
| skepticism for other posts, it's eye opening
| Shoue wrote:
| > I got the distinct feeling I was being sold something while
| reading it, and the last paragraph confirmed it.
|
| You mean the last paragraph where they _volunteer_ to have
| coaching sessions with people? "Selling" usually implies an
| exchange of money or an expectation of something in return, but
| there's no product here - the author is offering their time for
| free to help others start or join cooperatives. Is it fair to
| dismiss that as "being sold" something?
| mypastself wrote:
| I think so. Plenty of companies offer product samples or free
| services upfront. But even if you think the author has no
| specific "sales" goal with the article, self-promotion still
| seems to be its main objective.
| Shoue wrote:
| > Plenty of companies offer product samples or free
| services upfront
|
| Sure, but a startup using VC money to offer you something
| for free is very different from "I will personally
| volunteer to help you".
|
| Also the entire point of sharing articles is that they're
| being read, so there isn't any way to avoid implying
| they're doing "self-promotion" - should people just stop
| writing and sharing articles?
|
| Sometimes people aren't after some self-serving goal, and I
| think it's a little dangerous to think everyone is -
| charities exist. Cooperatives are more ethical businesses
| because they build democracy into their structure unlike
| traditional businesses, why would I assume whoever is
| talking about them isn't just hoping to see more of that in
| the world? Or do we reduce that to "that's just the author
| being selfish again"?
| mypastself wrote:
| I might be inclined to agree with your points if the
| article weren't mostly fluff, as stated in my original
| comment. The reason I read it was because I was genuinely
| interested in how this specific approach works in
| practice and how it applies to tech, but there was little
| actual information and a lot of what seemed like
| corporate cult-speak.
|
| Perhaps the article is devoid of insightful content to
| such an extent that we were both forced to interpret its
| author's motivations based on our preconceived notions of
| the idea they're discussing. You believe they're
| genuinely seeking to improve worker's rights, and it just
| looks like another hustle to me.
|
| One thing I can say for certain is that I did not get
| much from the article, and I suspect there will be
| comments that are shorter yet far more insightful than
| the article a few hours from now.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I think you're biased against cooperatives which made you
| uber-critical of the article. I did not find it to be
| "fluff."
|
| Many of the engineering blogs shared on HN have a "by the
| way, we are hiring"[0] stinger, or a promotion of the
| author's startup's product as a solution to the
| engineering problem described by the post, or if its a
| benchmark, then the entire post would be promoting their
| product as the superior product. This article no worse
| than others wrt self promotion.
|
| 0. Maybe not so much now, but perhaps we'll see an uptick
| of "I'm looking for my next move, if you're hiring,
| contact me."
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Co-ops and partnerships work very well for low capital
| intensity businesses, and coding _is_ a low capital-intensity
| business in this day and age. It makes total sense that people
| are interested in such arrangements, it 's not just a matter of
| wishful thinking.
| leethaxor wrote:
| I don't understand... I work as a software contractor in EU.
| I don't see a single thing I'm missing by not being in a
| coop. 5% of my income is a lot of money. For that money I can
| buy all the accounting and tax advisory services I need with
| enough money left over to get a Wework All Access membership
| and even then I'd have a significant portion of the 5% left.
| Why does it make total sense that people are interested?
| nanomonkey wrote:
| I would assume that the benefits are in having coworkers
| that fill in the gaps in your own business skills. For
| example: finding clients, invoicing, server maintenance,
| customer service, training, documentation, implementation
| consultants. There are a variety of job skills that one
| person will not have or want to contribute 100% of the time
| that are valuable jobs for junior or more senior coworkers.
|
| If you are paying someone to do any of these jobs, you are
| doing it out of income that you've paid taxes on. If they
| are a part of your cooperative then it comes out of the
| businesses own funds pretax. There are also incentives to
| share in other resources, such as buildings, child care and
| other invisible labor that we normally place little value
| on.
|
| Also, some cooperative companies will only outsource work
| to other cooperative groups.
|
| Not to mention the camaraderie of working with people with
| similar goals in a noncompetitive environment where they
| value your success.
| leethaxor wrote:
| > finding clients, invoicing, server maintenance,
| customer service, training, documentation, implementation
| consultants
|
| Clients find me, not the other way around. Documentation
| and implementation are my own lines of work.
|
| I have an accountant, tax advisor and lawyer as
| subscriptions. I also have a coworking pass. These cost
| me about 1.5% of my annual income.
|
| Trainings are given for free in coops? I can't imagine
| myself or my friends working for free, are you forced to
| work for free in a coop? As in, would I be forced to give
| trainings too? I value my time too much for this. Of
| course I do the occasional free tech talk for my
| friends/the public, but that's not in any way comparable
| to a "full" training.
|
| > If you are paying someone to do any of these jobs, you
| are doing it out of income that you've paid taxes on.
|
| No. As a contractor, all of the above are my business
| expenses (also including conference passes,
| trainings/certifications, driving to/from the client, all
| my hardware I use to work etc). Companies and contractors
| pay tax on profit, not turnover.
|
| > Also, some cooperative companies will only outsource
| work to other cooperative groups.
|
| Yeah indeed there's a coop like that where I live. They
| pay like half of what I make to their top guys (I myself
| am not a top guy; they offered me even less). Not
| encouraging.
|
| > Not to mention the camaraderie of working with people
| with similar goals in a noncompetitive environment where
| they value your success.
|
| I have this at the coworking space - and we don't share
| any money so there's no chance of any bad feelings
| whatsoever. I have very bad experience with that, it ends
| friendships.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| >Trainings are given for free in coops? I can't imagine
| myself or my friends working for free, are you forced to
| work for free in a coop? As in, would I be forced to give
| trainings too? I value my time too much for this. Of
| course I do the occasional free tech talk for my
| friends/the public, but that's not in any way comparable
| to a "full" training.
|
| No one said anything about training for free. This was an
| example of work that needs to be done _for a client_ that
| you may not want to do yourself. A junior level member of
| your coop could travel to the client 's site and train
| them on how to use your software, learn from the
| experience and make valuable ties, while you stay at home
| and work on more appropriate tasks.
| leethaxor wrote:
| Ah, okay, that makes more sense. Sorry I misunderstood.
| This is not really something applicable to my line of
| work (standard software development tasks on a larger
| project in an agile team managed by the client) but I can
| imagine some of my friends doing this.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm not familiar with
| the space but I wonder if it's just a matter of elite-
| ness. Hypothesis: The top 1 or 10 percent of a field are
| better off in their own, whereas the rest benefit from
| collective benefits. Another example that comes to mind
| is Matt Yglesias leaving Vox. He was well paid at Vox but
| now on his own I'm sure he's even higher paid and has
| more freedom etc. I donno just speculating.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >Why does it make total sense that people are interested?
|
| Because that way you can finance a bunch of useless
| moochers who "administer your coop". Smells like typical
| rent seeking.
| yogthos wrote:
| If you're worried about rent seeking wait till you find
| out how a traditional business works. The owner of the
| company takes all the profit, and then pays out a small
| portion of that profit to the workers doing the work in
| form of wages.
|
| On the other hand, in a coop the profit is shared fairly
| amongst the people actually doing the work. It's frankly
| incredibly that somebody thinks this is a worse model of
| compensation.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Your communism is showing.
| kodyo wrote:
| Visible frustration sometimes counts as violent communication,
| according to the book.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I used to work for the post office in the early 90s and a
| couple coworkers got into one of these visible frustration
| violent communications with the one who started the argument
| getting two weeks paid leave for 'stress'.
| Fnoord wrote:
| If it brings you any salvation: thanks to your post I did not
| bother clicking the link.
| samtho wrote:
| > I got the distinct feeling I was being sold something while
| reading it, and the last paragraph confirmed it.
|
| I have this feeling medium is being kept alive on the shoulders
| of other companies' marketing teams in an attempt to write
| thinly-veiled sales pitches disguised as blog posts from a
| "neutral" 3rd party.
|
| Coupled with the zero-life-experience blogger trope, the signal
| to noise ratio on medium is practically nil.
| 314 wrote:
| There is a strong "thought leadership" vibe.
| TylerE wrote:
| The signal I've started looking for is an above the fold
| "minutes to read" stat. Sites, like Medium, that have it are
| practically all worth ignoring because it's either
| astroturfing or just navel gazing.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Many static site generators add that stat. I find it
| useful.
| sofixa wrote:
| Absolutely agreed, there's a huge difference between a 5
| minute article you can quickly read whenever you stumble
| upon it, and a 30 minute post (like acoup.blog's
| excellent articles) that you might have to save to read
| later.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| The New York Times has the "x min read" stat listed under
| articles on its homepage.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| > 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 everywhere, about all things large
| and small. Meetings about whether to have consensus or majority
| rule, about whether the principle that everyone needs to follow a
| decision is sound etc etc.
|
| Personality might have something to do with it. 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.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| "Too many meetings" is a problem many companies have. It's an
| efficiency problem. There are ways to reduce or even eliminate
| too many meetings.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Does it have to always involve everyone? Why not vote for the
| CEO or board of directors once every couple of years?
| ankaAr wrote:
| I know coops that hire the CEO as An external guy. I saw that
| in many restaurants owned by their staff.
| Jensson wrote:
| > 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 those fields yet.
| adwn wrote:
| 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?
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's something to be said for representative democracy. I
| want to work in something like a cooperative, but I don't want
| to be constantly engaged in managing it. I'd rather assign my
| vote to someone who seems like they have their head on
| straight, and get a monthly email that tells me what's been
| going on lately.
|
| Maybe like how pure hierarchical capitalists need a fairly
| large financial industry to handle the movement of wagers and
| prizes between investors and producers, a flatter system might
| need a big and active enough group of secretaries/reporters to
| keep everybody so informed about internal decision-making and
| events that normal members don't feel like they have to attend
| meetings.
|
| It's really a privilege of power not to have to explain
| yourself. A flatter system might have to dedicate a standing
| portion of its efforts to explaining itself.
| rapsey wrote:
| Sounds like an awful work environment then.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| 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 the
| bad ones are the ones trying to run like a commune and reach a
| consensus on everything.
| spuz wrote:
| What is the difference between a cooperative like you
| describe and a startup where employees are given shares?
| majewsky wrote:
| In a startup, employees usually don't really have much
| influence even if they have shares, because each successive
| funding round dilutes the existing shares.
|
| Also, there's some significant differences in how shares
| work between cooperatives and corporations (at least in
| Germany, where I live). In a corporation, you get one vote
| per share, and shares can be freely traded once given out.
| In a cooperative, you only one vote _per shareholder_ , no
| matter how many shares you hold, and shares cannot be
| traded. You can invest into the cooperative to get shares,
| and you can return your shares to get your capital back,
| but the cooperative gets final say in who gets to hold
| shares.
| solardev wrote:
| A coop is one person one vote.
|
| A employee stockholder plan is one dollar one vote.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Employees are not second-class (or third-class) on share
| preference or dilution.
| jlokier wrote:
| Startups that give out shares are rare. Startups tend to
| give options. Options take years to accumulate, and don't
| give any significant rights by themselves, such as voting
| or profit share. Employees can typically only afford to
| exercise options at key company financing events, because
| they have to sell many of the resulting shares to cover the
| cost of exercising and cost of tax.
|
| Most startup employee recipients of options never get to
| exercise them for various reasons, often unable to due to
| cash flow or restrictive timing reasons, or because they
| aren't profitable (the employee would take a large
| financial loss). Many of those who do exercise the options
| get their shares after leaving the company or they're about
| to leave. And finally, of the small subset of employees who
| have shares as a result of exercising while still employed,
| the number of shares they have is a tiny percentage even in
| aggregate, so they have effectively no influence at
| shareholder meetings, if they choose to attend, and if
| their shares have voting rights which they don't always
| have.
|
| In co-operatives, the majority of shares as well as voting
| rights are usually held by a high proportion of employees,
| so that's a completely different dynamic. As well as voting
| rights, it means any profit distributed as a dividend tends
| to go to employees as well.
| bluesign wrote:
| So it is little worse than unions done good.
| Shoue wrote:
| That's an odd critique considering coops exist to solve the
| friction between unions and businesses by building the
| democratic control into the business itself, avoiding the
| need for a union.
|
| Especially when you consider all the union busting tactics
| used by leadership at traditional businesses - how are you
| even supposed to form a union when they won't let you?
| Coops come at that from a different angle: you get
| democratic control, straight up. Don't like your leadership
| if you choose to structure the business that way? You can
| actually vote them out of their role.
| bluesign wrote:
| Normally with union done right, you would have voice in
| management. Problem is all you see is non-working unions
| ( union busting etc also from sibling comments)
|
| Thats why I commented union done good from the beginning.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Especially when you consider all the union busting
| tactics used by leadership at traditional businesses -
| how are you even supposed to form a union when they won't
| let you?"_
|
| Even when you manage to form a union, companies have ways
| of screwing you over.
|
| Case in point was the recent successful unionization of a
| Starbucks location in Seattle you might have heard about
| on the news. Starbucks' reaction? They just closed that
| location.[1]
|
| [1] - https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/22/business/starbucks-
| closure-un...
| sokoloff wrote:
| https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-
| elections
|
| If you have broad support from the employee base, "they"
| can't block a union certification election. If you're
| having trouble forming a union, you're probably
| struggling at the "get employees to want your union" step
| in the process.
| sofixa wrote:
| You should let Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart and similar
| know this. Their union busting tactics are widely
| documented (including shutting down locations starting to
| form a union).
| sokoloff wrote:
| They do know this. Many of their tactics are specifically
| directed at "make the employees not want the union". Some
| of those tactics are under-handed, even despicable, but
| it's safe to say that they know this and act in
| accordance.
| sofixa wrote:
| Firing everyone in a store in the process of unionizing
| isn't "make employees not want the union", it's
| retaliating against those that do and instilling fear in
| the rest.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You might not like the methods (and in some cases, they
| are not legal), but I think that's exactly what it does.
| Fear makes (some) people not want the union.
|
| Firing pro-union employees also obviously directly
| reduces the number of employees who are pro-union.
| joxel wrote:
| So I'm guessing your head has been in the sand for the
| last decade while Starbucks and Amazon shut down places
| that attempt to unionize?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| 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.
| goodpoint wrote:
| That's just your experience. Many coops are run pretty
| efficiently.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Berkeley which was a major area for co-ops have almost none
| left. My family was part of a co-op. Challenges:
|
| Often very political - seen as a good thing but can add
| conflict (ie divesting/not stocking/opposing apartheid Israel
| while some members are Jewish). No x because y etc - repeat
| for many topics.
|
| Decision making - both hard and strong feelings internally-
| can lead to claims around "violent" communication, micro
| aggression, privilege, disrespect etc etc when there are
| disagreements. Coops will say a good thing, but I think can
| wear people out sometimes.
|
| Accountability/performance mgmt. not always, but sometimes
| difficult to take action in this area - maybe a good thing -
| goal is to work together.
|
| One interesting variant are employee owned businesses that do
| not run as co-ops. ESOPS etc. I'm not an expert at all, but I
| think there are a number of really industrial scale
| businesses that have this structure successfully.
| mihaaly wrote:
| 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
| their family, rightfully. When have a choice then will rather
| not turn but go straight when it is big. I admit some big turn
| very quick, like Elon Musk with Twitter, but thats the other
| wrong end of the scale, finding the balance is not easy and
| most of the time unsuccessful except for a short period. And
| those could be attributed to luck in many many cases too. We
| remember the success stories not the failures (except the huge
| ones) and being sentimental with those being successful and
| gone. Big organizations' success come and go, rare to shine
| more than several decade and could die easily if the decisions
| are wrong (or forget to make decisions). How is their decision
| making is better then if they go away or fall? They grow quick,
| then comes an other due to the constant need for competition
| and the old one goes or falls back. The need for quick
| decisions and neckbraking pace is actually fuelled with quick
| decisions and neckbraking race of the organizations themselves
| and call it business setting if that was not their making but
| some kind of external condition. Also not always (or rarely)
| turn to a direction that is good for a society and not just for
| those very few being in the position of making the decision
| (mostly it is coincidental or side effect then). Also success
| of a hierarchical organization does not necessarily mean it is
| making any good for customers and people but just being big
| enough to force its views and interests on others. That's not
| really success and good then just a social form of violence.
|
| Decisions are not easy when it affects lots of people and
| that's why those should be made as carefully as possible in the
| settings available and we know from social studies, it is
| proven, that individual decision making is quick, group
| decision making is accurate, in overall. For the group of
| people in the long run group decisions was better. As a side
| effect it was not making life unbearably quick by themselves
| and may eliminate the need for some of the quick decisions
| (some, as there are aspects outside of human groups that
| mandate actions, those cannot be eliminated).
|
| Mostly philosophizing above.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Interesting - so in your view Elon as the top person in
| Twitter hierarchy will not be able to change Twitter except
| very slowly ?
| AstralStorm wrote:
| 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.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| He understands what Twitter is and he and his buddies (
| jack for ex. ) want to turn it into something else.
|
| If they'll succeed that's a whole different matter. Not
| only because they were "wrong" but also because "reality"
| will have a say in that.
|
| You invest all you money building a nuclear reactor in
| 1929, you'll be not wrong but the timing was off.
| forty wrote:
| Timing being an important part of a strategy, I'd say
| wrong timing still counts as being wrong.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| Not saying this is the case but an outlier (exception) to a
| rule does not disprove the rule.
|
| So you're right, Elon came in and is making changes quite
| rapidly but that doesn't mean this is standard for large
| businesses.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| 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.
| replygirl wrote:
| check out sociocracy
| AstralStorm wrote:
| 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.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Or check out esops or employee owned companies - they don't
| have same egalitarian approach - but often run more like a
| business
| karaterobot wrote:
| Just my experience here, but:
|
| A badly run cooperative fails because the people involved don't
| take it seriously, or lose their alignment and break apart. A
| well run cooperative fails (or succeeds) for all the usual
| reasons any business does. A well run coop ends up feeling a lot
| like a small business with a traditional structure, and an owner
| who respects their employees and doesn't act like a tyrant.
| That's cool, but it's a lot of work to reproduce the performance
| characteristics of an existing technology.
|
| I've been involved in many sessions where we tried to experiment
| with the structure and mechanics of how a cooperative works, in
| order to address what seem to be persistent shortcomings in the
| model. Nobody has really cracked the code yet, in my opinion.
|
| When it comes down to it, having done both, I think I'd rather
| work for a good boss at a small company than be in another coop,
| even a good one. I want someone competent to do all the behind
| the scenes work, and make most of the decisions, asking me for my
| opinion on the things that affect me directly or for which my
| expertise can provide some direct insight.
|
| The advantages: If I don't like the company, I can leave without
| feeling like I've failed: there are no non-work relationships, or
| sense of ownership holding me there. I don't have to attend
| additional meetings. I don't have to look at budgets. I don't
| have to be on a committee or working group. I don't have to pick
| a side and convince the other side of anything. If the company
| makes a bad decision, I say "ha ha, those morons did it again"
| and keep on doing my job.
|
| In short, as I have come to identify less with work, I have
| become less interested in the cooperative model because the value
| of ownership has gone down.
| psyfi wrote:
| > an owner who respects their employees and doesn't act like a
| tyrant
|
| Until a multi-billion company aquires the corporate
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I like the idea of a co-op, but I'm always worried about "in a
| perfect world," not happening (like Communism sounds like a great
| idea, but human nature screws it all up).
|
| For myself, I'm not competitive. It's a life choice. When we
| compete, we win, and winning always means that someone else
| loses. I've spent my entire adult life, in an environment, where
| I help "losers" to get back on their feet, and it has had quite
| an impact on me.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| How do you help losers?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Long story, and one that I'm not really at liberty to share
| in public (press, radio and film, thing).
| ilyt wrote:
| But damn, "getting fired coz most of your coworkers wanted you
| gone" gonna hurt more than getting fired by some manager.
| davidjfelix wrote:
| I'm going to counter this a bit -- if most of your coworkers
| want you gone, do you want to work there? Does it make sense to
| continue or would staying just mean continuing a toxic
| relationship for all parties? I think this just formalizes the
| quiet grumblings of people who who think "how is x person still
| here, they don't carry their weight" etc.
|
| I think a more important concern is how does an org ensure that
| people remain tolerant and accommodating (both in legally
| required ways and in ways that expand your views and ideas) of
| people that may not mesh perfectly? I don't think a "divorce"
| of the org should be frowned upon and I think many orgs ought
| to codify how they sever to account for the possibility that
| people don't agree. I don't, however, believe that it's good to
| avoid conflict and sever every org over every meaningless spat.
| Shoue wrote:
| True, but coops are also more selective about firing and
| hiring. So if you're a bad fit, you're less likely to end up in
| a coop, and if you do end up there, you will have more stable
| employment because coops generally don't fire people during
| crises, they collectively cut their salaries by a certain
| percentage, or give up yearly bonuses, and when things get good
| again, they reinstate their old salaries or bonuses.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| I'm currently part of the administration of a co-op. It's in
| Portugal and it's a Multisectorial co-op, meaning instead of
| being focused on one type of activity we do anything as long as
| we have a member with that skillset. We are an agregation of
| freelancers and small businesses that go from small scale
| farming, to web development or architecture. The coop serves as a
| way to have a lot of the nice things of a bigger corporation like
| someone to help you with burocratic processes while allowing
| people to keep their independence. People can be very involved in
| the decision making or just financially contribute to the central
| structure. We have both general assemblies where all members vote
| in a very horizontal process but the day to day work has
| hierarchies to keep processes going smoothly
|
| The biggest thing I've learned from being part of this process is
| that co-ops vastly destroys competition among peers and replace
| that we the mindset of "what's the best way to benefit the
| collective". Best thing to make it work is that it's not just
| altruism, benefiting the collective benefits yourself. Kind of
| like OSS works.
| sitkack wrote:
| 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?
| fimdomeio wrote:
| 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 healtier and gives more reasons for people
| to want to be a contributing part of it.
|
| We take 5% from goods and services sold through the
| cooperative to the outside world and that's what mantains the
| whole central structure.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| 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?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Mind sharing the details? I'm based in Porto and I've been
| trying to learn a bit more about working in a co-op.
|
| My contact details are in the profile, alternatively feel free
| to come and say hi: https://sonnet.io/posts/hi/
| vernon99 wrote:
| I'm also very interested to learn more and also super curious
| to brainstorm about your governance protocols since we are
| building a community platform and I wish we support these cases
| better. If you have 30 minutes sometime, can you drop me an
| email to mikhail at peerboard dot com?
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >The biggest thing I've learned from being part of this process
| is that co-ops vastly destroys competition among peers and
| replace that we the mindset of "what's the best way to benefit
| the collective".
|
| Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
| larksimian wrote:
| Does it? Isn't that literally what being part of any well-
| functioning organisation is supposed to be like?
| ranguna wrote:
| Hello!
|
| Mind sharing the co-op name?
|
| I'm living in Portugal right now and I'm thinking about
| switching careers, so I might give that a look.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| I'm part of Cooperativa Integral Minga in Montemor-o-Novo. We
| we're the first one in Portugal in the concept of Integral
| Cooperative (took some inspiration from Cooperativa Integral
| Catalana). In Portugal there's now a few coops based on the
| same general principles. Rizoma Coop In Lisbon, Regenerativa
| in S. Luis, Cooperativa da Terra in Aljezur, A Geradora in
| Trancoso, Coop. Capsula in Leiria, Humus in Madeira (in
| process of forming), Coop. AlmaOhana in Odemira and Estacao
| Cooperativa also in Montemor. Feel free to get in contact if
| you want to know more.
| tacoopcurious wrote:
| I'm happily employed but I still want to keep an eye out for
| interesting developments in the tech coop space for AI. The field
| being what it is these days, N people sharing knowledge, code,
| and (as permitted) data could handle N similar applied AI
| projects much more easily than 1 person could handle 1. Are there
| successful examples of this model anywhere?
| [deleted]
| leereeves wrote:
| Eleuther and LAION are close to being tech coops for AI, and
| have helped open recent AI developments (LLM and diffusion).
|
| They aren't actually coops and really belong to just a few
| people, but they do show that an AI community can do good work.
| ankaAr wrote:
| Here in HN someone posted a GitHub repo with thousands of
| coops. Search for it, maybe they are some as your model.
| timinou wrote:
| Not in the tech field but in the consulting space, both Crisp
| https://dna.crisp.se and Enspiral https://enspiral.com came up
| with interesting organisational structures that they've
| extensively documented.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| The fact that enspiral keeps coming up as an example tells me
| that doing this right is really hard; if it were easy there
| would be more examples people would mention, no?
|
| edit: I hope it's clear I'm not trying to diminish the
| efforts, to the contrary!
|
| Here's also an interview with Richard Bartlett on the matter:
|
| https://codepodcast.com/posts/2018-09-17-richard-bartlett-
| on...
|
| And an episode from the General Intellect Unit podcast
| relating to this:
|
| http://generalintellectunit.net/e/068-common-knowledge/
| evolve2k wrote:
| There's a big online event on these types of collaborations
| happening later this week run by enspiral people.
|
| People from many different organisations are attending,
| this stuff is definitely spreading.
|
| https://www.doing.betterworktogether.co/
|
| A pop up digital village for building equitable,
| collaborative, distributed organisations
| carapace wrote:
| 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. :)
| bjornsing wrote:
| Why a cooperative and not a partnership (that is typical for law
| firms or business consultancies)?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Tried to found one 25+ years ago. In the end not enough people
| were left of those initially interested and we founded a startup.
| Should have gone through with the cooperative even with 5 people.
| jasfi wrote:
| Why do you believe a cooperative would have been better?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" 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.
| code_runner wrote:
| But why would the cooperative have survive and why is it
| less prone to antagonistic work?
| Shoue wrote:
| Cooperatives have a higher survival rate, both in general
| and during crises.
|
| > A 2013 report published by the UK Office for National
| Statistics showed that in the UK the rate of survival of
| cooperatives after five years was 80 percent compared
| with only 41 percent for all other enterprises.[5] A
| further study found that after ten years 44 percent of
| cooperatives were still in operation, compared with only
| 20 percent for all enterprises.
|
| > A 2012 report published by The European Confederation
| of cooperatives and worker-owned enterprises active in
| industry and services showed that in France and Spain,
| worker cooperatives and social cooperatives "have been
| more resilient than conventional enterprises during the
| economic crisis".[47]
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative#Economi
| c_stability
| ilyt wrote:
| sooo how being cooperative would get more money out of
| investors ? It looks like in that situation it wouldn't
| help
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-27 23:02 UTC)