The Company Isn't a Family

114 pointsby milesfalmost 8 years ago

10 comments

alberthalmost 8 years ago

Reid Hastings (Netflix founder) uses a different analogy.He compares a company as a high performing "sports team". With the idea being, you're working towards a collective goal. You each have you're own role. But if you're not performing, you get cut. Just like any athlete would get cut.The problem with the "family" analogy is it implies "unconditional love" regardless if you're messing up, failing, not performing.

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grandalfalmost 8 years ago

I look at it like a company is a group of predator birds who happen all to be flying together in formation for a while.Individuals temporarily have self-interest that aligns beautifully and lends itself to pattern flying. Individual incentives and goals will inevitably change over time.Maybe one person will veer off in a different direction if the startup doesn't get A-list funding, maybe another will get bored after the prototype is finished, maybe another will fly off in chase of a relationship, etc.Even large companies are like this. The CEO may be putting 150% into it for two years but will rationally give up and move on if things don't turn around. Someone may have tried hard to get hired right out of school, but after two years of experience fully plans on quitting to attend a PhD program.I like to be very upfront with would-be hires about their goals. I don't expect someone to fly with the pack out of loyalty, there has to be something about their overall life plan that makes flying in this pattern a big win for some period of time.I do want to talk about that life plan. How can time with my company help you get where you want to get and also help us get where we want to get? My goal of course is to make the experience of working there so incredible that you change your life plan to allow more time flying in our formation.Some people don't have kids or spouses and would rather be the best indoor soccer player they can be or the best at spoken word night at the local coffee shop. When someone is at work I want them to be focused on goals that matter to them and that are meaningful to the company, but I also want them to switch gears and live their life whatever it is, since I know that they will do that anyway if they have any sort of independent, inner drive.

corybrownalmost 8 years ago

> Because by invoking the image of the family, the valor of doing whatever it takes naturally follows. You’re not just working long nights or skipping vacation to further the bottom line, no, no, you’re doing this for the family.Same trick used by college fraternities to do all sorts of crap.

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unsignedintalmost 8 years ago

It's not that I have problem with this notion itself personally, but when it is used with a subtext of excuse for the problems, that's where I have issues.e.g. The company is going through great hardship, so we will have to mistreat you. You are part of our "family" so you understand and put up with that, right?I've been in that situation many years ago and was frustrating.

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ThrustVectoringalmost 8 years ago

The real problem with "The Company is a Family" is enmeshment and the resulting lack of boundaries. The company has an issue, so you need to make sacrifices to resolve it.I'm not opposed to spending time and effort - even extraordinary amounts of it - to helping the company. But as an employee, I make trades, not sacrifices. Sacrificing for the company makes my working conditions worse, and so I will look elsewhere if I'm not fairly compensated for it (which wouldn't be sacrifice now, would it?)

Johniealmost 8 years ago

This post is very simplistic. A company is defined by its culture. There are many different models for building the culture of a company.Different cultures prioritize different things. For example, Netflix prioritizes the individual Star culture. Zappos prioritizes the commitment culture.So whether a company is a family or a team or business transaction depends on the founder's imprint.A good read is: <a href="https://cmr.berkeley.edu/documents/sample_articles/2002_44_3_4776.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://cmr.berkeley.edu/documents/sample_articles/2002_44_3...</a>

scarface74almost 8 years ago

We had project managers come in and say "the business" has set a deadline of X on the project. I wasn't involved in setting the deadline even though I'm the architect responsible for leading the dev team to get it done.I said I wouldn't commit the team to a date that I had no role in setting. They asked me when do I think it could get done, I told them I didn't know.Then when we estimated our first sprint and based our capacity on a realistic 5 hour days per dev based on meetings, tickets, etc. they tried to push back. Agile sounds all good until you start talking about a "sustainable pace" and 40 hour work weeks.All that to say, my job is not my family. I set the expectation of 40 hour work weeks. Even if I do end up working extra because I'm on a groove or doing something challenging or interesting, I don't let anyone know I'm working extra.

Alacartalmost 8 years ago

Ok, here's a strange analogy, but hear me out. Think of a company as a hostel rather than a family or a sports team.For example:The owner is trying to make a profit (rather than a hard salary) and it's probably best if they're fairly detached or things go haywire, but a good hostel owner wants the hostel to be beneficial and enjoyable for the guests (regular employees) because it benefits everyone.The hostel staff are management. They are much more involved with everyone, but still try to remain detached somewhat, since they might have to kick a guest out for bad behavior. Often they were previous guests, and those people often make the best staff (managers) because they know all sides of it. They get direct orders from the owners and try to make that work.Guests are the equivalent of a company's employees. They are all there for different reasons and get all different kinds of things out of it. Some want to spend most of their day hanging out with other guests and staff. They're not in a hurry to leave and they get a lot of their satisfaction from the comfort of the hostel and the people they're with. Seeing the area is sort of tangential to them. Others are trying to see everything they can, they don't care about making friends, they have a plan and goals. On the extreme end, they might do something like cut in line to make sure they make the list for the next tour. In fact if they can't, they're probably going to another hostel.Anyways it's a loose analogy, but everyone is there for different reasons that overlap at different points. They're not really all working towards the same goal, but again, their goals likely overlap. Nobody bats an eye that the goal of a guest isn't to make the owner the most profit, or vice versa. You can reasonably expect that most people are going to move on sooner or later. People may or may not become really socially involved, depending on what they want. Some hostels are large and less sociable, others are tightly knit and cozy. I can draw parallels for days.I mean, obviously a hostel _is_ a type of company, but I still think it works as a helpful analogy. Most of the things I roll my eyes at or that people don't like about companies, you could try to apply to the hostel analogy and it will break the illusion of that thing being good. If people thought of their work more in that context, there might be a little less company koolaid being pushed around these days and a little more satisfaction for everyone.

ShabbosGoyalmost 8 years ago

I would argue that the first paragraph is a critique of capitalism itself.The implicit assumption of capitalism is that you have a perpetual debt that cannot be repaid, much like the Christian "debt" that cannot be repaid to the Abrahamic God.Capitalism is as much an economic system as it is a moralistic and religious system.

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zucchini_headalmost 8 years ago

About the article specifically, it's rather insubstantial and doesn't provide any more insight into company dynamics other than heartfelt paragraphs. Still a healthy reminder though.But anyway, about the subject matter, from the several tech companies I've been at now I can see that this kind of "exec brainwashing" does happen, and it always seems rather on-the-nose in it's indifference and facelessness. Where I work currently we even have paragraphs like these on our toilet doors! The thing is, people work better when it's "for" something. Something bigger than themselves, such as the "family" or "team" (it's probably something to do with our hunter-gatherer evolutionary genes). Execs, or rather HR and "Worker Performance Consultants" know this, and they (ab)use it to make workers produce more wealth for the company.I think however that both companies and workers are to blame for past-shift hours, pressures to finish, and such, and both maybe partially for the same reason - a race to the bottom. In terms of companies, this can be for example when company X pushes their workers harder than company Y to undercut their prices. You definitely see this in things like ~[UK reference warning]~ Sports Direct International Ltd, which treats workers rather poorly [1][2][3], just to make their shoes a bit cheaper than that fancy hipster shop down the road who's staff work only their shift hours. In terms of workers, you see the exact same thing, where worker X will over-propose on project A to undercut Worker Y's realistically-proposed project A. So you see that if you don't work crazy hours to finish that big project, then you can definitely bet on somebody else doing it.In the end it's not always "the evil company and their grubby execs" who are asking too much of their workers to get that good quarter result, but workers themselves asking too much of themselves to get that freelance project, job, promotion, raise, good reference, or whatever, over their job-market or worker peers.I think maybe the little post misses a few parts of the picture, but like I said, a good reminder of the topic.[1] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/08/inhumane-sports-direct-mike-ashley-workforce" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/08/inhuma...</a> [2] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how-sports-direct-effectively-pays-below-minimum-wage-pay" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how-sports-...</a> [3] <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-36855374" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-36855374</a>