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<p>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.
It’s high time I stopped reading Medium articles shared here.<p>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 <i>tech</i>.<p>The supposed “cons” sound like the ad equivalents of leading questions:<p>> The relationships in a cooperative are adult-adult oriented<p>> All of those might be very painful if you’re not used to vocalizing your inner thoughts in non-violent ways<p>Well jeez, I guess I’ll skip it if I’m not allowed to respond to assigned Jira tickets with my fists.
> Decision-making in cooperatives can be very daunting for beginners.<p>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.<p>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.
Just my experience here, but:<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Some of the worst politics I ever saw were in nonprofit entities.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Best of luck =)
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.<p>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...
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.
Weirdly most large companies are surprisingly similar to co-ops. No, seriously bear with me.<p>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<p>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)<p>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.
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 "<i>real bank</i>" 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?"<p>He replied "<i>Things like that are why you'll never find a real job.</i>" and stormed off.<p>(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.)<p>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.
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?
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.)<p>I realized that I didn't want to start a regular startup. I want to do business, but without the pressure of maximizing profits.<p>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...<p>(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.)<p>Email in profile. :)
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.<p>Anyway it is very naive at least.<p>Where the clients come from?<p>If you has been fired, look for another job.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>No, if you has been fired look for another job. A coop needs more from you than that.
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.
I have worked in a consensus environment and I know it can work. The concern I have is when it doesn’t work.<p>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.<p>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.
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..
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).<p>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.
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?