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Every company should be owned by its employees
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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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I work in consultancy and have a dream of forming a small elite company of consultants, employee owned, just 10 or so people who are shit hot at their jobs.
I would plan for it to always be 10 people, deliberately no growth. Do the job well, take a good wage, have some parties.
It's when companies look for massive growth and shareholder value that everything starts to go to shit.
In 2024, a crack team of management consultants was assembled to solve the toughest business challenges. These consultants promptly escaped from traditional firms to form their own elite unit. Today, still wanted by companies worldwide, they survive as consultants of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The C-Team.
[Cue dramatic music]
That's brilliant
Also, my colleagues always tell me I'm c-team standard, this must be what they mean!
I'm up for the C++ team!
Why would you want ten competent people when Deloite and McKinsey prove you can make way more money with a thousand incompetent people?
Hey, me too! Except I want growth. I want an army of consultants, all of whom own equal parts of the company. We could charge 3/4 of our competition and still make a ton of income while undercutting the larger, shareholder controlled firms. Someday...
That's the premise of citizen Kane's main character, Kane. It didn't go as he expected.
That movie is like 100 years old.
What happens when the other 9 want growth?
WTF is a consultant even?
A consultant is just a professional that works on a contract basis rather than employment.
That's a contractor.
A contractor does physical tasks while a consultant does intangible things... advice, reports, et cetera.
Ooohh, you're trying to put yourself above them. Got it.
I think this comment says more about you than it does about me. You might want to get that looked at.
Then you vote on it and they take over and it turns into a shit company that started out as a good idea, like so many others.
The only reason for growth is if you want to skim the money earned from other people's work.
It's a person who temporarily joins a company, tells everything is wrong, writes that in a piece of paper and moves on to another company.
If their paper happens to say what the CEO thinks then they're invited to come back a couple years later.
Its definitely the dream!
10 is a lot of cats to herd though. Do you already have your fantasy football team ready? Do you think that they share your (lack of) ambition?
At the same time 10 is a small number if a couple go on parental/sick leave at the same time. Are you ready to 'hold the baby' and get no extra credit? Who will do the admin/HR/sales/marketing/taking-the-bins-out/whatever you don't like doing?
10 people is enough that it would be very hard to run in a truly egalitarian way - its your idea, so would you be the 'primus inter pares'? ;-)
Honestly, It could be great - so please see me poking holes as a way to make your plan stronger.
Not the person you responded to but I have a similar plan for a company. The one hole I have a solution for I believe should be adopted by all companies: if it's a job that isn't your core focus, outsource. Everything from bookkeeping to janitorial staff should be an outside company (with your same ethics). I dream of a world where everyone is self-employed or part of small co-ops, and not one single company expands vertically or horizontally. Pick one thing you're good at and do that one thing well. Everything else, give that labor to someone else. I'm looking at you, Amazon.
You mean that you want to copy Amazon? Since this is exactly what they have done, outsourced delivery drivers; driven to pissing in bottles, outsourced sellers; selling items at a loss to imaginary bots to get positive reviews (amazon making its cut all the same).
I shouldn't respond... but let me guess:
The one thing that you are good at isn't unblocking toilets, is it? No, I'll bet you are really good at something rewarding like solving difficult math problems, or 'consulting' or some other rewarding job. I'm sure that you were top of your class at school, but in the real world, if you didn't turn up, the world would keep turning just fine.
I am saying this from no moral high ground at all (I am well rewarded for what is termed a 'bullshit job'), just pointing out that what you are saying kind of assumes that the proles want to live in your utopia, do you still expect to have a better living than the person who shovels your shit when you block the toilet? Thought so.
[edit: sorry for being such a curmudgeon - I must be having a bad day. If I've offended - check your idealism. Please start your ideal business - the world needs idealists... as well as people with shovels]
Luke Skywalker every word you just said is wrong.gif
Amazon's delivery service is part of Amazon. The reason Amazon employees have to piss in bottles is because they are owned by Amazon. The reason their tax returns list them as contractors is so Amazon can dodge the laws and the taxes that come with them.
And where did you get the impression that an outsourced job would be lesser? The exact reason I would want all companies to focus on only the one thing they're good at is to be forced, for lack of a better word, to pay what those jobs are worth. I would hope the person unblocking my toilet is self-employed so they can charge what they feel is a price equal to the effort of their job.
But on the other hand, I'm sure we'll all be treated well and paid well when there are only four companies to work for and they all collude with each other.
Why are you down voting the guy?? They have ethics, a vision, and totally reasonable way of building a 10 people community that care for each other.
You know, capitalism may outlive all of us but it's not forever. This wasn't the way to do things before shareholder supremacy in the 80s.
Balance your workload with care. Once you have "enough" work, hopefully you have other firms you can refer unwanted work to. My small business is run by a guy who A) isn't growing the business and B) says yes to every assignment. He's burning out, I'm burning out, and one of our best people burned out and quit last month. It's a nightmare.
I was thinking a kind of get-in-line attitude. We can get to you but not for 6 months, that's just how it is.
This way you just end up with the shit clients that no one else wants.
If you find a client who's a better fit than 80% of your clients that 80% get's pushed down the line.
Might work, depends on how loyal your clients are.