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Comment by RamshackleJ | Hacker News Reader

I'm always curious about companies who talk about "caring about things other than just money". Maybe I'm missing somethings but if you are a for-profit company by definition you care about money, any claims other wise feel like marketing.

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I used to work for a proprietary financial trading firm, where we turned the founders' pile of money into a bigger pile of money. It's the purest "only care about the money" circumstance, and even there they occasionally cared about things other than money. E.g., the people they worked with.

More broadly, though, you misunderstand what companies are about. They're just a collection of people who get together to do a thing. They are only soulless to the extent that the people there are. (Or decide to pretend they are.)

The best places I've worked and visited actually care about the thing they're doing. E.g., I have friends who do catering. They love making people's events go well. They love making people happy. They fucking love the physical acts of making food and serving it to people. Sure, they have to get paid, or the enterprise isn't sustainable.

They are, legally, a for-profit business. But if clubbing seals or trading bonds got them 10% more annualized ROI, they wouldn't do it. Because they're not really there for the profit. They're there to please and delight people by doing something they enjoy.

(That isn't to say that reptiles in suits won't put on the mask of "changing the world!" when it gives them an advantage. We could all name examples like that. But there are plenty of sincere people out there.)

Never said we don't care about money. But we care also about other things than just money. And that a lot more than most other for-profit companies out there.

There's nothing wrong with making a profit either. The more profit we make the better. But it's important to decide what you do with that profit. And I much rather pay for our employees to join me for a week of skiing in the Alps than buying myself a Ferrari.

I don't want to make this look like marketing (as you already mentioned), but if you're really curious I talked a bit about it just recently on this podcast: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/our-ceo-stefan-klumpps-interview...

This is the right approach. Build a business you want to work at and your employees want to work at. Focus on maintaining operating costs and expenses, everything else is gravy. The buy in and work output isn't necessarily greater or worse than others, but I would argue the quality of life is through the roof. Kudos on what you're doing.

To me the big non monetary currency is time.

Average US commute time is about half an hour [1], add to that another 15 minutes on each side for context switching and "settling in" and it's an easy 10 hours a week at least you're saving.

Remote work isn't for every job or person, but the financial difference would need to be significant to drag me back into an office.

1 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/25/how-m...

Jesus...That certainly puts things into perspective.

10 hours a week is an extra book you can read or 5 movies to watch or just...10 hours to relax and work on your side projects.

520 hours per year.

I find I have context switching and settling in time just as much (sometimes more) at my home office as I do at my office office. (IOW, I don't think I'd be inclined to count it as a cost of commuting.)

As an employee, I value more than money. I value time off, flexibility, office location, my working environment.

I think the distinction isn't making money as that's necessary to keep the doors open, it's more about corporate motivations. Some firms want to be a unicorn and some like where I work are more focused on building a business we all want to work at. While both are motivated, there are different buy in strategies with the employees. We have great growth, but we regularly turn down clients because they're not a fit for our team. I realize this isn't as feasible in all areas of expertise.

There definitely is a bit of marketing though and too much talk of culture is usually a good red flag.

This is a pet peeves mine. It's one thing to be honest but another to brainwash people into thinking that taking less pay is some how good for the employees.

If employees don't care about their money, why should they care about the company's money?

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