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Comment by jypepin | Hacker News Reader

it seems to me that most of those questions should influence positively employee happiness.

That's the point: those questions influence both employe happiness and company success. But employee happiness does not _directly_ influence company success.

But OP claimed that the two aren't even correlated.

Correlation just means that when goes up, the other tends go up (or down, as the case may be). It doesn't make any claim on whether there's a direct influence or not. Hence the common refrain: correlation is not causation.

I read it as "happiness is not correlated to success when you control for these questions".

Which I read as "happiness is not correlated to success when you control for most of the factors that influence happiness in the workplace"

I thought the claim was that happiness and company performance were not correlated, but good results on these questions and performance were.

I'd be surprised if any single factor directly and unambiguously influences success.

You could hire a bunch of jolly simpletons, have the happiest company in the world, and go bust before the year is out.

You could make it perfectly clear what is expected of everyone, give them all the kit they need, implement all their valuable suggestions then depress them by paying them minimum wage and discouraging fraternisation and have a similar outcome.

It does seem like it would correlate, but one might also think free food would contribute to it, too. These points help focus on precisely what kinds of things to perhaps focus on to contribute to happiness in certain ways.

I’ve read the book, and it’s a good one.

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