Unless you own the company, it’s not your business. Act accordingly.
First of all, if you want to maximize personal benefit, it's not clear that owning your own business is the way to go. Sure, there's a higher ceiling, but many rank and file engineers at big tech are making $1M+ due to stock appreciation without working particularly hard. By contrast, building a business that you can even pay yourself $100k is non-trivial—either you raise money and take on a whole new level of stress that comes with investor expectations, or you do the bootstrap grind which has a high chance of failure and almost no chance of keeping it to a solid 40 hours/week.
Second, if you have equity comp you are in fact an owner. You might not have much direct impact to that number, but at least your interests are aligned. And even if you don't have equity, the quality of your work reflects on both your reputation as well as your actual skill development. Of course you should truly evaluate whether your company is treating you fairly and expectations are realistic, but do so objectively instead of starting from a management-vs-labor ideology.
Equity in a private company is statistically meaningless and any one person being able to move the needle on a 1.6 trillion dollar market cap company is negligible.
The idea that you just job hop to promos is currently true for the low end, but there's a glass ceiling there. As a hiring manager, someone who got promoted to staff+ in a reputable company with a high bar is an order of magnitude stronger signal than someone who was hired directly into that level at the same company. Also, the current market and comp for software engineers is a result of the decade bull run of big tech. This will not continue forever. I was around during the dotcom bubble as well, and I can tell you, when the music stops you won't wanna be the guy who has a series of two year stints with progressively higher salaries but no close contacts who will fight to hire you.
I don't think the OP ever suggested this? Unless I'm missing something, here was the original comment:
> Unless you own the company, it’s not your business. Act accordingly.
"Act accordingly" does not mean "don't ever put any effort in". My interpretation was more along the lines of, "Don't stress yourself out over someone else's company", which is great general advice.
But to address this directly, I don't think owner/not-owner is the right mental model. Having been on both sides, you don't want to stress yourself out even if you are the owner. What's healthy is to focus on what you can control and try to get the best outcome you can. Using lack of ownership stake or impact as a reason for choosing any behavior just doesn't make sense to me as a first principle.
I realize this may not make sense to people who have spent their entire career in giant corporate moral mazes, but for me it's actually pretty important to have some integrity around my work, regardless of any lack of control and corporate bullshit I have to deal with.
Let’s talk about the “glass ceiling”. I’ll start off with the corp dev side of the world where most people work.
I know a few guys who are in their late 40s (as am I) who eschewed management and have been moving around between various corp dev jobs for 20 years and have kept their skills up. They have never made more than the mid $100s. They have wives that are working. Their wives are making between $70K and mid to high 100s. They live in a major city in the south. Do you know how far that can go making $250K+ in most cities? You are already well within the top decile of households[1].
Now let’s look on the BigTech side. A returning intern I mentored last year, got a return offer making $150K (consulting department). They can live anywhere in the US. They are already earning more than 92% of individuals in the US.
On a more personal note, I was a senior corp dev bopping around between unknown companies like the first set of developers until 2020. I fell into a role into the cloud consulting department in BigTech. I still work remotely making about what an SDE2 makes. Guess how much I’m stressing about becoming even a “senior consultant”?
Those friends in corp dev could easily get a job as at least an SA working where I work. But they weren’t interested. Once you have “enough” making more money and promotions isn’t that important.
As the 74 implies, I was also around during the bubble. It wasn’t that bad working in regular old corp dev where you were just another employee at a profitable company. Even then I was making $70K in 2000 - twice the individual income at the time.
That said, I’m still curious about your original intent. How should one act differently as an owner or not an owner?
As an owner, I would work much harder knowing that my work will lead to a more direct impact on outcomes than as an employee.
If it is not your company, if you don't own a large share of it, then work your hours and switch off. Any bullshit about putting in extra work because you are in a "leadership" position is just that, bullshit to extract more value from you and transfer it to the company.
Do what you are paid for, no more, no less.
The question is business owner or not. While some CEOs are also business owners, many are not, particularly for publicly traded companies.
If you are the owner of a startup, constancy, or plumbing company you put in the hours you want to maximize company profit. It is your profit!
If you are an employee, (CEO or otherwise), you put the hours you want to maximize your compensation. If putting in 80 hours vs 40 hours has no impact on your pay stub, don't do it. you don't keep the extra profit...
They are doing what they are paid for. If I get offered tens of millions of dollars a year I would also consider putting in more than a 40 hour week. But I don't, so I don't.
I worked for a startup that went out of business. You know how much sleep I lost when they were struggling? When they did finally kick the bucket, I called a few people in my network, got another job and kept it moving.
My interpretation is not to ruin my health for a company I hold less than 0.5% stock (options) in. The amount of skin I have in this game is not enough to make me sacrifice the little pleasures that keep me sane.
I agree but don't ruin your health for a company you do hold significant stock in either.
There is hard work and pulling your weight. There is having faith in your vision and giving it your best shot. And then there is being just plain stupid and making yourself ill or worse for something that is still only about money in the end.
But that's true for non-leadership roles just as much.
So I read it as, even if you're in a leadership position, the company isn't yours, so you don't need to act as if it is.