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Comment by ysavir | Hacker News Reader

What's your implication here? That non-owners are lesser and therefor should bend to the wants of the owner? That only owners have a right to the lifestyle they want?

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I believe they are stating the opposite.

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.

Great attitude to ensure you never own a company.

Owning a company is fairly trivial. Just fill out the requisite paperwork[1] and boom, you've got a company. Making it profitable is the hard part.

[1] https://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform/

Creating a company is easy. Staying on top of taxation/regulatory filings is more difficult.

This whole grinding is the only way to make it attitude has to stop. Do the work you get paid for. I imagine if someone started their own business, their attitude would be vastly different then working for a company on a fixed salary.

Great attitude to make sure you understand the realities of the system and protect yourself from being exploited by it more than is already inherent in the relationship between wage labor and capital.

I make a lot more than most business owners as a mid level employee at BigTech without the headaches.

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.

I do own my own company. It's pretty easy.

The vast, vast, majority of people will never own a significant portion of a company. Outside of normal investments and retirement funds most people will not own a company in the sense we mean here.

I'm confused. You really think a C-level exec is thinking the way you just described?

Probably not...c-level execs are usually owners of the business.

Ah The life of the C level, making commits directly to master and running your IDE with the brightest whitest background your monitors game mode can produce.

The C-level distinction is irrelevant.

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...

It was just an example, not a distinction. But most C-levels do have nontrivial equity in their company.

Yeah that's totally true. They often get huge equity packages so they behave more like the owners and less like employees. I think this underscores the situational incentive differences between owners and normal employees. As a rank-and-file employee, if I put in 2x to work, I don't see to the profit. That extra profit or efficiency goes to the major equity holders and owners.

I'm assuming C-levels get paid a butt load with the expectation they will do whatever it takes.

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 mean do what makes you happy. But I attribute nearly all of my promotions and success to doing work I am explicitly not paid for.

I do too. But not with promotions. With the ability to job hop. But it’s not to “help the company”.

That’s one way to look at it, but the opposite from how I read it.

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.

Thanks! That reading makes sense.

My interpretation is not to ruin my health for a company I hold less than 0.5% stock (options) in.

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.

Even if you own 20% of the company, statistically the chances of it being worth anything besides toilet paper is slim.

I think scarface74 was making the opposite claim: it’s not your company so fulfil your obligation but don’t put the company’s interest ahead of your own.

I read that as "don't kill yourself for someone else's profit."

There was an implication that in leadership roles there is always something more to be done, and you have to watch out you don't do too much.

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.

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