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Comment by beaned | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people simultaneously acknowledge that a business can be difficult to start for themselves, but fail to acknowledge that it wasn't any easier for their current employer to get started either. (Probably, in most cases; cue exceptions.) And that part of the tradeoff in working for someone else who actually did go out and achieve what you do have available to you but are not doing, is accepting that you work by their rules. And that you can negotiate and influence but at the end of the day it is their decision, just as you would want when running a business you've started.

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No, when a company hires you, the company becomes part you. And you have every right to do whatever you want that you think is best for the company's future, even if it undermines what managers says -- be that whistleblowing, refusing to stack rank, refusing to hide the fact that a stack-rank policy exists.

If the company cannot convince you that its policies are efficient and moral, then that is their mistake for hiring somebody who sees the world fundamentally differently. If they don't want people to do that, they should tell every new manager in the hiring interview "Part of working here as a manager involves stack ranking people as low, even if they are doing great work, and not telling them they are under stack ranking, and if you cannot do that you won't want to work here"

It sounds like you joined the wrong company and/or they should fire you. You equally have the ability to vet the company before joining with sufficient questioning.

> [...] part of the tradeoff in working for someone else [...] is accepting that you work by their rules.

i think a healthy working relationship involves employer & employee collaborating according to a set of mutually beneficial rules, which prevents either party from taking advantage of the other.

this is (at least idealistically) what employment contracts are for, even if they have a natural tendency to favor the employer in most situations.

besides that, i think there are plenty of examples from recent history which demonstrate that it's not healthy for the rules under which an employee operates to be solely outlined by the owner of the business (e.g. because that owner may attempt to take advantage of the employee).

That’a a lot to ask of folks who are spending a third of their waking lives on a shared endeavor.

May as well ask family to stop having opinions on my cooking.

> you can negotiate and influence but at the end of the day it is their decision

A family is more flat. Save for parents, a companies generally are more rigorously hierarchical.

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