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Comment by WJW | Hacker News Reader

No amount of pay can stop people from getting hit by a bus or leaving for other reasons though. Michael Jordan is an interesting example because he eventually did stop playing for the Bulls (because he retired) and then it took the Bulls six years before they made the playoffs again.

More in general: everyone thinks they're the "hero" in the situation and that they're underappreciated, but for the company the team is (and should be) more important than the individual. Imagine if you got laid off because the "hero" in (say) the sales team died and now the company is no longer profitable, because he/she was the only one bringing in any orders. Would you consider that a well-run company?

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If you discourage heroism - worse, if you announce that you discourage heroism, the average employee's motivation is going to fall drastically. Everyone will do the bare minimum. Exotic forms of corruption like thrift may even emerge

This is exactly what happens in the wider economy when you discourage heroism in society

Humans naturally want to see the grass greener. If you know all you'll ever be is just a number - worse, if you know you will actually be disapproved of because you tried harder or can do better than average, then everyone (but especially gifted individuals) will perform worse and worse until the company breaks

What this post synthesizes is the managerial's class desire to become the "heroes" at the expense of lump-sumed menial labor performed by faceless employees. It's a parasitical philosophy on work

Imagine you own a company (usually involves years' worth of sweat and tears to achieve some sort of success/profitability). Imagine you hear a manager say "let it fail". I hope the feeling that follows makes it clear that the manager is a sponger

If I own a company where (unbeknownst to me) some function has been hopelessly understaffed to the point they can no longer successfully complete all their tasks, a good thing that could happen is that eventually they do fail at their task and the subsequent investigation into why that happened reveals that they are understaffed and overworked. We can then either allocate more resources or reduce their workload so their tasks become more sustainable. The best way to fix it would be to have good enough communication at all levels that there are no such situations in the first place, but humans are imperfect and mistakes happen.

The last thing I would want is for some "heroic" employee to paper over the gaps until they eventually burn out or leave, after which the company will have a huge problem. All the domain knowledge has been concentrating in that one employee and now that they are gone we have lost that knowledge and will need to rebuild it, probably at great cost if it can be done at all. Like you say, if I built my own company with many years of sweat and tears then I am don't want to let easily preventable issues to have such impact.

As to the first few paragraphs of your post: there are many ways to make employees feel appreciated without also making them into a single point of failure for the entire company.

Actually, you are right. In an ideal world, managers wouldn't need to resort to letting things fail to highlight an area being understaffed

Likewise, in an ideal world, heroes would be compensated according to their performance

But we don't live in an ideal world, so your point is valid

> Michael Jordan is an interesting example because he eventually did stop playing for the Bulls (because he retired) and then it took the Bulls six years before they made the playoffs again.

I don’t see how this is a counterpoint. 100/100 NBA fans, players, and executives would take paying MJ and winning six in a row if the trade off was not making the playoffs for six years after. Are you saying it would have been better for the Bulls to not pay MJ, not win any championships, but consistently make the playoffs for 12 years instead?

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