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Comment by mfru | Hacker News Reader

This reads like "How to follow orders and resignate". Only shows that companies are dictatorships where workers don't have a say

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They are. Sometimes the managers are smart and voluntarily listen to the workers, but that isn't the same as workers having power. What should happen is that better run companies both get more value out of their employees and attract employees from the less well-run companies. But that doesn't seem to happen as much anymore with increasing consolidation and decreasing competition. At least that's how USA looks like from the outside. And this is across all sectors.

Dictatorships are far more efficient.

That’s why military is a dictatorship.

That’s why “design by committee” has such a bad rep.

The only problem with dictatorships is that you can’t change them. Also countries shouldn’t fail, so an orderly “change of power” process is needed.

But you can change companies, and companies can fail.

I've known quite a few people in the military and "efficient" is a word they never use to describe it.

Do you think it would be better to have a democracy during war? (I mean in individual military units, not in a country overall - note that military is controlled by a civilian democratically elected president)

"The enemy's forces are shelling us. Do we want to attack back? Who votes for/against?"

Interestingly I read a history of the French Army mutinies in WWI. One thing that came out of that is lower commanders had a duty to question orders from superiors if they didn't think the goals were achievable. Previously any hint at not following an order was considered "cowardice" and millions of men were led into insane situations with impossible objectives because nobody thought orders from the top could be challenged.

US military doctrine does often play out like this in the field. We prefer maneuver warfare strategies and tactics to positional and attrition ones as a general rule, and a key element of maneuver warfare is the units doing the work having the unilateral ability to maneuver or retreat regardless of some greater plan.

The battlefield is not a democracy, nor a top down dictatorship. In proper combined arms maneuver warfare its more akin to a network of syndicates working towards a common goal.

If we're making odd analogies to politics I think most high performing teams tend to end up in the Marxist "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Or instead of the military, think of a basketball team. How do five excellent athletes work together. The coach is not a "dictator", nor is anyone on the team, but they also don't vote on plays. They know what each other is good at and, based on the situation given to them, execute in a way that is most likely to succeed.

Marxism is amazing as long as you get to freely choose who to share the spoils with.

In fact, this idea is so amazing, we should create a new political philosophy around it!

How should we call it? Share-ism? Freedom-ism? Or, maybe just Capital-ism?

Let's just call it Communism and have it.

The basis of Communism is theft (sharing stuff that you take from other people) and murder (killing those that resist).

this is - of course - false.

Communism is not theft (that only computes if you have a neoliberal viewpoint of taxes = theft) and the second point is just a polemic (also: capitalism is directly and indirectly the cause of hundreds of millions of deaths, all the US led color revolutions, anti-communist killings like in Jakarta or Vietnam etc., all the shock doctrine countries that still are not sprawling hubs of capitalist paradise).

Also, the purpose or end of a country is not to produce some widget at high efficiency for a client, or to rapidly respond to the whims of a despot. It is just a structure around the essential activity of humans simply living their lives.

First time I have read in HN that waterfall is good for anything.

Have you ever worked in the military? I have and I don't think I have never seen a less efficient projects.

They do have very good reasons to do it that way. But my life is not in the hands of my coworkers, using the same tactics has no point.

The article says in many more words, "pick your battles". You can't manage when you aren't the manager. Getting fired/laid off won't get you the results.

Pressure is being exerted from above, you bend (lax enforcement) and bounce back (suggest to higher ups better policies) when the time is appropriate.

Did you think your company wasn't top down?

The American model of hierarchical with input which combines the top down structure of many societies with the flatter get input until agreement model of others has been pretty effective all in all.

I think shareholders get a say (in private companies that's the owner), you get a salary and benefits (maybe some shares giving you some say) (and hopefully some workers protections and unionization opportunities) and the issue right now is that the wealthy control a staggering number of the shares giving them huge, outsized impacts on regular people's lives.

What is the answer? unions?

Sure, also: worker cooperatives.

The key point is: workers need to organize together for themselves. Nobody else is going to stand up for you, certainly not your boss(es).

There is a tine to speak up. at meals with close family. At meetings with your boss. The right question at company meetings - though there are wrong question here: think long and hard before ask.

You can speak up it meetings with your team but be careful of the tone. You need to come off as overall having the companies back but this one thing you can't support. Or maybe things will change again. There are lots of options.

There have been recessions before. There will be a recovery. Leave when things get better (or you retire) and cite working conditions in the bad times in your exit interview.

unions can work, but they can force you into situation you don't want to be in.

As a collective we would have done well to have organized long ago. Unions or professional associations with teeth (e.g. like the Bar for lawyers, CPA boards for accountants etc) seem to be the only realistic options

There are lots of places that treat their employees well, work for them. There are a lot of complainers who yell about little things but are unreasonable. We have other options.

you think they are not?

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