What I think it is missing here is a concept I discovered very late in my career, after a burnout which took me over 1 year to pass over: psychological contract.

Which is defined as "Psychological contracts are defined by the relationship between an employer and an employee where there are unwritten mutual expectations for each side. A psychological contract is rather defined as a philosophy, not a formula or devised plan."

So I don't know what happened at Basecamp but here is how breaking a psychological contract feel to the employee from my experience: A leader representing the company does something, an action, takes a decision. You, the employee, feel that a wrong was done to you, even if the rules, law and contract says the one who took the action has the right to do it.

And in the beginning no amount of explanation about the action will alleaviate this feeling. Logically you will agree that they can do what they did, but emotionally (psychologically) at the end of every meeting or discussion you will still feel that somehow a wrong was done to you, a balance is unbalanced ...

Shortly you lost the trust in the company that what they will do has your best interests at heart.

It takes a big amount of effort and trying to put yourself in the shoes of your leader to try to understand how they got to that decision/action and if indeed was done in good faith you might overcome this. If not, then the best is to leave.

A "leader" makes a decision and the people under him decide whether to listen to that decision, to push back against that decision, or leave. So in reality, the company's direction is influenced by people both at the top and at the bottom of the totem pole.

True leaders realize the importance of cultivating those underneath them, and adapting their direction to pushback or input.

And when there's a dramatic split on how to move forward, they apparently generously buy out the minority.

Managers of high-performance teams recognise that they're not the talent; the job is to enable the talent. You are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon.

Hire good people, give them goals, and the resources they need, then get the fuck out of their way. Let them make their own processes, rules, norms, even mistakes. Most organisations have a prevailing culture, so they'll operate in context anyway; create boundaries by application of Conway's law. Intervene by guidance and with pertinent and impertinent questions, not with directives and fiat. Authoritarianism is the death-knell of ingenuity.

It’s one thing to solicit feedback and be open to the input of your team. It’s another, often ineffective, thing to let your team lead you. How would a leader make a decision when there are conflicting views or recommendations.

Brian Epstein made lots of decisions without the bands opinion and many more when they disagreed.

Well, here's the rub: I generally try to avoid saying "my team", because I don't regard them as possessions.

I'll make N-way decisions between conflicting ideals when I'm invited to adjudicate, but refrain otherwise. My guidance would be to workshop apparently dissimilar preferences extensively, because 99% of the time there is a synthesis to be found, and creating a focus for conflict tends to encourage loud voices to get louder, drowning out alternatives. I'll treat any administrative decision-making as being on behalf of the team, i.e. as having been delegated the authority to do so from the members. I learned years ago that governing by consent of the governed is the only form of respectful leadership, and this extends to organisations and corporations, and it's never more apparent than when a manager switches jobs and people follow to the new gig because they liked working with you.

The most important function, in this management style, is hiring, and in some organisations, talent acquisition has been half my workload. Regarding which I was once told, "hire people smarter than you"; the only issue with this maxim being the corollary, viz. that the CEO is, by induction, the company dunce.

Interesting perspective. What is it about my team that is possessive? The work my?

Why is it that you avoid possessiveness?

I am not asking from judgement but genuine curiosity.

I think there are some valuable ideas in your post. And I generally agree with your perspective. I also think nothing about governing with consent of the governed alters the existence of an actual power structure unless you would resign in the face of a team member not consenting to your decision.

> my

Yes. The primary meaning of "my" is the individual possessive. The secondary meaning of association, or membership, is something one cannot reliably communicate, even to oneself.

> Why is it that you avoid possessiveness?

I don't own people. They have individual agency.

> resign in the face of a team member not consenting to your decision

That's bonkers. It's still thinking in terms of a command authority. It's not me that has to consent, it's the rest of the team. Or more precisely, don't make decisions on behalf of a team if it hasn't agreed to recognising their validity in advance. The most important consent to obtain in this regard is hiring (nuance: compensation/levelling is best left to a separate corporate organ), followed by seating (yes, really) and allocation of day-to-day work.

Frankly, a manager whose team doesn't recognise the validity of their decisions, or who can't handle being challenged to qualify and explain their thinking, should go. Continuing the earlier analogy; if the band is unhappy with their manager, they can get a new one.

Command authority is for temporary dictators in situations required real-time skilled decision making, like a surgeon in the OR, or the emergency controller for a downtime incident. It is not for deciding which continuous delivery tool we'll use, whether we're including SSO in the next release, or buying standing desks, or who gets to sit next to the window, or has to refactor a problematic query.

The hardest thing to do in this context is fire someone, but then, it always is.

The easiest thing to do is actually extinguish the team, because the quid pro quo is that it spends company resources.

Who said they were high performing? They had the best team money can buy almost but I'm really not sure it was high performing. Looks like it had a lot of problems and I'm sure it affected productivity.

The funny thing about leadership is that those under you hold more power than you, because it is up to them to accept your decision.

In any marketplace, there are always people who decide not to deal with any given participant. That doesn't mean they have more or less power. There are still others to deal with.

Sure, ending a relationship is disruptive. But moving on is perfectly feasible.

I'm referring more to people -- leaders in a position of power and influence over those below them, like a CEO or manager.

And the thought here is not novel -- it was taught to me as part of an Organizational Psychology class in b-school

One's ability to lead is only as good as their ability to get followers to follow their lead. Hence why so many people use fear to keep others in line -- it's the easiest and simple way to ensure compliance

In Political Science, Neustadt’s seminal Presidential Power (1960) makes the point that the President’s power is mostly exercised through persuasion.

Yes, because B-school is exactly where people learn to become good leaders... please, tell me more ;-)

Knowledge-wise my BS in global business isn't worth the paper its printed on, but it keeps the "you have to have a degree" assholes at bay

Considering that most b-school students go on to become MBAs, I would hope they teach some leadership skills

This is true but it doesn’t change the structural reality that a leader makes a decision.

The leader makes a decision, but usually that decision is either fully defined or heavily constrained by the wishes of the team. Being in charge often feels more like figuring out what your subordinates want to do and putting out some compromise in a way everybody can agree to than coming up with directions yourself

Do you always do exactly what your boss first tells you to do? You never negotiate a delivery date?

Leaders make decisions but good leaders take account of the views of their teams.

Somehow negotiating a delivery date feels different from feeling free to use company resources to discuss outside politics...but I'm old fashioned, I know.

It wasn't "outside" politics though. It was discussion of things going on at the company, that the owners decided were "politics" that would be banned in the future.

I'm old fashioned enough to know that when you impose changes overnight that lead 1/3 of your staff to leave on the spot then maybe a little bit of consultation might have been a good idea.

Agreed, especially if things are slipping BECAUSE of all the time lost to political battles.

This is obviously wrong: decisions are negotiations. Rules are merely the next step in a continuous process. Rules change, participants change, environments change.

Ok, so why do we accept that companies are run like autocracies, but we expect that societies are run like democracies?

If we say that employees should be smart enough to autonomously do their jobs well, wouldn't their collective intelligence be better at running the business in its entirety? Why isn't it smarter and more financially sound to run a business like a democracy?

You should give "The Alliance" by Reid Hoffman a read. Excellent book - the first half, anyway - and I think it might give you a different perspective (or at least some food for thought).

America - land of freedom and democracy, where all are created equal... you must do exactly as your boss says without question though. The workplace is a magic alternate dimension where totalitarianism is suddenly good, for some reason.

You fundamentally do not understand the definition of totalitarianism which is why, you, simply lofting that word at everyone in every direction to blanket disparage things you don't like results in 90% of your comment history being greyed out.

I know I'm wasting my time here but here is the first three definitions of totalitarianism I was able to find :

(emphasis mine)

> Britannica: Totalitarianism: *form of government* that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of the state.

> Google : relating to a *system of government* that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.

> Dictionary.com : of or relating to a *centralized government* that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life.

A business is not a government and you are using the term in a meaningless context so you are going to have to forgive everyone else for pointing out that what you are saying makes absolutely zero sense.

> A business is not a government

Yes it is, hence the existence of concepts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_governance and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy

Employers have a great deal of authority of their employee's lives - to that extent they govern their employees. This is all straightforward, conventional usage of these words and terms.

Government also makes the rules about how businesses operate (property law, contract law, and so forth), and give businesses the right to enforce them - in this way, businesses are an extension of government in the control they have over our lives.

All you're doing is question-begging the exact premise I'm critiquing in the first place: That the workplace is in a magic separate dimension where principles usually agreed to be good (democracy, equality) are no longer desirable or even applicable.

That is honestly probably the single dumbest things I've ever seen written on hacker news. Congrats.

Instead of insults, perhaps you could explain what you think is wrong with it or what you disagree with.

I'm not sure why this has made you angry - perhaps you've become irrationally attached to certain ideological beliefs, and my pointing them out has triggered you.

>A business is not a government

>Yes it is

Some things reach a point of idiocy where no one is going to be convinced and you just need to call things what they are. And that is fucking moronic. So let's just stick with that.

Imagine being so convinced you're correct that you call others idiots and morons, when a cursory read of the relevant wikipedia article would show that you're obviously wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government

Emphasis mine:

> A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, *generally* a state.

> While *all types of organizations have governance*, the term government is *often* used more specifically, to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations.

So you are simply ignorant of the broader meaning of the term. I look forward to your apology. But do please try to interact with more humility and politeness in future, and be familiar with the very basics of a topic before debating it.

> you must do exactly as your boss says without question though.

You left off "if you want your boss to give you gobs of money every two weeks".

It’s a two-way street, though. If you’re a half-decent software engineer there are tons of bosses willing to give you gobs of money. And smart bosses recognize that.

Absolutely. But the idea that this is a "totalitarian" deficiency in the country's provision of negative rights is ludicrous.

"Do what I say or I'll cut off your income, depriving you of food and shelter" is exactly the kind of authoritarianism I'm talking about.

Basecamp isn't the only way on earth that these people can make an income

So as long as you can take your pick between a number of different authoritarian situations, that's OK?

Are you a socialist/communist? I've only heard socialists talk in these types of terms, "authoritarian" "totalitarian" etc when referring to the workplace.

I'm simply trying to get to the heart of people's beliefs, and understand why they think the way they do.

Well I'd say that companies, unlike governments in a nation, are myriad, and one has choices as to where to go. Similarly, the founders should retain as much control as they wish, as do the employees, as it's a bilateral contract. Now, for companies that essentially force workers to work, such as minimum wage shops, I have no sympathy for them.

Governments are myriad, just like companies are. There are hundreds to choose from, and one has choices as to where to go.

Sure, and if people don't like one, they are free to move to another country as well. Although this is harder by at least an order of magnitude than switching jobs of course.

No you aren't. You are hurling pejoratives around to win a point. As noted above, you are not even using the pejoratives correctly.

This is in no way "authoritarian". Basecamp is saying that if you want to sell your labor to them, they have a few requirements. Plenty of companies have this. Is making employees wear or uniform or wash their hands when they leave the restroom authoritarian? After all, if they don't follow those rules, they'll be fired and their income streams will be cut off.

It's fine for a job to have requirements, but why shouldn't those requirements be decided in a more democratic way?

Because the employees aren't buying their own labor. Why should they get a part in the decision about how someone else spends their money?

Because that's called plutocracy, which is bad. Things should be governed by democratic principles rather than plutocratic principles.

Particularly in the context of a workplace, where the workers are the ones actually doing all the work.

> Because that's called plutocracy, which is bad. Things should be governed by democratic principles rather than plutocratic principles.

This is a value judgment not shared by everyone. One/few person rule can be quite efficient in certain tasks such as rapid development and deployment of resources, because you can cut through red tape. At the same time, it can be inefficient in other tasks.