This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven.
I hope young people don't read this and blindly believe it.
Totally agree.
> We are NOT companies
Actually, we are humans. However, when it comes to our economic activity, we are also a company. Both things can be true at once.
> this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people.
Woah. Anything you specifically disagree with?
I put it in economic terms to address the article, but if you replace “company of one” with “life” and “returns” with “outcomes”, the message is largely the same..
Edit:
I think you disagreed so hard because you think I’m saying “you’re only an adult if you think everything is about money and personal gain.”
But what I was trying to say was “you’re an adult once you realise you’re it; you can fail; and it’s nobody else’s job to make sure you don’t” - which I didn’t think was such a controversial point..
Depending on what one means by "good", that one doesn't have a right to it is a fairly strong statement of political opinion, but it was presented as a universal truth.
I also think it's very important that people are allowed to enter risky ventures and "fail" while still being secure of a somewhat good outcome. Anything else puts a lid on innovation. (As they say, if you don't fail a lot, you aren't running bold enough experiments.)
----
You may have meant it descriptively ("I have observed that most societies don't allow for individual failure") and not prescriptively ("societies shouldn't allow for individual failure") but the rest of your comment was written in a prescriptive tone so it was hard to pick up on.
Either way, congrats on writing a popular and controversial comment!
From that point of view it's probably more defining of humanity as a species that we take care of others, not that we survive personally at all costs. There are thousands or millions of species on this planet that only do the latter, and they don't write books and invent recipes and create startups.
I think this is a really important thing to highlight in what I think is a real contradiction that is exposing its self and largely driving our global political narrative. Does one have the right to a "good life"? It looks like oop edited his original phrasing, but I'd like to take a moment and step into this question, because to me, it seems like its one that is still working itself out in real time. Its a question that for me, the US declaration of independence and framers were trying to address (for their identity, not necessarily for others).
Does one have an inalienable right to a "good life"? Do rights exist if we aren't will to fight, tooth and claw, to maintain them?
I think there is a real divide out in the wild about ones right to a 'good life', and a lot of people are being swindled by failing to think through and understand where the right to a 'good life' is borne. So many on one side argue that
Oop is getting a ton of flack for their framing, however, for me, it was once I adopted an almost identical framing that I started getting my worth at my place of employment. I started understanding that I was responsible for and being paid for or paying for all of my time. I may not like the game, but I didn't make it and playing ignorant to its rules wasn't going to help me.
There's clearly a lot of hate for neoliberalism in the responses to OOP's comment. I despise neoliberalism as much, and likely more than most of those respondents. But you can't fight something you don't understand. Sometimes its important to think through and understand how another group might frame something. Just because a belief happens in your mind doesn't mean you are that thought. Its ok to look at things from other perspectives, especially those you disagree with.
There's an embedded ambiguity in your sentence in that there are two kinds of failure. One is a failure of endeavor where one don't get what one necessarily wants but who has the basics. Two is a catastrophic type failure with some combination of deprivation, insecurity, and health problems as a result.
Most people would agree with your statement when it comes to one. When it comes to two I don't think such a consensus exists.
My interpretation of the disagreement you are replying to is that possibly differing definitions of failure are being used.
Fair enough.
In 2008 somebody asked me if I wanted to try cocaine. I didn’t. He eventually moved on to heroine and his life is now utterly “failed.” in the worst sense. My life is good.
In 2013 somebody told me I need to buy as much bitcoin as I can. I didn’t. That guy is now a billionaire and I’m still an average dude.
Personally I see those two situations as basically the same: decision -> outcome.
There is a continuum of outcomes and the “fail” end could be really catastrophic, for you, your finances, your life, loved ones, possibly even the whole planet in the extreme.
But yes, entertainment obsession in kids (on-demand media plus working single parent works out quite badly for the kids), media emphasis on those who are unaccountably good at a thing, means media portrays failing far less often than is realistic, and when it does it's a Rocky style training montage. Plus no-one really wants to write the manual for kids on how to give up on your dreams.
It's an ideological position, and a harmful one at that. We aren't all totally independent actors competing in a ruthless market to maximise profits.
Not saying there was anything abhorrent in this thread, but I agree with you that I'm seeing this pattern more and more in today's hyper-sensitive climate.
Why do you feel the need to be so condescending? Someone disagrees with your perspective and its because they are the least intelligent person in the room?
Perhaps it is you who is being shallow and trite, not understanding the actual objection I have. I know that what the OP is saying is a description of how to optimise your economic standing - I've done it plenty myself because optimisation comes naturally to me; I'm saying that's a shite way to live and invest your time and energy.
Outside an individual company, competition is favoured over cooperation, except when companies work together on e.g. supply chains.
It's possible that companies (knowingly or unwittingly) co-operate under some circumstances, though - even if competition is generally the {expected/favoured} model.
I don't see how an argument that agrees with the parent is counter argument. They literally said we all need to look out for our own well being, and a part of that is managing our participation in voluntary exchange.
> We aren't all totally independent actors competing in a ruthless market to maximise profits.
I missed the part where the parent said that. Where was it?
While that's an accurate description of neoliberal economics, I'm arguing that it's neither natural, nor necessarily productive, nor conducive to human wellbeing to mould one's behaviour to fit that system. Or to be more concrete: you're wasting your life studying the labour market for opportunities, learning new disciplines to increase your wage, reading through employment contracts looking for advantages (obviously you should check for big fuck-you statements in contracts, just for self-protection). Not only is the market irrational, such that behaviour based on a rational model of the market is a poor guarantee of positive outcomes, but that living such a life based on market rationality is pretty immiserating and misaligned with what actually makes people happy.
Parent never said totally independent, just that the assumption is the most useful operating mode. "Don't jump in a pool expecting a life guard" is good advice whether there is a tower nearby or not.
They also never said optimizing our participation should be a primary goal, but that our participation needs to be managed with our actual goals in mind. It's like he told everyone they should exercise and the counter argument is "Not everyone should quit their jobs to be a fitness model". It's nonsense.
You could have phrased much of your statement as "this should not be extended to mean...", or "If you are also implying X then Y", and it would have been totally valid. The counter argument framing is the issue, because it's just not a counter argument.
Exactly. So where does all of this other stuff about being a robot and only optimizing for profit come in? The topic is work, and he's telling you how to think about work, not how to think about relationships with colleagues, hobbies, life goals, etc.
I do think people should always try to operate rationally in the market as, even though it isn't perfect, it will generally produce the highest likelihood of success.
In any case, I appreciate the engagement!
> It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal hazard, reputational hazard, etc.
This is an argument that you have the responsibility alone to optimise your behaviour in the market. Yes, your utility function could be oriented towards something other than profit, but OP specifically oriented their argument towards getting "good returns".
While this is the direction that neoliberal capitalism pushes you in, what with the social alienation and commodification of everything in life, but that's because it's not aligned with human wellbeing. Your self-image should not be one of a company optimising its market behaviour; this precludes socialising, spending time in nature, exercising for reasons beyond increased economic productivity. It reduces human existence down to rational behaviour in a market.
To present an alternative, because criticism in a vacuum isn't very effective: I personally think that you should optimise your involvement in the economy, so that you are minimally involved in the economy, so that you can spend your precious little time on earth doing things that actually matter to you - whether that's social relationships, hobbies, communities, whatever. The market is something to be avoided, not exploited. To do this effectively you have to understand the market, sure, but it's the same way an accountant for an enterprise company has to deeply understand tax law in order to avoid paying taxes.
If that's also what OP was arguing for then that's a whole other thing, but that's not the impression I got at all with the whole "you are a company, start acting like one" spiel.
That does not mean you should treat your family or yourself exactly as a business, but there are some aspects that are beneficial if managed in that manner.
I've had this called out as absolutely faux pas if not totally asinine by people who are deep into philosophy, but I'm doing great, a lot better than some of them born with silver spoons.
These people are embarrassed that you can think for yourself.
Life has such a high fractal dimension. It's highly unlikely that a single theory, expressed in a serial language, can be a very good description of life, at all.
But it feels good to believe one thing strongly. It feels so, so good. And it feels good to hate people who believe the other thing, and to think they're wrong.
But the right way really is to believe in all the things at once. It's weird, schizoid, scary, and completely logical.
I'd like to put something together to help people understand this. I think the quickest way to get there is:
* math doesn't work the way you think: see Wittgenstein
* space and time don't work the way you think: see Einstein
* matter doesn't work the way you think: see the double slit experiment
* rationality doesn't work the way you think: see tons of psychology
Given the above, do you think anything could possibly work the way you think it works? The best way forward is to just be incredibly weird. (And yet, somehow, be incredibly normal at the same time).
But yes it's hard to describe life, because of that fractal complexity you mention. So the best we can do is go over and over it again and again with different lenses, at different scales, different rates, and get a feel for the thing that way. (Then you must sample all of that, cut it together with music, and release a Terrance Malick movie).
We are companies. You can be a company of one and not a robot. Being a company of one doesn't imply giving up free will or somehow not being meat and bone. That's nothing to do with the statement he's making.
I hope every young person reads it and take it seriously, because it's reality. No one can manage your time, your money, your mental health, like you. No one will.
So I agree with you that it's a very partial treatment, but I didn't read it as attempting to be totalizing.
That's true, although, in a way, I think it's reasonable for the parent commentor to want to identify as a corporation if that's what they feel like.
Are there preferred pronouns for corporate identities? Perhaps people would display a personal stock ticker symbol instead?
I wonder if the IRS would play along: “I identify as a corporation so you may only tax me on my profits not my income”
(in practice: there are probably a lot of reasons why it's a terrible idea)
But as the CEO of you, you can easily get yourself killed in a couple of minutes of bad calls.
The laws of physics are the only laws.
I think you're taking the OP's comments out of context. They did not say that we are not social animals, etc. they made an allegorical comparison likening a person and their value in the marketplace to a company. That does not mean a person does not have value as a human being, as a member of the community, as a friend, partner, parent etc.
I think the comparison is apt when weighing up our careers - which is what the actual article is about - that is of course my own humble opinion, but you're implying meaning which I don't see in the OP's comment.
It’s just an analogy. A different way of looking at the decisions you make throughout your life.
The kind of response is also very childish (, not in the sense I am insulting you as childish, but actually just some kind of reaction that would comes from a child. Eg emotion and incoherent thoughts.)
Eg
The “decades of brainwashing” comes out of nowhere and essentially projecting a political view to a logical argument. If you think the argument is wrong, argue with facts not branding it as something and attract that thing in general.
“We are NOT companies”. Again sounds like an argument made by a poor politician (I mean good politician wouldn’t fall into this kind of fallacy.) Clearly it was an analogy to illustrate a fact. I mean what’s this argument arguing against? What’s “are” means in this context? In Chinese there’s an idiom 白馬非馬 comes from a similar fallacy: is black horse a horse? Is white horse a black horse? Therefore white horse is not a horse.
“We don’t live in an economy”: what? What kind of brainwashing would results in that conclusion?
“We are … social animals” and then quote “scientifically proven”. What’s the point? “We are just a bunch of carbon and stuffs worth collectively not more than a few bucks.” This is scientifically proven too. We should all quote random facts to argues against some view we don’t like.
This is so sad, really. I hope any people would exercise more logic and stops politicize things and argue based on hatred, not on HN at least.
This makes no sense from my perspective.
I could literally put myself through anything that I needed to, if it meant the safety or well-being of my children. It's not a company, it's a primal force from thousands of years of primordial reinforcement. I'd manage with less capital, so that my kids have a chance at college. I'd manage with less chance of promotion, so that my kids can have my presence at important functions. I'd manage with anything that arose, if it meant something better for them.
I think it's important to understand, and deeply internalize the personal responsibility that adult life brings and the extent to which our decisions influence the things that end up happening, but this analogy of yours borders on psychosis if taken to it's literal end.
A little deeper still, and I think what you're really pointing at is the boundary that decisions can't cross, that certain things are out of our control. Risk management can come into play, but ultimately risk can never be negated. You can only shift it. You can evade the risk of being run over by a bus by never leaving home, but maybe that raises the risk of dying in a house fire, or by being poisoned by lead paint, etc. These aren't "company decisions" they're just a byproduct of life in the natural realm.
I sincerely hope that you don't actually conduct this thinking deep into your lifestyle, perceiving things as though one big company spreadsheet of assets and liabilities.
Much love, friend.
I made a number of choices differently once I had kids. I folded up a startup and took steady employment at a company with good work/life balance. I bought a house in a good school district rather than renting and taking the risk that rising rents would force them away from their grandparents. I make a choice to drop the work at 4:30 so I can go walk to pick the older one up from pre-school rather than get an extra 20 minutes of work in.
But all of these are still choices - they're weighing the things important to me and deciding that I'm going to allocate my labor and capital in different ways. Once you start getting into the economics of pricelessness, when you must do this for your kids or you're a bad parent, bad things often happen. You lose the ability to make rational trade-offs, and your kids often sense that and never learn the ability to make rational trade-offs.
The point of the metaphor is to not depend upon your current employer to manage your career for you. If you do, they will inevitably manage your career to suit their own interests, not yours.
I follow the parent poster's advice in part because I have kids. I manage my career to serve my personal success so that I can care for those who depend upon me.
Not all of life is one big spreadsheet of assets and liabilities; just those things that are relevant to my career growth.
Yes.
> I sincerely hope that you don't actually conduct this thinking deep into your lifestyle
I think what I said holds true about your economic decisions (which the article I’m commenting on is about).
I don’t believe you have to (or even really can) view your entire life through an economic lens. I didn’t mean to imply you are ONLY a company and nothing else.
I did mean the last bit that nobody else is going to make sure you don’t have a bad outcome as applying to life generally.
You had me up until this one. It is not (in my view) necessary to optimize monotonically toward anything that makes life better for my children. All the stuff you said before that, I would certainly do if the alternative was deprivation for my children, but having secured their basic well-being, making things even better for them is only one consideration among others. As an extreme, if I had enough money in the bank to secure them shelter, food, education, and enjoyment, I would not then take or continue in a job I hate in order to pad out a big trust fund.
I fear this is a pedantic point I'm making as I suspect this sort of going above and beyond is not what you meant, but it was my reaction to the end of that first paragraph.
Right, the main difference is that nepotism is bad in a regular company but in a personal company it is the opposite, not practicing nepotism makes you look bad.
Aside from this the difference isn't that big.
I'm obviously exaggerating, but not THAT much.
You can't just paint over that with an analogy. Maybe I just treat my kids different, but there's literally nothing about work that I care about even remote as much as my childrens' well-being. I'd burn my inner company to the ground if it meant they get a chance at a decent life. I believe it's a biological imperative to remain willing to self-sacrifice to any necessary extent for the betterment of the offspring.
I'm not really sure what your objection to this analogy is.... Choosing to work more so you can send your kids to an elite private school is one action that somebody can take. Choosing to work less so that you can be more involved in your children's lives is another. All the analogy is asking is that you be intentional about how you are managing yourself and your household.
That last part in particular poisons the rest. Sure, it could be interpreted in good faith, but as it's so damn condescending - why put the work in?
Take ownership of your life, nobody else will. Set priorities straight, nobody else will. Beware of far-reaching mistakes, you can screw up your life irreparably, nobody is going to magically save you like in Hollywood stories.
What the heck? These are some solid life advises. They are crystal clear to any adults, yet so many people fail with those, often badly, and their lives are ruins.
Were you told these things at least once when growing up in a manner that actually sticked with you? I didn't and for sure I wish I did (I ended up all right but I believe I had more luck than average and sometimes risked way too much)
Case in point. You use quotes, and some of the words are the same, but what the author actually said and what you think the author said are just different things.
It's not even about giving the benefit of the doubt for something that was poorly worded. I just don't think you understand what was actually written.
I apologise. It’s not what I meant, in two different ways:
1. You’re not JUST a company.
2. The adult realisation isn’t that you’re a company - it’s that you’re responsible, and your decisions have Real Consequences.
I wish I could write more clearly. I made an edit to try to address this.
Thanks.
More specifically, would it be fair to say that you shouldn't depend upon or expect other people (such as your employer) to manage your career for you?
A review of ages of history would tell that nobody ever nails it down that fully. Everything has its price, including a bank account that never goes red.
Why assume bad faith in the other comments? Try a different perspective while reading OP's comment.
That is to say, the industrial-entrepreneurial worldview is a valid one. But there are many other valid ones besides.
I'm correctly critiquing yourself and others for not actually understanding what caffeine said. It seems that you still don't.
> Why assume bad faith in the other comments? Try a different perspective while reading OP's comment.
I'm inferring bad faith on the basis that people seem to use caffeine's comment as a spring-board to engage in anti-capitalist rants, rather than actually engage with the quite reasonable career advice it was.
> That is to say, the industrial-entrepreneurial worldview is a valid one. But there are many other valid ones besides.
No one said it was the only one. Only that it is an important perspective to have on managing one's career.
Other world-views may take other positions. That doesn't make them wrong, or acting in bad faith.
Shouldn't assume people are acting in bad faith simply because you disagree. If OP's advice is as sound as you think, then it should stand up to scrutiny, not shrink from it.
This is a poor analogy and and an analogy that isn't needed (what exactly have you simplified for the reader here -- the concept of self-determination?). Not sure why you think that every person is basically a temporarily embarrassed CEO of a minuscule company and then to grandstand on that as if anyone who doesn't subscribe hasn't hit the same threshold of maturity.
You trade time, health, mental energy for money and health insurance (and/or reputation or whatever you get from your job). That's pretty much it. We (well, most of us) live in free countries, so if the business transaction does not benefit you, you're free to take your 'business' elsewhere.
That wasn't the point. The point is that businesses are people, so people are businesses. And while regular businesses can be run by a separate CEO, the business of your own person can only be run by yourself, so you got to learn to think like a real CEO to run the business of your person, even though this business will never have more than one member.
Why? Because bussinesses aren't people, rather businesses are made up of people. People aren't businesses, people do business.
You can tell yourself "you got to learn to think like a real CEO to run the business of your person" and "make good decisions" or else "you will fail".
Or you can tell yourself "I am my own man (CEO), I can decide what my goals are, and what's considered success/failure. And I have decided that I don't actually want nor have to work so hard". The day you can do that, is the day you hold a huge component to being happy.
The concept of opportunity cost.
Adages like: You can't have your bun and your penny. Or 'you can't have your cake and eat it' describe such a situation.
Whats happening here reminds me of an old git/hacker news joke: "Git gets easier once you understand branches are homeomorphic endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space"
Think like a CEO and making where you apply for work and delegate your time descicions even easier!
Want more money -- just think like a sequoia investor!
1: "Companies maximize profits. Humans maximize utility. Profits != utility"
2: "Profits are absolute. Utility is perceived."
Utility is an under-defined combination of components on Maslow's pyramid. Even more vexing, is the realization that these components vary from concrete (health, food, shelter) to hedonistically moving targets (social acclaim, money, material wants) to merely perceived (self-actualization). The term: "under-defined combination" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Because some utilities are uncomparable. 'Time spent with your children' cannot be quantified in corresponding wealth or social acclaim. Till date, I am yet to find a better compact representation (meme) of the human condition than Maslow's pyramid.
However, to a more technical audience I prefer the 'RL agent' analogy. A human is an RL agent in a weakly observed universe. The utility function it weakly defined, expected outcomes vary from true outcomes and you can only control your action space. As any RL researcher will tell you; an agent tries to maximize their utility. However, they must periodically update the utility function itself and the manner in which the world is observed. This directly applies to humans. Every once in a while, use previous experiences to re-evaluate your perception of the world. Reflect on the very foundational drivers of your goals with this new perception in mind. Find new goals. In between these iterations, a person focuses on reaching whatever their current perception of the goal is, until the next iteration.
This RL model is incredibly effective. If each iteration leads to massive changes in goals, then 'regularize' or use 'RMSE' on your utility function. If each iteration sees too little change and your utility isn't good enough; then you're stuck in a local minima. Increase your learning rate and lean more on exploration (try something new) instead of exploitation (staying your course).
Humans have lived on the planet for 200000 years. This way of organizing people as a company interacting with the labor market with assets & investments & risk management...is at best a 100 years old. Its like a drop in the ocean of time.
That said, when I was taking courses in Finance as a young 20 something, I came up with this same exact analogy & took it to its logical end - I conceived a stock exchange called the Human Stock Exchange, where every human being was a human stock ticker, and if you liked the performance of your colleagues you would buy their human stock so their human stock price would go up. You could sell short the poorly performing colleagues on your team...its a pretty toxic concept, if you think through it.
Ofcourse, since its such a toxic idea, given the extremely virtuous nature of our benign species, this toxic idea must already exist & thrive. See for instance Will Smith's stock taking a beating after what happened yesterday - https://www.hsx.com/security/view/WSMIT
You think being human stock ticker is worse than:
living on average 25 years, starving most of your life, having high chance of being literal slave not figurative, being ostracized and killed for any silly reason by local community, being dumped into trash or simply killed if local community found you were not useful or weak
So if you take it into perspective of 200000 years - being human ticker is actually really nice and comfortable.
This is all outdated colonial myth. You should turn on your educational updates.
But I still think hunter-gatherer that broke his leg had maybe couple of months to live.
Peasants in middle ages in Europe that were not able to "simply" change jobs or move out to live wherever they want. That would have to put up with abuse from land owners and other "nobles".
The same hell if one would be a woman in past times - not just no ability to vote - just daily abuse as in rape and violence.
I would like to see some real arguments for "life was better back then, now we are mindless drones".
I've had a very vague (somewhat similar) idea that I'm stil trying to articulate well.
something like what you said but the stock is run on a blockchain
then every person can emit their own stock which can get traded around.
at some point, the emitter person must (somehow) be made to respond for what they emitted.
naturally, some people will be reliable (and their emited credits will have high value) and others will constantly flop and default so nobody will be interested in having lots of their credit.
so far, this "idea" (which is just barely a sketch) poses more problems than solutions (maybe it's a bit of a barely-baked idea looking for a problem?) but it's fun to think about what else we could possibly do that nobody's thoght to do yet.
Implying that everyone who runs a company is mature and makes responsible decisions, which is not true.
Nitpick, but companies have limited liability, natural persons do not. It's for that reason that I would probably never get hired if I actually was an employee of a "company of one" (formed me for example). Companies would obviously prefer to contract with me directly, not my company.
Also maybe don't focus so much on _"Personal Responsibility"_.
When you truly internalise that life is about making money, that you need to make a good return for your stakeholders (aka family), etc is the day when you have been fully assimilated into the borg.
I sell this commodity on the market, to whom? Business owners, I guess. And this is a weird one: I actually have to sell this commodity on the market, if I want to eat and live and all. So does almost everyone else. But the buyers have other options, so I guess everyone on the sell side basically has to undercut each other til there's no more profit left on our side. What does it mean if I'm not profiting, I sell my labor at the cost of production? Best I can hope for is find an inefficiency and hope to eke out a little bit myself until I can afford to be a buyer? Maybe the whole thing doesn't quite work.
Yeah, I'd say internalizing the, uh, implications of this setup is pretty much a requirement for being a grown adult.
That's not always an assumption that holds. Many "buyers of labor" in the tech sector right now are very limited on their options, whereas the "labor sellers" have many options.
> Best I can hope for is find an inefficiency and hope to eke out a little bit myself until I can afford to be a buyer?
You will always be a buyer of some things and a seller of others. "Spending" your time to invest in rare and valuable skills that you can "sell" on the labor market can net you very nice returns.
When you truly internalise that last fact is when you truly internalize capitalism. Congratulations. There will be no prize.
this reads like a teenager, or ironically someone who never mentally moved past the point of being a teenager, who just read Atlas Shrugged for the first time
It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns.
It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal hazard, reputational hazard, etc.
There is nobody else to run this company. It does not have a right to a good outcome. A lot of companies fail. Your company of one WILL fail if you make poor decisions.
When you truly internalise that last fact is when you become an adult.
(Edit: clarified that the last paragraph refers to the previous one specifically)