I wonder how many outraged posters have ever tried to be their own boss. I gladly trade 50% of my potential income for uninterrupted family time, PTO, marketing, customer service, support, accounting, tax declaration, and all the other crap that I had to do myself as a freelancer.
Some people like doing those other tasks and the owner/boss doesn’t do them but pays others to (while still taking the biggest chunk of the proceeds).
There are other forms of organization than capitalistic corporations with a parasite at the top. Cooperatives, collectives, and other organizations like that even exist today and are successfully functioning. The parasite serves no vital function and can be cut out to the benefit of everybody else.
In the company I work for the CEO does quite a lot of work, in the previous company the owners were there when I came in the morning and still there when I left home, writing code like me but also meeting customers, doing acquisition, finding out why the cleaning company didn’t send anyone that week, etc.
If being “a boss” is so easy, I don’t understand why don’t everyone here just go freelance, hire people and start browsing for Ferraris.
This isn’t about small companies with a handful of people, it’s about the ones with thousands of employees. And being a freelancer basically means not having anyone beneath you.
The whole point is about the massive amount of surplus value the employer takes off the employee. In small companies, due to a lack of machines, experience, connections in the industry and other things, there needs to be more work done for the same profit. So the employers will have to work themselves to rival other major corporations.
You shouldn’t see these type of things as a critique on the person, but on the system. You have to exploit your workers, otherwise you won’t be able to compete with the ones that do.
If you are a fair boss, and you give your employees the actual value of their work, you don’t have any to invest, and will eventually fall behind on technology. So the more someone exploits others, the more they’re able to invest in tech, therefore increasing their workers productivity, and the amount of money they can extract.
The owner of a major company has to be a major exploiter, otherwise they wouldn’t be where they are.
That’s why the problem is the system, not the person
You are describing other workers who own part of the company. Just because you call them “boss” does not make them the same as all “bosses”, and it certainly doesn’t make them the same as those taking the bulk of market profits in general.
The part of the strata they occupy is the petite bourgeoisie. Within this group there are people who work their asses off and compensate themselves accordingly, while giving a fair share to the workers under them. There are also people who squeeze their workers for every penny, giving the bare minimum to survive while doing nothing of note themselves except rent seeking.
I have worked for business like what you are describing. My bosses ate and slept their jobs. They took a greater share. They also compensated us well and gave us a part of the profits when things were good.
When people are complaining about “bosses” and what they do, they are not complaining about those people. They are complaining about the much larger set of bosses (by market share) that absolutely do not do those things.
Do you think Zuckerberg is like your boss? Musk? Trump? The family that runs Walmart does not put in as much labor as their entire employee base.
Even in the lower strata, most bosses are not like the people you describe, and to come here and defend “bosses” with your outlier examples (by market share), is disingenuous.
I wonder how many outraged posters have ever tried to be their own boss. I gladly trade 50% of my potential income for uninterrupted family time, PTO, marketing, customer service, support, accounting, tax declaration, and all the other crap that I had to do myself as a freelancer.
Some people like doing those other tasks and the owner/boss doesn’t do them but pays others to (while still taking the biggest chunk of the proceeds).
There are other forms of organization than capitalistic corporations with a parasite at the top. Cooperatives, collectives, and other organizations like that even exist today and are successfully functioning. The parasite serves no vital function and can be cut out to the benefit of everybody else.
In the company I work for the CEO does quite a lot of work, in the previous company the owners were there when I came in the morning and still there when I left home, writing code like me but also meeting customers, doing acquisition, finding out why the cleaning company didn’t send anyone that week, etc.
If being “a boss” is so easy, I don’t understand why don’t everyone here just go freelance, hire people and start browsing for Ferraris.
This isn’t about small companies with a handful of people, it’s about the ones with thousands of employees. And being a freelancer basically means not having anyone beneath you.
The whole point is about the massive amount of surplus value the employer takes off the employee. In small companies, due to a lack of machines, experience, connections in the industry and other things, there needs to be more work done for the same profit. So the employers will have to work themselves to rival other major corporations.
You shouldn’t see these type of things as a critique on the person, but on the system. You have to exploit your workers, otherwise you won’t be able to compete with the ones that do.
If you are a fair boss, and you give your employees the actual value of their work, you don’t have any to invest, and will eventually fall behind on technology. So the more someone exploits others, the more they’re able to invest in tech, therefore increasing their workers productivity, and the amount of money they can extract.
The owner of a major company has to be a major exploiter, otherwise they wouldn’t be where they are.
That’s why the problem is the system, not the person
I’d love to see a company of thousands of people without bosses…
You are describing other workers who own part of the company. Just because you call them “boss” does not make them the same as all “bosses”, and it certainly doesn’t make them the same as those taking the bulk of market profits in general.
So we consider CEOs and owners not bosses?
Just to clarify: this was a startup and all 3 were the only co-owners, +5 employees .
It depends on the person and situation.
The part of the strata they occupy is the petite bourgeoisie. Within this group there are people who work their asses off and compensate themselves accordingly, while giving a fair share to the workers under them. There are also people who squeeze their workers for every penny, giving the bare minimum to survive while doing nothing of note themselves except rent seeking.
I have worked for business like what you are describing. My bosses ate and slept their jobs. They took a greater share. They also compensated us well and gave us a part of the profits when things were good.
When people are complaining about “bosses” and what they do, they are not complaining about those people. They are complaining about the much larger set of bosses (by market share) that absolutely do not do those things.
Do you think Zuckerberg is like your boss? Musk? Trump? The family that runs Walmart does not put in as much labor as their entire employee base.
Even in the lower strata, most bosses are not like the people you describe, and to come here and defend “bosses” with your outlier examples (by market share), is disingenuous.
How does that boot taste?
Awesome, it is exquisite. I happily trade 2-3 hours everyday with my kids for some concept of “boot” of strangers on the internet.
If you are unhappy with your boss I’d say it’s a skill issue.