Toward the Open Company 272
Arto Stimms writes "The author of the e text editor is using the principles of open source to transform his company into an Open Company. Not only is he releasing the source, the company itself becomes totally open: no concept of bosses or employees. Anyone can join in at any time, doing whatever task they find interesting, for whatever time they find appropriate. This is in service of the idea of 'the real freedom zero': the freedom to decide for yourself what you want to work on."
Re:Seriously.. has no one read Atlas Shrugged (Score:2, Insightful)
Atlas Shrugged is not actually a history book. It's not even a good piece of fiction, and the economics and politics therein are laughable.
Re:Seriously.. has no one read Atlas Shrugged (Score:2, Insightful)
"Atlas Shrugged" is a *history* book? Perhaps you should read it again, this time more carefully.
Re:Ok, I will join! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a trustrank plan for assigning compensation, which is a little farfetched, IMO. FTA:
The problem is that any kind of trustrank system can be gamed. This would likely degenerate into a core clique that games the system to reward themselves disproportionately -- even if the concept ever got off the ground.
Never mind the people who make valuable contributions that are unpopular among code contributors (such as marketing, sales, accounting, etc).
Re:Trust Metrics (Score:3, Insightful)
Want a glimpse of how this works out? Think about Karma on slashdot or karma on reddit. If you've participated attentively in either of those systems you already know how problematic this will be.
Honestly, I've seen a lot of people complain about the Karma/moderation system on slashdot, but I've never seen a problem with it. I actually find it works quite well (for me at least). If I'm having a really bad day and write a flamebait sort of post, it'll generally be modded as such. The majority of my posts don't get modded at all, and when I write something that particularly interests people, it tends to get up-modded accordingly.
It may just be that I've never been targetted by any of those types that downmod based purely on their personal feelings of me personally, but looking at the mods in general on posts, I do tend to agree with them, so clearly it's working in general at least.
Re:Still sounds like a boss (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it kind of sounds possible to use trust metrics to distribute the salary. But what kind of trust metrics?
If he uses his example of advogato, then co-workers would upmod their peers. But I'm not sure that structure creates the right incentives for modders - if I upmod some stranger, he gets a bigger piece of the pie - every upmod I do makes my take smaller. Every downmod makes my piece bigger. And if friends upmod friends, maybe they'll be expecting some kind of reciprocity.
This "opem source company" is a really interesting idea, but to the extent that trust metrics can be gamed, the concept can be broken.
Re:Trust Metrics (Score:3, Insightful)
The most recurring complaint I've seen with the slashdot mod system is from people complaining that it enforces groupthink. In otherwords, it's perfect for a corporate environment.
Re:I don't think it will work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine two goods, good A and good B, that are sold on the open market. Good A sells for a price that is eight times greater than good B. Person A was able to produce good A in one day, and person B was able to produce good B in one day. So, on the open market, person A makes eight times more money than person B in the same period of time. That means consumers have judged person A to be eight times more productive than person B, even if person B worked much harder!
So, if person A and person B happen to be working for the same company, why shouldn't their boss pay person A eight times more than person B? Why should their boss come up with some arbitrary limit?
Sounds Like an Open Co-op (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy doing this determines the operating expenses, including (I'd assume) their own salary. If it's really as open as they claim, all the accounting will be public, too. So anyone who wants to do some work can see how much the company is spending on those operating expenses, and the (ongoing) income statements. If they accept it as reasonable, they can do the work, or they can just not do the work.
This principle could work. It's like a cooperative [wikipedia.org] company, "employee owned", but without employees owning shares in the corporation getting dividends of the profits (income - expenses), just a direct share. Eliminating the shareholding eliminates control, but it also makes coming and going as a "profitholder" much easier.
Of course the real problem is the "trust metric". It's a popularity rating, set by members of the group on anyone else who joins the group. Joining requires only contributing code. There's going to be a fair amount of (paid) work by group members reviewing the code to decide trust, but that's a necessary part of software quality anyway.
The real problem is for people who contribute code (or review, or other work) who aren't rewarded with trust metrics by others in the group, perhaps because of a bias by some against others because of the type of work. If some people contribute only code, and others contribute only review, that might lead to a "class war" where one group discounts the value of the other, regardless of the (only guessable) "real" value of each kind of work to the profits being divided up. If more people review than code, even if that's not necessary, and the reviwers all have a bias in rewarding each other's work more than they reward coders, an coders don't have a bigger bias against reviewers to compensate for their smaller numbers, then reviewers will get a higher rate of reward than coders. Which could prevent any coders from contributing. Or the sizes/biases could be reversed, and reviewers could get shorted enough that no one reviews.
I think this project goes too far all at once. If this system were familiar across our large Internet development population through its exercise within closed groups, with more permanent membership, perhaps assigned traditionally by a boss who hires, it's less likely to be torn apart by people who don't understand they're working against their own best interests. Then, once it's understood to be workable by people who understand their best interests, and not just an easy target for losers looking to game a system they merely clumsily destroy, maybe the transition from co-op to open co-op would work.
Does anyone know of any successful closed co-ops running like this one, but centrally hired, fired and assigned shares of the profits?
Re:I don't think it will work... (Score:5, Insightful)
If that were the case, the company should seriously think about producing more of good A and less of good B.
I get that it's a hypothetical, but it's not realistic. You're trying to force a choice when that choice doesn't really need to be made... There are other options.
Unfair. (Score:4, Insightful)
The system is supposed to ensure fairness by having employees rate each other, but I know how this goes simply by watching people around me, in person and in real life.
Every 'contest' I've ever seen has been about popularity, not efficiency. They guy who sucks up to everyone and buys them beers after work will have the highest pay, while the guy who does his shitty job in silent magnificence will have one of the lowest pays. In addition, everyone in a group will rate their own group members higher than they rate other group's members. This means the biggest group will have the highest average pay as well.
Absolutely none of it will be based on efficiency or profitability.
That is, assuming it's truly 'open' and not just claiming it and then having the owner overrule everything anyhow.
Re:Ok, I will join! (Score:5, Insightful)
This would likely degenerate into a core clique that games the system to reward themselves disproportionately -- even if the concept ever got off the ground.
So basically, executives?
Re:I don't think it will work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine two goods, good A and good B, that are sold on the open market...
I've been through the economic allegories hundreds of times before. All of us on Slashdot have. I've read the Wikipedia summary of Atlas Shrugged [wikipedia.org] (sorry, I'm not reading it, too high of an opportunity cost), and have been through several semesters of college economics, accounting, and finance.
I look around today and say to myself, I could run GM, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, into the ground just as well as anybody. Why shouldn't I get paid the big bucks like those guys? The fact is, they aren't worth what they get paid. There is some sort of flaw in that logic. If Ayn Rand was right, engineers would make more money than CEOs.
Seven times the minimum salary isn't an "arbitrary limit", the owner of the company I mentioned spent quite a bit of time figuring out that amount. At the time I met the owner of that company he was making $350k and the janitor was making $50k. If the janitor wasn't worth $50k, he would fire him, it's that simple. He told me that the janitor was very good at his job, and had been working for him for many years.
Policies like that encourage people to be conscientious about their work. It also reduces employee turnover, and hostility between the work force and the management. In the end, the company is more efficient because of it.
Re:There's already a name for this... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the new buzzword for this is "crowdsourcing".
I was thinking more along the lines of "abandonware".
No longer interested in being the sole contributor to your yet-another-editor software project? Send out a press release touting it as a new paradigm in "Open management"!
Re:Just like a closed company... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't think it will work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking it farther, people would only wish to be producing good A, until the point where the market for good A drops in price down to where good B and good A have roughly the same margins.
Treating people as commodities, you have the present situation in north america. Everyone is in a pile on to be "a leader" (by which I mean CEO), to get the top dollar. Very few people want to be the scientists, engineers, accountants, factory workers, janitors, nurses, etc. required to fund that CEO because the wages are low(er). People choose career paths that will lead them there, which often neglect the company fundamentals.
Because of this problem, we have a shortage of the types of labor we want, but to avoid the unpleasant solution (amongst decision-makers) of paying higher wages based on need, we have are providing an escape valve via globalization strategies. We can back fill exportable jobs via cheaper foreign labor by taking advantage of arbitrage. This further exacerbates the problem locally, by reinforcing the trend to CEO-type positions (and janitorial/nursing, should that prospect look dim).
In the long run, assuming no armed revolts, it will ultimately balance out. It's clear the time constant required for stability exceeds the lifetime of most of us here on slashdot. A better solution to achieve control sooner is to reduce the discrepancies in pay, and attempt to change our cultural values away from being "the" boss, to being a solid, reliable individual who is an expert in his chosen field.
We all know that if you have a company of 80k people, and the ceo goes from getting 100M in a year to 0 in a year, it won't make a huge impact to each employee if spread equally ($1.25k/yr), but it may make a huge impact in driving the labor market the way we need it to.
If CEOs are chosen based on the person with the best capability of leading organizations and making decisions, other factors removed, rather than the person who most wants to make a fortune... I think good things would happen to our labor market and our corporate governance.
This isn't quite a hippie commune mentality, wages will vary based on need and difficulty in producing qualified individuals. But it will be more stable than the rabid elitist method we currently use.
The question is how to produce this ideal when the people who have the money and/or authority who traditionally create and profit from a top-down model won't immediately benefit (or in fact would lose out). Since the investment for software projects is very low (particularly open source), it is interesting to see how ideas like these work and how they could be applied to other areas.
Ayn Rand (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say you didn't read "Altas Shrugged" but you already did say it. In it the subject John Galt [wikipedia.org] travels the world to talk business owners to convince them to abandon their business because of socialist governments nationalizing businesses.
If Ayn Rand was right, engineers would make more money than CEOs.
It's easier if they start their own business and or work for themselves. Even Bill Gates started as a programmer when he started Microsoft. He was the first person to hack a basic interpreter, the Altair BASIC [wikipedia.org], for a homebrew or microcomputer. He dropped out of college to do so.
Falcon
Re:I don't think it will work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that everyone capable of being a good CEO is employed as one already? We have all seen cases where the less qualified have been promoted due to slick self-promotion skills or company politics. Do you really think these factors are less prevalent when it comes to CEO appointments?
The fact is that there isn't any evidence of a relationship between executive salaries and executive management skills.
Re:I don't think it will work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why shouldn't I get paid the big bucks like those guys? The fact is, they aren't worth what they get paid. There is some sort of flaw in that logic.
The world is frequently NOT a logical place because it is populated by many more stupid people making illogical decisions than smart people making intelligent and rational ones. This results in much of the available capital being concentrated, for various reasons having little to do with relative IQ, in the hands of people who are ambitious, corrupt, and ruthless but not necessarily smart. However, it is simplistic to say that because engineers are not the most wealthy members of society Ayn Rand was absolutely wrong.
Re:I don't think it will work... (Score:3, Insightful)
you're going to be getting offers much higher than $250k per year, lots of offers.
There is something to be said for intrinsic motivation. [wikipedia.org] Ideally, Ben and Jerry would have found a qualified CEO that would have the same love of ice cream that they have. I think this would have been a much better option for them. Unfortunately, a person like that is much harder to find.
Re:dude, i wish you luck (Score:3, Insightful)
ideas on organization are always in competition. what is the yardstick we use to measure them? simple monetary success or monetary failure.
But maybe that won't be the criterion that people involved actually use. IME, the more people really enjoy what they do, the happier they are just to be able to cover basic living costs. If the company were to tick over for a decade or so generating enough income for the people involved to live on without screwing anybody over or trashing the environment, I think that might meet quite few people's ideas of "success."
I like to believe that I can see a distinct cultural change happening these days: people want to remain child-like for longer, and are increasingly resistant to anything that forces them to grow up. This has its downsides, of course, as anybody with conservative tendencies will have noticed (and I have a few myself): failure to take responsibility, solipsism / narcissism, selfishness. But the flip-side is that people don't want to live with the sort of constant low-grade background anxiety that the current socio-economic system generates, and want to be able to play, i.e. do creative stuff they like. We may be able to transcend that Darwinian struggle, and if the opportunity's there, it's worth making the attempt ..
you have just as much chance (Score:3, Insightful)
to exorcise simple greed from the human mind as you would exorcising the desire to have sex
greed is greed is greed. monkeys, insects, hell even bacteria understand the notion: get it all for yourself
its an instinctual drive deeper and more rooted in the human mind than any social system you could ever possibly devise. it is not taught. it is organic. children brought up in isolation from any social influence you deem harmful would spontaneously recreate it
so you need to work with greed, because there's no getting rid of it
or choose to reject my words. that's fine. i don't really expect you to listen to me. such is your passion. there are in fact people on this planet who do not want to have sex. asexuality is a real psychological phenomenon. likewise, i believe there are psychological classes of people, such as yourself, who are fanatically altruistic organically. no greed
but the fanatical altruists, and the organically asexual: we are talking about classes of psychology that are firmly and permanently in the minority, and have no hope to influence the majority. not that that will stop you. nor should it
i don't think you should stop with your attempts at creating your visions. why? because your uptopian scheme, like the millions that have come before it and the millions that will come after, they DO serve a valid purpose in society: it keeps people like you occupied in mediocrity and obscurity, and away from real businesses that works and real society that works, where you might do real damage
xoxoxoxoxoxoxox
I'd /love/ to be open-everything... (Score:3, Insightful)
but we have enough trouble with people doing direct rips of our site /without/ providing the source code.
Yeah, I know that GPL uses copyright law too, but the problem is we're dealing all the time with people who don't respect copyright law. Exposing our code would just make it easier for people to rip us off.
Most I can push for at work is "Let's not actively obfuscate anything we're sending over anyway".