Companies Are Psychopaths and Don't Care About You

From AMA on Twitch w/ @roxkstar74: Pieter Levels AMA on Twitch w/ @roxks...
Roxkstar74: Yeah. I think that's like part of the really interesting world of software is that you kinda get to the point where a lot of people feel, like a lot of companies will ask you to be passionate about what you do. Just the level of making it, which when hiring for a job, kinda ask. Kinda super ask. But when actually doing stuff for yourself has such absurd benefits.

Pieter Levels: Dude, companies are psychopaths. They are completely sociopath, sociopathic, psychopathic. Like I know 'cause I went to business school. I have an MBA there. They don't have any loyalty to you as a human, especially on an America where there's less labor protection done in Europe. There's no loyalty from companies. So why should you be loyal to companies? Fuck companies. Man, you know what fucked me up about it? Like American corporate culture is a startup culture. It's this whole, we're family, we're like happy family, team photos, team activities. Dude, that's really creepy, that's a lock-in gimmick. Because if you get fired, you lose your whole social life. That means you can't negotiate salary because you have no negotiation power anymore. It's a reductionist negotiating power because you're too locked into the company through a company culture being so good and stuff. Dude, companies are sociopaths and you should treat them like that. They pay you money, you work for them. That's it. And man, in startups, they really try to abuse that and feel like, and it's very dodgy and dark because nobody talks about that. They don't show that. It looks all positive, but it's not positive, it's kinda creepy. Company is not your family. Company, they pay you, that's it. Unless you're an owner, you get shares because it's co-op. And yeah, right?

It's interesting. 'Cause like, I don't know, it's such a great line. 'Cause ideally--

Well, it's so good marketing like, oh we have like amazing Skippy balls. You can sit on and you know, whatever the fuck with ping pong tables. And I know that's two for the sake. There's more shit now. Benefits are good. Health care, dental, but yeah, they do try and lock you in and you should be passionate about your own career trajectory not passion for the company. Who cares about the company? Like, I mean yeah, you should do the things that are good in your job, in your job description. But I don't know, yeah. I'm not a communist, but I do believe in co-op and the concept of like that there should be some kinda like shared ownership and revenue share, profit share or something. It's unfair that a capitalist owner, and I'm a capitalist for sure, but that a capitalist owner, capital owner and a company owner takes all the, reaps all the rewards. They should reap a lot of rewards because they did all the risk taking as entrepreneurs for sure. But once employees get into the picture, I believe it's fair at a day, reap also the rewards of the results of the company, not just salary. I would be for a system where you can get less salary, but you can get shares in a company or something. I mean, that's what startups do. That's kinda like equity, but you don't see it in normal jobs. Like you work in supermarkets, you don't really get ownership of the supermarket. I don't know, I feel it should be more fair.

Yeah, I know, my brother is a game designer and he works at a company that does profit sharing. So everybody gets a cut. So how successful the game is directly influences how much they get bonus wise.

Yeah, cool, yeah. Yeah, that's nice.

It gives them much more ownership over what they do. And I think--

Then it makes sense to say, okay, are you passionate about the company? Yeah, I'm passionate because we're gonna make money. I'm gonna make money too.

I think the thing is, the question is always, how do they make you care? And that's the big thing. And some people will care on the mission. Super ideal. But a lot of people that talk to me, talk to me because they say, well, you're working on local business. I'm passionate about local business. I wanna help you. And people offer to do stuff for free for me all the time because of that. But ideally, if I were to hire somebody, I would want someone who gives that much of a crap 'cause I know I'm gonna get way better work out of them 'cause they're going to feel that--

That makes sense. But I mean, they don't have passion for your company. They have passion for that general industry.

Exactly.

But that's fine. Especially for remote work. So yeah, that's fine.

And so I think that's like the more ideal version of it where you want to care about the company only as much as you care about the problem that they solve.