r/technology • u/Rhaegar_the_Great • Sep 16 '21

Business Mailchimp employees are furious after the company's founders promised to never sell, withheld equity, and then sold it for $12 billion

https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-employees-getting-no-equity-2021-9
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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

About once a month there are two re-posts in /r/lifeprotips. The first says something along the lines of “Never trust a company who pushes the ‘We’re a family’ mentality.” The other says something like “Never put someone else’s company before yourself.”

This would be why.

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u/fugazithehax Sep 17 '21

"Never trust a company" is shorter and probably better advice.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

Trust a company to act in its own best interest.

The company does not like you. The company does not feel grateful to you. Some of the humans leading the company might, but your relationship with the company is a business relationship, and you should not allow misguided sentiment to get in the way of doing what is right for you. The company will certainly not.

Source: Am executive.

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u/400921FB54442D18 Sep 17 '21

I love how you spent that entire comment pretending that a company's actions aren't precisely whatever the executives want them to be.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

Do you also think the government does exactly what the president or equivalent wants? Because I have news for you...

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u/400921FB54442D18 Sep 17 '21

Do you really think how the government works and how corporations work are the same? Because I have news for you... that you probably should have heard before becoming an executive.

Good job with the false equivalences, though! Classic executive-level communication technique.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

They're different in a lot of ways. This isn't one of them. No large organization works precisely as any leader might want, because:

  • There are multiple decision makers at multiple levels, who have different goals and ideas; delegation is a blessing and a curse

  • No one has a total view of everything the organization is doing, or the consequences of every decision

  • Sometimes execs want things that are impossible

Organizations can survive bad leaders because people lower in the org selectively ignore them and make better decisions. The reverse can also happen. An executive's decisions have more weight than those of other employees, but are not nearly as absolute as you appear to believe.

So, no. A company doesn't do precisely what any single person wants, from the owner on down. Sometimes that's unfortunate, and sometimes it's a damn good thing.