Ask HN: Do you make decisions like its your company?

I use to act as if I own a large stake of the company I worked for, regretting it much later when I realized I was doing too much and knowing too little.

I was just kidding myself pretending as an owner of the company therefore investing too much emotion and work into it. Why would I pretend something that is not true? It's not like fake it until you make it thing.

I do not know how much you know about your company, but I was an outsider that knew nothing about the inner workings and secrets about it. I thought I knew, that's the kidding myself part.

Unless you are a real owner, you are just a cog in a machine. If you perform well, you will be rewarded well as a cog in a machine not as an owner. Most decisions you make would not affect the overall situation. Just do your job well and try to spend time with something else you care after work, not something you have no control of.

If you owned most or all of the company, maybe you would make more of an effort to prevent bad stuff, like dumping toxic waste in rivers.

On the other hand, if you owned the whole company, you could maybe make a lot of money by creating externalities like dumping toxic waste in rivers.

I always thought from observing others (since a year or two into my first corporate job) that the job of managers, up to and including the CEO, is to manage conflicts of interest. Fashionably, "stakeholders".

All of the things people say about managing sound to me like misdirection from the actual meat and potatoes.

As a non-manager, I've tried to train myself to never take it personally if a manager does something inhumane out of (apparently) loyalty to an organization. Maybe they feel it, or maybe they feel like they are trapped into it to keep their job.

If I want something, I appeal in some manner to the underlying human feelings that I assume everyone has. Blaming people (even implicitly) for failing to be loyal to whatever they ought to be only creates bad feelings.

But, people, managers and non-managers, who are good at manipulating situations by such techniques as appealing to friendship or human decency, can end up subverting a whole organization. The integrity of an organization paradoxically depends on people who follow rules for their own sake even when they lead to wrong outcomes, for a greater good. I'm thinking of the legal system and government as much as corporations.

   “William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

   Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to 
   get after the Devil?”

   William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”

   Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 
   'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This 
   country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not 
   God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you 
   really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, 
   I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”

I do not. Why would I? My job is to deliver what has been asked of me by my boss, on time. Sometimes I take an initiative and propose something else I could deliver, if it helps me get a promotion, earn reputation/respect, learn new skills, or is interesting to work on. Typically that something would also benefit the company, and that's how I sell it to my boss, but it wouldn't be why I want to do it.

Only if I'm making money like it's my company.

For real though, they don't want me making decisions like it's my company. They want subordination. They'll praise you if you make a decision that agrees with their views, but punish you otherwise.

If the business wants to feed my useless admin work, I'll tell the once it's useless and after that I just eat it.

No one cares that you're churning unsellable butter unless it becomes an existential threat. Even then, most of us are confident enough that we're just gonna move on.

No. Mainly because acting like a "company owner" implies a higher degree of connection between the employee and the company. I tried to not get too attached to the companies I work for. Besides the real "company owners" are paid enough to behave as such; regular employees are not.

I enjoy the work, and I know it has value, so I need my money today.

If a company wishes to participate in this sort of arrangement, I tend to put in more than healthy. If a company shows signs of trying to take advantage of my offer, I will remind it that I do not belong to it, no matter what a contract may have made them think.

It can be a very strong relationship, if the company wants it.

But I’m not taking a bullet.

There are likely others at or around your level that view your work as not important. You likely view theirs as the same. Maybe not. Either way, who is right?

Are you ever trying to accomplish something despite a different business unit? You might just be thinking of it like your company.

Are you ever willing to let a goal slip for the greater good? You might just be thinking about it like your company.

Dropping into that head space is important. But if it isn’t your company, it is as delusional to live in that headspace as it is to think the company cares for you in the way any person could. The CEO might. The company does not.

I think this understatement of importance to do so is also partly why a lot of people are largely filled with some angst and doubt. It doesn't help that we're continually being hyper-connected to the point that one's success is overseen.

Also it's why a lot of things suck right now, incompetence is net-high on a global scale. And no one seems to be willing to do maintenance enough at scale which is why automation is prominent. Historically if you look at technological innovations at a global scale we are definitely not innovating at a net-good/net-high. There was definitely a drop/stagnation that started at a certain time.