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(1)Sorry for not linking to it, I can’t morally support that platform.
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<h1>phil@bajsicki:~$</h1>
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<h1 class="content-title">A kind view of business</h1><span class="content-meta"><p class="author">[Phil Bajsicki]</p><p class="date">2024-01-25</p><span>7 min read </span><a href="http://localhost:1313/tags/mindset">mindset</a> <a href="http://localhost:1313/tags/rant">rant</a> <a href="http://localhost:1313/categories/business">@business</a> </span></section>
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<section><p>Scrolling LinkedIn today, I saw a post talking about the entitled attitude of
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business owners when hiring<label for="sidenote-1" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number">(1)</label>
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<input type="checkbox" id="sidenote-1" class="margin-toggle"/>
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<span class="sidenote">
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<span class="sidenote-number">(1)</span>Sorry for not linking to it, I can’t morally support that platform.
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</span>
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.</p>
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<p>The post’s point was that most businesses are not providing sufficient
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compensation for the skills and effort they are asking for when hiring.</p>
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<p>And… I can’t help but agree. But I would also like to voice a bit of my
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thoughts about the matter, because I feel like it needs a little bit more
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context and explanation.</p>
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<p>A business has one goal: to make money.</p>
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<p>To maximize the amount of money a business or enterprise can bring in, a
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business has to… stay in business.</p>
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<p>What follows from that is that the business has to be structured in a way that’s
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resilient to adversity, but also allows for increasing its potential in several
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ways:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>Sales/ Marketing</li>
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<li>Production/ Services</li>
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<li>Logistics/ Infrastructure</li>
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<li>HR/ Legal</li>
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</ol>
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<p>The important part about these is, they’re all departments that are run by
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<strong>humans</strong>.</p>
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<p>Hiring an employee is no different from signing a service agreement. Your
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employee agrees to perform certain actions for a certain amount of compensation.</p>
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<p>It is an adverse relationship, because while the owner of the business wants to
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get the most out of the employee for the given price, the employee wants to get
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the most compensation for the least amount of work.</p>
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<p>And this is an important point. Fundamentally, an employer is on equal grounds
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with the employee at every point - the business can lay them off, and the
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employee can quit.</p>
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<p>But… the employer can <em>actually</em> put themselves at a severe disadvantage, if
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they neglect the real value skilled people can bring to their business.</p>
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<ol>
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<li>Institutional knowledge<label for="sidenote-2" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number">(2)</label>
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<input type="checkbox" id="sidenote-2" class="margin-toggle"/>
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<span class="sidenote">
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<span class="sidenote-number">(2)</span>I.e. all the things about your business that only they know, such as the way your systems interact with each-other, side-effects certain actions may have, etc.
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</span>
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</li>
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<li>A practical understanding of the systems and processes in place<label for="sidenote-3" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number">(3)</label>
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<input type="checkbox" id="sidenote-3" class="margin-toggle"/>
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<span class="sidenote">
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<span class="sidenote-number">(3)</span>The ability to rapidly solve issues as they appear, while keeping the big picture in mind, so as not to break anything.
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</span>
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.</li>
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<li>The mood and culture in the company that facilitates teamwork and collaboration<label for="sidenote-4" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number">(4)</label>
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<input type="checkbox" id="sidenote-4" class="margin-toggle"/>
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<span class="sidenote">
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<span class="sidenote-number">(4)</span>Seeing people leave makes their friends sad, and that decreases their trust and emotional investment in the workplace
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</span>
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.</li>
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</ol>
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<p>If the business doesn’t understand just how valuable these contributions are,
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and doesn’t compensate employees for their real contributions… churn starts.</p>
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<p>Employees start realizing that their presence isn’t appreciated, and that their
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contributions will be valued more highly elsewhere.</p>
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<p>In my experience, it’s rare that an employee quits because of a specific event
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at work. In most cases, it’s the culture, attitude and mindset enforced top-down
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by the business owner/ CEO/ management.</p>
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<p>And fundamentally, this is an incentives problem. People work better when they
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see that their efforts are being rewarded.</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p><em>“Why should I work hard, performing duties and tasks that would easily warrant
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$40+/h,<!-- raw HTML omitted -->
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when I’m only being paid $12/h?”</em></p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>So then when employees are leaving, or being fired for bringing up issues<label for="sidenote-5" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number">(5)</label>
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<input type="checkbox" id="sidenote-5" class="margin-toggle"/>
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<span class="sidenote">
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<span class="sidenote-number">(5)</span>Yes, there is a juicy story there, and the company in question isn’t in my resumé because of that.
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</span>
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, this not only creates an exodus (because employees
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start questioning the value and stability of their employment), but also strips
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the businses of established, knowledgable, skilled talent.</p>
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<p>Which means new employees must be trained and brought up to speed. This is a
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significant expense to the business, often far outweighing the cost of
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compromising with existing employees, and giving them better working conditions.</p>
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<p>If you’re a micro-small business owner, you don’t have the leverage, the power
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to compensate talent that bigger businesses have. You’re not in a position to
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ask for a laundry list of skills that would put your applicants in the top 10%.</p>
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<p>As an applicant<label for="sidenote-6" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number">(6)</label>
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<input type="checkbox" id="sidenote-6" class="margin-toggle"/>
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<span class="sidenote">
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<span class="sidenote-number">(6)</span>I am actively searching for a job as of this writing.
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</span>
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, when I see a
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laundry list of very in-demand and valued skills for a position, such
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as<label for="sidenote-7" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number">(7)</label>
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<input type="checkbox" id="sidenote-7" class="margin-toggle"/>
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<span class="sidenote">
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<span class="sidenote-number">(7)</span>This is pulled from the jobs page of a company I worked for.
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</span>
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…</p>
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<blockquote>
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<ul>
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<li>Be a top-rated CRM specialist</li>
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<li>Responsible for:
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<ul>
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<li>managing customer data</li>
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<li>automating marketing campaigns</li>
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<li>creating effective sales funnels</li>
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<li>streamlining the CRM management process</li>
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<li>ensure seamless automations</li>
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<li>optimizing funnels</li>
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<li>designing engaging landing pages</li>
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<li>automating personalized email campaigns</li>
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</ul>
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</li>
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</ul>
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<p>[Follows a list of very undescriptive and vague “benefits”, such as
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‘opportunities for rate increases’, ‘rates based on project requirements’,
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‘we’re here to support you’ and such.]</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Give me a guess… how much do you think this company is willing to pay for this
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kind of skill-set?</p>
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<p>For reference, Glassdoor gives a bracket of $59k to $100k. That translates to
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about $28/h.</p>
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<p>The real pay for this position is about $10-11/h, not accounting for the ‘other
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duties as assigned’ trick that American companies try to get away with.</p>
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<p>So this person may end up not only managing the CRM, but also working on
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documentation, unrelated automations, project management, and a number of other
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things that are outside of their skillset.</p>
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<p>Of course, the position is paid hourly under the pretense of the employee (by
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IRS standards) being a contractor. And so the business doesn’t offer any
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insurance, worker’s comp, PTO, or anything of the sort, because it’s preying on
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international hires being ‘invisible’ in the system, and for whom these
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conditions are better than what they can get locally.</p>
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<p>Many of them are amazing people. Kind, skilled, enthusiastic and very willing to
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learn, because as it turns out - life is hard when you’re broke, so you do what
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you have to do.</p>
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<p>And the same applies to American workers, too. Ironically, they have much fewer
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protections than the rest of the world has, and so they’re getting exploited and
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manipulated by their condition to settle for less than their labor is truly
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worth.</p>
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<p>With the rising wave of awareness about these topics (as we see on Reddit, BlueSky,
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Mastodon), businesses that want to find a point of stability from which they can
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grow have to start accounting for the human element.</p>
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<p>Most of us are not happy with human-on-human violence, or violence in general.
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And violence isn’t limited to fists, knives or guns. It’s also the lack of
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respect for each-other as members of the same species.</p>
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<p>The work an employee performs is what’s on sale. Trying to get a better price is
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okay in my mind, but there are limits one shouldn’t cross, such as compensation
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not meeting the needs of the employee.</p>
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<p>Google can afford to take their employees all the way
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through <!-- raw HTML omitted --><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#Stages">the stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.</a><!-- raw HTML omitted --></p>
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<p>Small businesses often can’t, but they should still strive to, because not doing
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so automatically undermines workplace stability, and increases costs.</p>
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<p>It’s not rare to see one skilled, established employee be let go, only to be
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replaced by two or three new hires, who not only cost more, but don’t have the
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<em>institutional knowledge</em> necessary for them to be effective and efficient at the
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job.</p>
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<p>So then, what can a small business do?</p>
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<p>Focus on maintaining few highly skilled employees who are <em>happy</em> and <em>fulfilled</em>
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working for you. You can hire cheap and help newbies grow, but even then,
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compensation has to follow the market, if you want to keep them long-term.</p>
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<p>Because if you don’t, all those skills and knowledge go to your competition.</p>
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<p>If you’re a CEO/owner, and you’re looking for help to get the daily stuff out of
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the way (communication, scheduling, task management, team coordination), get a
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good assistant. They’re pricy, but you really get what you pay for.<label for="sidenote-8" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number">(8)</label>
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<input type="checkbox" id="sidenote-8" class="margin-toggle"/>
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<span class="sidenote">
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<span class="sidenote-number">(8)</span>An
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assistant with some technical skills can often handle the entire back-end of your business on their own (fulfillment and deliverables excluded), and as your business grows, they’ll be the perfect person to step into the COO position.
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</span>
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.</p>
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<p>TL;DR: Be kind, and think a little bit about what each of your employees <em>needs</em>.
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Creating internal tension in your business, between management and employees is
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the perfect way to ruin long-term prospects, both for the business, and the
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people it consists of.</p>
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<p>Thanks for reading my venty rant.</p>
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<p><!-- raw HTML omitted --><a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Join the FSF!</a><!-- raw HTML omitted --></p></section>
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