[gruez]

>we sign them up as part owners instead of as conventional wage employees.

That's basically how startups work. They pay less, but they presumably make up for it in terms of equity. However, the common advice when it comes to startup options is to value them at $0, which makes sense given how much risk there is. I can't imagine many people taking up on the "you get equity instead of wage" offer. The "options are worthless" problem doesn't exist for large publicly traded companies, but then at that point shares in the company and cash is basically interchangeable. What real difference is there between $300k in meta stock vs $300k in cash? I'd guess most people would still rather take the cash than the equity so they can have some sort of worker co op.

>but the disparity in ownership between "founder" and "twentieth employee" might be so stark that the latter is better off taking a wage. Maybe the founders _could_ decide to give everybody a bigger piece of the pie, so to speak, with proportional increases in responsibility to those hired and difficulty in finding people. It would be a different kind of company.

The problem is that in terms percentage ownership of the company, giving out equity is a zero sum game. You can't give everyone a significant stake (eg. 5%), because that would wipe out the founders/investors.

[MathMonkeyMan]

> The problem is that in terms percentage ownership of the company, giving out equity is a zero sum game. You can't give everyone a significant stake (eg. 5%), because that would wipe out the founders/investors.

I agree that it's a problem, but only if the founders think that they are due a much bigger share than anybody else. It's only natural to think so. But, if you're doing the cooperative thing, you have to share. I don't really know anything about it, but that's why I described it as a different kind of company.

[gruez]

>but that's why I described it as a different kind of company.

You mean... like a partnership? It works well for professional services (eg. lawyers, accountants, consultants) because there isn't much capital required and are limits to scalability, so you giving your partners equal share isn't that much of an issue. However, I can't see it working for tech companies where there's a massive amounts of capital required, and the impact of a single contributor can be enormous. Why would investors invest the "different kind of company", the returns will only be shared among the workers? For the founder that has a $1 billion idea and has the skills to execute on it, why would he create an organization where he gets the same share as a junior developer who care barely make a CRUD app?

[MathMonkeyMan]

I agree with you.

> For the founder that has a $1 billion idea and has the skills to execute on it, why would he create an organization where he gets the same share as a junior developer who care barely make a CRUD app?

Presumably he wouldn't hire a developer who can barely make a CRUD app, and his decision to share more than he has to would be on ideological grounds.

[Animats]

> I can't imagine many people taking up on the "you get equity instead of wage" offer.

Autodesk did that. Everyone who took that deal became rich. This is unusual.

[mathgladiator]

What I've "discovered" is that most people today have very elevated compensation goals that they can't really fathom being an 'equity player'...