[lsc]

as a boss, the 'respect' and 'above' thing kinda bother me. I mean, it /is/ my company, but on the other hand, if I didn't think you were good at something, I wouldn't be spending my money on you. (I mean, sometimes an employee who is very good at one thing starts telling me how to run something that I don't think they know very much about, and that can be irritating, but eh.) If you are a boss and you are hiring non-interns that aren't better than you in their areas of expertiece, you are incompitent.

I mean, I'm not a very good boss; I think of most of my relationships the way you think of contractors. which is wrong for most people, but personally? I get really uncomfortable with this idea that I'm "above" an employee.

On the other hand, I think this actively contributes to me being a bad boss. A whole lot of people really like the idea that the company is a family or something, rather than it just being a mutually benficial relationship. I mean, if you are part of the company, and I own the company.... that has some (i think) disturbing implications. If it's just a mutually benifical relationship, on the other hand? that seems much less disturbing to me. But many people are more comfortable with the former. (and yes, many of those people like to see the company as more of a co-op where everyone has ownership, and that's another area where I'm a bad boss. I'm not any better at pretending that other people own what is mine than I am at pretending to own other people. I have enough experience with real co-ops and communes to want to avoid that sort of thing.)