[LA.pm] dream job, as far as tech goes

[Mark Hedges]

Topic for discussion: Programmer Co-operative

We market in two ways:

1)  Contracting agency, we have staff recruiters who place members at other
companies.  Recruiters are also members, paid at a base rate, but they get
commissions too, which is generally how that game works.

2)  In-house projects that we do for other companies.  TDD, pair
programming, task rotation, remote distributed work.

By having both in-house projects and contract placement, we have flex
room.  If you're placed somewhere, and then your contract ends, you can
work on tasks for in-house projects until we get you a new placement.

Because it is democratic and worker-owned, no more of the hierarchy keeping
secrets from each other.  Everyone knows about all the money, which makes
fraud next to impossible.  Bad manager?  Follow the rules of order to vote
them out of the co-op and elect a new one.

We still employ some people, perhaps worker-owners or perhaps contractors,
to manage things like H.R. and payroll.  The difference is, we are their
bosses, and the co-op would have to vote along certain rules to confirm
recommendations to hire, fire, promote and discipline.

We would need a few C-shares to get started from someone who has been more
financially successful than me.

Then we exploit the general discontent of workers in hierarchical
businesses who have nonsensical managers and get sick of the highschoolish
personality dominance games prevalent in the industry.  We use the coolness
factor of a real co-operative, to run a crowd funding campaign for
additional cash to fund the recruiters and marketers and start growing the
business.

I have studied a little of this law and I know I can put together a
workable set of bylaws.

It's not socialist, to all the dumb doublespeak propagandists out there.
No one forces anyone to buy your bits from our co-op, and it would be a
private company of a small group of individuals, not an organ of the
state.  In this industry, I think worker co-ops would be more competitive
than corporations, if we could get over the initial hurdles.  Other groups
are certainly free to form their own cooperatives and compete with
different rules and preferences.  The market would decide which set of
people and decision frameworks would be most successful.  Read Léon Walras,
founder of capatalist analytic theory.  He was a big advocate of
co-operatives because he did not see any actual reason why the same person
couldn't be capitalist, entrepreneur and laborer to some degree.  Those
were just number sinks or sources in his analytic theory, not any objective
criteria that made them social class boundaries that individuals were
limited to.  Think of it like an Athenian Forum.  (Just don't try to run
Melos without giving them votes.)

If it works for grocery stores, coders could make co-ops work more
efficiently and profitably.

So yeah, that's my dream job, as far as tech goes.  If anyone's interested,
let's talk.  We can't do it alone.  (And that's the whole point.)

Mark
(310) 487-7123
http://formdata.biz
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