Why Work Marriages Make Sense

http://www.blog.joelx.com/why-work-marriages-make-sense/9511/

by joelx • 12 years ago

27 34 12 years ago

blog.joelx.com

dnissley2• 12 years ago

This is the "Loser" deal according to the Gervais Principle[1]:

"[The Losers have] given up some potential for long-term economic liberty (as capitalists) for short-term economic stability."

It makes a certain amount of sense, but so do the other positions of the "Clueless" or "Sociopaths". If you are ambitious, then the "Loser" deal is clearly a bad one.

[1] http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...

the_af• 12 years ago

Wow, that's a much better article. The following quote in particular rings true (and is the opposite of the claim from the "marriage" article):

"The Clueless are the ones who lack the competence to circulate freely through the economy (unlike Sociopaths and Losers), and build up a perverse sense of loyalty to the firm, even when events make it abundantly clear that the firm is not loyal to them. To sustain themselves, they must be capable of fashioning elaborate delusions based on idealized notions of the firm — the perfectly pathological entities we mentioned. Unless squeezed out by forces they cannot resist, they hang on as long as possible, long after both Sociopaths and Losers have left"

I've seen former coworkers build these delusions, even when the ship was sinking and what was left of management was clearly mistreating them.

nostrademons2• 12 years ago

I'd argue this is the "Clueless" deal in the Gervais model. Losers are fully aware that they have struck a bad and unequal economic bargain with their employer, they just don't care. They will happily go elsewhere if a better bargain comes along.

It's the Clueless who believe that their loyalty to their employer is matched by their employer's loyalty to them (hence, "clueless"). They're the ones who stick with the firm, rise into middle management, diligently play the company line, and then get abruptly disillusioned when the firm institutes mass layoffs.

dnissley2• 12 years ago

On second thought, yeah. Losers are strategic enough that they would be appalled to think that they had a "relationship" with their employer.

fleitz2• 12 years ago

Yeah no shit, if you get fired and get to keep 50% of the stock, it might be a marriage.

Otherwise it's just delusional. My labour goes to the highest bidder.

joelx7• 12 years ago

Wow, this is a really interesting article! I have to say it is a much darker view of the interaction between companies and employees than what I had put forth, but I do agree that it is more accurate for the majority of companies. I do think that an enlightened ownership (hopefully like mine) can treat people better.

kkartik• 12 years ago

This makes no sense to me. A marriage is premised on a lifetime commitment. Even with a 50% divorce rate, you are talking about 2 marriages in a lifetime, outliers are 3.

Most people stay in jobs for an average of a few years. It is dating as best.

Seems like a very contrived argument with no particular value derived from this analogy, apart from in fact, not making sense.

nilkn• 12 years ago

I'll admit I haven't read the full article. However, this did stand out to me:

So why would they want to be exclusive? Mostly because they want their significant other to be committed and not leave them whenever the significant other has a better option.

Realistically, I think it probably is true, sadly, that many people might see committed relationships this way. And if it is true, I would take that as at least a partial explanation for why the divorce rate is so high.

This is totally anecdotal, but from my observations, the marriages I've seen and known that have succeeded the best were not based on a trading of commitments, at least not in this very game theoretic sense. They were based on actual, legitimate love, and that's all there is to it. Love doesn't mean you can't be attracted (even very attracted) to someone else, but it means that any such attraction pales in comparison to the companionship you share with the one you love.

nostrademons2• 12 years ago

The view of romantic relationships underlying this piece is not one shared by most of my friends who are in stable relationships, and is IMHO rather unhealthy.

People do not stay in romantic relationships to avoid "the trauma of getting dumped". They stay because their partner is who they are looking for, someone who enriches their life. Healthy people sting for a bit when dumped, but they get over it and find someone new.

Also, the boyfriend/girlfriend stage doesn't match up with what I've seen: people who dump their boyfriend/girlfriend "because someone better comes along" usually find that the new person isn't better at all, and in the meantime they've labeled themselves as fickle and capricious in the minds of friends and prospective dates. Rather, it's time to end a relationship when your continued partnership is making you unhappy, regardless of whether there is someone better out there. And as long as you are happy, you are unlikely to be more happy with someone else.

I'd argue that even with these corrections, viewing work like a romantic relationship still makes no sense. The cornerstone of romantic relationships is equal emotional investment, and the idea that beneath all the trappings, we're fundamentally all just people. Business is different because:

1. There is an inherent power imbalance between employer and employee. A company is never going to love you back, nor will you ever fulfill as important a role for it as it does for you.

2. Companies will and should respond to changing market conditions. Those changes sometimes mean that whole roles disappear, and employees who want to perform those roles can and should go elsewhere. A romantic relationship is hopefully based on qualities more fundamental than "what professional role do I want to occupy?"

3. If a company refuses to make hard choices about employment and market positioning, the market makes it for them, with the result that everybody is hunting for a new job.

tjradcliffe2• 12 years ago

Company/employee relations are well-modeled by marriage between a mortal human and an immortal sociopath.

The Ancient Greeks had a fairly extensive literature on such relationships, which tended not to end well for the human, even when the human is exceptional. The gods... err... corporations can always behave irrationally, so even "irreplaceable" people can get dumped.

anon4• 12 years ago

To add to that, I know of at least two instances of people in stable relationships with children who are not formally married (there's nothing really special about having a child with someone without being married legally speaking - the father signs a document stating that he's the father and is treated as such from then on; the mother is obviously known). That's really the kind of relationship I'd like to be in - one where you don't involve the state's laws in your close personal affairs. You can still have a ceremony and exchange rings, and the people I know do wear engagement rings.

joelx7• 12 years ago

You have extremely good points about my article. My thoughts on your points: 1) The article was specifically written by me (CEO of my small business) for my top managers, so while a big Fortune 500 company will never act this way - I can make sure my company does treat the employee in this fashion. 2) Companies absolutely should respond to changing market conditions and often this will mean that certain roles go away while new ones emerge. However, as CEO of my company I can make decisions that are not optimized for profit such as to keep a great employee and retrain them into a new position or at least to continue paying them till they find a similar position. 3) True - If I did this for ALL positions the company would fail to keep up with the market. However, if the company does this with the top 5% of people, those people will likely perform even in different roles as market needs evolve.

p1esk• 12 years ago

>>as long as you are happy, you are unlikely to be more happy with someone else.

'happy' is a multidimensional concept. There are many 'shades of grey'.

beachstartup• 12 years ago

People do not stay in romantic relationships to avoid "the trauma of getting dumped".

plenty of people do, in fact, stay in relationships for this reason. also to avoid being alone in general. not everyone has noble motives for the relationships they maintain. to think otherwise is quite frankly a bit naive.

i do agree with your larger point though.

mmcconnell1618• 12 years ago

So vesting periods for options are a prenuptial agreement? Stay for a few years if you want to leave with anything.

joelx7• 12 years ago

Haha... and golden parachutes are alimony!

GeneralMayhem• 12 years ago

Even if it were better for the employee to be married to their job (which is doubtful - see: the many articles telling us that the best way to get a raise is to negotiate your new starting salary), I worry that this post could be taken to mean that you should be loyal to your company in the current real world. Your employer does not want to marry you, and will in fact drop you as soon as something better comes along. If you're the only one acting as if it's a long-term thing, you're the sucker.

joelx7• 12 years ago

Agreed... you would need to strike some sort of a deal directly with ownership, which is impossible for most public companies. Good point!

opendais2• 12 years ago

This article is terrible. Companies are not loyal to their employees and pretending otherwise is truly deluding yourselves.

People in a marriage, in theory, should remain loyal for life.

joelx7• 12 years ago

I agree most companies are not loyal. It would need to be a 2 way relationship led by ownership (not really possible for publicly held companies, but can work for small wholly owned companies like mine). Perhaps it should even include some sort of legal contract...

Good point though for most large companies.

opendais2• 12 years ago

Joel,

I think that sort of relationship should really only existing for a few types of government jobs to block regulatory capture [if you have a job for life with good pay and retirement...the only way to lose it is to be caught being bribed] and teaching [which politics might meddle with].

Please don't take my comment personally. I watched people who were loyal for 10+ years get laid off recently and it kind of has made me angry about the idea of that kind of loyalty to a legal fiction.

carsongross• 12 years ago

Basically it’s a trading of commitments: Each person says to the other, “I want to avoid the awful risk of being painfully dumped for someone else, so I will make a commitment to you to not leave as long as you do your part even if someone else that might be better comes along.”

From Dante to this.

"Progress"

piyushpr134• 12 years ago

One of the most stupid things I have ever read on this side of the screen

tjradcliffe2• 12 years ago

While I don't disagree, I'm deeply interested in knowing how often you read things from the other side of the screen...

patio11• 12 years ago

This model of employment exists. In Japan we call them "salarymen", in America "tenured professors" or "civil servants" or (in much of the country) "tenured schoolteachers." The model heavily distorts expectations about work (for those in the model and out of it), life, culture, etc. It is not an accident that your workplace will frequently be involved in the decision of who you actually, not metaphorically, marry.

If your life experience does not include enough warning flags for the potential negative consequences of this model on the firm, on its non-"married" workers, on its "married" workers, on its workers' families, on its customers, and on the wider society, flag me down two weeks from now and I will go into them at substantial length.

Mz• 12 years ago

So why would they want to be exclusive? Mostly because they want their significant other to be committed and not leave them whenever the significant other has a better option.

Uh, no. Monogamy is rooted in, basically, the following issues:

1) Germ control. You can get deadly diseases by sleeping around casually.

2) Sex leads to babies and human babies do best with two parents. It is a big burden and our species is designed to do the two parent thing.

3) It takes 15-20 hours a week to build and maintain real intimacy. There simply isn't enough time in the week to have lots of different genuinely intimate lovers. The math suggests that most people can sustain no more than two genuinely intimate sexual relationships.

humanrebar• 12 years ago

2 is pretty key. The parent(s) are the anchor for the family unit. Examining marriage outside the context of family is a big conceptual mistake.

fleitz2• 12 years ago

You're trying to justify the dominant social mode rather than trying to discover arrangements that make people fulfilled.

Marriage stats suggest that humans aren't at all monogamous, most marriages end in divorce, and most people cheat.

jasode• 12 years ago

This article is terrible.

Some companies today and many companies of yesteryear had a different relationship with their team members: that of the husband / wife level of commitment.

The relationship was more like parent & child than that of husband & wife. That's what it was with the 1950s automotive companies and Japanese corporations decades ago. The common adjective when discussing those companies was "paternalistic" and not "spousal".

The author should research the rigid labor situation in France and see how it's handicapping their economic growth. They don't have the political will to push through labor reforms and their young workers face 25% unemployment rates.

A husband+wife employment model in America would weaken instead of strengthen its economic power.

joelx7• 12 years ago

Very good point about the parent-child relationship vs the spousal relationship... I thought of the husband-wife metaphor today and liked it so I wrote an article on it. I will consider your idea further to see if my idea needs updating.

sebastianconcpt• 12 years ago

That's really a confusing thing in many ways.

"The company can be sure that that person will show up each day and do their best to do good work." <- no, the company managers can feel they're getting the best they can get. Not the same thing at all (it's all about perception).

Sorry I'm too tired to refute the rest of the confusion but to leave something of value to think about: the way our brains operate have optimised us to think about people. Disney make some objects like creatures because is easy for kids to pick up on anthropomorphised objects.

There might be something of value to research in the antropomorphisation of the company-employee relationship but my radar says it's easily going to end up hacking unaware or unpowered humans into company drones.

Watch this: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-corporation/

joelx7• 12 years ago

I agree; this concept if applied to a company that did not (or legally could not) operate this way would lead to the detriment of the employee. By the same token, the concept if misapplied by a company to employees would lead the company to fail. It needs a bit of an enlightened team to work properly.

lauradhamilton• 12 years ago

Almost all the comments here are saying that this article is terrible, yet it's at the top of the front page. Huh.

Kluny• 12 years ago

It got under people's skin - good troll! Bad argument though.

Why Work Marriages Make Sense

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