I think I really meant to give this thread the title, "Being an employer . . . Is it worth it?". Really I was giving consideration to the grief, hassle and stress you put up with every day trying to manage a business with employees.
Let's say I had as much money as Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. I would have so much money that I would be able to create jobs just for the sake of providing people with a livelihood and a nice place to work. I could find two very impoverished towns, one in Kenya, and another in Cambodia. I could say "I'm going to build a big massive factory in both of these towns, and employ 15,000 people in each factory". If I paid US$16,500.00 per year to 30 thousand people, then it would set me back half a million dollars per year. That's pocket change for folks like Zuckerberg and Musk.
I could get the whole operation started by having a load of scrap metal delivered to the Kenyan factory, and get my Kenyan workers there on a production line to melt down the metal, cut it, and weld it into the shape of metal frames. Then I could transport the metal frames from the Kenyan factory to my other factory in Cambodia, and get my Cambodians to melt it down again and make different shape frames out of it. I could keep this operation going for years and years, exchanging scrap metal between Kenya and Cambodia, spending half a million dollars of my own money per year on providing a livelihood and a nice place to work for 30,000 people.
It wouldn't surprise me if there were a handful of employers in the world who have an operation such as this going on somewhere -- a project that employs people to work but incurs a loss rather than a profit -- with the intention being just to create jobs.
But 99.999% of employers don't have that kind of money. Running a business is about turning over a profit while remaining within your moral boundaries -- although for some people it's just about making a profit. I think 99% of employers take on a new employee so that they can increase the level of work that gets done, and in turn increase the overall profit of the business. I'm sure employers do take pride in employing a dozen people, providing them with a nice place to work and a decent wage to live on, but really the employer took on those employees to build up his business -- i.e. to increase his $$$ per month.
Ten years ago I took up a new job just after I finished school (we call it 'college' or 'uni' in Europe). I took up work in a new IT firm, and I worked for a very exploitative employer. This employer was able to get all the other employees to work unpaid overtime whenever he wanted them to. I remember the first day I met my co-worker named Michael, he was in an electronics lab down on the ground floor, and it was in the month of July, the sun was shining outside and I was wearing shorts to try cope with the Summer heat. I walked into the lab at about noon, and all of the blinds were shut. Michael was sitting at a desk over an electronic circuit, wearing a hoody with his hood up. I said to him:
His reponse was:Em.... the sun's shining outside and you have the blinds closed all the way
As I said, my employer's efforts to exploit my colleagues were successful. These guys were actually working for below minimum wage, as they were only getting paid for 40 hours per week but really they were working 50 - 100 % more hours than that. I'm pretty sure if you do the maths on that, it brings their hourly pay below the minimum. But anyway my employer's attempts to manipulate and exploit me didn't work out well. I remember one day in particular he had prepared a speech for me. He came in to the office and asked if he could speak to me in the next room. Then he began speaking:Sometimes I'm in here til after midnight so I don't like to know what time it is
This guy really wanted me to believe that he had employed 4 people for the sake of employing 4 people (i.e. just to provide a livelihood to 4 people). Not any mention of how he would get rich off the electronic product we were developing. No word of profiteering and capitalism. No word of the massive investment he'd gotten from rich guys who wanted to quadruple their money.Thomas, I was living in the South of France, and my children were learning French. The economy back home in Ireland was on its knees. I wanted to be a patriot, I wanted to create jobs, so I left France and took my family back to Ireland.
I've never been an employer so I can't say for sure what it would be like, or how I'd treat my employees. If I was to start out as a sole trader and then develop a very lucrative business to the point of needing help with the work, I'd have to think long and hard about becoming an employer. I'm used to doing volunteer work in homeless hostels and psychiatric units, where I see the person in front of me as someone whom I'm willing to use my own time and money to help, and so then if I were to become an employer then I'd need a shift in mindset where I see the person as basically a tool. A money-making tool.
Over the past 10 years or so I've spent a fair bit of time around temples and meditation centres, where people work together just out of kindness and good will, to be part of something that's making a positive change in the world, to be around nice people. In particular I've been to meditation centres where the head honcho isn't allowed to accept any gifts.
If I were to ever become an employer I'd need to have a big change in mindset, and I'd have to be careful not to run away with a lust for riches, because exploitative employers are human sewerage.
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Originally Posted by Fluidic Kimbo
