Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Are we in an era where a company is a commodity?
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Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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pinak — Apr 12, 2006 10:00:52 AM — # ↩
birdonthewire — Apr 12, 2006 10:14:24 AM — # ↩
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 10:37:18 AM — # ↩
This effect is most pronounced in very small companies (under 50 people) that are competing in the same market, where when you have a project and have identified people to execute it, it becomes a matter of finding a shell to stuff these people into for the duration of the project. The shell itself is disposable and easily substituted with another -- it comes into play solely to provide an organisational framework.
This also accounts for job hopping: association with a company is no longer sacred. It is meant to be temporary, to be honoured only until the task is done.
This of course only works in a competitive market where (a) human players are numerous and yet few enough to be in demand, and (b) homogenisation has ensured that you can walk into just about any company and expect a familiar structure.
I've observed this phenomenon with a couple of projects for Indian clients in recent months and am wondering if this is a recurring pattern.
black_victory — Apr 12, 2006 11:23:27 AM — # ↩
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 11:31:45 AM — # ↩
There's a teeming mass of no-name companies doing small projects in the long tail (to borrow terms from a much hyped up observation) where what I mentioned is at play. That is what I'm interested in.
mat_attack — Apr 12, 2006 1:37:11 PM — # ↩
Just curious, do you know many companies that that hire use temporary contract workers. In large numbers. More importantly individuals who don't have permanent jobs. I imaging the pool would have to be pretty large for the companies to be considered comodities.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 1:56:35 PM — # ↩
The Long Tail -- or Power law or Zipf's law (see also) as it was known before -- is a very real phenomenon that all well-informed media industry managers are justly terrified of. Long before Wired started hyping it up.
The long tail is irrelevant to this discussion except that it assures us for every Infosys and Wipro, there'll be a humongous number of small companies that pretty much nobody's heard of, and nobody will hear of. The A-list are well studied and get their share of publicity every day. Several publications dedicate themselves to drooling over how cool the A-list are. I'm not interested in them.
The no-name small companies, however, are enigmatic.
I'm not looking at temp contract workers, but talented individuals who chose to not be cogs in large machines.
mat_attack — Apr 12, 2006 2:50:52 PM — # ↩
Thanks to the current situation there are a large number of companies particularly small and medium sized ones. So a prospective employee does get a lot of choice.
But I do feel that most people are looking for permanent and secure jobs rather than take big risks.
This might be a matter of perspective. From where we sit, the both of us probably run through a very different groups of people.
About the long tail, from what I have seen most of the talent floats up to the big companies. The talent tail is very short.
I grant, there might be a change comming but its not here yet.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 3:08:45 PM — # ↩
No, that's the wrong way of looking at it. Power Law states that a scarce resource concentrates in few hands. Talent is scarce. It'll accumulate with a few companies. These are not necessarily big companies. Google vs Infosys, for example.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 3:09:30 PM — # ↩
birdonthewire — Apr 12, 2006 2:20:17 PM — # ↩
Company as a commodity, can't quite agree with that. In "The elephant and the flea", Charles Handy talked about how the future will see increasing number of fleas ('flea' to be likened to a talented individual doing his own thing). At the same time, he also cautioned about how the jobs/lives of those who are not fleas will get increasingly worse.
In my opinion, while fleas are no doubt on the increase, I think it is his cautionary warning that is more the story. The number of temps (like someone pointed out) in large companies is pretty substantial. Most of these temps are not people like you, but the avg joe. And the number of so called "knowledge workers" is really an insignifcant fraction. Of course, this is not the case in a smaller company, where the skills of the people are at a greater premium. But that has been the case in any era, not just today.
A company as a commodity can be a reality only when a significant majority are fleas. I am afraid that is simply not the case.
And job hopping is largely because of the state of the economy today. Even people with limited talent find better opportunities in today's job market.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 3:02:30 PM — # ↩
Is it plausible that a new form of super organisation is emerging that treats the form of the company as a transient means of expressing itself? After all, people collaborate outside the company framework, and tools for that form of collaboration -- the Internet in general -- have been getting better and better.
The Company is an invention of a period when it turned out the best way for individuals to collaborate. It needn't continue to be the best way forever. Reviews of Handy's book also suggest his concern was with lack of commitment to an organisation -- but an organisation need not necessarily be in the form of a company.
birdonthewire — Apr 12, 2006 4:12:56 PM — # ↩
Possibly. But the emergence (if it happens) will take a long time coming, IMO. No doubt communication and collaboration tools are better, far better than ever before. But if I were to look at this philosophically, it is also a mindset thing. To take advantage requires a person (ergo, society) to operate from a different mindset (maybe, a "commune mindset"). Where stability/steady income source is not as important as it has always been, where communes can become a way of life.
Fundamentally, I feel we can move towards a different organization only when we stop operating from a "predominantly self-interest" mindset. It is not impossible, I rather think it is desirable. And of course unlikely. :-)
Yes, a company is not necessarily the best way to collaborate. As a matter of fact, it is hardly an ideal way once it gets beyond a certain size.
I have only read bits and pieces of The Elephant and the Flea, but I have read "Gods of management" and am somewhat familiar with his ideas. One of the reasons I like him is because of his philosophical/social approach to management ideas, quite unlike most other so called management gurus.
frozenaftermath — Apr 12, 2006 12:15:12 PM — # ↩
But yes, most companies are essentially shells these days with a handful of people deciding the direction and the financial.
In the five years that I've been working, it has been pretty much the same stuff that I've done. Mapping out workflows, getting processes in place and developing the product and process to a stable level, hand over and move to a new gig.
Come to think of it, even the senior level management is affected by the same factors. Quite a few them I've known have moved on to new ventures and pretty much picked up from where they left off.
I guess I would say the talent pool now is more of a commodity than a company, where your value is determined by how well you can retrofit into an existing scheme of things or modify your own stuff to start a new one.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 12:46:43 PM — # ↩
So on the one hand we have established individuals treating companies as disposable shells, and on the other hand we have established companies treating individuals as disposable workforce.
Very interesting.
Perhaps we can still use the term "commodity" if you consider a company as a resource "consumed" during the execution of a project? The company may not cease to exist, but it does cease to maintain the same relationship with the people and the project, and hence is consumed and transformed.
themadman — Apr 12, 2006 12:54:40 PM — # ↩
Eh?
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 1:20:23 PM — # ↩
themadman — Apr 12, 2006 1:25:08 PM — # ↩
birdonthewire — Apr 12, 2006 4:15:07 PM — # ↩
zeeshanmn — Apr 12, 2006 2:19:57 PM — # ↩
frozenaftermath — Apr 12, 2006 3:51:41 PM — # ↩
Coming back to the topic, companies are doing the 'disposable workforce' drill mostly out of compulsion, at least the big ones. It costs too much money/time to get new guys into the loop and make up for old hands who leave the deck. And this is in an age of insane pay outs and performance-related bonuses. It is probably also an indication of how processes have standardised across segments (works beautifully well in the case of media at least) making all this possible. Companies really don't have a choice here, they can't try more than a certain extent to retain people. If you make it really difficult for anyone to leave, hiring new and good people also becomes equally difficult.
I'd still not call the company a commodity, a tooled-up platform/workshop prolly would be a more apt description. You can force the issue and call it consumption, but that would more or less an argument over the semantics than the concept.
Apologies for the delayed response we are kind of pushing the limits of Apache/Postgres tweaking here :)
mat_attack — Apr 12, 2006 1:28:44 PM — # ↩
mat_attack — Apr 12, 2006 1:21:59 PM — # ↩
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 12, 2006 1:30:52 PM — # ↩
Maybe we're seeing two sides of the same scene?
I can imagine that as the IT industry (for example) grows more and more prominent and makes its people richer than the general populace, it'll have immigrants who want the security of a banner that identifies them as insiders. This is the disposable people in an established company side of affairs.
jessyleen — Apr 12, 2006 2:59:46 PM — # ↩
kingsly — Apr 12, 2006 9:06:41 PM — # ↩
You'll have to agree that we are past the era of people aiming for govt/bank jobs with pension etc.
Even the biggest of companies pink-slip their employees.
IMO the only real "security" in today's world is to constantly remain "employable".
latelyontime — Apr 12, 2006 3:46:41 PM — # ↩
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 13, 2006 10:29:25 AM — # ↩
sriramb — Apr 12, 2006 5:06:56 PM — # ↩
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Apr 13, 2006 10:34:06 AM — # ↩
And it does appear to only work in a thriving economy where individuals are highly valued. I think it'd be fascinating to figure out how it skews the supporting structure.
kalyancreddy — Apr 12, 2006 11:16:08 PM — # ↩