4mo ago

The most communist FOSS company

Let's immediately acknowledge that the title is lighthearted, and that "communist company" is an oxymoron. The better choice would've been, "which is the most worker-owned, egalitarian, power-structures-free cooperative?", which SEO experts told me was too long of a title. With that said, let me tell you about Igalia and other tech cooperatives

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I remember Huawei claimed that its employees owned the company. It would be nice to have a list of these "kind of odd" companies
- Indeed they do
  Ownership
  Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd. is a private company wholly owned by 151,796 of its employees and retired beneficiaries, as of December 31, 2023. Mr. Ren’s investment accounts for nearly 0.73% of the company’s total share capital.
  https://www.huawei.com/en/media-center/company-facts
  
  So this Mr Ren is the founder? How did they get to that? They've got a lot less employee owners than total employees?
  
  After Elon will be arrested because of illegal procedures applied in case of injured people in Tesla's factory in Berlin, Tesla will follow a similar management structure ⚖️
- They are a massive megacorp though. It always leaves me to wonder "how much".
  Tons of capitalist companies do stock options where "technically" the employees own a share of the company, though that percentage is usually extremely small, even collectively such that they have no decision power. I can't help but think that it is similar with huawei, but with better marketing.
- Vivaldi is an employee owned cooperative
- There is this showcased at the end of the article.
Yea, agree with the description for this post. This is an example of a worker cooperative, which is certainly a form of business that usually is much better for the workers involved, but calling it Communist is certainly a stretch, as Communism is more about full public ownership of an economy than it is carving a niche out of a broader Capitalist system. Not saying it's bad! Just that the title is definitely toungue-in-cheek, if I'm going to be annoyingly nitpicky.
Wonder:
How do they handle someone who may not be performing as well as others?
What's the process for conflict resolution? Both professional and inter-personal.
Not sure if they've been through a big global recession yet. That's usually when companies and their policies get tested.
Not to take away from their unique model. Just curious how the idealism handles the messy parts of human nature.
- There was the 2008 crash they survived?
Fascinating read. Thank you for sharing!
- You're welcome 😊
This sounds awesome! Thanks for sharing!
However, that comes with some extra requirements, such as having 85% of the partners be from Spain, a limitation that Igalia did not want.
How does that comply with EU law? Is not most discrimination between citizens of different EU member states prohibited by it?
- Good point not sure. There must be some exceptions because I'm certain there are citizenship requirements in France for some jobs.
Goddamn!
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure I'd be happy in a fully remote role where you've got hundreds of employees voting on how you build stuff, but I know that there are lots of people who dig this pattern, and they're clearly doing Good work.
Amazing, thank for sharing!

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