Engineers taking responsibility

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/k_prasad_2.html

Frankly, the place described in this article sounds like a fun place to work. I bet all the religious arguments about programming languages and code - astronaut style design pattern fettishism evaporates when everybody is an owner.

Some of the rules of the "virtual enterprise"
-- Employees would not be paid regular salaries.

-- After execution of a project the returns would be shared by the employees as follows: 50 percent to the development team, 10 percent to the marketing team and the remaining 40 percent for the management to meet the infrastructure costs including profit.

mystified
Friday, April 16, 2004

What lunacy.

"After execution of a project the returns would be shared by the employees as follows: 50 percent to the development team"

Uh, if you want me to do the rainmaking, do the development, and share the risk of bench time, why the heck shouldn't I just strike out on my own and take 100% of the returns?

Corporate development diversifies the risk and return - in exchange for not getting 100% of the return, I get to share in *all* the wins, and can rely on a steady income.

Heh. It's like a Republican version of a commune.

Philo

Philo
Friday, April 16, 2004

Yep - I'm with Philo on this one. 

Consider they claim they paid no one until the project was delivered.  It would seem either they had a lot of wealthy developers or people who liked a large gamble.  He then made the disparaging remarks about those unwilling to work for nothing, without any guarantees, and who would share less per person than the management team, while delivering more. 

All this, while failing to mention a client, project or industry yet claiming great success.  Sorry, but you will not find me at Innovation Communications Systems Ltd or taking their advice.  Of course, I am not surprised to see it in Hyderabad, India either.

MSHack
Friday, April 16, 2004

What does Hydrabad have to do with anything?

mystified
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Because India has more of a culture of submissive workers and almightly bosses.

The story has interest, but it reeks of things that haven't been told, and comes across just a bit too cute to be honest.

Me And The View Out The Window
Saturday, April 17, 2004

That article is complete claptrap. Ground zero, rules are darwanian.

Sathyaish Chakravarthy
Saturday, April 17, 2004

I have a feeling that the "returns" are like an old Hollywood
studio's "contract" - the movie makes $billions, but
somehow, the studio lost money and the jilted star didn't
see a dime.

x
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Actually this isn't a new idea at all, it looks surprisingly like a straightforward partnership, or else a co-operative. Both ideas have been around since the mid-1800's. Co-operative enterprises (of either flavour) can work quite well, but not if they need access to large amounts of capital (which is why you don't see them in manufacturing industry).

Gaius
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Doesn't look like any kind of partnership to me, since "management" still seems to be calling the shots. It appears to me that the engineers are just working on commission rather than salary.

Tom h
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Sounds like a straightforward scam. And the ten percent for marketing is laughable. Have these guys never cnecked up on what sales guys charge on a commission only business to sell an unproven product? You're talking about 5% commission in Real Estate, let alone something you have to persuade the client there's a need for.

Stephen Jones
Saturday, April 17, 2004

Hmph.  It might work as long as the reward is reasonable.

In a typical North American consulting shop (chip design, mind you, not software), you are billed out at roughly 4x salary.  This is OK given that you are paid salary even if you are on the bench, and the sales team is doing the marketing.

If you then transition to a model where you get paid only when the project lands and ships, then you ought to expect that said payment will be better than 1/4 of the billing.

A certain consulting shop didn't set that expectation, and a design centre imploded as a result.

David Jones
Saturday, April 17, 2004

I haven't read the article so for now I will agree with what David Jones posted.

Sunday, April 18, 2004

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