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Trasmattayesterday at 10:14 PM8 repliesview on HN

> Ownership Mindset

Every company I've worked at hammers the "ownership" idea and I hate it so much. It's how they drive a culture where employees are expected to invest themselves into "owning" a problem space that can be taken from them at any moment. It's how they trick you into doing extra work that's not in your job description.

Unless you're ACTUALLY an owner, don't be fooled by an "ownership" value.


Replies

seanp2k2yesterday at 10:58 PM

Another term for it is "accountability laundering" https://fortune.com/2026/03/05/mobile-world-congress-account...

It's the norm at Big Tech these days. Directors and VPs take all the glory if it goes well while ICs, team leads, and people managers get all of the blame if it doesn't. When the charlatans get exposed, they bounce on to the next company with their charlatan friends. Rinse and repeat while swapping RSUs for index funds, retire with >$10m before 50. If we stopped allowing this to work in our industry, it wouldn't be such a common thing. Unfortunately, with how everything is these days, these people are getting hired on vibes and bravado.

croteyesterday at 10:39 PM

Ownership implies both accountability and agency. In practice you often get all of the accountability, none of the agency.

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saganusyesterday at 10:25 PM

Conversely, you have "full ownership" and have the ability to decide the direction, as long as it's the same direction as your higher-ups have decided.

All the responsibility is still yours though.

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arcticbunnyyesterday at 10:30 PM

You need to take the mercenary mindset and look after You Inc. first

kajmanyesterday at 10:29 PM

"Speed with quality" combined with that says a lot. Sounds to me like it will be the base expectation that their remaining developers slop out features in record time. Any failures will be theirs to "own" personally.

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geodeltoday at 1:23 AM

Heh, tell me about it. This "ownership" thing is some Grade A bullshit. I see at workplace, all the autonomy on deciding any part of technical solution is taken away but on the other hand I have to take ownership of all consequences of their half-assed decisions.

I think same group of management consultants do a round of industry and in short time every company is using same duplicitous language of ownership, design thinking, customer first mindset, cloud first, cloud native, AI native, enterprise 2.0...and on and on it goes.

j-bosyesterday at 10:32 PM

I read this and often think, yes, yes we know, but then I hear juniors at work taking these ideas at face value without considering things like stock splitting and preferred shares.

trhwayyesterday at 10:25 PM

Owner is the one who gets the added value assigned to. At least according to the Das Kapital. So the check is easy - do you see the added value flowing onto your account or not.