After the Ladder

August 2005 Thirty years ago, one was supposed to work one's way up the corporate ladder.

2005 年 8 月 三十年前，人们应该通过努力在公司的阶梯上晋升。

That's less the rule now.

现在已经不那么规则了。

Our generation wants to get paid up front.

我们这一代人希望预先得到报酬。

Instead of developing a product for some big company in the expectation of getting job security in return, we develop the product ourselves, in a startup, and sell it to the big company.

我们不是为一些大公司开发产品以期获得工作保障作为回报，而是在一家初创公司中自己开发产品，然后将其出售给大公司。

At the very least we want options.

至少我们想要选择。

Among other things, this shift has created the appearance of a rapid

除其他外，这种转变造成了快速发展的表象

increase in economic inequality.

经济不平等加剧。

But really the two cases are not as different as they look in economic statistics.

但实际上，这两种情况并不像经济统计数据中看起来那么不同。

Economic statistics are misleading because they ignore the value of safe jobs.

经济统计数据具有误导性，因为它们忽视了安全工作的价值。

An easy job from which one can't be fired is worth money; exchanging the two is one of the commonest forms of corruption.

一份轻松且不会被解雇的工作是值钱的；两者交换是最常见的腐败形式之一。

A sinecure is, in effect, an annuity.

闲职实际上是一种年金。

Except sinecures don't appear in economic statistics.

除了闲职不会出现在经济统计数据中。

If they did, it would be clear

如果他们这样做了，那就很清楚了

that in practice socialist countries have nontrivial disparities of wealth, because they usually have a class of powerful bureaucrats who are paid mostly by seniority and can never be fired.

事实上，社会主义国家存在着巨大的贫富差距，因为它们通常有一类有权有势的官僚，他们的工资主要按资历计算，而且永远不会被解雇。

While not a sinecure, a position on the corporate ladder was genuinely valuable, because big companies tried not to fire people, and promoted from within based largely on seniority.

虽然不是闲职，但公司阶梯上的职位确实很有价值，因为大公司尽量不解雇员工，并且主要根据资历从内部晋升。

A position on the corporate ladder had a value analogous to the "goodwill" that is a

公司阶梯上的职位具有类似于“商誉”的价值，即

very real element in the valuation of companies.

公司估值中非常真实的因素。

It meant one could expect future high paying jobs.

这意味着人们可以期待未来的高薪工作。

One of main causes of the decay of the corporate ladder is the trend for takeovers that began in the 1980s.

企业阶梯衰退的主要原因之一是 20 世纪 80 年代开始的收购趋势。

Why waste your time climbing a ladder that might disappear before you reach the top?

为什么要浪费时间去攀爬可能在到达顶部之前就消失的梯子呢？

And, by no coincidence, the corporate ladder was one of the reasons the early corporate raiders were so successful.

而且，绝非巧合的是，企业阶梯是早期企业掠夺者如此成功的原因之一。

It's not only

这不仅是

economic statistics that ignore the value of safe jobs.

经济统计数据忽视了安全工作的价值。

Corporate balance sheets do too.

企业资产负债表也是如此。

One reason it was profitable to carve up 1980s companies and sell them for parts was that they hadn't formally acknowledged their implicit debt to employees who had done good work and expected to be rewarded with high-paying executive jobs when their time came.

分割 20 世纪 80 年代的公司并以零部件形式出售是有利可图的，原因之一是它们没有正式承认自己对那些工作出色、期望在时机到来时获得高薪高管职位的员工的隐性债务。

In the movie Wall Street , Gordon Gekko ridicules a company overloaded with vice presidents.

在电影《华尔街》中，戈登·盖柯嘲笑了一家副总裁过多的公司。

But the company

但公司

may not be as corrupt as it seems; those VPs' cushy jobs were probably payment for work done earlier.

可能并不像看起来那么腐败；这些副总裁的轻松工作可能是对之前所做工作的报酬。

I like the new model better.

我更喜欢新型号。

For one thing, it seems a bad plan to treat jobs as rewards.

一方面，将工作视为奖励似乎是一个糟糕的计划。

Plenty of good engineers got made into bad managers that way.

许多优秀的工程师就这样变成了糟糕的管理者。

And the old system meant people had to deal with a lot more corporate politics, in order to protect the work they'd invested in a position on the ladder.

旧制度意味着人们必须处理更多的公司政治，以保护他们在晋升职位上投入的工作。

The big disadvantage of the new system is that it involves more <a href="inequality.html">risk .

新系统的一大缺点是它涉及更多的风险。

If you develop ideas in a startup instead of within a big company, any number of random factors could sink you before you can finish.

如果你在初创公司而不是在大公司内提出想法，那么在你完成之前，任何数量的随机因素都可能让你陷入困境。

But maybe the older generation would laugh at me for saying that the way we do things is riskier.

但也许老一辈人会嘲笑我说我们做事的方式风险更大。

After all, projects within big companies were always getting cancelled as a result of arbitrary decisions from higher up.

毕竟，大公司内部的项目总是因为高层的武断决定而被取消。

My father's

我父亲的

entire industry (breeder reactors) disappeared that way.

整个工业（增殖反应堆）就这样消失了。

For better or worse, the idea of the corporate ladder is probably gone for good.

无论好坏，企业阶梯的想法可能已经永远消失了。

The new model seems more liquid, and more efficient.

新模型似乎更具流动性，也更高效。

But it is less of a change, financially, than one might think.

但从财务角度来看，这并不像人们想象的那样发生变化。

Our fathers weren't that stupid.

我们的父辈没那么傻。