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Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

joanwestenberg.medium.com

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Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#131

Post by llarsson »

chii wrote: post #120
koonsolo wrote: post #109

I once worked at a company where I didn't understand why they took certain decisions. In the end, it all became very clear. My mindset from "these guys have no idea" shifted towards "wow, they are smart, I didn't get this part". Basically, they were acquiring customers faster than anyone could follow. Our development goal was "fast and opportunistic". As you can expect, the product was full of bugs, and customer supp…

> I didn't see how this would ever turn into a success story. We were digging a grave. But I didn't realize 1 thing: we were not selling a product, we were selling the company. why don't the executive making this goal clear to the "underlings"?

If the underlings know their product is intended to be trashed, do you really think they will suffer through the late evenings and weekends of gruelling overtime to patch ugly bugs in production?

I don't.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#132

Post by TeMPOraL »

qazpot wrote: post #122
hh3k0 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough

SpaceX is trying to solve the finite environment problem.

That's good. It buys us more time. But we need to ease up on the exponent anyway.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#133

Post by wpietri »

chii wrote: post #120
koonsolo wrote: post #109

I once worked at a company where I didn't understand why they took certain decisions. In the end, it all became very clear. My mindset from "these guys have no idea" shifted towards "wow, they are smart, I didn't get this part". Basically, they were acquiring customers faster than anyone could follow. Our development goal was "fast and opportunistic". As you can expect, the product was full of bugs, and customer supp…

> I didn't see how this would ever turn into a success story. We were digging a grave. But I didn't realize 1 thing: we were not selling a product, we were selling the company. why don't the executive making this goal clear to the "underlings"?

Because the "underlings", like the product, were part of the sacrifice. At best, they'd learned they just wasted a lot of time and energy trying to build a product (which was necessary for the scam). At worst, they'd find out they were all getting laid off as unnecessary to the purchaser's interests.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#134

Post by belval »

hh3k0 wrote: post #118
dm319 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a growing body of thought that capitalism and, more specifically, continued growth, is unsustainable. A lot of the literature focuses around the environment [1], but we should also think about businesses that perform a useful community service or product to their community - must they always grow? If not, must their competitor? [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1558/jocr.v5i2.197

"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough

That quote always bugged me because it disregards that our economic growth is not really tethered to natural resources. Sure a company like Coca-Cola can only grow so much before it effectively covers the entire planet, but they can still reduce costs to improve their profit margins and displace existing drinks from other companies with a new product.

The cloud as a business is mostly about building products that address ever changing needs and making the clients more dependent on said products. There are no environmental restrictions here you could grow for as long as user needs grow.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#135

Post by TeMPOraL »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #127
hh3k0 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough

One thing this argument misses is that much of economic growth comes not from increasing consumption, but from making that consumption more efficient.

The problem isn't solved while consumption of matter and energy grows exponentially.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#136

Post by isoprophlex »

dm319 wrote: post #108
jspash wrote: post #36

I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the cu…

There is a growing body of thought that capitalism and, more specifically, continued growth, is unsustainable. A lot of the literature focuses around the environment [1], but we should also think about businesses that perform a useful community service or product to their community - must they always grow? If not, must their competitor? [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1558/jocr.v5i2.197

> There is a growing body of thought that capitalism and, more specifically, continued growth, is unsustainable.

Excuse my language but... who the actual fuck thinks otherwise? This is extremely perplexing to me.

How many layers of double speak must one hide behind before you can believe that sustained growth for its own sake can be a healthy, sustainable goal?

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#137

Post by tome »

bmitc wrote: post #69
sxg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe those companies don't have net growth, but they still need some sort of growth. Regardless of what industry you're in, every business will face inevitable losses—customers will decide to leave, inflation will occur, equipment will need to be repaired/replaced, etc. Those losses need to be offset by growth. While net positive growth isn't necessary, it is a major motivator for launching your own business. If you…

That’s not what people mean by growth of a company. That’s maintaining a balanced, viable system.

"Growth" is used as a term for a particular property of every biological system https://basicbiology.net/biology-101/mrs-gren. Perhaps it would help if people in this discussion defined their terms.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#138

Post by aynyc »

zpeti wrote: post #116
jspash wrote: post #36

I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the cu…

Then your management aren't very good. The reason is that every business, or system gets worse if you don't improve it. Call it entropy in physics. If you don't try and improve, pay attention to the market, adapt, move, change, or at least maintain or build a moat, competition will inevitably want to have what you've got. It's why capitalism works. If you get old, and don't satisfy your customers, someone else will.…

> But management and shareholders certainly would like the business to be around for as long as possible. And for that you always need to develop and change.

I agree with everything you said except this part. Maybe I'm jaded, everything I've read and seen on the market and job shows investors/management only really care about the next quarter, maybe a year the most. Only a few companies who are capable of looking at and committing to multi-year plans.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#139

Post by abdullahkhalids »

zpeti wrote: post #116
jspash wrote: post #36

I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the cu…

Then your management aren't very good. The reason is that every business, or system gets worse if you don't improve it. Call it entropy in physics. If you don't try and improve, pay attention to the market, adapt, move, change, or at least maintain or build a moat, competition will inevitably want to have what you've got. It's why capitalism works. If you get old, and don't satisfy your customers, someone else will.…

This is a very simplistic take. Capitalism as it is practiced in its various forms across the world, has thousands of levers that are pushed in certain direction by laws and regulations, and by norms and cultural philosophy. If you change the latter, you change the values of the levers which changes how much businesses have to _compete_ and _grow_ in order to remain _profitable_ in the long term. So yes, the current climate is our choice, and we can make different choices if we decide to.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#140

Post by saalweachter »

llarsson wrote: post #131
chii wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn't see how this would ever turn into a success story. We were digging a grave. But I didn't realize 1 thing: we were not selling a product, we were selling the company. why don't the executive making this goal clear to the "underlings"?

If the underlings know their product is intended to be trashed, do you really think they will suffer through the late evenings and weekends of gruelling overtime to patch ugly bugs in production? I don't.

I think programmers in general have an overly optimistic expectation of the lifespan of their works. "The great thing about software," they say, "as opposed to buildings or hammers, is that you can write code once and use it forever," as they ignore the dozens of applications and libraries which did nearly the same thing as the code they are writing.
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