Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by kevincox » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

rtx wrote: post #66

kevincox wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The only answer I see is that you make more money. But it is well understood that money doesn't lead to happiness. What if your company was making enough money that you could pay everyone worked there generous salaries and your customers are happy. If you product is complete I don't see the need to add more. Why not let everyone work half time, and continue to deliver an excellent and focused product. Slowly add…

We could add more people to share the happiness.

We could but at some point having 10x more people then you need working half a day a week doesn't seem optimal. Maybe it could work but it seems that there is some sort of workforce size that makes sense for a given amount of work.

I think that something like a universal basic income makes more sense here than to force a company to grow, possibly harming its product just to employ more people.

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

#152

Post by pdimitar » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

> Fashion changes all the time, but it does not last.

I am so stealing this quote. Now that I think of it, fashion does not last by definition and I feel stupid for not coming up with the same quote myself but oh well.

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

#153

Post by eternalban » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

bregma wrote: post #58

I suspect the initial premise is incorrect. The purpose of a company that makes widgets is to make widgets. Nothing more. Some rent seekers realized that they could extract some of the wealth created by the company making widgets, and that they could manipulate various people involved in other enterprise to enhance and enforce their rent-seeking abilities. To that end, they have manipulated the various controls on th…

We can get our analogy ducks in order:

- The economy is an ecology.

- A company is an organism.

- Rentiers are carcinogens.

It would be interesting to know if there have been models of economies that disallow usury and rent seekers. I know Michael Hudson has made the distinction between industrial and rentier capitalism [1], and there is also CASSE [2] (but that seems to be aligned with the "too many people" ideological line), but I am not aware of any contemporary writing on the nature and dynamics of economies that disallow usury and rent seeking in principle.

[1]: https://michael-hudson.com/2021/01/the-rentier-resurgence-an...

[2]: https://steadystate.org/

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

#154

Post by tome » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #11

simon_000666 wrote: post #7

I'm not the biggest fan of this analogy. I find it reductionist to the point it loses it's meaning. Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones. The problem with cancerous cells is that the body stops recycling them and so then they grow unchecked. Modern companies are more like sk…

Yes – until you bring the stock market and investors into the picture. Oftentimes, companies will have a legal obligation to their stockholders to (attempt to) maximise profit…

> Oftentimes, companies will have a legal obligation to their stockholders to (attempt to) maximise profit…

Can you point me to an example of a company that has a legal obligation "to (attempt to) maximise profit"?

I suspect that, in fact, the legal obligations of any company include (but are not limited to) increasing profit whilst taking into account many other factors.

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

#155

Post by Ekaros » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

rollulus wrote: post #57

sunstone wrote: post #3

To push the metaphor a bit further isn't humanity itself a kind of cancer of the earth?

If so, then space colonisation is metastasis.

I would call industrialisation metastasis... Colonisation is jumping hosts...

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

#156

Post by ROARosen » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

soVeryTired wrote: post #102

I think one interesting way of looking at a company is as a power struggle between - the owners - the employees - the managers - the clients - (and sometimes) the government / general public Companies can benefit all of these parties, but a good system should have forces in place to prevent any of them from getting the upper hand. Some of those forces include competition, unionisation, labour mobility, fiduciary duty…

Sure there's the ongoing struggle. But the basic fact will always stay that the point of founding and putting in the effort to establish a commercial company in the first place is to "provide value to the shareholders" (i.e. the owner/founder). If not for that, why anyone go through that hassle?

All that Silicon-Valley-esque "We founded the company because we wanted to make the world a better place" is only when the company is also making money for the stakeholders. Once you take out that point, there goes you company. It is now officially a charitable organization (which, BTW also provides value to the "stakeholders", but that discussion is for a different time)

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

#157

Post by koonsolo » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

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"?

"Hey developers, you will be out of a job when some other company acquires us. This is best case for us, because we will make a lot of money. Unfortunately for you, you don't have any shares, so you will probably just be fired or prodded to leave".

I think I was the first one to realize what was going on: we were the developers in Belgium, and we had some cheap developers in Eastern Europe. They had developers in US. They were going to continue developing their own product, and would "keep us all as developers".

But from their point of view, it didn't make much sense to me that "We have devs in EU, but those guys from Belgium are 4x more expensive than those from another country". I quit shortly after the acquisition, and my colleagues all left a year later. They kept the developers in Eastern Europe.

It makes total sense to me, and I'm not resentful about it, probably because it's so easy for developers to find a new job.

One other thing I want to mention: they were very transparent on the strategy when they were acquiring various smaller companies. Very insightful.

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

#158

Post by gdubs » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #16

There are 2 states in the forest: growing trees and rotting trees. Nothing in between. So this cancer analogy is a bit absurd. The same with business: business is growing or dying, I am not buying “we don’t want grow” argument.

This is a very incorrect take on forests. They’re incredibly intricate ecosystems in balance. They are anything but black and white, grow or die situations. Cancer in a forest would be the invasive tree that wipes out all of the native species which can’t compete. Or a blight that destroys the dominant trees.

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

#159

Post by ROARosen » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

3np wrote: post #121

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…

Anyone aiming for VC money should realize that this is what's coming, in the vast majority of cases, no matter how different expectations might be set initially.

Why only VC money? I don't understand, which person would invest their in your company so that the customer (rather than themselves) should get value from it?

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

#160

Post by auggierose » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

bregma wrote: post #58

I suspect the initial premise is incorrect. The purpose of a company that makes widgets is to make widgets. Nothing more. Some rent seekers realized that they could extract some of the wealth created by the company making widgets, and that they could manipulate various people involved in other enterprise to enhance and enforce their rent-seeking abilities. To that end, they have manipulated the various controls on th…

When a company is founded, the purpose of it is whatever the founders want it to be.

After a while, there might not be a purpose anymore, just a thing that is.