Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

joanwestenberg.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 313 posts

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

#241

Post by Spooky23 »

belval wrote: post #134
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

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 add…

In a way, sure. The reality is they are mostly a consolidation play.

Lots and lots of apps are going to be rolled up into forms solutions, for example.

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

#242

Post by bluetomcat »

dukeyukey wrote: post #238
dimitrios1 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no environmental restrictions here you could grow for as long as user needs grow. All this demand for software and ever changing needs, and more cloud computing environment is coming from somewhere. You want to know where? Merely 2 decades ago, the average household had one computer in the house, and it was typically a desktop, and the adults and teenagers had had cellphones. Now, almost everyone that is…

That kind of economic growth requires more resources, but not all does. When Google tweaks a caching algorithm to enable 10% more with the same hardware/energy input, that contributes to economic growth with less resources. Same as if we discovered a new steel smelting technique that uses 10% less coking coal for the same quality steel.

> When Google tweaks a caching algorithm to enable 10% more with the same hardware/energy input, that contributes to economic growth with less resources.

Sure, but that also increases Google's net profit and allows its users to make more queries. That profit is then maybe invested to penetrate new market segments like transportation or hardware production, or is distributed among CEOs who buy bigger houses and more cars.

In essence, the efficiency gains of improving the algorithm are lost because of the free-flowing streams of capital.

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

#244

Post by RGamma »

titzer wrote: post #209
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…

What you are experiencing is growthism , and it is directly tied to local incentives. CEOs for publicly traded companies have only one goal in mind: make massive bonuses. The path to get to massive bonuses is to pump up the stock, which requires growth, or the appearance of growth.

And to get there, they (instead of providing anything of actual value justifying the growth) play fast and lose with quality, reputation or respect for employees.

It's an overall loss for society and something that I notice has seeped especially into the gaming industry.

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

#245

Post by grishka »

duckfang wrote: post #187
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…

Where I work is in the similar boat. Except we're 130 people and still private. The company recently took a large cash infusion from a venture capital firm. The company said "yadayada you'll see small improvements how we work" - what that translates to is: 1. adding a new C level for sales 2. doubling the sales department 3. Metrics now for new customers is doubled But... The rest of the departments - we have stagnat…

I worked at a company that started with a passionate founder who respected his users. Then he was ousted by the investors. Then the company was acquired by a giant corporation. It all went downhill from there. At some point I couldn't take it any more and quit. I couldn't bring myself to betray my users, I felt personally responsible for what I put out. Now, it's increasingly a money-making machine. Many sane people left. There are now KPIs tied to metrics. There are now managers and hierarchies. There are managers who have no clue what they're doing. There are now a/b tests, server-side settings, dark patterns, unwanted algorithms, omnipresent analytics, and user manipulation. It's effectively a B2B company now, and your attention is the product.

Even though I quit 5 years ago, it still pains me to see what has become of something I put my soul into, something I lived for, something I enjoyed using myself and recommended to everyone.

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

#246

Post by agumonkey »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47
agumonkey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may have become, but it wasn't until we figured the physics out.

It was already. We've been a rolling ecological disaster way before we figured out writing . We just went from place to place, leaving burned forests and extinct species behind. Grokking physics definitely accelerated this, but we have an opportunity ahead of us to stabilize. Not sure we'll be able to take it, though. Not with the systems of incentives that we have now.

At that scale it's not much more than other species can do. I remember an article of the effects of less wolves on the eco system (yellowstone?). The whole area became a swamp. What changed since is the scale at which human societies impacted the ecosystem.

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

#247

Post by Raidion »

bluetomcat wrote: post #242
dukeyukey wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of economic growth requires more resources, but not all does. When Google tweaks a caching algorithm to enable 10% more with the same hardware/energy input, that contributes to economic growth with less resources. Same as if we discovered a new steel smelting technique that uses 10% less coking coal for the same quality steel.

> When Google tweaks a caching algorithm to enable 10% more with the same hardware/energy input, that contributes to economic growth with less resources. Sure, but that also increases Google's net profit and allows its users to make more queries. That profit is then maybe invested to penetrate new market segments like transportation or hardware production, or is distributed among CEOs who buy bigger houses and more c…

I don't think it allows its users to make more queries. When is the last time you've done a google search and have seen "too many queries, try again later"?

The efficiency gains of improving the algorithm ARE free-flowing streams of capital.

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

#248

Post by baq »

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.

trees 300-500 years old are not unusual. organisms can grow without blowing themselves or their ecosystems up.

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

#249

Post by elygre »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #103
elygre wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article didn’t say “If a company is growing”, but “if the purpose of a company is merely growth”.

Fair enough, but to survive a company needs to aim to grow - existing customers will always leave (die or go out of business). Making products that make their customers lives better, providing a living for its employees, and a service to its community, are by-products of survival and of the process of growing. A well run 'evil' company that just cares about growing may do more good because of the people it gives a go…

You probably noticed that I didn’t really object to any content in the article or your comment. It was all about the way you created an incorrect analogy to make fun of the article.

Don’t do that.

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

#250

Post by vorpalhex »

eternalban wrote: post #153
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" ideol…

Historically, even societies that disallowed usary still needed financiers - they would just hunt them down and kill them when it came time to pay the piper.

Not even attempts at communism have survived removing dynamic markets.

Post reply on HN