31–40 of 127 posts
>"What happened to Don't be Evil?" I asked. "I don't think corp dev got the memo," he replied. Why is it that every company that starts with good intentions eventually succumbs and becomes that which they claimed to not like?
He actually didn't even cover one of the worst parts about the whole process - fake buyers who just want to steal your tech. I was working at a startup with a ground breaking product no one had released before, we had shipped hundreds of prototypes and gotten good reviews and had plenty of orders, but board redesigns and setting up a factory assembly line for the production models was eating into our cash and runway.…
It usually takes an experienced engineer a 15 minutes tour around a building watching the machines to know exactly how you have done anything. It takes years an millions of dollars for your company to iterate on the specific layout, from the infinite possibilities.
I have seen so many derivatives of this system, like courting/buying the gatekeeper with expensive gifts (laptops, very cheap vacations) or compliments in order to gain access.
It is relevant here to talk about what Apple did with DropBox. They invited those guys to a tour around Apple HQ(probably with bed sheets over machines), but Steve Jobs got angry when the people of DropBox did not reciprocate and invited Apple folks to a neutral place instead.
It became clear Apple just wanted to know all the internals in order to copy them strait, just with mountains of money.
He actually didn't even cover one of the worst parts about the whole process - fake buyers who just want to steal your tech. I was working at a startup with a ground breaking product no one had released before, we had shipped hundreds of prototypes and gotten good reviews and had plenty of orders, but board redesigns and setting up a factory assembly line for the production models was eating into our cash and runway.…
Wouldn't acquisition talks be covered in NDAs to prevent precisely this?
They have a football team of very good lawyers working full time in order to delay things for years.
You can be right and go broke just dealing in Courts and distracting your company from your technical work.
>"What happened to Don't be Evil?" I asked. "I don't think corp dev got the memo," he replied. Why is it that every company that starts with good intentions eventually succumbs and becomes that which they claimed to not like?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Old HTML might be fine, but sending it over an insecure connection isn't.
These words "secure" and "insecure" when used as synonyms for "encrypted" and "plaintext" obscure more than they illuminate and have done a lot of damage to the world of software security. They stop thought. You would not believe how many times I've talked to a company with some complex webapp and asked for their security policy and they respond with some statement about using TLS. It's absurd. Then even in books or…
Especially in a world full of disinformation, authenticity and integrity of information are often a much greater good than confidentiality.
>"What happened to Don't be Evil?" I asked. "I don't think corp dev got the memo," he replied. Why is it that every company that starts with good intentions eventually succumbs and becomes that which they claimed to not like?
>"What happened to Don't be Evil?" I asked. "I don't think corp dev got the memo," he replied. Why is it that every company that starts with good intentions eventually succumbs and becomes that which they claimed to not like?
The pattern seems to be that after a lifetime of wealth acquisition one buys a cloak of respectable benevolence by donating a fraction of that wealth to good causes (which you'll probably carefully choose to provide the best tax benefits and as a marketing tool to help the next generation of super-wealthy to get a good start).
Any company prepared to be sold off, if profitable, will be acquired by greedy people.
People who want a quiet unassuming life living in harmony with those around them don't acquire the wealth in the first place, they have the morals to run companies for good, they don't have the wealth to acquire them.
Capitalism appeals to [immoral] greed, it's a natural successor to feudalism.
>"What happened to Don't be Evil?" I asked. "I don't think corp dev got the memo," he replied. Why is it that every company that starts with good intentions eventually succumbs and becomes that which they claimed to not like?
As my economics teacher repeated probably 20 times in one semester: the purpose of a corporation is to increase shareholder's wealth
The purpose of a corporation is to fulfill their chosen corporate mission. Corporations are no more bound to choose financial accumulation _above all else_ than are any of the people that form those corporations.
Cooperatives and public interest companies are corporations, for example.
>"What happened to Don't be Evil?" I asked. "I don't think corp dev got the memo," he replied. Why is it that every company that starts with good intentions eventually succumbs and becomes that which they claimed to not like?
I don't say that to be cynical, I think using that as a mental model really clarifies how we should approach corporate regulation. Saying a company "should" do this or that is no more useful than saying my laptop "should" do this or that. They will try to maximize profit, we ( the public) need to find ways to make negative activity unprofitable. Hauling Mark Zuckerberg in front of Congress doesn't do anything, we need to get into the machine and change the way it works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ll disagree then because Corp Dev, like most tags, can mean something else like a group at a corporation responsible for strategic decisions to grow and restructure its business, establish strategic partnerships, and/or achieve organizational excellence.
The only reason Corp Dev is establishing a partnership is because they want to buy you but they aren't sure yet, so it's like a trial. It's also a good way to convince you to sell to them while also locking out competitors. If you have a partnership with Google, it makes a lot harder for Amazon to buy you because first they have to unwind the partnership.