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Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

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Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#81

Post by nicoburns »

brigadier132 wrote: post #19
tjpnz wrote: post #7

How do you achieve infinite growth on a planet with a finite population and resources? It should be obvious to most, yet the supposed "smartest guys in the room" are the first to stumble through it.

> How do you achieve infinite growth on a planet with a finite population and resources? Efficiency gains. How many "resources" are consumed by a piece of software relative to the "growth" that resulted from it? I can now have a machine generate 100 mediocre pieces of art for $20, two years ago each one would have cost $100 and taken a week for an actual artist to produce.

You can some gains this way, but they're limited in a couple of ways:

1. Yes, the resources consumed to make software are smaller, but they're still non-zero and will never be zero. So ultimately you're still limited by finite resources.

2. Many things just can't be implemented in software. I would point to A. Housing and B. Food production as things that are pretty hard to optimise. That isn't to say that we can't optimise them at all. We can build smaller houses or taller buildings. And we can transform energy from fossil fuels into fertiliser that increases yields. But growth in these areas is still very much constrained.

And these things are key human needs.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#82

Post by lazyasciiart »

aeternum wrote: post #57
rcme wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A boom/bust cycle is over-hiring to the point that you need to lay people off. You can over-hire or under-hire in moderation.

>You can over-hire or under-hire in moderation. It's unclear whether that would be better. In control theory, underdamped systems are generally preferred as it allows you to reach the desired value rapidly even though you often overshoot. Overdamped systems (IE hire in moderation) can be very slow to respond and often spend the majority of their time in the un-desired regime. It's quite possible that tech over-hiring…

Tech companies over-hire to excess and then under-hire to excess. It's like people trying to follow a 1000-calories/day diet who then give up and eat 4000 calories a day. They are never going to hit a healthy weight. Neither is my jackass company, who has laid off more people in 2023 than we hired in 2022, and is still on a hiring freeze.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#83

Post by lazyasciiart »

cbsmith wrote: post #55
LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is that better? Because it doesn't create unnecessary suffering for the unfortunate people who find themselves out of a job because some executive over-allocated for a particular role or department. Fundamentally, we want people to still participate in the capitalist system and not reject it because they're constantly treated like cattle.

> Because it doesn't create unnecessary suffering for the unfortunate people who find themselves out of a job because some executive over-allocated for a particular role or department. Unnecessary suffering is going to happen either way. Keep in mind, at the time of hiring, there is real demand, and while "forever" is more than a bit ridiculous (and no doubt a misrepresentation of the executives' thinking), the truth…

> Keep in mind, at the time of hiring, there is real demand,

That seems like a big claim for which I haven't seen any evidence.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#84

Post by parlortricks »

lmpdev wrote: post #42
gamerDude wrote: post #28

I feel like the author here is not thinking through the opposite. What happens to the CEO if they plan for the market to stagnate and then it doesn't? Then they look like fools as their competitors take market share and then they get replaced. The incentives just aren't designed to plan for decline.

>The incentives just aren't designed to plan for decline. I wonder how managed printing service companies deal with this I brokered a five year deal earlier this year, and all vendors put a 7% yoy decrease in print volume I wonder what it looks like at the top of these companies like Fujifilm or Ricoh for printing sales people - are they diversifying or trying to converge on a sustainable level of revenue?

They are moving print to digital

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#85

Post by rightbyte »

bratbag wrote: post #60
Freedom2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs are definitely something we should reconsider in this day and age. There's something about the kind of fiefdom that they command that I don't really know the term for it - immoral? Unnatural?

Effective is the word you are looking for. Despite occasional anecdotal examples of incompetence, companies with them perform better than companies who lead by comittie.

There is the king of Norway and there is the king of Saudi Arabia. Both are kings.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#86

Post by tombert »

LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #13

The real problem that author doesn’t call out is that at the end of the day, the people in charge don’t get hurt from these irresponsible boom and bust hiring practices. These companies knew the growth wouldn’t last, nothing lasts forever. They all maintain control while the little people suffer. The dream is to become insulated from the economic storms like they are.

Yeah; the thing that kind of triggered me on this was the Google CEO saying in December or January that he "takes full responsibility" for all these layoffs.

"Full responsibiliyt"? Really? How are you doing that exactly? By still getting your full paycheck and bonus while you fired twelve thousand humans because you didn't consider that the economy after years of a pandemic might be volatile?

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#88

Post by whstl »

tombert wrote: post #86
LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #13

The real problem that author doesn’t call out is that at the end of the day, the people in charge don’t get hurt from these irresponsible boom and bust hiring practices. These companies knew the growth wouldn’t last, nothing lasts forever. They all maintain control while the little people suffer. The dream is to become insulated from the economic storms like they are.

Yeah; the thing that kind of triggered me on this was the Google CEO saying in December or January that he "takes full responsibility" for all these layoffs. "Full responsibiliyt"? Really? How are you doing that exactly? By still getting your full paycheck and bonus while you fired twelve thousand humans because you didn't consider that the economy after years of a pandemic might be volatile?

Well, this is the equivalent of saying "it's not you, it's me" when breaking up. It's just a way of avoiding a discussion.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#90

Post by tombert »

whstl wrote: post #88
tombert wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah; the thing that kind of triggered me on this was the Google CEO saying in December or January that he "takes full responsibility" for all these layoffs. "Full responsibiliyt"? Really? How are you doing that exactly? By still getting your full paycheck and bonus while you fired twelve thousand humans because you didn't consider that the economy after years of a pandemic might be volatile?

Well, this is the equivalent of saying "it's not you, it's me" when breaking up. It's just a way of avoiding a discussion.

I know, it's a corporate platitude. It doesn't "mean" anything, but it just rubbed me the wrong way. "Taking full responsibility", to me, would imply some sort of sacrifice on your end.

Words are cheap; hell, I can say that I take full responsibility for the Google layoffs. I have never worked for Google but I did about as much as Sundar Pichai to take responsibility for the layoffs.

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