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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

#141

Post by piva00 »

dools wrote: post #106
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?

That's what private companies are supposed to do though. They exist to make a profit. The type of people working for Google will be the first to get hired when the economy picks up again, if you really care about the impacts of boom and bust don't worry about what the private sector is doing, think about advocating for a federal Job Guarantee which helps those who need it most: http://www.jobguarantee.org/

It's what private companies are supposed to do since adopting the Jack Welch way of doing business. Before that was thought all around MBA schools businesses had a social duty to society and their employees as well.

Touting that as the only reality that could exist is not knowing the past, shareholders-first mentality and extract-as-much-profit-as-possible types of business are a thing from the 80s onwards, after Welch gutted GE's engineering prowess to become just another financial scheme.

Finance capitalism is the main issue, businesses are supposed to provide value to society first which they can profit on after.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#142

Post by [deleted] »

permanent wrote: post #135
auggierose wrote: post #133

> Just the law of large numbers says that eventually you reach all of the people who are likely to be your customers and you stop growing (see Netflix). That has nothing to do with the law of large numbers. That's just discrete and strictly monotonic growth hitting any upper bound eventually. What a bullshitter.

Agreed. Truly despise when otherwise smart tech bloggers use jargons (incorrectly) to appear authoritative

[deleted]

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#145

Post by tombert »

piva00 wrote: post #141
dools wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what private companies are supposed to do though. They exist to make a profit. The type of people working for Google will be the first to get hired when the economy picks up again, if you really care about the impacts of boom and bust don't worry about what the private sector is doing, think about advocating for a federal Job Guarantee which helps those who need it most: http://www.jobguarantee.org/

It's what private companies are supposed to do since adopting the Jack Welch way of doing business. Before that was thought all around MBA schools businesses had a social duty to society and their employees as well. Touting that as the only reality that could exist is not knowing the past, shareholders-first mentality and extract-as-much-profit-as-possible types of business are a thing from the 80s onwards, after Wel…

I am no fan of Jack Welch, and I do blame him to some extent for things being frustrating now, but honestly it just feels like he's "yet another horrible leader of a company".

You can look at basically any capitalist during the Gilded Age or the 1920's and see plenty of clear cut examples of them valuing profit substantially more than "doing the right thing". They didn't treat their workers terribly well, they destroyed large chunks of the environment, and they became richer than anyone could possibly imagine.

Sure, people like Carnegie would later talk about "social responsibility" of rich people, and to some extent I'm sure he even believed what he was saying, but that doesn't really detract from the fact that he still fundamentally made most of his money off suffering of others.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#146

Post by vrc »

auggierose wrote: post #133

> Just the law of large numbers says that eventually you reach all of the people who are likely to be your customers and you stop growing (see Netflix). That has nothing to do with the law of large numbers. That's just discrete and strictly monotonic growth hitting any upper bound eventually. What a bullshitter.

Did you mean monotonic growth or actually tedious/lacking in variety? Both hold once the growth machine hits steady state.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#147

Post by auggierose »

vrc wrote: post #146
auggierose wrote: post #133

> Just the law of large numbers says that eventually you reach all of the people who are likely to be your customers and you stop growing (see Netflix). That has nothing to do with the law of large numbers. That's just discrete and strictly monotonic growth hitting any upper bound eventually. What a bullshitter.

Did you mean monotonic growth or actually tedious/lacking in variety? Both hold once the growth machine hits steady state.

Thanks, updated it.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#148

Post by jodrellblank »

pdimitar wrote: post #128
DrScientist wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By saying that he is directing internal heat ( and external heat - like yours ) to himself, rather than HR, or middle managers etc in Google. I suspect that's the reason for saying that. If you feel the need to blame somebody - blame me ( not other people or external conditions or shareholders ). Ultimately it is his fault - even if it was forced on him be shareholders - he'd have the option of resigning ( following…

This does not change the fact that the "heat" he is taking had exactly zero consequences for him. So "I take full responsibility" is an empty platitude that means basically nothing.

2021 added 40% revenue growth and $36Bn in net profit to Alphabet in one year. - https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/24/google_exec_bonuses_c...

That seems like something the board/shareholders/market would reward him for, not punish him for. Who would punish him and why for the inhumanity of firing lots of people? Not the board, not the California state government, not the Federal government. Maybe that would be a role for an employee's union?

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#149

Post by berkethegrizzly »

gtirloni wrote: post #130
berkethegrizzly wrote: post #122

The article is missing a huge point. The companies mentioned in it did not lose anything at all, or an amount that is negligible. They took advantage off the boom and made more money than they could in a normal situation. They did not lose anything (at least the companies mentioned in the article) in my point of view. They already knew they were going to fire the staff they hired. But they also knew that they had to…

> They already knew they were going to fire the staff they hired. But they also knew that they had to hire more staff to take advantage of the situation Exactly. People keep either saying CEOs are playing 5D chess or that they are fools... when reality is much simpler.

[flagged]

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#150

Post by arc-in-space »

gtirloni wrote: post #131
iepathos wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, also doesn't mention the super low 3.4% unemployment rate the US still has. Most of the people being laid off are being re-hired within a very short timeframe. The Fed has wanted unemployment back up to ~6% for over a year and can't get it.

> The Fed has wanted unemployment back up to ~6% for over a year and can't get i Why is the Fed interested in that and why does it want that number to be higher?

It's not that they specifically want less people to do work, rather, high employment is a symptom of an overheating economy in which hiring is (for now) cheap and it's difficult to replace people and meet high demand, because most people who would be looking for a job already have one.
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