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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

#151

Post by singpolyma3 »

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.

No job can or should last forever. Being laid off is of course unfortunate, but suggesting that never hiring them in the first place would have been better seems... wrong?

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#152

Post by EricMausler »

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…

Unfortunately, people actually need to make money first and then help society second.

Survival basics are to help yourself first and then help others. Since neither people nor businesses can survive without generating money, this situation we are in seems natural.

Take away people's dependency on money for basic needs, and you will get a lot more businesses that can safely operate for the good of society first and profit second.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#153

Post by dboreham »

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.

To be fair, I've heard the term mis used like this numerous times on business news tv (CNBC for example). So it's possible in that context they've appropriated the term for a new meaning (basically they're talking about a logistic curve).

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#154

Post by singpolyma3 »

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…

So much this, they didn't "over" hire, they hired who they needed at the time. That they don't need them anymore does not mean they didn't need them previously.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#155

Post by photochemsyn »

Investment capitalism is a pretty flawed economic model - the shareholders will always want more, more, more. In the tech world, once the market is saturated their only options are to (1) degrade quality of service but cutting costs in 'non-growth sectors' like customer service, or (2) cut labor costs by offshoring or importing cheap labor, or (3) merge competing companies for form monopolies that can set prices well above what a healthy competitive market would converge on. The executives will do all they can to game the system by investing in stock buybacks to raise stock prices (because that's the metric that controls their bonuses), rather than investing in R & D or similar.

This is the result of the wholesale financialization of the economy under the rubric of neoliberal policy over the past 40 years. The outlook is not very good.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#156

Post by scarface74 »

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.

It is naive for anyone to view a job as anything but transactional. Do you expect your employer to isolate you from economic storms? Would the people who worked at BigTech during the boom times have been better off not getting hired and making at least 3x-5x the median wage?

I was hired at BigTech in 2020 going straight there from a 60 person company. I have used every single penny of my signing bonus + RSUs since then to improve my financial condition. I kept my resume up to date and my network strong.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#157

Post by lasereyes136 »

It isn't a fallacy, it is due to incentives. The stock market reacts to the stories companies tell them and well received stories lead to higher stock prices in the short run so executives cash out during the good times, either by selling stock or demanding higher compensation.

As always, incentives matter.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#158

Post by pdimitar »

jodrellblank wrote: post #148
pdimitar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Sure, what you say is not wrong, the financial incentives are all wrong and reward being an inhuman.

That being said, none of what you said justifies his empty "I take full responsibility" statement. It's hollow and it achieves nothing. Well, nothing good related to those fired that is.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#159

Post by pdimitar »

m000 wrote: post #138
pdimitar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not true. I'm sure he was more sweaty than usual, laughing on his way to the bank. /s

And he practically worked an entire month's hours by having to pretend that he cares! Obviously he busted his arse working that day!

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#160

Post by scarface74 »

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?

Would those 12 thousand people at Google have been better off if they hadn’t work there? Would you have not taken a job at Google if you knew that you would be laid off four years later or would you have saved aggressively and been preparing for your next role?
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