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Successful companies go blind

ianreppel.org

41–50 of 94 posts

Re: Successful companies go blind

#41
post #5

From what I've seen, LLMs just accelerate or compound this whole process as well. Everyone has the same group think, it bleeds into the way the LLM generates code and ultimately it just rots teams.

Corporations were the original AIs. They were slower, a bit less predictable, but they were superhuman intelligence disciplined to produce only the most bland depersonalised slop at all times.

Interesting take. I assume that, because corporations are a subset of “groups of people” that this applies to any group? The theory here being that, in the same way that LLMs produce the average of everything they’ve trained on, a group of people produces the average of every individual’s ideas and efforts (subject to things like some people having more power than others, etc.)?

I don’t think this is always true, however. It’s provably false, actually, because I can name at least one group of people that has done something unique and not sloppy. For example, the C8 Corvette is pretty sweet. So is Costco’s supply chain and employment practices. And I also think Pink Floyd’s music is pretty non-average.

Re: Successful companies go blind

#42
post #4

Most startups fail. Most big company projects are kind of worthless. These are two sides of the same coin. Producing something novel and valuable is HARD. Unbelievably hard. The idea is hard. The building is harder. The scaling and steering and feedback is ego-crushingly hard. When it's valuable, it's frequently enormously valuable. That funds the experimentation, the incremental expansion, the waste. It's hard to re…

> Producing something novel and valuable is HARD

I disagree, producing something valuable is common, and it’s common for scientists / inventors / artists / composers to die poor.

Selling, Capturing the value, and building businesses on top is hard.

Re: Successful companies go blind

#43

A good example of "founder bias" where big companies are read as not innovating, when in fact their goal is to squeeze as much juice from their user base and strengthen their monopolistic position and pricing power. From the outside it looks like blindness and atrophy but from the inside it's the main bread and butter. The sighted engineer is also cave adapted, just to a different cave.

The problem is when practices are chosen, that improve things on one dimension, and harm things on another, without recognition of the long-term tradeoff being made. Simply recognizing the tradeoff exists, is likely to result in wiser decisions with lower tradeoff costs, and greater opportunity expansion.

who is to recognize the tradeoff? communicate it to who? A giant business is built on stability. i dont think its a bad thing that they do not pivot except in circumstances where they have no other choice. The business is a brand and that brand is a certain way of doing things and if/when that way of doing things falls out of favor then the business should fail. the owners made enough to retire by then, as well as many additional people, and its a reasonable way for people to become unemployed which doesnt hurt their chances at new jobs. A new company sprouts up, or 5 new ones, and they can all be lean and quick to pivot and try to figure out the whole new way to do the same kind of business. All the experts can be hired and the supply chain keeps chugging along

this is also a wanring to young people joinging old companies in weak job positions over taking a chance on a new company trying to be better. dont just assume the old company is going to be there forever.

especially now in defense. war has changed. companies like Anduril are on the rise while classics like Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, etc are assessing how much they can adapt. its not extreme like theyll go out of business but the gov may order way less jets and such than in the past, and put a lot more money into drones. they will still buy jets though, and the classics may need to adapt to a lower funding pool, lower orders, and becoming a low volume legacy product hovering around certain use-cases, while new companies get all the runway to takeoff on the big investments.

this kind of thing plays out at all different scales and to different degrees everywhere in the market.

Re: Successful companies go blind

#45

Currently working at an older style defense company and this fits but I think momentum is a better reference. There are no financial incentives to risk on new process. Gatekeepers, siloing, bureaucracy, and risk aversion act to stop and slow. I have worked startups and early stage companies prior and used that experience to force developmental projects and gotten prototypes and patents through the resistance. My cowo…

A company at a certain point moves from “make it work” to “don’t break it”. Both have good reasons to be honest but “don’t break it” has far more restrictions.

Re: Successful companies go blind

#46
post #45

Currently working at an older style defense company and this fits but I think momentum is a better reference. There are no financial incentives to risk on new process. Gatekeepers, siloing, bureaucracy, and risk aversion act to stop and slow. I have worked startups and early stage companies prior and used that experience to force developmental projects and gotten prototypes and patents through the resistance. My cowo…

A company at a certain point moves from “make it work” to “don’t break it”. Both have good reasons to be honest but “don’t break it” has far more restrictions.

Perhaps what separates the good companies from the Great companies is that the latter always tries to make it works, doesn't rest on it's laurels, and takes any bet which is +ev.

Re: Successful companies go blind

#47

In a lot of cases it is deliberate and not something that "just happens". See enshitification or Instagram or what can happen in a marriage, say https://www.amazon.com/Uncoupling-Turning-Points-Intimate-Re... If you are starting a new social media service, for instance, the N^2 dynamics are brutal and you have to work so hard to attract, onboard, and retain each precious user. A site that has momentum is practically…

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Re: Successful companies go blind

#48

Currently working at an older style defense company and this fits but I think momentum is a better reference. There are no financial incentives to risk on new process. Gatekeepers, siloing, bureaucracy, and risk aversion act to stop and slow. I have worked startups and early stage companies prior and used that experience to force developmental projects and gotten prototypes and patents through the resistance. My cowo…

You're correct. But have you been on the other side: something you know is not perfect, but someone convinces you to try something, you agree, it isn't great but it gets used... then they leave and you are stuck with something that is a pain clean up. I understand it can suck: but what is lacking isn't your technical demonstration (unless it is truly ground breaking), but your demonstration to clean up your own mess…

Yes and it’s still always better to try new things then wait for approval or something to be perfect if you want the company to keep innovating.

Re: Successful companies go blind

#50

Currently working at an older style defense company and this fits but I think momentum is a better reference. There are no financial incentives to risk on new process. Gatekeepers, siloing, bureaucracy, and risk aversion act to stop and slow. I have worked startups and early stage companies prior and used that experience to force developmental projects and gotten prototypes and patents through the resistance. My cowo…

You're correct. But have you been on the other side: something you know is not perfect, but someone convinces you to try something, you agree, it isn't great but it gets used... then they leave and you are stuck with something that is a pain clean up. I understand it can suck: but what is lacking isn't your technical demonstration (unless it is truly ground breaking), but your demonstration to clean up your own mess…

I just told you I have run multiple projects through at a large defense contractor.

The entire system there is old projects dropped by some new manager, retiree, or corpse. I work on systems that are older than I am and I was born in the 80s. There is no side in Ba Sing Sah.

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