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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

#171

Post by ant_li0n »

tombert wrote: post #145
piva00 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 destro…

I'm certainly no expert, but I believe all that historical talk about corporations doing the right thing by their workers (and by extension, society) came after many years of struggle (unions) and regulation (trust busting etc).

This is just an idea that I have, I'm not sure if it's even true. In any case, corporate speak is and always has been tuned to what the public expects of the corporation (current example is the whole LGBTQ+ signalling). Don't get it twisted: corporations aren't people and they don't really have feelings. They don't care about you; they're incapable of caring about you.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#172

Post by staunch »

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.

In the great tradition of correcting someone only to be corrected ;-)

> ... strictly monotonic growth ...

Their growth is hardly "strictly monotonic" since their growth can fluctuate up and down, as can their subscriber count.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#173

Post by bubbleRefuge »

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/

Yeah. This would put a floor on working standards. Living wage. Health care. Vacay. Etc. Make the private sector compete for labor. Rising tide lifts all boats.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#175

Post by vsareto »

bilvar wrote: post #104
Tade0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often have to uproot their lives to get into a new role. It's only ultimately worth it if it's a long-term commitment on both sides. Also later in life having to suddenly switch jobs is neither easy nor desirable.

Cry me a river, the same people who demand a long-term commitment from their employer will jump ship in an instant for 10k more after 6 months of employment. Companies are full of them.

If you want loyalty, hire contractors. You can't expect people (especially individuals) to act like they're in a contract without the upsides.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#176

Post by tombert »

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…

Shouldn't he only be rewarded if something he did actually led to growth? Lots of companies grew like crazy in 2021, as mentioned in the parent article.

Moreover, if we're going to reward this individual when times are good purely for being in charge at the right time, then shouldn't it go both ways? Shouldn't we punish him when things are going bad, for example the tail end of 2022?

I'm not a business person, it just seems like if I were an investor with Google [1] then that's how I'd view it.

[1] I don't own any Google stock directly, but I suppose indirectly I own some via ETFs and an index fund.

ETA:

The reason I mention this is that I don't want to "punish him for firing lots of people", but because the people that were fired were the only ones punished for his bad leadership.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#177

Post by zanderz »

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…

Agree. Hindsight is 20/20. A conservative CEO who pulls back and doesn't lean into a growth cycle will be criticized even more for leaving money on the table.

Whether the entire economy should be structured to incenivize all this instability is a separate question. Don't hate the player, hate the game!

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#178

Post by scarface74 »

pdimitar wrote: post #158
jodrellblank wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What were the financial incentives of people taking a job at Google? They wanted to get paid top of market compensation for their labor and they did while they were working there.

What did the employees do with their additional compensation? Did they save it? Are they trying to use the fact they worked for Google to increase their network?

At what point is it the employee’s responsibility to assume that no job is permanent?

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#179

Post by iinnPP »

jonas21 wrote: post #161
iinnPP wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't adding that to the statement have the same effect but also be honest? Perhaps the effect would be even greater given that people wouldn't feel like the need to guess at the real reason? I guess it's better than some approaches such as "we can do better."

Shouldn't that part be obvious? "I take full responsibility" means you should blame me and only me. That's the very definition of responsibility.

You could see it that way, I guess. To me there's more requirements to taking responsibility than to just claiming such, especially dishonestly. Some quick research suggests my interpretation isn't solely my own.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#180

Post by sharemywin »

mschuster91 wrote: post #102
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.

> 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. It's one thing for small companies (such as Peloton) - for them, "overhiring" or "overbuilding" can indeed be fatal. But companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook? They all were…

But that's the bigger problem for stock prices. There are no more monopolies to conquer
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