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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

#41

Post by LapsangGuzzler »

whitemary wrote: post #37
notho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Hurting” the elite has always been up to the public. Teacher strikes and unionization efforts have been winning; the financiers know nothing about self sufficiency. They know they rely literally on someone else to grow the food, kill the steaks. The white collar public have a credibility problem; they want to be served and not serve themselves. There is zero reason for most tech workers to login tomorrow; the vast m…

> Teacher strikes and unionization efforts have been winning Citations needed

Among the urban working class in cities like Chicago, union interest has been rising rapidly across a variety of sectors. Retail, education, warehouse labor, museums are all seeing increases in union activity. The mayor-elect is a former union organizer.

Chicago is certainly one of the more pro-labor cities in the US, but they’re not the only ones seeing growing interest in organized labor. The Democratic Socialists of America membership grew from 6,000 to 90,000 in less than 10 years.

https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2023/5/11/23720181/chicago-dep...

https://www.afscme.org/blog/workers-at-another-chicago-insti...

https://chicago.suntimes.com/business/2023/5/8/23715750/rei-...

https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2023/5/12/23720406/chicago-pub...

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#42

Post by lmpdev »

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?

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#44

Post by stkdump »

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.

If efficiency gains were the secret go (infinite) growth, then companies would be able to grow their business without growing their workforce, building more factories, warehouses, etc.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#45

Post by alberth »

Isn't it much simpler.

Given that Tech, compared to other industries (Mining, Energy, etc) is still in its early years - most tech companies optimize for Growth.

While more established industries optimize for profitability / stability.

What's happening now in Tech is that companies are beginning to graduate to these later years where they run into natural total address market plateaus where they need to shift from Growth to Profitability/Stability.

(Think Netflix).

And this transition from being a Growth company, to a matured business - is a hard transition for any company.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#46

Post by crazygringo »

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.

Growth doesn't intrinsically have to have anything to do with population or resources. Growth is fundamentally about ingenuity.

If you develop a microchip that delivers the same performance but takes 50% less material and energy and cost to manufacture and use, that's growth. 2x growth in that area, to be precise.

As long as we keep thinking of cleverer ways to do things, we keep growing economically. So it's really whether you think human ingenuity will come to a dead end?

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#47

Post by operatingthetan »

srackey wrote: post #17
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.

People can make babies, and we’re not limited to a one planet ;)

An organism with a tendency for unchecked colonization might attract the wrong kind of attention.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#48

Post by AmericanChopper »

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.

Why would it be reasonable to expect that employment rates remain steady in cases where demand for labor fluctuates downwards? A CEO isn’t failing by implementing a layoff any more than they’re failing when they increase headcount, they’re simply responding to market conditions. The real problem is viewing employment as some sort of charity businesses grant to employees, or even worse, an entitlement that people should receive even when a business no longer needs them. Employment is driven by ordinary supply and demand, and when demand goes down, so does employment. This isn’t a failure of leadership.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#49

Post by tschellenbach »

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.

Would you propose that companies should pay below market rates to create a buffer against these cycles?

Or perhaps not engage in competition with their competitors?

I think the conclusion here is that companies don't control this. If the market pays people more, they pay more. If there's heavy competition they compete and hire aggressively.

You can't predict these cycles. If you could you'd be a billionaire trading on the stock market. So anyone who says that now is just suffering from hindsight bias.

I think the root cause here is government action on monetary policy and interest rates.

Re: Tech companies keep falling for the forever fallacy

#50

Post by notho »

whitemary wrote: post #37
notho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Hurting” the elite has always been up to the public. Teacher strikes and unionization efforts have been winning; the financiers know nothing about self sufficiency. They know they rely literally on someone else to grow the food, kill the steaks. The white collar public have a credibility problem; they want to be served and not serve themselves. There is zero reason for most tech workers to login tomorrow; the vast m…

> Teacher strikes and unionization efforts have been winning Citations needed

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Oklahoma_teachers%27_st...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_West_Virginia_teachers%...

If you like some real numbers; All propped up by labor of tens of millions.

Let Jamie Dimon go door to door for those mortgages. 10k NYC cops threatened to strike over vaccine mandates; only 34 did. Let them see police work for pay not fealty.

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