91–100 of 467 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference between getting fired and getting convicted of a crime is pretty important, actually!
For the executive, sure. Not for the impact of the overall incentive structure on the trajectory of the business. Which is what this discussion is about.
That's what I was responding to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be clear, business operators have extremely, extremely broad latitude in how they interpret their fiduciary duty to shareholders. We actually need to combat this notion that somehow exclusive focus on short term returns is somehow legally, morally, or ethically required. It is actually antisocial and obviously destructive.
I have a better idea: let's combat the notion that putting shareholder value ahead of the common good is moral.
I guess the LLM era makes credible products more capital-intensive than they used to be, but even so, the vendors are pricing their stuff aggressively, and even when they try to squeeze the prices later, half these foundation models that are better-than-last-year’s-SOTA are open-source!
If you want to play with lots of money and seek out lots of money, there’s lots of money swirling around seeking to involve you in that game. But if you just want to make something nice and human-scale and small, what better time than now?
The path to billions of bucks may require mercenary bucks-extracting behavior, but that’s not the same as a growth imperative being an inevitable force of nature.
I can’t help but feel like the Small Web folks are on to something.
Thought experiment: what if these apps were owned by non-profits? Would they still be addictive? I don’t think the VC money does much but accelerate the end state, the apps would become addictive if they were held privately their entire lifespan.
Now just need a successful startup to push the idea
> Then it raised venture capital, hit scale, and needed to hit growth numbers and meet quarterly metric goals. The focus shifted from “authenticity” to “daily active users.” Having spent a few years in the VC world I have been increasingly convinced outside investment is the biggest reason why companies lose their morals. The legal obligation to represent shareholders erodes morality. When the people running these co…
Engineering addiction is also probably more often than not intentional. When all the business metrics/KPIs are stuff like "engagement time", "$ spent", even AB testing of random features leads to manufacturing addiction
> We need a fundamental re-evaluation of what our phones should be for, whether these platforms can ever return to their original purpose of actually bringing us together instead of keeping us scrolling Unpopular opinion but I think we need to stop building social networks if we want to bring people together. Let people meet each other in real life. Let the relationships flourish organically. No amount of tech will e…
I love that idea, I just wish I knew how to precipitate it in my local community beyond just trying.
> Then it raised venture capital, hit scale, and needed to hit growth numbers and meet quarterly metric goals. The focus shifted from “authenticity” to “daily active users.” Having spent a few years in the VC world I have been increasingly convinced outside investment is the biggest reason why companies lose their morals. The legal obligation to represent shareholders erodes morality. When the people running these co…
To be clear, business operators have extremely, extremely broad latitude in how they interpret their fiduciary duty to shareholders. We actually need to combat this notion that somehow exclusive focus on short term returns is somehow legally, morally, or ethically required. It is actually antisocial and obviously destructive.
Legally maybe. The market and shareholders will punish you if you deviate from the current standard behavior.
We’ve all seen companies do layoffs just because “Wall Street” was concerned about the economy and then instantly see the stock price spike up.
These negative consequences are all results of bog standard prisoner dilemma issues that need government regulation to make sure everyone picks the good square, but the tech industry and this boards community as well is allergic to the idea that regulations can improve the situation for everyone
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the executive, sure. Not for the impact of the overall incentive structure on the trajectory of the business. Which is what this discussion is about.
The discussion literally said "legal obligation." That's what I was responding to.