As business complexity grows it just gets hard for Tech, Engineering, Science & Creative folk to keep pace with the skills of Finance/Business folk.
And this has a huge impact on trajectory of the majority of businesses. Cause with scale, they become dependent on other experts from Finance, Marketing, Sales, Logistics etc who take over decision making and leadership as firms grow in size.
You can see it in every sector of the economy. Not just Tech. James Cameron, Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson don't end up creating and running a Disney anymore cause the amount of time to specialize in their own field keeps increasing.
Look at Finance. As soon as an org has more than a few offices in different countries they very quickly learn how to take advantage of difference in labor costs, interest rates, forex, corporate tax rates, rent, real estate costs, subsidy differences, regulatory differences etc. Now scale that up 20 offices in 20 countries and the Financial Engineering dept suddenly a huge say in where the story goes.
Replace Finance with other specializations(Marketing, Sales, Supply chain etc) and the same story plays out.
If you want to have influence you need to have skills across specializations, or know specialists who share your values.
Nah, this time it's "capitalism bad! Evil VCs want to make a profit on the money the invested. How dare they! Evil people" (the speaker literally calls people "evil" for this).
> Nah, this time it's "capitalism bad! Evil VCs want to make a profit on the money the invested.
Yes, this is correct, but your sarcasm is misdirection.
The criticism is how they are attempting to "make a profit". With callousness and indifference. Dark patterns and exploitation. Growth at any and all cost.
What is the value in a rhetorical victory by ignoring the message of "how" to make it about "what"?
VC backed companies need to return money to VCs, and public companies have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. There's no long term equilibrium in a regime that single mindedly focuses on one incentive and demands growth of that one objective.
As social beings, we are subject to a wide variety of constraints. Why do we keep acting surprised-pikachu when corporations, which aren't, are sociopathic?
The cure would be to balance fiduciary duty against other incentives. This will happen as disillusionment grows, but as it stands it'll be regulation - slow, unsatisfying, static, and disempowered.
Instead I see a future of enshittified products being swiftly replaced by solo motivated people - or small teams. Suddenly we are back to disruption. Instead of "Google sucks, all I can do is complain on my blog" you can say "Google sucks, I made this alternative give it a shot".
Especially since LLMs can code now. We genuinely can get there. Make something in minutes, pull in some of the open data that's out there and things do get really interesting.
For example. Google Maps recently started showing ads when you're driving - ick. What else is out there? OsmAnd is a maps app with high-quality OpenStreetMap data, but (without meaning to offend) its UI is not up to my personal standard. It's certain that with a few weeks of focused effort one could polish its UI and give the world a third solid maps app.
This is Hacker News, we have the skills and the right level of disrespect for the status quo, we can disrupt!
As business complexity grows it just gets hard for Tech, Engineering, Science & Creative folk to keep pace with the skills of Finance/Business folk.
And this has a huge impact on trajectory of the majority of businesses. Cause with scale, they become dependent on other experts from Finance, Marketing, Sales, Logistics etc who take over decision making and leadership as firms grow in size.
You can see it in every sector of the economy. Not just Tech. James Cameron, Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson don't end up creating and running a Disney anymore cause the amount of time to specialize in their own field keeps increasing.
Look at Finance. As soon as an org has more than a few offices in different countries they very quickly learn how to take advantage of difference in labor costs, interest rates, forex, corporate tax rates, rent, real estate costs, subsidy differences, regulatory differences etc. Now scale that up 20 offices in 20 countries and the Financial Engineering dept suddenly a huge say in where the story goes.
Replace Finance with other specializations(Marketing, Sales, Supply chain etc) and the same story plays out.
If you want to have influence you need to have skills across specializations, or know specialists who share your values.
I can guess, people want cheap and only cheap.
Nah, this time it's "capitalism bad! Evil VCs want to make a profit on the money the invested. How dare they! Evil people" (the speaker literally calls people "evil" for this).
> Nah, this time it's "capitalism bad! Evil VCs want to make a profit on the money the invested.
Yes, this is correct, but your sarcasm is misdirection.
The criticism is how they are attempting to "make a profit". With callousness and indifference. Dark patterns and exploitation. Growth at any and all cost.
What is the value in a rhetorical victory by ignoring the message of "how" to make it about "what"?
Who cares? Sounds like an opportunity to make some money by providing a less shit alternative.
I care that people have abandoned moral and ethical norms for the sociopathic pursuit of money.
It has been very unpleasant getting to know you, ajmurmann.
VC backed companies need to return money to VCs, and public companies have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. There's no long term equilibrium in a regime that single mindedly focuses on one incentive and demands growth of that one objective.
As social beings, we are subject to a wide variety of constraints. Why do we keep acting surprised-pikachu when corporations, which aren't, are sociopathic?
The cure would be to balance fiduciary duty against other incentives. This will happen as disillusionment grows, but as it stands it'll be regulation - slow, unsatisfying, static, and disempowered.
Instead I see a future of enshittified products being swiftly replaced by solo motivated people - or small teams. Suddenly we are back to disruption. Instead of "Google sucks, all I can do is complain on my blog" you can say "Google sucks, I made this alternative give it a shot".
Especially since LLMs can code now. We genuinely can get there. Make something in minutes, pull in some of the open data that's out there and things do get really interesting.
For example. Google Maps recently started showing ads when you're driving - ick. What else is out there? OsmAnd is a maps app with high-quality OpenStreetMap data, but (without meaning to offend) its UI is not up to my personal standard. It's certain that with a few weeks of focused effort one could polish its UI and give the world a third solid maps app.
This is Hacker News, we have the skills and the right level of disrespect for the status quo, we can disrupt!
> its UI is not up to my personal standard
Have you tried https://organicmaps.app/? It has the same data source, but ui is cleaner.