5 ms·
Corporations need to be treated as if they could have radically different managers at any moment (because they can). The Best Company Ever of today could be bo
by makecheck 10y ago
Corporations need to be treated as if they could have radically different managers at any moment (because they can). The Best Company Ever of today could be bought by Worst Corporation In Existence tomorrow.
It essentially doesn’t matter what a company is currently doing or “promises” to do or not do, if those behaviors are not legally binding. And even then, if you have to read a hundred-page document to figure out what the legal binding is, assume that the company has carefully placed a nice escape hatch somewhere in their legalese.
It was supposed to be true that if one vendor does something you don’t like, you simply “vote with your wallet” and go to one that you do like. That works great when buying toasters. Yet now, with essentially your whole life tied up in one or two devices and key services like Internet being dictated by one company based on where you live, it is REALLY hard to just walk away from one crappy technology experience and find something you like better. This is a real sign that it is not a good idea to have so much technology powered by so few corporations.
- zdw 10y agoIf anyone needs an example of the first point, look to what happened to Sun's free/open projects and firmware downloads after it's acquisition by Oracle.
- ThrustVectoring 10y agoIt also works great when you buying a satisfactory toaster is the problem. It works less well when your neighbor buys an insecure IoT toaster that DDoSes the website you want to read an article from.
- Retra 10y ago"Voting with your wallet" seems a pretty absurd concept to me anyway. If you could vote with money, there'd be no need to call it a vote. One may as well be a proponent of "voting with bombs" for all the rational good tying power directly to wealth will do you.
- DasIch 10y agoYou're seriously overestimating how powerful managers are and how difficult it is to change the culture of an organization.
- totalZero 10y agoManagers don't make a company good or evil. Culture does. Culture bends managers, reward some behaviors and suppresses others...unless you change management en masse, the culture is persistent and strong.