20 ms·

I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sal

by jspash 6y ago

I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the customer or providing a great product/service. It's about squeezing margins and duping the customer to join our mailing list or accept cookies. Otherwise "the list won't grow". And how can we market to more and more people if we can't track how many pages they've viewed? I've gone a bit off track there, but the point being, there IS no answer when I've explicitly asked "why" with regards to these things. Nobody knows. They just know they have "targets" and the targets are constantly moving. /rant over

jariel 6y ago
"there IS no answer" Sure there is. 'In the begging' it was was invariably led by some kind of founder/owners, and the values of the company were intimately related to their values. For better or worse. A public or widely held company not led by founders tends to have a more political class of executives who are more likely to report to the board on the basis of 'making them money'. Maybe not, but probably a little more so than otherwise. Every situation is different. So the answer to 'why' is simple: the board probably makes the expectation of the CEO, who requires that of the team, one way or another, and that trickles down into various plans of various kinds. It's really just that.
melomal 6y ago
Shareholder value above all else is what is important. Unfortunately, VC money needs to be returned to their shareholders too. It's a ponzi scheme and somebodies next big idea will be the catalyst for additional money and so on and so on. It almost feels like startups are the get rich quick scheme of the moment.
- sizt 6y ago
  Squirrels who don't like the nuts, complaining about the tree.
- musicale 6y ago
  > Shareholder value above all else is what is important At Evilcorp, we are fanatically dedicated to the mission statement and core values articulated by our founder: "To bring ever-increasing value to shareholders and upper-level managers by harming our customers, employees, and the communities and environment where we operate."
  - melomal 6y ago
    Bingo! I imagine this is what Facebook's mantra of 'Move Fast and Break Shit' has matured into over the years.
dm319 6y ago
There is a growing body of thought that capitalism and, more specifically, continued growth, is unsustainable. A lot of the literature focuses around the environment [1], but we should also think about businesses that perform a useful community service or product to their community - must they always grow? If not, must their competitor? [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1558/jocr.v5i2.197 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1558/jocr.v5i2.197
- hh3k0 6y ago
  "We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough
  - qazpot 6y ago
    SpaceX is trying to solve the finite environment problem.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      That's good. It buys us more time. But we need to ease up on the exponent anyway.
    - _qulr 6y ago
      Is it? Earth is, or was, extremely hospitable to humans. Mars is, and will be for a very long time, extremely inhospitable to humans. If we can't even take care of the Earth, what hope is there of taking care of Mars? The more likely scenario is that greedy Martians destroy their own Martian environment very quickly and make themselves extinct. It's much easier to destroy Mars (for human life) than it is to destroy Earth. We need to focus on sustainability, otherwise Mars will also be unsustainable. Just wait until oxygen itself becomes a commodity, like in the film "Total Recall". Except unlike in film, there's no deus ex machina native ancient technology to suddenly make the entire atmosphere breathable.
      - 6y ago
zpeti 6y ago
Then your management aren't very good. The reason is that every business, or system gets worse if you don't improve it. Call it entropy in physics. If you don't try and improve, pay attention to the market, adapt, move, change, or at least maintain or build a moat, competition will inevitably want to have what you've got. It's why capitalism works. If you get old, and don't satisfy your customers, someone else will. Now, if you plan on keeping your job for 1-2 years, then you don't really care. Fine, that's your point of view. But management and shareholders certainly would like the business to be around for as long as possible. And for that you always need to develop and change. And this is not about some crazy capitalist mentality that destroys the planet. Nature is the same. Inevitably the tribe leading lion will get challenged and taken down. It's just what happens. Unless you at least try and work against it.
- chii 6y ago
  > If you don't try and improve, pay attention to the market, adapt, move, change, or at least maintain or build a moat, competition will inevitably want to have what you've got. It's why capitalism works. If you get old, and don't satisfy your customers, someone else will. only in a competitive market. There are markets which don't behave freely, and some would call those market failures. Health insurance, and healthcare, for one, is like that.
  - zpeti 6y ago
    Fair point. Of course a lot of those industries have sown up regulation and spend enough of lobbying to not have to do shit. Unfortunately.
- aynyc 6y ago
  > But management and shareholders certainly would like the business to be around for as long as possible. And for that you always need to develop and change. I agree with everything you said except this part. Maybe I'm jaded, everything I've read and seen on the market and job shows investors/management only really care about the next quarter, maybe a year the most. Only a few companies who are capable of looking at and committing to multi-year plans.
seer 6y ago
I left a CTO role of a startup for similar reasons. We already had paying customers, and the company was doing OK, but there was always drive to do and more flashier things, rather than double down on helping our customers. I remember the moment of epiphany when I realised that the company was not in fact working for customers, they were just a marketing sell to be able to attract more investors to grow the company even more. While I was not naive even back then and knew that its mostly how the world works, I still felt the misalignment of incentives would generally mean I as a person would need to squeeze and disregard some people in order to accomplish the goals of others. Organizational incentives always win in the long run, however well meaning the people of it are. I'd much prefer to work for a client that gets its revenue directly from its customers, as that would mean helping them would help the company too. I'm very happy that working in IT allows me to be a bit more picky in who I'm working for to enrich, and it was possible for me to leave, and be happy for it.
duckfang 6y ago
Where I work is in the similar boat. Except we're 130 people and still private. The company recently took a large cash infusion from a venture capital firm. The company said "yadayada you'll see small improvements how we work" - what that translates to is: 1. adding a new C level for sales 2. doubling the sales department 3. Metrics now for new customers is doubled But... The rest of the departments - we have stagnated. It's sales sales sales. Our department is suffering. Badly. So are others. Complaints to upper management appear to go on deaf ears, or with ridiculous responses (like: well we saw one of you on your cellphone so you're not really busy). And when we've asked for direct support for retaining customers (using their sales language), our team was told "just make less mistakes". And unsurprisingly, customers are getting more vocal about substandard service after the sale. I'm looking elsewhere. Have been since this VC firm acquisition/funding was announced. (VC's are poison in every case I've seen.) But things are getting worse, with no end in sight - and I want out.
- pferde 6y ago
  "Our department is suffering. Badly. So are others. Complaints to upper management appear to go on deaf ears, or with ridiculous responses (like: well we saw one of you on your cellphone so you're not really busy)." "And when we've asked for direct support for retaining customers (using their sales language), our team was told "just make less mistakes"." Wow, that's literally Dilbert-level of bad management. My condolences. Where I work (a large international corp.), the two or three levels of management above me are fairly reasonable and in touch with everyday reality. I guess I'm lucky.
- grishka 6y ago
  I worked at a company that started with a passionate founder who respected his users. Then he was ousted by the investors. Then the company was acquired by a giant corporation. It all went downhill from there. At some point I couldn't take it any more and quit. I couldn't bring myself to betray my users, I felt personally responsible for what I put out. Now, it's increasingly a money-making machine. Many sane people left. There are now KPIs tied to metrics. There are now managers and hierarchies. There are managers who have no clue what they're doing. There are now a/b tests, server-side settings, dark patterns, unwanted algorithms, omnipresent analytics, and user manipulation. It's effectively a B2B company now, and your attention is the product. Even though I quit 5 years ago, it still pains me to see what has become of something I put my soul into, something I lived for, something I enjoyed using myself and recommended to everyone.
titzer 6y ago
What you are experiencing is growthism, and it is directly tied to local incentives. CEOs for publicly traded companies have only one goal in mind: make massive bonuses. The path to get to massive bonuses is to pump up the stock, which requires growth, or the appearance of growth.
- RGamma 6y ago
  And to get there, they (instead of providing anything of actual value justifying the growth) play fast and lose with quality, reputation or respect for employees. It's an overall loss for society and something that I notice has seeped especially into the gaming industry.
ghoward 6y ago
I wrote about this phenomenon at https://gavinhoward.com/2020/01/corporations-create-perverse-incentives/ https://gavinhoward.com/2020/01/corporations-create-perverse... . I think it's a real thing.
lamename 6y ago
"The list must grow, the spice must flow"
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  "I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze! Give me spice! Drive them. Drive them into utter submission! Do not show the slightest pity or mercy!" I agree, the growth at all costs mentality has the ring of the frothing House of Harkonnen to it.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    And even the Baron Harkonnen himself didn't think that was a good way to govern. His plan was to let that run for a while, then have his favorite younger nephew take over, dial it back, and gain the people's support because he would be less bad by comparison.
technofiend 6y ago
I know there was some grumbling recently about some folks on HN drubbing MBAs. But when I think of someone putting profit and servicing the shareholders over servicing the customers that's what I mean when I say MBA disease. IMHO redirecting the company's resources to favor sales vs service in order to fuel growth and pay shareholders will eventually result in a loss of customers, perhaps irreparably damaging the business as a result.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
usrusr 6y ago
Publicly traded stocks will inevitably end up in the hands of whoever is more optimistic about a company's potential than everybody else with money to buy. It's like gravity. If you had a company that could somehow produce a million dollars every time a magic button is pressed, you could get immensely rich. But you could get even richer by selling that company if you found someone sufficiently convinced that they'd be able to scale that magic to two buttons. If geese that lay golden eggs were real, stock exchanges would be their dedicated killing zone.
lazide 6y ago
I think I finally found out why this is often the case - took awhile to figure it out, and many people may intuitively know this without being able to articulate why. There is a lifecycle in industries and within companies. The more the industry you are in is exposed to competition, the more obvious and unavoidable it is. Some, such as a Dr's office, or a field/industry with geo-local niches (a plumber, or a well drilling outfit, or a realtor), the less obvious it is/the more you can sometimes avoid it. The more you're part of the global marketplace (tech, manufacturing - especially mass manufacturing, food, etc.) the more obvious and unavoidable it is. The way this typically works is: 1) A new field is discovered, a major disruptive shift happens in a marketplace, or a new niche opens up. Everyone jumps on the new openings - new players often have an advantage as they can move quicker and are less 'stuck' in old ways. They also tend to be small. They also tend to be pretty inefficient, but the opportunity is rich enough, it usually has plenty of room - most companies that aren't complete disasters will thrive. Even those that ARE complete disasters can survive. 2) Companies that start iterating on more efficient ways to produce value (more value for less cost) get a lot of extra capital in cashflow, or those that seem most promising are able to leverage outside capital (investment) to increase in scale. This means the 'machine' consuming customer needs is able to take more input, produce more output at a given company. This machinery is expensive to operate, but a key part - produces economies of scale. This rarely is at any one company, it is often spread across many companies, with various degrees of success/copying. With any luck, this expands the market (more customers, more money coming in). This often results in shifts of customers, as those who have free capital have invested in serving the customer needs better or are able to provide lower prices due to their improved economies of scale. This is why folks get so worked up about market share.It is also why Monopolies are so dangerous. 3) This iterates for awhile, until the market stops growing much. You now have a set of companies with various degrees of market share, ability to execute, economies of scale, debt load, etc. Usually 1-2 that are REALLY good, and others that give them a bit of a leg up in a particular niche. 4) Now it gets hard - market stops growing, or even worse shrinks. You have a set of companies with great economies of scale who can cut prices (easy for them, hard for others without that scale). These companies are probably also pretty decent at execution as they have a lot of practice. They also probably have a lot of capital (due to excess from their operations - 10% of a billion is a lot more money than 10% of 1 million, even assuming similar margins), or have experience raising capital. You also have a bunch of smaller companies with none of those things, or that tried to get there, couldn't pull it off, and are loaded with debt (even worse). Guess who loses? It is rarely the big co. Long term, it's called a cycle because of the shifts in markets/opportunities. They make the parts that were the big corp competitive advantage in the old environment - all the CapEx sunk cost + operation tuning at the big co - into more of a harm than a help in adjusting to the new reality. Also, no one wants to kill the 'goose that laid the golden egg', so there is intense organizational pressure to even attempt a pivot. Kodak and their huge miss re: digital photos is a great example of that. This also comes out a lot in things like forest growth, crop development, etc. If you're not racing to be the tallest tree around, or the tallest ear of corn - you're going to get starved out by those who will. Unless you're lucky enough to get a niche anyway they won't try to go after. Intentionally setting a 'be the best, don't try to grow too fast' business strategy is not, IMO, a good idea to do blindly, any more than settling into your current job and not seeking to learn or grow career wise or eventually find something better. If you're 'lucky' you may end up stagnant and complaining about all the people who passed you by. At the same time, job hopping between FAANG's every month will quickly run out of steam and leave you with nothing you've really accomplished, and impossible to meet deliverables (like a company that has overpromised/oversold itself without figuring out things like execution, sustainable company culture, etc.). It's a balance.
draw_down 6y ago
Just because someone won't say the reason doesn't mean there is no reason.

by jspash 6y ago

jariel 6y ago

"there IS no answer" Sure there is. 'In the begging' it was was invariably led by some kind of founder/owners, and the values of the company were intimately related to their values. For better or worse. A public or widely held company not led by founders tends to have a more political class of executives who are more likely to report to the board on the basis of 'making them money'. Maybe not, but probably a little more so than otherwise. Every situation is different. So the answer to 'why' is simple: the board probably makes the expectation of the CEO, who requires that of the team, one way or another, and that trickles down into various plans of various kinds. It's really just that.

melomal 6y ago

Shareholder value above all else is what is important. Unfortunately, VC money needs to be returned to their shareholders too. It's a ponzi scheme and somebodies next big idea will be the catalyst for additional money and so on and so on. It almost feels like startups are the get rich quick scheme of the moment.

sizt 6y ago
Squirrels who don't like the nuts, complaining about the tree.
musicale 6y ago
> Shareholder value above all else is what is important At Evilcorp, we are fanatically dedicated to the mission statement and core values articulated by our founder: "To bring ever-increasing value to shareholders and upper-level managers by harming our customers, employees, and the communities and environment where we operate."
- melomal 6y ago
  Bingo! I imagine this is what Facebook's mantra of 'Move Fast and Break Shit' has matured into over the years.

dm319 6y ago

There is a growing body of thought that capitalism and, more specifically, continued growth, is unsustainable. A lot of the literature focuses around the environment [1], but we should also think about businesses that perform a useful community service or product to their community - must they always grow? If not, must their competitor? [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1558/jocr.v5i2.197 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1558/jocr.v5i2.197

hh3k0 6y ago
"We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." David Attenborough
- qazpot 6y ago
  SpaceX is trying to solve the finite environment problem.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    That's good. It buys us more time. But we need to ease up on the exponent anyway.
  - _qulr 6y ago
    Is it? Earth is, or was, extremely hospitable to humans. Mars is, and will be for a very long time, extremely inhospitable to humans. If we can't even take care of the Earth, what hope is there of taking care of Mars? The more likely scenario is that greedy Martians destroy their own Martian environment very quickly and make themselves extinct. It's much easier to destroy Mars (for human life) than it is to destroy Earth. We need to focus on sustainability, otherwise Mars will also be unsustainable. Just wait until oxygen itself becomes a commodity, like in the film "Total Recall". Except unlike in film, there's no deus ex machina native ancient technology to suddenly make the entire atmosphere breathable.
    - 6y ago

zpeti 6y ago

Then your management aren't very good. The reason is that every business, or system gets worse if you don't improve it. Call it entropy in physics. If you don't try and improve, pay attention to the market, adapt, move, change, or at least maintain or build a moat, competition will inevitably want to have what you've got. It's why capitalism works. If you get old, and don't satisfy your customers, someone else will. Now, if you plan on keeping your job for 1-2 years, then you don't really care. Fine, that's your point of view. But management and shareholders certainly would like the business to be around for as long as possible. And for that you always need to develop and change. And this is not about some crazy capitalist mentality that destroys the planet. Nature is the same. Inevitably the tribe leading lion will get challenged and taken down. It's just what happens. Unless you at least try and work against it.

chii 6y ago
> If you don't try and improve, pay attention to the market, adapt, move, change, or at least maintain or build a moat, competition will inevitably want to have what you've got. It's why capitalism works. If you get old, and don't satisfy your customers, someone else will. only in a competitive market. There are markets which don't behave freely, and some would call those market failures. Health insurance, and healthcare, for one, is like that.
- zpeti 6y ago
  Fair point. Of course a lot of those industries have sown up regulation and spend enough of lobbying to not have to do shit. Unfortunately.
aynyc 6y ago
> But management and shareholders certainly would like the business to be around for as long as possible. And for that you always need to develop and change. I agree with everything you said except this part. Maybe I'm jaded, everything I've read and seen on the market and job shows investors/management only really care about the next quarter, maybe a year the most. Only a few companies who are capable of looking at and committing to multi-year plans.

seer 6y ago

I left a CTO role of a startup for similar reasons. We already had paying customers, and the company was doing OK, but there was always drive to do and more flashier things, rather than double down on helping our customers. I remember the moment of epiphany when I realised that the company was not in fact working for customers, they were just a marketing sell to be able to attract more investors to grow the company even more. While I was not naive even back then and knew that its mostly how the world works, I still felt the misalignment of incentives would generally mean I as a person would need to squeeze and disregard some people in order to accomplish the goals of others. Organizational incentives always win in the long run, however well meaning the people of it are. I'd much prefer to work for a client that gets its revenue directly from its customers, as that would mean helping them would help the company too. I'm very happy that working in IT allows me to be a bit more picky in who I'm working for to enrich, and it was possible for me to leave, and be happy for it.

duckfang 6y ago

Where I work is in the similar boat. Except we're 130 people and still private. The company recently took a large cash infusion from a venture capital firm. The company said "yadayada you'll see small improvements how we work" - what that translates to is: 1. adding a new C level for sales 2. doubling the sales department 3. Metrics now for new customers is doubled But... The rest of the departments - we have stagnated. It's sales sales sales. Our department is suffering. Badly. So are others. Complaints to upper management appear to go on deaf ears, or with ridiculous responses (like: well we saw one of you on your cellphone so you're not really busy). And when we've asked for direct support for retaining customers (using their sales language), our team was told "just make less mistakes". And unsurprisingly, customers are getting more vocal about substandard service after the sale. I'm looking elsewhere. Have been since this VC firm acquisition/funding was announced. (VC's are poison in every case I've seen.) But things are getting worse, with no end in sight - and I want out.

pferde 6y ago
"Our department is suffering. Badly. So are others. Complaints to upper management appear to go on deaf ears, or with ridiculous responses (like: well we saw one of you on your cellphone so you're not really busy)." "And when we've asked for direct support for retaining customers (using their sales language), our team was told "just make less mistakes"." Wow, that's literally Dilbert-level of bad management. My condolences. Where I work (a large international corp.), the two or three levels of management above me are fairly reasonable and in touch with everyday reality. I guess I'm lucky.
grishka 6y ago
I worked at a company that started with a passionate founder who respected his users. Then he was ousted by the investors. Then the company was acquired by a giant corporation. It all went downhill from there. At some point I couldn't take it any more and quit. I couldn't bring myself to betray my users, I felt personally responsible for what I put out. Now, it's increasingly a money-making machine. Many sane people left. There are now KPIs tied to metrics. There are now managers and hierarchies. There are managers who have no clue what they're doing. There are now a/b tests, server-side settings, dark patterns, unwanted algorithms, omnipresent analytics, and user manipulation. It's effectively a B2B company now, and your attention is the product. Even though I quit 5 years ago, it still pains me to see what has become of something I put my soul into, something I lived for, something I enjoyed using myself and recommended to everyone.

titzer 6y ago

What you are experiencing is growthism, and it is directly tied to local incentives. CEOs for publicly traded companies have only one goal in mind: make massive bonuses. The path to get to massive bonuses is to pump up the stock, which requires growth, or the appearance of growth.

RGamma 6y ago
And to get there, they (instead of providing anything of actual value justifying the growth) play fast and lose with quality, reputation or respect for employees. It's an overall loss for society and something that I notice has seeped especially into the gaming industry.

ghoward 6y ago

I wrote about this phenomenon at https://gavinhoward.com/2020/01/corporations-create-perverse-incentives/ https://gavinhoward.com/2020/01/corporations-create-perverse... . I think it's a real thing.

lamename 6y ago

"The list must grow, the spice must flow"

at_a_remove 6y ago
"I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze! Give me spice! Drive them. Drive them into utter submission! Do not show the slightest pity or mercy!" I agree, the growth at all costs mentality has the ring of the frothing House of Harkonnen to it.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  And even the Baron Harkonnen himself didn't think that was a good way to govern. His plan was to let that run for a while, then have his favorite younger nephew take over, dial it back, and gain the people's support because he would be less bad by comparison.

technofiend 6y ago

I know there was some grumbling recently about some folks on HN drubbing MBAs. But when I think of someone putting profit and servicing the shareholders over servicing the customers that's what I mean when I say MBA disease. IMHO redirecting the company's resources to favor sales vs service in order to fuel growth and pay shareholders will eventually result in a loss of customers, perhaps irreparably damaging the business as a result.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

usrusr 6y ago

Publicly traded stocks will inevitably end up in the hands of whoever is more optimistic about a company's potential than everybody else with money to buy. It's like gravity. If you had a company that could somehow produce a million dollars every time a magic button is pressed, you could get immensely rich. But you could get even richer by selling that company if you found someone sufficiently convinced that they'd be able to scale that magic to two buttons. If geese that lay golden eggs were real, stock exchanges would be their dedicated killing zone.

lazide 6y ago

I think I finally found out why this is often the case - took awhile to figure it out, and many people may intuitively know this without being able to articulate why. There is a lifecycle in industries and within companies. The more the industry you are in is exposed to competition, the more obvious and unavoidable it is. Some, such as a Dr's office, or a field/industry with geo-local niches (a plumber, or a well drilling outfit, or a realtor), the less obvious it is/the more you can sometimes avoid it. The more you're part of the global marketplace (tech, manufacturing - especially mass manufacturing, food, etc.) the more obvious and unavoidable it is. The way this typically works is: 1) A new field is discovered, a major disruptive shift happens in a marketplace, or a new niche opens up. Everyone jumps on the new openings - new players often have an advantage as they can move quicker and are less 'stuck' in old ways. They also tend to be small. They also tend to be pretty inefficient, but the opportunity is rich enough, it usually has plenty of room - most companies that aren't complete disasters will thrive. Even those that ARE complete disasters can survive. 2) Companies that start iterating on more efficient ways to produce value (more value for less cost) get a lot of extra capital in cashflow, or those that seem most promising are able to leverage outside capital (investment) to increase in scale. This means the 'machine' consuming customer needs is able to take more input, produce more output at a given company. This machinery is expensive to operate, but a key part - produces economies of scale. This rarely is at any one company, it is often spread across many companies, with various degrees of success/copying. With any luck, this expands the market (more customers, more money coming in). This often results in shifts of customers, as those who have free capital have invested in serving the customer needs better or are able to provide lower prices due to their improved economies of scale. This is why folks get so worked up about market share.It is also why Monopolies are so dangerous. 3) This iterates for awhile, until the market stops growing much. You now have a set of companies with various degrees of market share, ability to execute, economies of scale, debt load, etc. Usually 1-2 that are REALLY good, and others that give them a bit of a leg up in a particular niche. 4) Now it gets hard - market stops growing, or even worse shrinks. You have a set of companies with great economies of scale who can cut prices (easy for them, hard for others without that scale). These companies are probably also pretty decent at execution as they have a lot of practice. They also probably have a lot of capital (due to excess from their operations - 10% of a billion is a lot more money than 10% of 1 million, even assuming similar margins), or have experience raising capital. You also have a bunch of smaller companies with none of those things, or that tried to get there, couldn't pull it off, and are loaded with debt (even worse). Guess who loses? It is rarely the big co. Long term, it's called a cycle because of the shifts in markets/opportunities. They make the parts that were the big corp competitive advantage in the old environment - all the CapEx sunk cost + operation tuning at the big co - into more of a harm than a help in adjusting to the new reality. Also, no one wants to kill the 'goose that laid the golden egg', so there is intense organizational pressure to even attempt a pivot. Kodak and their huge miss re: digital photos is a great example of that. This also comes out a lot in things like forest growth, crop development, etc. If you're not racing to be the tallest tree around, or the tallest ear of corn - you're going to get starved out by those who will. Unless you're lucky enough to get a niche anyway they won't try to go after. Intentionally setting a 'be the best, don't try to grow too fast' business strategy is not, IMO, a good idea to do blindly, any more than settling into your current job and not seeking to learn or grow career wise or eventually find something better. If you're 'lucky' you may end up stagnant and complaining about all the people who passed you by. At the same time, job hopping between FAANG's every month will quickly run out of steam and leave you with nothing you've really accomplished, and impossible to meet deliverables (like a company that has overpromised/oversold itself without figuring out things like execution, sustainable company culture, etc.). It's a balance.

draw_down 6y ago

Just because someone won't say the reason doesn't mean there is no reason.