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> We, as in the IT industry, need to come up with a culture or methodology of 'declaring a product complete' whereby all product managers are gracefully allowed

> We, as in the IT industry, need to come up with a culture or methodology of 'declaring a product complete' whereby all product managers are gracefully allowed to move on and a product is put into a state of stasis We live in a time when large companies will divest themselves of profitable but not growing businesses because it gets in the way of the core mission, which for large public companies is only one thing. Growth. In that light, I think the chance of a product being allowed to sit and fulfill it's purpose gracefully, at least for services that are major moneymakers, is essentially nil. Private companies can sometimes get away with it, as long as the people backing them don't start to see them as investment vehicles like any other public company. At least, that is, until some large public company sees a way they can "improve" on that model and either buys them up or uses their size to bully them out of market (it's not really free market competition to use billions of VC money to undercut competitors until they fold and you have all of the market). It's all horribly broken.

_jal 5y ago
Yeah, this is the root problem. If you want to break from mandatory upgrades (this includes "cloud" stuff, where you have even less control over software), you need vendors that aren't forced to invent reasons to build them by their operational structure. This is a "Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house" situation. Not unrelatedly, I strongly support Debian and think everyone else should, too. Software in the Public Interest (https://www.spi-inc.org https://www.spi-inc.org) accepts donations for them.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  That phrase has a very specific meaning rooted in racism; I would not advise using it to describe any other situation that you don’t want to bring that context into. If only to avoid misunderstandings.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I think that would be rooted in anti-racism, and anyway the next sentence after it "They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." I think establishes the universality of the idea, the same idea expressed in phrases such as if voting could truly change the system it would be outlawed. that idea being that systemic change cannot be achieved within the system that is to be changed. on edit: I am not necessarily a believer in the idea, as I think the 'if voting' expression of the idea can be shown to be wrong by various historical examples.
    - wayoutthere 5y ago
      Audre Lorde chose her words carefully. Her use of “master” holds clear connotations that black people are still not free and the struggle continues. You can’t tear down the master’s house when you yourself are one of his tools. It’s powerful because it’s a personal challenge in the context of white supremacy. And whenever you use the phrase, some decent percentage of your audience will be put off by it and wonder why you’re bringing race into a conversation that’s not about race. If that’s not something you want, you shouldn’t use the phrase when not talking about issues of race.
      - _jal 5y ago
        No, I don't fence off metaphors for exclusivity. Good ones get reused. And claiming Lorde was only talking about race is simply incorrect.
        wayoutthere 5y ago
        Of course she wasn’t; she’s a poet so everything she says has multiple meanings, but context matters. The issue of race and personal marginalization is inextricable from the quote. She would have used a different word than “Master” otherwise. Context crushing it this way diminishes the effectiveness of any argument you may be using it in support of. You can choose to use whatever metaphors you want, but other people will add their own context. It’s the same reason you can’t say things like “final solution” — the phrase has societal context and its use is distracting at best when used in another context.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Just FYI. The app that I’ve been working on is designed for a “comfortable stasis.” It may take some time to get there, but I have no interest in metrics-driven growth, or appropriation of people’s PII. We are likely to introduce changes, over time; but these will all be completely focused on Serving our users’ needs more effectively. Kind of refreshing. I’m working for a 501(c)(3), and we don’t need to show “growth”; just Serve our community.
- kbenson 5y ago
  Nice! Here's to hoping it's successful and provides benefit to people, and doesn't trigger some startup founder to think they can "monetize all that potential you're leaving on the table" or some such. I say that jokingly, but honestly, a non/not for profit is probably an really good way to structure some of these things to do an end run around both the market and people's expectations, so I sincerely wish you the best in whatever your endeavor is (and you can consider this me politely asking what it is, so you don't have to feel like you are injecting it into the conversation). :)
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    I am not at liberty to discuss it, at the moment. Even when it ships, it probably won’t be mentioned here, as it Serves a very specific demographic, and probably won’t be of interest to most folks. You can always contact me (via my Web sites), and I could talk about it a bit more.
saghm 5y ago
> We live in a time when large companies will divest themselves of profitable but not growing businesses because it gets in the way of the core mission, which for large public companies is only one thing. Growth. > Private companies can sometimes get away with it, as long as the people backing them don't start to see them as investment vehicles like any other public company. I'm probably just naive or missing something obvious, but fundamentally it doesn't seem obvious to me _why_ public companies should be treated differently as investments. Ostensibly the original reason stocks had value is that when companies were making money, they'd pay dividends, but like you said, this isn't really the mentality anymore. The stock is worth something because someday if the company makes more money, someone will buy it for more money than you paid...but why? So they can sell it when the company is making even more money later? It seems like if companies don't end up eventually paying dividends at some point, there's no reason why the price of the stock should be related to the amount of money the company makes. The only other thing that shares really do is give very limited voting rights, but this seems like it's not remotely worth enough per share given how much you'd need to have to even begin to influence board elections, which in itself is a very indirect way of influencing the company.
- evandwight 5y ago
  Some owners of private companies don't see the goal of the company as profit maximization - eg SpaceX. With a public company there's always going to be a shareholder to sue you for not maximizing profit. https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/special-comment/ebay-v-newmark-al-franken-was-right-corporations-are-legally-required-to-maximize-profits/ https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/s...
  - justahuman74 5y ago
    SpaceX is somewhat expected to produce profit at some point, else it would have been registered as a non-profit
    - evandwight 5y ago
      SpaceX definitely wants to make a profit. I don't think building a city on Mars is profit maximization though and this is Elon's explicit reason for not taking SpaceX public. > According to the company, the short-term demands of shareholders conflict with his long-term ambitions. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/121515/will-elon-musks-spacex-go-public.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/121515/will-el...
mcny 5y ago
» Private companies can sometimes get away with it, as long as the people backing them don't start to see them as investment vehicles like any other public company. I don't know if anyone has any chance if Stack Exchange can't stay independent. Like the product was arguably "done" years ago if you ignore monetization. » As you may have seen in the news this morning, Prosus (AEX:PRX) has announced its intention to acquire Stack Overflow for 1.8 billion dollars. https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/06/02/prosus-acquires-stack-overflow/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/06/02/prosus-acquires-stack-... » Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus. Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. » This is, in some ways, the best possible outcome. Stack Overflow stays independent. The company has plenty of cash on hand to expand and deliver more features and fix the old broken ones. Right now, the biggest gating factor to how fast we can do this is just how fast we can hire excellent people. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announcement/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announ...
- kbenson 5y ago
  > This is, in some ways, the best possible outcome. Stack Overflow stays independent. Sometimes I wonder if the people writing these are actually as oblivious as they sound or is they're self aware enough to now be using this verbage to actually be messaging the exact opposite, given how many times this has been written and shown to be false, no matter how much people want it not to be. Does anyone actually believe that SO isn't beholden to the owning entity, and that no control will be exerted?
  - krageon 5y ago
    Almost every takeover starts with this lie. I can't imagine anyone actually falls for it, it's just repeated by marketing types because it sounds good.
barrenko 5y ago
Or, as per NNT, Big Companies just seem to want to die.
OtomotO 5y ago
The only thing that doesn't stop growing, is cancer. The focus on growth is disgusting and cancer for the real world, the environment as well as society
- stevofolife 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - Valakas_ 5y ago
    Unregulated capitalism you mean.
    - guyfieri 5y ago
      [flagged]
  - BoardsOfCanada 5y ago
    Removing capitalism doesn't have a great track record. Maybe the problem is more fundamental than capitalism.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Socialist economies need growth or else all your citizens start leaving and you have to build a wall. That and it's cruel to not let their economy grow when everyone started out in poverty. China is obsessed with economic growth. Hardly any economic motivations are removed by getting rid of shareholder capitalism; you still have markets, a growing population, and you still need productivity to increase. Oh, and eliminating growth would destroy the environment because 1. environmentalism is a luxury good 2. low-productivity technologies consume much more resources than modern ones do.
    - stevofolife 5y ago
      I agree. However, the type of growth you're addressing here is different from the growth in social media companies. The growth in ad-tech based companies are by nature very artificial when put in economic terms. One can easily argue that these companies provide value by enhancing the reach and personalization of your marketing activities which results in increased sales and brand exposure. But at the very end of the day, how is an ever increasing of consumer spending GDP going to solve real life and death issues? Growth becomes relevant because capitalism is very focused on generating profit, you can either increase revenue or reduce cost, which one is easier? Increase revenue which then leads to, "let's get more users".
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I mean, technically you can write the goals of the company into its charter as whatever you want. It doesn't need to be money/growth/etc. And you could, technically, find investors who will back that goal with their money. And you could, provided you jump through the relevant hoops, take that company public. I'm not sure what restrictions exist on the markets, but I don't think there's anything technically stopping someone from creating a non-profit-oriented public company.
Valakas_ 5y ago
Totally agree with your comment about the cancerous need for growth. If a company is not growing, immediately it's seen as if something is wrong with it.
mro_name 5y ago
> only one thing. Growth. It's engrained in the money system (money as debt) but I guess the cause stems deeper from human nature. As nomads, keeping things was near impossible, so aquiring was a permanent necessity. (And pollution no issue btw) That's what we were for 300k years, and isn't easily changed with a few compliance rules. What we need is balancing rules, that take the anthropologic reality into account. Not personal wealth maximisation.
the_other 5y ago
> We live in a time when large companies will divest themselves of profitable but not growing businesses because it gets in the way of the core mission, which for large public companies is only one thing. Growth. If you have good product-market fit, then “shrinking” is growth. By “shrinking” I mean automating more, becoming more efficient, streamlining. Pay off excess staff in shares and free them up (and yourself) to work on something else.

_jal 5y ago

Yeah, this is the root problem. If you want to break from mandatory upgrades (this includes "cloud" stuff, where you have even less control over software), you need vendors that aren't forced to invent reasons to build them by their operational structure. This is a "Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house" situation. Not unrelatedly, I strongly support Debian and think everyone else should, too. Software in the Public Interest (https://www.spi-inc.org https://www.spi-inc.org) accepts donations for them.

wayoutthere 5y ago
That phrase has a very specific meaning rooted in racism; I would not advise using it to describe any other situation that you don’t want to bring that context into. If only to avoid misunderstandings.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I think that would be rooted in anti-racism, and anyway the next sentence after it "They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." I think establishes the universality of the idea, the same idea expressed in phrases such as if voting could truly change the system it would be outlawed. that idea being that systemic change cannot be achieved within the system that is to be changed. on edit: I am not necessarily a believer in the idea, as I think the 'if voting' expression of the idea can be shown to be wrong by various historical examples.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Audre Lorde chose her words carefully. Her use of “master” holds clear connotations that black people are still not free and the struggle continues. You can’t tear down the master’s house when you yourself are one of his tools. It’s powerful because it’s a personal challenge in the context of white supremacy. And whenever you use the phrase, some decent percentage of your audience will be put off by it and wonder why you’re bringing race into a conversation that’s not about race. If that’s not something you want, you shouldn’t use the phrase when not talking about issues of race.
    - _jal 5y ago
      No, I don't fence off metaphors for exclusivity. Good ones get reused. And claiming Lorde was only talking about race is simply incorrect.
      - wayoutthere 5y ago
        Of course she wasn’t; she’s a poet so everything she says has multiple meanings, but context matters. The issue of race and personal marginalization is inextricable from the quote. She would have used a different word than “Master” otherwise. Context crushing it this way diminishes the effectiveness of any argument you may be using it in support of. You can choose to use whatever metaphors you want, but other people will add their own context. It’s the same reason you can’t say things like “final solution” — the phrase has societal context and its use is distracting at best when used in another context.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Just FYI. The app that I’ve been working on is designed for a “comfortable stasis.” It may take some time to get there, but I have no interest in metrics-driven growth, or appropriation of people’s PII. We are likely to introduce changes, over time; but these will all be completely focused on Serving our users’ needs more effectively. Kind of refreshing. I’m working for a 501(c)(3), and we don’t need to show “growth”; just Serve our community.

kbenson 5y ago
Nice! Here's to hoping it's successful and provides benefit to people, and doesn't trigger some startup founder to think they can "monetize all that potential you're leaving on the table" or some such. I say that jokingly, but honestly, a non/not for profit is probably an really good way to structure some of these things to do an end run around both the market and people's expectations, so I sincerely wish you the best in whatever your endeavor is (and you can consider this me politely asking what it is, so you don't have to feel like you are injecting it into the conversation). :)
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I am not at liberty to discuss it, at the moment. Even when it ships, it probably won’t be mentioned here, as it Serves a very specific demographic, and probably won’t be of interest to most folks. You can always contact me (via my Web sites), and I could talk about it a bit more.

saghm 5y ago

> We live in a time when large companies will divest themselves of profitable but not growing businesses because it gets in the way of the core mission, which for large public companies is only one thing. Growth. > Private companies can sometimes get away with it, as long as the people backing them don't start to see them as investment vehicles like any other public company. I'm probably just naive or missing something obvious, but fundamentally it doesn't seem obvious to me _why_ public companies should be treated differently as investments. Ostensibly the original reason stocks had value is that when companies were making money, they'd pay dividends, but like you said, this isn't really the mentality anymore. The stock is worth something because someday if the company makes more money, someone will buy it for more money than you paid...but why? So they can sell it when the company is making even more money later? It seems like if companies don't end up eventually paying dividends at some point, there's no reason why the price of the stock should be related to the amount of money the company makes. The only other thing that shares really do is give very limited voting rights, but this seems like it's not remotely worth enough per share given how much you'd need to have to even begin to influence board elections, which in itself is a very indirect way of influencing the company.

evandwight 5y ago
Some owners of private companies don't see the goal of the company as profit maximization - eg SpaceX. With a public company there's always going to be a shareholder to sue you for not maximizing profit. https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/special-comment/ebay-v-newmark-al-franken-was-right-corporations-are-legally-required-to-maximize-profits/ https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/s...
- justahuman74 5y ago
  SpaceX is somewhat expected to produce profit at some point, else it would have been registered as a non-profit
  - evandwight 5y ago
    SpaceX definitely wants to make a profit. I don't think building a city on Mars is profit maximization though and this is Elon's explicit reason for not taking SpaceX public. > According to the company, the short-term demands of shareholders conflict with his long-term ambitions. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/121515/will-elon-musks-spacex-go-public.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/121515/will-el...

mcny 5y ago

» Private companies can sometimes get away with it, as long as the people backing them don't start to see them as investment vehicles like any other public company. I don't know if anyone has any chance if Stack Exchange can't stay independent. Like the product was arguably "done" years ago if you ignore monetization. » As you may have seen in the news this morning, Prosus (AEX:PRX) has announced its intention to acquire Stack Overflow for 1.8 billion dollars. https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/06/02/prosus-acquires-stack-overflow/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/06/02/prosus-acquires-stack-... » Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus. Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. » This is, in some ways, the best possible outcome. Stack Overflow stays independent. The company has plenty of cash on hand to expand and deliver more features and fix the old broken ones. Right now, the biggest gating factor to how fast we can do this is just how fast we can hire excellent people. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announcement/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announ...

kbenson 5y ago
> This is, in some ways, the best possible outcome. Stack Overflow stays independent. Sometimes I wonder if the people writing these are actually as oblivious as they sound or is they're self aware enough to now be using this verbage to actually be messaging the exact opposite, given how many times this has been written and shown to be false, no matter how much people want it not to be. Does anyone actually believe that SO isn't beholden to the owning entity, and that no control will be exerted?
- krageon 5y ago
  Almost every takeover starts with this lie. I can't imagine anyone actually falls for it, it's just repeated by marketing types because it sounds good.

barrenko 5y ago

Or, as per NNT, Big Companies just seem to want to die.

OtomotO 5y ago

The only thing that doesn't stop growing, is cancer. The focus on growth is disgusting and cancer for the real world, the environment as well as society

stevofolife 5y ago
[flagged]
- Valakas_ 5y ago
  Unregulated capitalism you mean.
  - guyfieri 5y ago
    [flagged]
- BoardsOfCanada 5y ago
  Removing capitalism doesn't have a great track record. Maybe the problem is more fundamental than capitalism.
- astrange 5y ago
  Socialist economies need growth or else all your citizens start leaving and you have to build a wall. That and it's cruel to not let their economy grow when everyone started out in poverty. China is obsessed with economic growth. Hardly any economic motivations are removed by getting rid of shareholder capitalism; you still have markets, a growing population, and you still need productivity to increase. Oh, and eliminating growth would destroy the environment because 1. environmentalism is a luxury good 2. low-productivity technologies consume much more resources than modern ones do.
  - stevofolife 5y ago
    I agree. However, the type of growth you're addressing here is different from the growth in social media companies. The growth in ad-tech based companies are by nature very artificial when put in economic terms. One can easily argue that these companies provide value by enhancing the reach and personalization of your marketing activities which results in increased sales and brand exposure. But at the very end of the day, how is an ever increasing of consumer spending GDP going to solve real life and death issues? Growth becomes relevant because capitalism is very focused on generating profit, you can either increase revenue or reduce cost, which one is easier? Increase revenue which then leads to, "let's get more users".

marcus_holmes 5y ago

I mean, technically you can write the goals of the company into its charter as whatever you want. It doesn't need to be money/growth/etc. And you could, technically, find investors who will back that goal with their money. And you could, provided you jump through the relevant hoops, take that company public. I'm not sure what restrictions exist on the markets, but I don't think there's anything technically stopping someone from creating a non-profit-oriented public company.

Valakas_ 5y ago

Totally agree with your comment about the cancerous need for growth. If a company is not growing, immediately it's seen as if something is wrong with it.

mro_name 5y ago

> only one thing. Growth. It's engrained in the money system (money as debt) but I guess the cause stems deeper from human nature. As nomads, keeping things was near impossible, so aquiring was a permanent necessity. (And pollution no issue btw) That's what we were for 300k years, and isn't easily changed with a few compliance rules. What we need is balancing rules, that take the anthropologic reality into account. Not personal wealth maximisation.

the_other 5y ago

> We live in a time when large companies will divest themselves of profitable but not growing businesses because it gets in the way of the core mission, which for large public companies is only one thing. Growth. If you have good product-market fit, then “shrinking” is growth. By “shrinking” I mean automating more, becoming more efficient, streamlining. Pay off excess staff in shares and free them up (and yourself) to work on something else.