5 ms·

All it takes is a structural shift. Blockbuster had a 29-year run, most of which was after it wiped out the independent stores that predated it.

by mkr-hn 5y ago

andrew_ 5y ago
Do you have an example of industry-wide, pervasive structural shift? Sincere question, as Blockbuster is a good example, but relatively isolated. By the time Blockbuster was done, viable replacements had already arisen.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  I think that's the point. Something will come along to replace it, and that thing does not historically pay better. "Your margin is my opportunity," as Lord Bezos said. It's already kind of happening. I could get $25 per extremely plain HTML page when I was a kid because that was a rare, in-demand skill. Now $20 buys 10 fancy Carrds. Every new framework or language or platform is chasing an efficiency or simplicity that opens it up to people who'll work for less or lets one person do the job of 10. There's always an initiating event, and then the prophecy of the tech adoption curve takes over. Someone is gunning for the margins behind those salaries, but the people making those sums don't know it yet. If I knew where it was coming from, I would email them about a collaboration, not post it here. edit to add: It can be a slow boil or a rapid shift. Google swept the search engine space in a few years, but Netflix and Blockbuster traded places over decades. Now Netflix is struggling as third-party content retreats into publisher silos.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Sure. The easy money growth phase of cloud will slow or stop. People laugh at my mainframe example upthread, but no Data Processing Executive saw 1992 coming in 1988. Most of the people making $500k comp at AWS, MS, GCP will all get nuked once the growth and investment phase slows down. You’re already seeing it happen at the margins - you don’t see “Uber for Litter Box” startups in 2022. I’ve seen this happen with internal enterprise services as well. When you’re growing 50-500% a year, all of your sins and fuckups are hidden in the growth. Once dust settles and you shift to steady state, you suddenly care about cost accounting vs growth.
scarface74 5y ago
How would a union have helped?
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  I'm sure people at all levels except executive got the short end during the collapse of Blockbuster. A union would have represented employee interests every time the C-suite issued an execution order down the chain. They could very well have stopped the decline if there had been anyone to protect the retail employees who used to be able to recommend movies. That could have held the line against Netflix and its algorithm the way it has for electronics stores that have survived. Every story I heard about a closing store, from Sears to Best Buy, began with "first, they fired everyone who knew anything and hired a bunch of people who were completely out of their depth to save money." Best Buy in particular saved itself by remembering the value of competence. Their stock is at record highs. Now imagine if there'd been a union to bring that to the people in charge before the business penny pinched itself to near death. Unions also help with getting people into new jobs when the company really can't keep them.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    So a union would have stopped Carl Icahn from killing Blockbuster? It would have stopped Viacom from spinning off Blockbuster and saddling it with debt? How much negotiation does a union have in a company that is bankrupt? https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/review-blockbusters-demise-had-many-culprits-2021-04-16/ https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/review-blockbusters-de... How would a union have helped? Retail was the cause of BlockBuster’s problems. Forcing stores to stay open wouldn’t have helped. How much did unions help employees at automakers get jobs?
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Unions make the slow demise of companies bearable for workers. Think of any big company it has a 50-100 year life cycle with the first 10-20 years being up and the rest being middling or decay. During the first 10-20 unions aren’t common or needed much but eventually management rot sets in and you start getting some crazy policies. Take Amazon for example, if they had a Union a lot of the crazy stacked ranking insane ot oddities would be resolved by Union contact. Salary would probably go down because you don’t need to pay insane wages if your work/life environment is good. The company Might be a bit less productive but the effect would be pretty negligible

All it takes is a structural shift. Blockbuster had a 29-year run, most of which was after it wiped out the independent stores that predated it.

by mkr-hn 5y ago

All it takes is a structural shift. Blockbuster had a 29-year run, most of which was after it wiped out the independent stores that predated it.

andrew_ 5y ago

Do you have an example of industry-wide, pervasive structural shift? Sincere question, as Blockbuster is a good example, but relatively isolated. By the time Blockbuster was done, viable replacements had already arisen.

mkr-hn 5y ago
I think that's the point. Something will come along to replace it, and that thing does not historically pay better. "Your margin is my opportunity," as Lord Bezos said. It's already kind of happening. I could get $25 per extremely plain HTML page when I was a kid because that was a rare, in-demand skill. Now $20 buys 10 fancy Carrds. Every new framework or language or platform is chasing an efficiency or simplicity that opens it up to people who'll work for less or lets one person do the job of 10. There's always an initiating event, and then the prophecy of the tech adoption curve takes over. Someone is gunning for the margins behind those salaries, but the people making those sums don't know it yet. If I knew where it was coming from, I would email them about a collaboration, not post it here. edit to add: It can be a slow boil or a rapid shift. Google swept the search engine space in a few years, but Netflix and Blockbuster traded places over decades. Now Netflix is struggling as third-party content retreats into publisher silos.
Spooky23 5y ago
Sure. The easy money growth phase of cloud will slow or stop. People laugh at my mainframe example upthread, but no Data Processing Executive saw 1992 coming in 1988. Most of the people making $500k comp at AWS, MS, GCP will all get nuked once the growth and investment phase slows down. You’re already seeing it happen at the margins - you don’t see “Uber for Litter Box” startups in 2022. I’ve seen this happen with internal enterprise services as well. When you’re growing 50-500% a year, all of your sins and fuckups are hidden in the growth. Once dust settles and you shift to steady state, you suddenly care about cost accounting vs growth.

scarface74 5y ago

How would a union have helped?

mkr-hn 5y ago
I'm sure people at all levels except executive got the short end during the collapse of Blockbuster. A union would have represented employee interests every time the C-suite issued an execution order down the chain. They could very well have stopped the decline if there had been anyone to protect the retail employees who used to be able to recommend movies. That could have held the line against Netflix and its algorithm the way it has for electronics stores that have survived. Every story I heard about a closing store, from Sears to Best Buy, began with "first, they fired everyone who knew anything and hired a bunch of people who were completely out of their depth to save money." Best Buy in particular saved itself by remembering the value of competence. Their stock is at record highs. Now imagine if there'd been a union to bring that to the people in charge before the business penny pinched itself to near death. Unions also help with getting people into new jobs when the company really can't keep them.
- scarface74 5y ago
  So a union would have stopped Carl Icahn from killing Blockbuster? It would have stopped Viacom from spinning off Blockbuster and saddling it with debt? How much negotiation does a union have in a company that is bankrupt? https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/review-blockbusters-demise-had-many-culprits-2021-04-16/ https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/review-blockbusters-de... How would a union have helped? Retail was the cause of BlockBuster’s problems. Forcing stores to stay open wouldn’t have helped. How much did unions help employees at automakers get jobs?
rdtwo 5y ago
Unions make the slow demise of companies bearable for workers. Think of any big company it has a 50-100 year life cycle with the first 10-20 years being up and the rest being middling or decay. During the first 10-20 unions aren’t common or needed much but eventually management rot sets in and you start getting some crazy policies. Take Amazon for example, if they had a Union a lot of the crazy stacked ranking insane ot oddities would be resolved by Union contact. Salary would probably go down because you don’t need to pay insane wages if your work/life environment is good. The company Might be a bit less productive but the effect would be pretty negligible