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Nah, I can come up with countless examples of companies making decisions to maximize their market cap over the next 0-2 years, that are obviously going to have
by notshift 4y ago
Nah, I can come up with countless examples of companies making decisions to maximize their market cap over the next 0-2 years, that are obviously going to have a huge negative impact over the next 5-10 years (a much greater negative impact than was gained in the short term).
Serious long term thinking by those running companies (on the time-scale of 7-10+ years) is extraordinarily rare and represents a massive competitive advantage for those who actually do it (almost no one).
Companies do not adequately select for or reward long term thinking behavior by CEOs and upper management. Mostly you only see this coming from company founders who actually have enough of a stake and political capital to make doing so viable.
- literallyWTF 4y agoPretty much agree with you. Countless stories of how Amazon tears their workers apart has literally made me unwilling to _ever_ work for them. Imagine if they were so goddamn ruthless!
- refurb 4y agoI’d love to hear some examples since predicting the future isn’t easy. But regardless, it’s impossible for a business to focus entirely on the long-term. Why? There are short terms costs that have to be paid as well. So there has to be a trade off “if we do X we can keep the lights on and people employed while we work at Y which pays off in 10 years”. Private companies typically have it a bit easier since they don’t worry about stock price, but I’ve seen plenty of private companies make stupid decisions too. At least stupid in hindsight, but not stupid at the time they were made.