7 ms·

Court of Versailles vs. the Wild West

31 points by vwoolf 4y ago

DeathArrow 4y ago
The author has made some really great points. The comparison between french aristocracy and us tech megacorps is spot on.
- bartvk 4y ago
  Why, though? Do you just feel yourself agreeing on an emotional level? Does it match your experience at a particular firm? Or something else?
bla3 4y ago
Starts out insightful bit then pivots into > If you rebel against some of the precepts of this new ideology by espousing a contrary view as James Demore did at Google when he offered an alternative explanation on female representation Eh.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Demore was right though. Too bad that’s not what matters.
pjc50 4y ago
The article starts off well, with a contrast between work environments where expansion is rewarded and those that end up fighting among themselves for control of an existing revenue stream. The latter phenomenon is common in petro-states, for example; arguably that is why Russia is so dysfunctional. .. then the author takes a sharp right turn to blame it on "diversity", i.e. the idea that people who aren't white guys should be given a shot at the wealth, and it goes downhill from there. The rest of the blog is devoted to complaining about e.g. the existence of women's basketball or cosplaying aristocracy of the early 20th century. (diversity discussion on HN is .. not likely to go well)
- fuckyc284 4y ago
  [flagged]
- bsenftner 4y ago
  I suspect you missed the point: not "diversity", that is not what the author is blaming. He blames the cultural shift from the revenue creation to revenue management with little to no attention outside the firm, as if the prior institutionalized revenue streams are forevermore assets. The author picks "diversity" has his "economic indicator" of this systematic transition.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > The author picks "diversity" has his "economic indicator" of this systematic transition. .. which is an instant red flag. They could have talked about e.g. Google's many chat apps or tendency to shut down products, or Facebook's abandoned "metaverse" project, as indicators that the company has switched from providing new ways to win revenue and serve users to new ways to spend revenue on conspicuous consumption. Instead they rant about "diversity". To expand on the author's metaphor, the problem with the Wild West is that some of the "building" was in fact theft, murder, and genocide; and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered. The unsympathetic reaction to the SVB crisis is a hint to SV that some of the proletariat might be massing outside the walls. Their approach to "diversity", "ESG", and other social issues is the beginning of a glimmer of recognition that they have a responsibility to broader society, but combined with a very poor ability to actually listen to people they consider not as smart.
    - DeathArrow 4y ago
      >and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered. The author feels that big corps are not focused on the reason they exist but simply they are concerned to distractions outside of their objective.
nraynaud 4y ago
It reminds me of those VCs who only do "warm" introductions (hello Versailles), but use their cold introduction mailbox as a measure of success, the more plebeians they leave screaming at the gates, the happier they feel.
_8j50 4y ago
As others have noted, using diversity as an indicator seems like confirmation bias. If you look for something hard enough you will see it (like faces in a cloud) and correlation is not causation. Now, I don't care much for diversity/dei stuff, i believe in reasonable (not puritanical) meritocracy but when someone picks on dei it shows you how they think. Obviously the author is not claiming diversity is the cause of decline at these companies. He is claiming it as an indicator of a court of bersailles culture shift where people pay lip service to DEI but he chose analyst calls which are not by tech workers or producers in FB. This is a call by managers/execs and traders. DEI lip service has been a thing in corporate america long before 2020, I remember having to endure bs DEI townhalls in companies that have nothing to do with tech and that were and still are very profitable as long ago as 2014-15. The fact is, a public call or company wide townhall is set up to pay lip service to bullshit. You can't take that as a reflection of internal culture. They probably stopped talking about it on analyst calls because they had more pressing items like loss of share value and their plans to reassure shareholders. If a FB tech worker claimed they get promoted based on attendance of a diversity seminar I would change my mind but the author picked on diversity similar to how republicans say "woke" as a dogwhistle to what they really mean. It's not that I care about bullshit diversity lipservice bu random corporations but when you use that to make your point about the overall decline of a company now you are not paying lip service, your anti-diversity propaganda will have actual effects in excluding people. Another HN post was saying things like "you shouldn't have committ hooks for a diversity committee meeting" I keep seeing this as a dogwhistle, the new "maga". Show me evidence that diversity lipservice, as bullshit as it maybe, is being used in place of actual performance of employees that aren't in HR or managers at the middle-manager and higher level and I will take back what I said. Until then, this is a nicely concealed racial dogwhistle. I remember clearly my highschool teacher telling the class how corporate america is "is still great, mostly white" and no one batter an eye lol. I know where this sentiment comes from no matter how well it is concealed these days. The court of versailles vs wild west analogy lacks a lot of nuance. HR will usually be to the versailles extreme and SWEs to the wild west in any company. What I have noticed on the other hand is execs are influenced by marketing, legal, investors, anyone but their core product people and that's when you see a decline. Google for example became a "buy another company instead of build it in house" type of a company which is why they were caught off guard. Microsoft got past all that after shedding steve ballmer. They're not the 90s Microsoft but they are very innovative and even when they take over a company they show wisdom in not destroying the culture/people right away. It's a shame, the article started out nice but I think the author let their bias leak/influence their conclusion.
kleinsch 4y ago
Article takes a pretty wacky direction blaming diversity. I was at FB during the period they describe, nobody was getting promos for going to diversity seminars. If you look at other posts on the site, seems to be a theme with this author. Everything is about how progressive politics are making the world harder for them.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
The problematic parts of the court is in my opinion not the current flavour of social self aggregandization, but the priesthood of the holy cow that giveth the revenue stream. If at microsoft, all must be windows. If at google all compareth horribly to search. If at apple, does it look good and can be sold at store. The company internal wild-west eco system continus to produce more often then not, but the priesthood feels attacked by the idea of other power centers, aka revenue streams emerging inside the company.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Um... I don't disagree with the authour but isn't this just a nice metaphor for small companies (where you have to be good at doing things) vs large ones (where politics rule). I've worked at quite a few small/medium/large companies now, and watched companies grow from the former to the latter and it is always that way isn't it? I've said before that FAANGs used to be start ups. And did very well to keep that mindset for as long as they did. But they are not that anymore. They are corporations. Drucker said the same thing before I was born or most FAANGs existed. This is just the lifecycle of any enterprise. Even the French nobility were once a rag-tag, battle winning, bunch of Franks. The fact it has taken so much less time for Tech (however you define that) to go from rebels to empire is just modern life... Upvoted anyway, because it IS a nice metaphor.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Great points by the author. Fortunately this fixation on race and sex are unstable. The bottom line will win out.

31 points by vwoolf 4y ago

The author has made some really great points. The comparison between french aristocracy and us tech megacorps is spot on.

bartvk 4y ago
Why, though? Do you just feel yourself agreeing on an emotional level? Does it match your experience at a particular firm? Or something else?

bla3 4y ago

Starts out insightful bit then pivots into > If you rebel against some of the precepts of this new ideology by espousing a contrary view as James Demore did at Google when he offered an alternative explanation on female representation Eh.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Demore was right though. Too bad that’s not what matters.

pjc50 4y ago

The article starts off well, with a contrast between work environments where expansion is rewarded and those that end up fighting among themselves for control of an existing revenue stream. The latter phenomenon is common in petro-states, for example; arguably that is why Russia is so dysfunctional. .. then the author takes a sharp right turn to blame it on "diversity", i.e. the idea that people who aren't white guys should be given a shot at the wealth, and it goes downhill from there. The rest of the blog is devoted to complaining about e.g. the existence of women's basketball or cosplaying aristocracy of the early 20th century. (diversity discussion on HN is .. not likely to go well)

fuckyc284 4y ago
[flagged]
bsenftner 4y ago
I suspect you missed the point: not "diversity", that is not what the author is blaming. He blames the cultural shift from the revenue creation to revenue management with little to no attention outside the firm, as if the prior institutionalized revenue streams are forevermore assets. The author picks "diversity" has his "economic indicator" of this systematic transition.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > The author picks "diversity" has his "economic indicator" of this systematic transition. .. which is an instant red flag. They could have talked about e.g. Google's many chat apps or tendency to shut down products, or Facebook's abandoned "metaverse" project, as indicators that the company has switched from providing new ways to win revenue and serve users to new ways to spend revenue on conspicuous consumption. Instead they rant about "diversity". To expand on the author's metaphor, the problem with the Wild West is that some of the "building" was in fact theft, murder, and genocide; and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered. The unsympathetic reaction to the SVB crisis is a hint to SV that some of the proletariat might be massing outside the walls. Their approach to "diversity", "ESG", and other social issues is the beginning of a glimmer of recognition that they have a responsibility to broader society, but combined with a very poor ability to actually listen to people they consider not as smart.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    >and the problem with Versailles was the incredible conspicuous consumption while failing to address the problems and starvation outside the magic castle walls, leading to an uprising of the public and middle-elites which got the entire aristocracy murdered. The author feels that big corps are not focused on the reason they exist but simply they are concerned to distractions outside of their objective.

nraynaud 4y ago

It reminds me of those VCs who only do "warm" introductions (hello Versailles), but use their cold introduction mailbox as a measure of success, the more plebeians they leave screaming at the gates, the happier they feel.

_8j50 4y ago

As others have noted, using diversity as an indicator seems like confirmation bias. If you look for something hard enough you will see it (like faces in a cloud) and correlation is not causation. Now, I don't care much for diversity/dei stuff, i believe in reasonable (not puritanical) meritocracy but when someone picks on dei it shows you how they think. Obviously the author is not claiming diversity is the cause of decline at these companies. He is claiming it as an indicator of a court of bersailles culture shift where people pay lip service to DEI but he chose analyst calls which are not by tech workers or producers in FB. This is a call by managers/execs and traders. DEI lip service has been a thing in corporate america long before 2020, I remember having to endure bs DEI townhalls in companies that have nothing to do with tech and that were and still are very profitable as long ago as 2014-15. The fact is, a public call or company wide townhall is set up to pay lip service to bullshit. You can't take that as a reflection of internal culture. They probably stopped talking about it on analyst calls because they had more pressing items like loss of share value and their plans to reassure shareholders. If a FB tech worker claimed they get promoted based on attendance of a diversity seminar I would change my mind but the author picked on diversity similar to how republicans say "woke" as a dogwhistle to what they really mean. It's not that I care about bullshit diversity lipservice bu random corporations but when you use that to make your point about the overall decline of a company now you are not paying lip service, your anti-diversity propaganda will have actual effects in excluding people. Another HN post was saying things like "you shouldn't have committ hooks for a diversity committee meeting" I keep seeing this as a dogwhistle, the new "maga". Show me evidence that diversity lipservice, as bullshit as it maybe, is being used in place of actual performance of employees that aren't in HR or managers at the middle-manager and higher level and I will take back what I said. Until then, this is a nicely concealed racial dogwhistle. I remember clearly my highschool teacher telling the class how corporate america is "is still great, mostly white" and no one batter an eye lol. I know where this sentiment comes from no matter how well it is concealed these days. The court of versailles vs wild west analogy lacks a lot of nuance. HR will usually be to the versailles extreme and SWEs to the wild west in any company. What I have noticed on the other hand is execs are influenced by marketing, legal, investors, anyone but their core product people and that's when you see a decline. Google for example became a "buy another company instead of build it in house" type of a company which is why they were caught off guard. Microsoft got past all that after shedding steve ballmer. They're not the 90s Microsoft but they are very innovative and even when they take over a company they show wisdom in not destroying the culture/people right away. It's a shame, the article started out nice but I think the author let their bias leak/influence their conclusion.

kleinsch 4y ago

Article takes a pretty wacky direction blaming diversity. I was at FB during the period they describe, nobody was getting promos for going to diversity seminars. If you look at other posts on the site, seems to be a theme with this author. Everything is about how progressive politics are making the world harder for them.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

The problematic parts of the court is in my opinion not the current flavour of social self aggregandization, but the priesthood of the holy cow that giveth the revenue stream. If at microsoft, all must be windows. If at google all compareth horribly to search. If at apple, does it look good and can be sold at store. The company internal wild-west eco system continus to produce more often then not, but the priesthood feels attacked by the idea of other power centers, aka revenue streams emerging inside the company.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Um... I don't disagree with the authour but isn't this just a nice metaphor for small companies (where you have to be good at doing things) vs large ones (where politics rule). I've worked at quite a few small/medium/large companies now, and watched companies grow from the former to the latter and it is always that way isn't it? I've said before that FAANGs used to be start ups. And did very well to keep that mindset for as long as they did. But they are not that anymore. They are corporations. Drucker said the same thing before I was born or most FAANGs existed. This is just the lifecycle of any enterprise. Even the French nobility were once a rag-tag, battle winning, bunch of Franks. The fact it has taken so much less time for Tech (however you define that) to go from rebels to empire is just modern life... Upvoted anyway, because it IS a nice metaphor.

nonethewiser 4y ago

Great points by the author. Fortunately this fixation on race and sex are unstable. The bottom line will win out.