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> but instead financially engineered their way to focus only on higher profit You explained the core of the problem that usually gets little blame. Successful

> but instead financially engineered their way to focus only on higher profit You explained the core of the problem that usually gets little blame. Successful companies get infiltrated by Wall Street MBA types who make decisions for the short term to manipulate the stock price because their own compensation structures help encourage that behavior. Companies, especially like Intel should be built for being resilient over decades instead of maximizing profits by the quarter.

dghughes 4y ago
Like Bed, Bath and Beyond. Obsessing over their stock price and ran out of cash to buy actual things to sell. Now bankrupt.
nemothekid 4y ago
>Successful companies get infiltrated by Wall Street MBA types who make decisions for the short term to manipulate the stock price This really applies for Intel, but for Google, I think it's less so. I've been thinking you have to look at incentives and at a large corporation everyone is incentivized to make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. If you really want to spend years hammering away at something, it made more sense to just start your own company doing that where you would reap most of the benefits through equity. There is no reason for someone to spend years at Google on a project that is seemingly going nowhere; they would struggle to get promoted, and if it does work out, most of the value will go to existing shareholders.
- startupsfail 4y ago
  Why not? Getting a project up is a struggle anyway. And it’s a trade off between the upside and downside risk. At Google there is little downside risk and upside is reasonable. One or two experienced and passionate engineers, hammering away, amplified by a big company can compete with a startup.
  - nemothekid 4y ago
    The downside risk is only marginally different. If you are "passionate" engineer at Google, going to startup means making 150k rather than 350k. Don't get me wrong, 200k is a lot, even in the bay area, but it's not like you are destitute. If it doesn't work out you can always return to Google. The upside is completely different. Secondly, you are also at the mercy at your VPs, who got to that position by also maximizing short term results. A VC may not have the tools to force you to pivot if you are making ump-teen million dollars in year 1, but a VP may decide to kill your project to move more experienced engineers to another pet project. A passionate engineer at a pet project is an anomaly at a large corporation, who also has to fight the political winds of people trying to maximize their short term gains. And I don't think those people are wrong, it's the rational thing to do, especially when any equity upside will go largely to existing shareholders.
    - startupsfail 4y ago
      150k means not on a path to own your own home and not much savings. If that’s a single income for a family, in the bay you’d be struggling.
kazen44 4y ago
Bert Hubert had an excellent talk which exactly describes the problem of this phenomenon[0]. [0]: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/
bsder 4y ago
It isn't just the MBA types. "Only the paranoid survive" applied fractally at all levels in Intel. This meant that there were very few "anointed successors" as people who had specialized knowledge regarded not sharing it as a survival technique. This meant that as the technical people who built things got old and retired a lot of institutional knowledge simply walked out the door. Technical excellence rests on training and sharing. Intel was the exact anathema of that.

dghughes 4y ago

Like Bed, Bath and Beyond. Obsessing over their stock price and ran out of cash to buy actual things to sell. Now bankrupt.

nemothekid 4y ago

>Successful companies get infiltrated by Wall Street MBA types who make decisions for the short term to manipulate the stock price This really applies for Intel, but for Google, I think it's less so. I've been thinking you have to look at incentives and at a large corporation everyone is incentivized to make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. If you really want to spend years hammering away at something, it made more sense to just start your own company doing that where you would reap most of the benefits through equity. There is no reason for someone to spend years at Google on a project that is seemingly going nowhere; they would struggle to get promoted, and if it does work out, most of the value will go to existing shareholders.

startupsfail 4y ago
Why not? Getting a project up is a struggle anyway. And it’s a trade off between the upside and downside risk. At Google there is little downside risk and upside is reasonable. One or two experienced and passionate engineers, hammering away, amplified by a big company can compete with a startup.
- nemothekid 4y ago
  The downside risk is only marginally different. If you are "passionate" engineer at Google, going to startup means making 150k rather than 350k. Don't get me wrong, 200k is a lot, even in the bay area, but it's not like you are destitute. If it doesn't work out you can always return to Google. The upside is completely different. Secondly, you are also at the mercy at your VPs, who got to that position by also maximizing short term results. A VC may not have the tools to force you to pivot if you are making ump-teen million dollars in year 1, but a VP may decide to kill your project to move more experienced engineers to another pet project. A passionate engineer at a pet project is an anomaly at a large corporation, who also has to fight the political winds of people trying to maximize their short term gains. And I don't think those people are wrong, it's the rational thing to do, especially when any equity upside will go largely to existing shareholders.
  - startupsfail 4y ago
    150k means not on a path to own your own home and not much savings. If that’s a single income for a family, in the bay you’d be struggling.

kazen44 4y ago

Bert Hubert had an excellent talk which exactly describes the problem of this phenomenon[0]. [0]: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/

bsder 4y ago

It isn't just the MBA types. "Only the paranoid survive" applied fractally at all levels in Intel. This meant that there were very few "anointed successors" as people who had specialized knowledge regarded not sharing it as a survival technique. This meant that as the technical people who built things got old and retired a lot of institutional knowledge simply walked out the door. Technical excellence rests on training and sharing. Intel was the exact anathema of that.