11 ms·

The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to

by aljgz 3y ago

The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to grow the market, or your market share. When returns on your efforts become diminishing, you push to improve how much you earn of each customer/each sale. At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that. What happens instead is companies keep rewarding executives by increases in revenue, they keep rewarding product managers similarly, and product managers selectively choose metrics that optimize immediate revenue, at the expense of brand loyalty. This is happening to almost every tech company, and the exceptions are rare gems. In android, if I click on a link in facebook messenger that takes me to facebook, the back button takes me "back" to facebook's home screen instead of to the messenger app. Tapping back button again does nothing. I have to switch back to messenger manually. That's 5-6 taps/swipes instead of 1, because a product manager's bonus in FB depends on how well they beg for more engagement. As a result, I rarely use any of these products. I used to spend some time in Instagram/FB. I close LinkedIn immediately after an important interaction for similar reasons. I made a mistake of buying another Samsung product after years. Never again. I made a mistake of buying another HP product, never again. I might still consider Dell only because of how well they supported me with their monitor flicker. None of these products have a defect that's caused by poor design, programming, or manufacturing. They all suffer from growth-obsessed mindset. Brother is what it is, not because of lack of innovation, but because of deliberate evasion of short-sighted greed.

gofreddygo 3y ago
> At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that Yes! What I see instead is a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot mindset. Its everywhere I see. I wish there was a way to see and fix this before its too late. The right way to treat your loyal customers is also micro-intangible, hard to show clear numbers and so does not bear any rewards for a manager taking this approach. Instead, the opposite of screwing loyal customers for new ones is rampant, easy to cook up numbers and so amply rewarded not just limited to tech companies. Unless the same management chain is responsible for new customers and leaving ones, this is an internal conflict of interest and its effects only show at the macro level. I've seen many once-popular restaurants go this route, losing long time repeat customers who prefer well priced, familiar drinks and dishes over hit or miss exotic overpriced ones. They don't complain, they just stop coming back. Car manufacturers, Appliance manufacturers, Food chains, Internet Service Providers, Telcos, tech startups are all guilty of this. Factions at MS, Goog, AAPL too are guilty. Exceptions here are really really rare. I've never bought a brother printer, but it will be my next.
prima-facie 3y ago
> I made a mistake of buying another Samsung product after years. Never again. Honest question: what's wrong with Samsung? I'm pretty happy with their phones and SSDs but haven't had any experience with their appliances.
konschubert 3y ago
Instead of trying to innovate in-house, many big old companies would be MUCH better served returning the money to shareholders. The shareholders can then invest into new companies and startups. This is much better for the economy AND for the shareholders
- hef19898 3y ago
  Stock buy-backs exist, and are controversial for various reasons.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    My point is that stock buybacks and dividends are good for the economy.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      The point is that they are good for management, share prices and share holders. The economy is made of more than just those groups.
      - konschubert 3y ago
        Stock buybacks are good for the economy because they allocate money to where it can be used more efficiently, which is usually not in existing big corporations. The alternative to stock buybacks is that the corporation make stupid acquisitions and try to integrate them into their processes, thereby killing them.
        jowea 3y ago
        The closest alternative to buybacks is dividends. But to be honest I'm not sure if that's what the critics want the money going.
        konschubert 3y ago
zero_shift 3y ago
If you think about it the growth mindset is quite psychotic. Imagine a human being with a growth mindset. He optimises his bodyfat to the point of anorexia. He optimises conversations by extracting knowledge then moving on. His diet is pure protein shakes and broccoli. Every morning he does six Leetcode Hards. If you met him you'd think he was deranged. This growth ideology means every company we interact with behaves like Bob. Soon enough this Bobism filters into people through the labour market and professional values. (Like the Leetcoders). It's alienating and the only purpose it serves is an investment based economy with unclear benefits to society at large It creates a very strange world where we have computers acting like people and people acting like machines
- aikinai 3y ago
  Your description reminded me of this Krazam sketch[0]. [0] https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U?si=OyKs8ULYBNLOmmcI https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U?si=OyKs8ULYBNLOmmcI
- masklinn 3y ago
  > If you think about it the growth mindset is quite psychotic. More to the point, if you think about it the biggest follower of the growth mindset is cancer. And turns out that’s not just of > unclear benefits to society at large But actively detrimental to it, and ultimately, with a handful of exceptions, to the cancer itself.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    That was exactly the way I worded it. https://jacquesmattheij.com/if-growth-was-good-then-getting-cancer-would-be-good-news/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/if-growth-was-good-then-getting-... This obsession with growth is so utterly self-centered. I still have those chairs, by the way.
    - masklinn 3y ago
      Seeing the date, I would not be surprised if that’s where I originally got it from, in all honesty.
withinboredom 3y ago
The thing is, there is a ceiling with SaaS products. You can usually hit it within 5 years of starting. That ceiling is entirely controlled by churn, with 0% churn, you go to the moon, but nobody has 0% churn. Once you hit that ceiling, the only reasonable thing is to focus on churn, not growth (as it will have the most impact). But that is like explaining that a "circular line on a map is actually a straight line" they say they get it, but they still see a circular line.
amelius 3y ago
We should have stronger consumer organizations. Want to mass produce a product? Consumer orgs should first okay it.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  That seems absurd. People often have no idea that a product would be useful or desirable beforehand. Perhaps our current level of consumer choice is somewhat absurd, but that brings you to a Soviet style system.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    It's fascinating that this was downvoted. What the comment above is suggesting is literally a planned economy. How would these "consumer groups" even work? Would they be democratically elected? Appointed by governments? How would they be insulated from pressure from companies trying to suppress competition? It would inevitably lead to a thoroughly inefficient and corrupt system...
    - mlrtime 3y ago
      People who come up with these ideas think that the 'groups' would be filled with like minded people like themselves when in reality it would be the opposite.
Simon_ORourke 3y ago
> In android, if I click on a link in facebook messenger that takes me to facebook, the back button takes me "back" to facebook's home screen instead of to the messenger app. Tapping back button again does nothing. I have to switch back to messenger manually. That's 5-6 taps/swipes instead of 1, because a product manager's bonus in FB depends on how well they beg for more engagement. As a result, I rarely use any of these products. I used to spend some time in Instagram/FB. I close LinkedIn immediately after an important interaction for similar reasons. This! Each and every time I see an Instagram link I avoid clicking on it for the same click/login capture nonsense. If they opened it up for views only with out logging in, I'd probably actually end up using the service. Short-term protectionist strategies like these will be etched into the gravestone of Meta/Facebook.
- xvector 3y ago
  Details like these go through extensive A/B testing. Clearly, Meta has found that gating their content behind a login prompt leads to greater engagement and revenue growth. For what it's worth, I eventually created an Instagram account because of these prompts. The strategy works.
  - lacerrr 3y ago
    it's just artificial growth, though. You're not generating any more engagement than if they'd just show you the content as a guest. Unless you also started using the app as a result of creating an account.
    - patmorgan23 3y ago
      They've covered non-logged in engagement into logged in engagement, which lets them target ads better.
      - alluro2 3y ago
        Or at least immediately fees you presumably more relevant posts from people you follow, so that you can engage more and they can serve more ads.
daniel-cussen 3y ago
[dead]
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
I've been noticing this type of bullshit with Netflix recently. Every time I watch something I'm prompted to rate it. Every. Single. Time. And it's not like a gentle suggestion, it's a pop-up that has to he dismissed to be able to interact with the rest of the interface.
zubairq 3y ago
Makes sense, yes the growth mindset makes sense until you or a company get product market fit. When stagnation sets in and things stop working then a growth mindset makes sense again. Of course you also need to make sure that you don’t get blindsided by new changes in society or tech, but those things just need you to be open minded to new things
clusmore 3y ago
> The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to grow the market, or your market share. When returns on your efforts become diminishing, you push to improve how much you earn of each customer/each sale. At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that. Kent Beck calls this the Explore and Extract phases (with the middle phase being Expand). I'm not sure if you had this talk in mind as you were writing your comment, but if not I think it'll resonate with you. [1]: https://youtu.be/YGhS8VQpS6s https://youtu.be/YGhS8VQpS6s
gpderetta 3y ago
YouTube on android does something similar. Eventually if you back-button enough you get back when you started. But the amount of presses required increases every few months or so. But hey, engagement and retention goes up!
tcfhgj 3y ago
Our society's economy is grow or die
Ensorceled 3y ago
> The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to grow the market, or your market share. When returns on your efforts become diminishing, you push to improve how much you earn of each customer/each sale. At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that. The worst part is that when companies MUST switch must switch to "sustain" because they can't squeeze out any more growth or their efforts to squeeze out more growth become counter productive, they instead switch to enshitification and drain their user base, and the company, of all the value they can, essentially running into the ground for a few more quarters of profit and bonuses. As an aside, I'm sad that "growth mindset" has been hijacked to mean "grow at all costs" when it originally meant "the belief that a person's capacities and talents can be improved over time". It was originally a term of nurturing, not of exploitation and infinite capitalism.
nine_k 3y ago
It's not just a "growth" mindset; it's "this quarter's growth" mindset. Short-term goals that give short-term results while making long-term results predictably worse. Not a problem for a particular executive: they will move on to work on something else, and are not going to be hurt by the fallout. But if this strategy underperforms as badly as we as customers feel it does, it will eventually drive its perpetrators from the market. If they think that their positions are unassailable, let them remember how the unassailable GMC and Ford felt in 2000s.
lettergram 3y ago
You really need to balance both at a company. Some segments need innovation / growth at different times. You also might want to release / invest in competitors to ensure you maintain your market share which is taken via innovation. Google kind of did this for a time with Inbox and similar products. Apple had multiple phone lines (less like this, but a tad). Facebook has multiple social media platforms. Block has square and cash app (among other things).
artursapek 3y ago
I agree with you completely. The endless growth mindset (resembling cancer) is driven by investors who want passive income in the form of returns. Investment returns in a company necessitate its market cap growing, not merely being sustained. A "sustain" mindset is incompatible with this. It requires ownership to be simple and unanimously content with not having endless return on their capital.
grumpy-de-sre 3y ago
There's an interesting cultural element to this, and I think Brother being a Japanese company is not a coincidence. I see the same mindset applied widely here in the German Mittelstand. The American growth at all costs mindset (particularly quarterly) is excellent during the technology exploration phase. It spurs radical innovation, but as a technology matures it becomes impossible to meet growth expectations. In response to this the spiral of Enshittification kicks off and eventually the company and it's products fade into irrelevance. Stability in such an environment is impossible (the gain knob is cranked to the max). The German Mittelstand are different, typically they are much slower to innovate during the technology exploration phase (I think mostly due to the German economy not really rewarding early stage innovation). However as a technology matures the Mittelstand's strength in stable, gradual evolution and refinement really shines. They focus on being the best in their niche and grow by expanding to new markets, opening adjacent product lines etc. Enshittification is the last thing on their minds (the system is critically/over damped).
jacknews 3y ago
I think your phrasing is wrong, 'growth mindset' is the idea that you can improve yourself with effort, education, etc, instead of just 'I'm inherently bad at maths' or whatever. What you are referring to is simply Capitalism. Capitalism is where 'capital', aka money, ultimately, owns the 'means of production'. And it also innovates, and creates the means of production, by deploying money to uncertain ventures; building a new factory or whatever. The problem is that deployed capital needs to earn a return, else why bother. In other words, everything needs to grow. The system just doesn't work without growth. 'Growth' can be, people doing more things, or, more people doing things, or, making more money from the things people do (though I'm not sure that's actual growth). We've come a long way in the last century with the first two, and now the focus seems to be on that third option. IMHO the current system is past, or at least fast approaching, it's expiry date, and we really should have researched, and have at least a vague idea of a plausible future replacement, by now, otherwise we might be doomed to recycle the 20th C.
jakderrida 3y ago
> What happens instead is companies keep rewarding executives by increases in revenue, they keep rewarding product managers similarly, and product managers selectively choose metrics that optimize immediate revenue, at the expense of brand loyalty. While I'm not advocating for the growth mindset, you seem to be neglecting why, exactly, most executive incentive packages so frequently include stock options. They are directly intended to defer the rewards over a defined vestment period to align their incentives for the long term success of the company.
duxup 3y ago
It's the same problem with tech support. I've worked in several support organization that sincerely prioritized providing good support to customers. They paid good tech's good salaries, hired good managers, and we provided great support. Sales team members would come to me and say they were selling support contracts with ease because of the support provided, "easiest money I ever made" was a common refrain. But eventually at every company customer / tech support eventually is viewed as a cost, an annoyance. After all when customers complain what do they complain about? Even the best customer's can't praise support enough for companies to avoid eventually seeing it as an annoyance and eventually cost that is easily cut. Good managers see it coming and jump ship, support for support teams starts to erode and the culture changes. I worked one company where the engineering team would secretly invite some of the support staff over to their building when they had a team lunch ... because they liked us and knew that our team lunches (low cost pizza) had been cancelled. It happens time and again ... :( Eventually I moved on and learned to code. Maintenance is hard and not valued.
pmontra 3y ago
> The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. This is OK if management is paid and get bonuses by the money they make by selling products. If they make money and get bonuses by selling their shares or increasing their value, they cross the line between industry and finance. Finance doesn't give a f** about industry. They'll eat one after another like we eat cherries. Unsustainable growth and enshittyfication are two tools to squeeze the most money from a company and if it dies in the process they move to the next one.
ants_everywhere 3y ago
> The growth mindset Somewhat pedantic comment: the phrase "growth mindset" is also psychology jargon that refers to the fact that many skills are more learnable than most people realize. It contrasts with a "fixed mindset" where people assume you have to work with what you've got. Just wanted to point that out so people don't get confused between the healthy idea of being able to grow and the idea you're addressing, which is more like a compulsion for businesses to grow economically.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  The same observation works for the psychology definition too, they are similar. If you insist on getting better and better on the stuff you already excel, you will hit a wall and will have to sacrifice a lot for small improvements.
  - watwut 3y ago
    I have seen it used only in context of talent itself and people who do not have much skill.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      As the OP said, for companies that don't have a lot of fitness, it's great too. The one overwhelmingly large difference is that the professionals that deal with it on the context of people are well trained and know not to push it over the point it becomes harmful. But that detracts nothing from the point.
refurb 3y ago
The “sustainable” business model is fine. However, investors aren’t interest in buying stock in a company with poor returns. They have other options with better returns. It comes with accessing capital in the public markets. The other issue is that a sustainable business quickly becomes a dying business when competitors innovate and you don’t. I honestly can’t think of any business that just prints cash without a daily struggle to keep the company growing.
taneq 3y ago
> Brother is what it is, not because of lack of innovation, but because of deliberate evasion of short-sighted greed. Exactly. We have two new Brother multifunction printers at work and they're pretty great. They're exactly like printers, you tell your computer to print a document, that's where it comes out. No hassle. All this other BS that HP, Epson etc. are pulling isn't innovation, it's extortion. "Just be a printer that isn't shit" is innovation in this environment.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
This idea about sustain-mode resonates with me! It almost feels like we need different kind of "product" people to do this; the typical incentives for product is to innovate innovate innovate. This topic reminds me a lot of the recent thread on Signal being so comparatively small but being scaled so big (and shaming big tech companies for being so big). https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/signal-meta-google-too-big-18496594.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/signal-meta-google-too-b... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38382811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38382811

by aljgz 3y ago

gofreddygo 3y ago

> At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that Yes! What I see instead is a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot mindset. Its everywhere I see. I wish there was a way to see and fix this before its too late. The right way to treat your loyal customers is also micro-intangible, hard to show clear numbers and so does not bear any rewards for a manager taking this approach. Instead, the opposite of screwing loyal customers for new ones is rampant, easy to cook up numbers and so amply rewarded not just limited to tech companies. Unless the same management chain is responsible for new customers and leaving ones, this is an internal conflict of interest and its effects only show at the macro level. I've seen many once-popular restaurants go this route, losing long time repeat customers who prefer well priced, familiar drinks and dishes over hit or miss exotic overpriced ones. They don't complain, they just stop coming back. Car manufacturers, Appliance manufacturers, Food chains, Internet Service Providers, Telcos, tech startups are all guilty of this. Factions at MS, Goog, AAPL too are guilty. Exceptions here are really really rare. I've never bought a brother printer, but it will be my next.

prima-facie 3y ago

> I made a mistake of buying another Samsung product after years. Never again. Honest question: what's wrong with Samsung? I'm pretty happy with their phones and SSDs but haven't had any experience with their appliances.

konschubert 3y ago

Instead of trying to innovate in-house, many big old companies would be MUCH better served returning the money to shareholders. The shareholders can then invest into new companies and startups. This is much better for the economy AND for the shareholders

hef19898 3y ago
Stock buy-backs exist, and are controversial for various reasons.
- konschubert 3y ago
  My point is that stock buybacks and dividends are good for the economy.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    The point is that they are good for management, share prices and share holders. The economy is made of more than just those groups.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      Stock buybacks are good for the economy because they allocate money to where it can be used more efficiently, which is usually not in existing big corporations. The alternative to stock buybacks is that the corporation make stupid acquisitions and try to integrate them into their processes, thereby killing them.
      - jowea 3y ago
        The closest alternative to buybacks is dividends. But to be honest I'm not sure if that's what the critics want the money going.
        konschubert 3y ago

zero_shift 3y ago

If you think about it the growth mindset is quite psychotic. Imagine a human being with a growth mindset. He optimises his bodyfat to the point of anorexia. He optimises conversations by extracting knowledge then moving on. His diet is pure protein shakes and broccoli. Every morning he does six Leetcode Hards. If you met him you'd think he was deranged. This growth ideology means every company we interact with behaves like Bob. Soon enough this Bobism filters into people through the labour market and professional values. (Like the Leetcoders). It's alienating and the only purpose it serves is an investment based economy with unclear benefits to society at large It creates a very strange world where we have computers acting like people and people acting like machines

aikinai 3y ago
Your description reminded me of this Krazam sketch[0]. [0] https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U?si=OyKs8ULYBNLOmmcI https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U?si=OyKs8ULYBNLOmmcI
masklinn 3y ago
> If you think about it the growth mindset is quite psychotic. More to the point, if you think about it the biggest follower of the growth mindset is cancer. And turns out that’s not just of > unclear benefits to society at large But actively detrimental to it, and ultimately, with a handful of exceptions, to the cancer itself.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That was exactly the way I worded it. https://jacquesmattheij.com/if-growth-was-good-then-getting-cancer-would-be-good-news/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/if-growth-was-good-then-getting-... This obsession with growth is so utterly self-centered. I still have those chairs, by the way.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Seeing the date, I would not be surprised if that’s where I originally got it from, in all honesty.

withinboredom 3y ago

The thing is, there is a ceiling with SaaS products. You can usually hit it within 5 years of starting. That ceiling is entirely controlled by churn, with 0% churn, you go to the moon, but nobody has 0% churn. Once you hit that ceiling, the only reasonable thing is to focus on churn, not growth (as it will have the most impact). But that is like explaining that a "circular line on a map is actually a straight line" they say they get it, but they still see a circular line.

amelius 3y ago

We should have stronger consumer organizations. Want to mass produce a product? Consumer orgs should first okay it.

AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
That seems absurd. People often have no idea that a product would be useful or desirable beforehand. Perhaps our current level of consumer choice is somewhat absurd, but that brings you to a Soviet style system.
- qwytw 3y ago
  It's fascinating that this was downvoted. What the comment above is suggesting is literally a planned economy. How would these "consumer groups" even work? Would they be democratically elected? Appointed by governments? How would they be insulated from pressure from companies trying to suppress competition? It would inevitably lead to a thoroughly inefficient and corrupt system...
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    People who come up with these ideas think that the 'groups' would be filled with like minded people like themselves when in reality it would be the opposite.

Simon_ORourke 3y ago

> In android, if I click on a link in facebook messenger that takes me to facebook, the back button takes me "back" to facebook's home screen instead of to the messenger app. Tapping back button again does nothing. I have to switch back to messenger manually. That's 5-6 taps/swipes instead of 1, because a product manager's bonus in FB depends on how well they beg for more engagement. As a result, I rarely use any of these products. I used to spend some time in Instagram/FB. I close LinkedIn immediately after an important interaction for similar reasons. This! Each and every time I see an Instagram link I avoid clicking on it for the same click/login capture nonsense. If they opened it up for views only with out logging in, I'd probably actually end up using the service. Short-term protectionist strategies like these will be etched into the gravestone of Meta/Facebook.

xvector 3y ago
Details like these go through extensive A/B testing. Clearly, Meta has found that gating their content behind a login prompt leads to greater engagement and revenue growth. For what it's worth, I eventually created an Instagram account because of these prompts. The strategy works.
- lacerrr 3y ago
  it's just artificial growth, though. You're not generating any more engagement than if they'd just show you the content as a guest. Unless you also started using the app as a result of creating an account.
  - patmorgan23 3y ago
    They've covered non-logged in engagement into logged in engagement, which lets them target ads better.
    - alluro2 3y ago
      Or at least immediately fees you presumably more relevant posts from people you follow, so that you can engage more and they can serve more ads.

daniel-cussen 3y ago

[dead]

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago

I've been noticing this type of bullshit with Netflix recently. Every time I watch something I'm prompted to rate it. Every. Single. Time. And it's not like a gentle suggestion, it's a pop-up that has to he dismissed to be able to interact with the rest of the interface.

zubairq 3y ago

Makes sense, yes the growth mindset makes sense until you or a company get product market fit. When stagnation sets in and things stop working then a growth mindset makes sense again. Of course you also need to make sure that you don’t get blindsided by new changes in society or tech, but those things just need you to be open minded to new things

clusmore 3y ago

gpderetta 3y ago

YouTube on android does something similar. Eventually if you back-button enough you get back when you started. But the amount of presses required increases every few months or so. But hey, engagement and retention goes up!

tcfhgj 3y ago

Our society's economy is grow or die

Ensorceled 3y ago

> The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. First you push to grow the market, or your market share. When returns on your efforts become diminishing, you push to improve how much you earn of each customer/each sale. At some point there should be a mindset that our company is worth X dollars, and we should sustain that. The worst part is that when companies MUST switch must switch to "sustain" because they can't squeeze out any more growth or their efforts to squeeze out more growth become counter productive, they instead switch to enshitification and drain their user base, and the company, of all the value they can, essentially running into the ground for a few more quarters of profit and bonuses. As an aside, I'm sad that "growth mindset" has been hijacked to mean "grow at all costs" when it originally meant "the belief that a person's capacities and talents can be improved over time". It was originally a term of nurturing, not of exploitation and infinite capitalism.

nine_k 3y ago

It's not just a "growth" mindset; it's "this quarter's growth" mindset. Short-term goals that give short-term results while making long-term results predictably worse. Not a problem for a particular executive: they will move on to work on something else, and are not going to be hurt by the fallout. But if this strategy underperforms as badly as we as customers feel it does, it will eventually drive its perpetrators from the market. If they think that their positions are unassailable, let them remember how the unassailable GMC and Ford felt in 2000s.

lettergram 3y ago

You really need to balance both at a company. Some segments need innovation / growth at different times. You also might want to release / invest in competitors to ensure you maintain your market share which is taken via innovation. Google kind of did this for a time with Inbox and similar products. Apple had multiple phone lines (less like this, but a tad). Facebook has multiple social media platforms. Block has square and cash app (among other things).

artursapek 3y ago

I agree with you completely. The endless growth mindset (resembling cancer) is driven by investors who want passive income in the form of returns. Investment returns in a company necessitate its market cap growing, not merely being sustained. A "sustain" mindset is incompatible with this. It requires ownership to be simple and unanimously content with not having endless return on their capital.

grumpy-de-sre 3y ago

There's an interesting cultural element to this, and I think Brother being a Japanese company is not a coincidence. I see the same mindset applied widely here in the German Mittelstand. The American growth at all costs mindset (particularly quarterly) is excellent during the technology exploration phase. It spurs radical innovation, but as a technology matures it becomes impossible to meet growth expectations. In response to this the spiral of Enshittification kicks off and eventually the company and it's products fade into irrelevance. Stability in such an environment is impossible (the gain knob is cranked to the max). The German Mittelstand are different, typically they are much slower to innovate during the technology exploration phase (I think mostly due to the German economy not really rewarding early stage innovation). However as a technology matures the Mittelstand's strength in stable, gradual evolution and refinement really shines. They focus on being the best in their niche and grow by expanding to new markets, opening adjacent product lines etc. Enshittification is the last thing on their minds (the system is critically/over damped).

jacknews 3y ago

I think your phrasing is wrong, 'growth mindset' is the idea that you can improve yourself with effort, education, etc, instead of just 'I'm inherently bad at maths' or whatever. What you are referring to is simply Capitalism. Capitalism is where 'capital', aka money, ultimately, owns the 'means of production'. And it also innovates, and creates the means of production, by deploying money to uncertain ventures; building a new factory or whatever. The problem is that deployed capital needs to earn a return, else why bother. In other words, everything needs to grow. The system just doesn't work without growth. 'Growth' can be, people doing more things, or, more people doing things, or, making more money from the things people do (though I'm not sure that's actual growth). We've come a long way in the last century with the first two, and now the focus seems to be on that third option. IMHO the current system is past, or at least fast approaching, it's expiry date, and we really should have researched, and have at least a vague idea of a plausible future replacement, by now, otherwise we might be doomed to recycle the 20th C.

jakderrida 3y ago

> What happens instead is companies keep rewarding executives by increases in revenue, they keep rewarding product managers similarly, and product managers selectively choose metrics that optimize immediate revenue, at the expense of brand loyalty. While I'm not advocating for the growth mindset, you seem to be neglecting why, exactly, most executive incentive packages so frequently include stock options. They are directly intended to defer the rewards over a defined vestment period to align their incentives for the long term success of the company.

duxup 3y ago

It's the same problem with tech support. I've worked in several support organization that sincerely prioritized providing good support to customers. They paid good tech's good salaries, hired good managers, and we provided great support. Sales team members would come to me and say they were selling support contracts with ease because of the support provided, "easiest money I ever made" was a common refrain. But eventually at every company customer / tech support eventually is viewed as a cost, an annoyance. After all when customers complain what do they complain about? Even the best customer's can't praise support enough for companies to avoid eventually seeing it as an annoyance and eventually cost that is easily cut. Good managers see it coming and jump ship, support for support teams starts to erode and the culture changes. I worked one company where the engineering team would secretly invite some of the support staff over to their building when they had a team lunch ... because they liked us and knew that our team lunches (low cost pizza) had been cancelled. It happens time and again ... :( Eventually I moved on and learned to code. Maintenance is hard and not valued.

pmontra 3y ago

> The growth mindset is incredible for expanding when your product is in its early ages. But there should be a "sustain" mindset at some point. This is OK if management is paid and get bonuses by the money they make by selling products. If they make money and get bonuses by selling their shares or increasing their value, they cross the line between industry and finance. Finance doesn't give a f** about industry. They'll eat one after another like we eat cherries. Unsustainable growth and enshittyfication are two tools to squeeze the most money from a company and if it dies in the process they move to the next one.

ants_everywhere 3y ago

> The growth mindset Somewhat pedantic comment: the phrase "growth mindset" is also psychology jargon that refers to the fact that many skills are more learnable than most people realize. It contrasts with a "fixed mindset" where people assume you have to work with what you've got. Just wanted to point that out so people don't get confused between the healthy idea of being able to grow and the idea you're addressing, which is more like a compulsion for businesses to grow economically.

marcosdumay 3y ago
The same observation works for the psychology definition too, they are similar. If you insist on getting better and better on the stuff you already excel, you will hit a wall and will have to sacrifice a lot for small improvements.
- watwut 3y ago
  I have seen it used only in context of talent itself and people who do not have much skill.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    As the OP said, for companies that don't have a lot of fitness, it's great too. The one overwhelmingly large difference is that the professionals that deal with it on the context of people are well trained and know not to push it over the point it becomes harmful. But that detracts nothing from the point.

refurb 3y ago

The “sustainable” business model is fine. However, investors aren’t interest in buying stock in a company with poor returns. They have other options with better returns. It comes with accessing capital in the public markets. The other issue is that a sustainable business quickly becomes a dying business when competitors innovate and you don’t. I honestly can’t think of any business that just prints cash without a daily struggle to keep the company growing.

taneq 3y ago

> Brother is what it is, not because of lack of innovation, but because of deliberate evasion of short-sighted greed. Exactly. We have two new Brother multifunction printers at work and they're pretty great. They're exactly like printers, you tell your computer to print a document, that's where it comes out. No hassle. All this other BS that HP, Epson etc. are pulling isn't innovation, it's extortion. "Just be a printer that isn't shit" is innovation in this environment.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

This idea about sustain-mode resonates with me! It almost feels like we need different kind of "product" people to do this; the typical incentives for product is to innovate innovate innovate. This topic reminds me a lot of the recent thread on Signal being so comparatively small but being scaled so big (and shaming big tech companies for being so big). https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/signal-meta-google-too-big-18496594.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/signal-meta-google-too-b... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38382811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38382811