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I like the cut of Zitron's jib, but have to disagree with this point here: > We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters f

I like the cut of Zitron's jib, but have to disagree with this point here: > We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where "what's useful" is dictated not by outputs or metrics that one can measure but rather the vibes passed between managers and executives that have worked their entire careers to escape the world of work. We have redefined competence, but we haven't redefined it to be measured in nebulous ways. Far from it. Nadella does one thing and he does it well: he makes number go up. And that's all that matters. Number gotta go up. If you don't make number go up, then how Grugg Ugug, MBA, to figure out how company doing? You no seriously expect Grugg to approach enterprise of measuring benefit of a business to society without one simple number. We used to measure the worth of investment and expenditures of capital by their holistic benefit to society. That was way more thinking than business school graduates in this country wanted to do, so we distilled it down to the quarterly profit. At the very least, these people could understand addition, subtraction, and which number was bigger than the other. The "nebulous" way was what we got away from as a result.

johnea 1y ago
> We have redefined competence Thanks for that! I'll definitely use that one...
deleted 1y ago
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h2zizzle 1y ago
>Nadella does one thing and he does it well: he makes number go up. I'm unconvinced that it's him so much as MS' entrenched position as a contractor, and ZIRP. There are a lot of companies whose number go up for whom number should no no go up, but it did, because they had first dibs at the money printer trough.
listenallyall 1y ago
> measure the worth of investment and expenditures of capital by their holistic benefit to society. This seems specious, I mean, when? And how? The article seems to contradict you, given that it is mostly focused on tech companies that do in fact spend billions in product development and tend to delay huge profits. Amazon, famously, was universally praised for its various innovations in e-commerce (i.e. benefit to society) while not making a profit for what, 25 years? The current business press gushes over "big data", the metaverse, AI, whatever, despite many such projects actually losing billions of dollars before being shut down or vastly reduced. I'm not claiming these companies do actually benefit society, but Wall Street and the press is often willing to overlook immediate profit for the promise of long-term dominance (and the rewards that come with that) and in the meantime, they will at least promote the possibility of future societal benefit to justify their position.
delusional 1y ago
> > We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where "what's useful" is dictated not by outputs or metrics that one can measure but rather the vibes passed between managers and executives that have worked their entire careers to escape the world of work. > We have redefined competence, but we haven't redefined it to be measured in nebulous ways. Far from it. Nadella does one thing and he does it well: he makes number go up. And that's all that matters. I think Ziton would argue that this statement was supposed to be one level below "number going up". His argument seems to be not that number shouldn't go up, but that the number that goes up used to be based on "being good at stuff" but now isn't. His argument isn't that executives shouldn't focus on the money, but rather that the money has last track of what they were supposed to track. It's not the executive themselves, it's the economy. The executives would then be the outcome of skewed incentives by an economy that has disconnected from "useful stuff". This also happens to be my favorite take. So I may just be confirmation biased.
surgical_fire 1y ago
While I agree with your post, I don't really think that goes counter to the original meaning of the argument as a whole. He even mentions some paragraphs later that CEOs are only fired when line does not go up: > While CEOs do get fired when things go badly, it's often after a prolonged period of decline and stagnancy, and almost always comes with some sort of payoff — and when I say "badly," I mean that growth has slowed to the point that even firing masses of people doesn't make things better. And I think that's what he was gesturing at in the beginning when ranting about Satya. He knows Satya is not an imbecile, he would not survive the cutthroat sociopathic business environment if he was. The logical conclusion is that Satya is just bullshitting on a softball interview to prop up Microsoft's copilot thing. That is a marketing piece, not a proper interview. And on bullshit, it is always important to keep something in mind: "bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care whether what they say is true or false."

johnea 1y ago

> We have redefined competence Thanks for that! I'll definitely use that one...

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h2zizzle 1y ago

>Nadella does one thing and he does it well: he makes number go up. I'm unconvinced that it's him so much as MS' entrenched position as a contractor, and ZIRP. There are a lot of companies whose number go up for whom number should no no go up, but it did, because they had first dibs at the money printer trough.

listenallyall 1y ago

> measure the worth of investment and expenditures of capital by their holistic benefit to society. This seems specious, I mean, when? And how? The article seems to contradict you, given that it is mostly focused on tech companies that do in fact spend billions in product development and tend to delay huge profits. Amazon, famously, was universally praised for its various innovations in e-commerce (i.e. benefit to society) while not making a profit for what, 25 years? The current business press gushes over "big data", the metaverse, AI, whatever, despite many such projects actually losing billions of dollars before being shut down or vastly reduced. I'm not claiming these companies do actually benefit society, but Wall Street and the press is often willing to overlook immediate profit for the promise of long-term dominance (and the rewards that come with that) and in the meantime, they will at least promote the possibility of future societal benefit to justify their position.

delusional 1y ago

> > We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where "what's useful" is dictated not by outputs or metrics that one can measure but rather the vibes passed between managers and executives that have worked their entire careers to escape the world of work. > We have redefined competence, but we haven't redefined it to be measured in nebulous ways. Far from it. Nadella does one thing and he does it well: he makes number go up. And that's all that matters. I think Ziton would argue that this statement was supposed to be one level below "number going up". His argument seems to be not that number shouldn't go up, but that the number that goes up used to be based on "being good at stuff" but now isn't. His argument isn't that executives shouldn't focus on the money, but rather that the money has last track of what they were supposed to track. It's not the executive themselves, it's the economy. The executives would then be the outcome of skewed incentives by an economy that has disconnected from "useful stuff". This also happens to be my favorite take. So I may just be confirmation biased.

surgical_fire 1y ago

While I agree with your post, I don't really think that goes counter to the original meaning of the argument as a whole. He even mentions some paragraphs later that CEOs are only fired when line does not go up: > While CEOs do get fired when things go badly, it's often after a prolonged period of decline and stagnancy, and almost always comes with some sort of payoff — and when I say "badly," I mean that growth has slowed to the point that even firing masses of people doesn't make things better. And I think that's what he was gesturing at in the beginning when ranting about Satya. He knows Satya is not an imbecile, he would not survive the cutthroat sociopathic business environment if he was. The logical conclusion is that Satya is just bullshitting on a softball interview to prop up Microsoft's copilot thing. That is a marketing piece, not a proper interview. And on bullshit, it is always important to keep something in mind: "bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care whether what they say is true or false."