3 ms·

> I love the asymmetry. Much as I hate to defend companies climbing to success and pulling up the ladder afterwards, this asymmetry you note is kind of the who

> I love the asymmetry. Much as I hate to defend companies climbing to success and pulling up the ladder afterwards, this asymmetry you note is kind of the whole point a company would want to grow big. Growing an organization has some super-linear costs and generally sucks for most individuals living through it - including the management - but it's still considered worth it, precisely because big entities can do things small entities cannot, and escape the threats from smaller competitors. It's so basic it's actually part of the reason we exist, and animals of various sizes exist, and generally why evolution didn't stop at single-cellular life. > They have lost the right to cry foul when they trained their model with "but it's fair use" card. Life works by reaping what you sow. Now they are at the reaping stage. Yup. Except what they're reaping is insane cashflow and ability to pull stunts like these. We can call out the hypocrisy until our throats run dry, and in ideal fantasy land this would've meant something, but here in the real world, they sow the seeds of success, and now are reaping the right to be hypocritical and continue to get away with it.

marcus_holmes 4mo ago
I disagree with your assessment that large organisations are beneficial. We can see with our current crop of large organisations that they really struggle to create anything new; most of their new products or services were developed by a small organisation and then acquired. A lot of those products are then enshittified and badly managed because large organisation politics screws things up. Large organisations are inefficient (everyone has stories of people in large organisations literally doing nothing all day). They are horrible to work for because of the politics. They mistreat their customers and their employees. Their executives tend to lose touch with reality, surround themselves with yes-folk and descend into authoritarian psychopathy. My personal opinion is that we would be much, much, better off if we had fewer large organisations and more smaller organisations.
- gwerbin 4mo ago
  They are beneficial for those with an equity stake. That much is clear.
  - marcus_holmes 4mo ago
    Agreed. And for oligarchs.
  - usrusr 4mo ago
    Needs a little more precision: not "those with an equity stake": those with a disproportionally large equity stake. Otherwise it's just an opener for the old excuse of "they might be ruining your life, but it's all good, it's also your pension fund, little man, that's profiting from your life getting ruined, you should celebrate them!"
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 4mo ago
  And I disagree with yours :). Large organizations are necessary if you want things like airplanes and rockets and computers and MRI machines to exist. And if you feel you benefit from those things yourself, then large organizations that create and operate[0] them are beneficial to you, too. > A lot of those products are then enshittified and badly managed because large organisation politics screws things up. That's not caused by org size. It's how modern economics work because of ad-backed business models and few other things (a tangent for another time). Importantly, small orgs and especially startups are very much complicit in this - the venture capital business model in software settled around a symbiosis, where startups create toys (er, MVPs) and growth-hack the shit out of them, in hopes of winning an acquisition or IPO lottery (aka. "exit"), where a big org buys the whole thing for ${a lot}, and enshittifies it further in an attempt of extracting a positive multiple of ${a lot} from the market. Both sides know what they're doing, exits are planned from day 1, and at no point in this process "creating useful products" is ever a driving goal. Note this symbiosis: it's a recurring theme. > Large organisations are inefficient In some ways. Small organizations are inefficient in others. More at the end. > (everyone has stories of people in large organisations literally doing nothing all day). Some (not all) cases of this are about maintaining slack in the system, which is necessary for efficiency. A system at 100% capacity is extremely fragile to breaking completely due to tiny, random workload spikes. Breakage is inefficient. Some degree of idle capacity improves overall efficiency. > They mistreat their customers and their employees. Their executives tend to lose touch with reality, surround themselves with yes-folk and descend into authoritarian psychopathy. That description fits small business owners much better IMO. In our times, at least in non-failed western countries, there's a limit to how abusive or careless a large organization can be with their customers or employees - their very size makes them easy to target legally. It might be hard to get through their well-funded legal defense, unless the case is slam dunk, but that's still much better than the armies of small businesses flying completely under the radar, flagrantly violating basic health and safety regulations, or flat out lying to customers in their face, because they're not worth the effort of investigating. (Of course I'm using a biased sample; I don't know many CEOs of big orgs.) Symbiosis angle: for abusive practices they can't get away with on their own, big organizations are more than happy to outsource to small orgs and then look the other way. -- Anyway, key point: *there is no categorical difference between "large organizations" and "small organizations". You need a certain amount of people and communication (and capital) to do high-complexity endeavors. The difference between a well-integrated big corporation, and a hundred of small businesses that kinda end up together delivering something big, is just that the latter is using the market as management layer. And yes, you need big orgs to create things like commercial airplanes and MRIs, simply because the big org is a boundary layer, within which you have a non-market based incentive structure, and this lets you build things the free market just cannot reach on its own. -- [0] - Airports and hospitals are themselves large organizations.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
podocarp 4mo ago
I've actually heard it quite a few times from different people who want to climb the greasy pole to get heard or resources. Idk it just seems rather soulless and slightly psycho to me. It also seems like that kind of system is rather broken and unstable, if the only way you get impact is to climb up the ladder and whatever that entails. Change this from humans to companies and I still think it feels slightly wrong.
calcifer 4mo ago
> Much as I hate to defend companies climbing to success and pulling up the ladder afterwards Based on your post, you don't sound like you hate it at all.
qwertytyyuu 4mo ago
At risk of losing the metaphor, they reaped stuff across all the lands, even ones that were not theirs, and it is questionbale that they even did most of the sowing in the first place
tripzilch 4mo ago
> It's so basic it's actually part of the reason we exist, and animals of various sizes exist, and generally why evolution didn't stop at single-cellular life. It's also quite natural to want it to stop at individual human life instead of us getting absorbed by some next bigger thing. Which I'm fairly sure is also the desire (as far as they can be said to have any) of these animals of various sizes you speak of. > We can call out the hypocrisy until our throats run dry, and in ideal fantasy land this would've meant something, but here in the real world, they sow the seeds of success Just because they pulled a mirage over people's eyes doesn't mean it suddenly became the "real" world.

marcus_holmes 4mo ago

I disagree with your assessment that large organisations are beneficial. We can see with our current crop of large organisations that they really struggle to create anything new; most of their new products or services were developed by a small organisation and then acquired. A lot of those products are then enshittified and badly managed because large organisation politics screws things up. Large organisations are inefficient (everyone has stories of people in large organisations literally doing nothing all day). They are horrible to work for because of the politics. They mistreat their customers and their employees. Their executives tend to lose touch with reality, surround themselves with yes-folk and descend into authoritarian psychopathy. My personal opinion is that we would be much, much, better off if we had fewer large organisations and more smaller organisations.

gwerbin 4mo ago
They are beneficial for those with an equity stake. That much is clear.
- marcus_holmes 4mo ago
  Agreed. And for oligarchs.
- usrusr 4mo ago
  Needs a little more precision: not "those with an equity stake": those with a disproportionally large equity stake. Otherwise it's just an opener for the old excuse of "they might be ruining your life, but it's all good, it's also your pension fund, little man, that's profiting from your life getting ruined, you should celebrate them!"
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
TeMPOraL 4mo ago
And I disagree with yours :). Large organizations are necessary if you want things like airplanes and rockets and computers and MRI machines to exist. And if you feel you benefit from those things yourself, then large organizations that create and operate[0] them are beneficial to you, too. > A lot of those products are then enshittified and badly managed because large organisation politics screws things up. That's not caused by org size. It's how modern economics work because of ad-backed business models and few other things (a tangent for another time). Importantly, small orgs and especially startups are very much complicit in this - the venture capital business model in software settled around a symbiosis, where startups create toys (er, MVPs) and growth-hack the shit out of them, in hopes of winning an acquisition or IPO lottery (aka. "exit"), where a big org buys the whole thing for ${a lot}, and enshittifies it further in an attempt of extracting a positive multiple of ${a lot} from the market. Both sides know what they're doing, exits are planned from day 1, and at no point in this process "creating useful products" is ever a driving goal. Note this symbiosis: it's a recurring theme. > Large organisations are inefficient In some ways. Small organizations are inefficient in others. More at the end. > (everyone has stories of people in large organisations literally doing nothing all day). Some (not all) cases of this are about maintaining slack in the system, which is necessary for efficiency. A system at 100% capacity is extremely fragile to breaking completely due to tiny, random workload spikes. Breakage is inefficient. Some degree of idle capacity improves overall efficiency. > They mistreat their customers and their employees. Their executives tend to lose touch with reality, surround themselves with yes-folk and descend into authoritarian psychopathy. That description fits small business owners much better IMO. In our times, at least in non-failed western countries, there's a limit to how abusive or careless a large organization can be with their customers or employees - their very size makes them easy to target legally. It might be hard to get through their well-funded legal defense, unless the case is slam dunk, but that's still much better than the armies of small businesses flying completely under the radar, flagrantly violating basic health and safety regulations, or flat out lying to customers in their face, because they're not worth the effort of investigating. (Of course I'm using a biased sample; I don't know many CEOs of big orgs.) Symbiosis angle: for abusive practices they can't get away with on their own, big organizations are more than happy to outsource to small orgs and then look the other way. -- Anyway, key point: *there is no categorical difference between "large organizations" and "small organizations". You need a certain amount of people and communication (and capital) to do high-complexity endeavors. The difference between a well-integrated big corporation, and a hundred of small businesses that kinda end up together delivering something big, is just that the latter is using the market as management layer. And yes, you need big orgs to create things like commercial airplanes and MRIs, simply because the big org is a boundary layer, within which you have a non-market based incentive structure, and this lets you build things the free market just cannot reach on its own. -- [0] - Airports and hospitals are themselves large organizations.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

podocarp 4mo ago

I've actually heard it quite a few times from different people who want to climb the greasy pole to get heard or resources. Idk it just seems rather soulless and slightly psycho to me. It also seems like that kind of system is rather broken and unstable, if the only way you get impact is to climb up the ladder and whatever that entails. Change this from humans to companies and I still think it feels slightly wrong.

calcifer 4mo ago

> Much as I hate to defend companies climbing to success and pulling up the ladder afterwards Based on your post, you don't sound like you hate it at all.

qwertytyyuu 4mo ago

At risk of losing the metaphor, they reaped stuff across all the lands, even ones that were not theirs, and it is questionbale that they even did most of the sowing in the first place

tripzilch 4mo ago

> It's so basic it's actually part of the reason we exist, and animals of various sizes exist, and generally why evolution didn't stop at single-cellular life. It's also quite natural to want it to stop at individual human life instead of us getting absorbed by some next bigger thing. Which I'm fairly sure is also the desire (as far as they can be said to have any) of these animals of various sizes you speak of. > We can call out the hypocrisy until our throats run dry, and in ideal fantasy land this would've meant something, but here in the real world, they sow the seeds of success Just because they pulled a mirage over people's eyes doesn't mean it suddenly became the "real" world.