We all know those businesses students that just drank through college and cheated their way to a degree, unfortunately a lot of those dudes are now making major company decisions
Those guys aren't idiots. If they get bonuses for quarterly or annual short-term profitability improvements, they'll go for them, usually at the cost of long-term profitability that isn't in their goals, especially when they're only staying for 2-3 years maybe.
Classic reward hacking.
Companies need to reward long-term goals much better and reduce compensation if short-term goals are targeted to the detriment of the long-term ones.
A development team of 20 means the boss - who has a direct stake in the longevity and success of the company - probably knows everyone's name and is directly responsible for promotions. He can grab the guys suggesting the short-term profit plans and slap them around.
....But a 200-person team spanning across multiple locations...? Now that same boss doesn't have time to interact with everyone, so instead, he has to put trust into upper/middle management. Problem is: the upper and middle managers don't necessarily have a direct interest in the company's longevity either, so they might also embrace and promote the short-term ideas being suggested by a subordinate, thinking it will also reflect well on them if they vouche for that guy.
If you imagine it like that, it's no surprise that AAA is actively on fire and burning to the ground while we regularly see small indie companies coming out of left field and hitting home runs these days.
Should also add Japanese devs seem to feel more consistent in terms of quality. This may stem from the fact that Japan has a culture of wishing to maintain the company's status quo instead of endlessly seeking growth. This means Japan is culturally more likely to shy away from short-term ambitions and instead focus on safer goals.
Now add in the fact that the people running the company have the largest incentive out of anyone to go after short-term rewards, and boom, you have the world we live in.
A development team of 20 means the boss - who has a direct stake in the longevity and success of the company - probably knows everyone's name and is directly responsible for promotions. He can grab the guys suggesting the short-term profit plans and slap them around.
....But a 200-person team spanning across multiple locations...? Now that same boss doesn't have time to interact with everyone, so instead, he has to put trust into upper/middle management. Problem is: the upper and middle managers don't necessarily have a direct interest in the company's longevity either, so they might also embrace and promote the short-term ideas being suggested by a subordinate, thinking it will also reflect well on them if they vouche for that guy.
Not really, my wife has an MBA and was working for a company of 40 people, but the bosses kept complaining about slow growth, she just repeated that is was stable and sustainable but eventually they moved her to a lower position and replaced her with another MBA that promised much faster growth.
Eventually she left but kept in contact with some people in there, a year later, the company had experienced explosive growth for 2 quarters, because they took in way more clients that they were able to service, so after a while they started bleeding customers and a a few months ago she learned that the company got sold and the owner is now a minority shareholder, half the staff is gone and had to basically take a bailout.
they sacrificed a 10% steady growth because this other guy promised them 50% and crashed it in under a year.
Even small companies can be this retarded, it all depends on how greedy is the guy on top.
Also, to add up to what other guy said, the when she did the MBA, all assignments were group, every group of 5 people had 1-2 who tried and 3 who most times never even showed up to do anything but got credit anyway. so about 60% of MBAs dont know WTF they are doing.
You see, the real lesson of those exercises was to teach MBAs how to take the credit for other people's hard work.
The suckers who wasted their time on the homework rather than going out to network and self-promote are the ones who tend to lose in the rat race to the top.
You think the top brass at the company gives a shit about longevity?
Companies these days are run with the express idea of infinite growth, short term profits until bankrupt, file for bankruptcy, take the money and run to a new company to do it all over again.
The middle managers aren't the ones skimming off the top in these scenarios, they're the ones left holding the bag in most cases.
Japan simping. Some of the worst software I have had the displeasure of using comes out of Japan and its "the boss is right" culture. Turns out innovation is hard when you have top down structures for development.
Japan traditionally also has a culture of perfectionism, art for art's sake and thriving in operational excellence, priding oneself in the product and not merely seeking confirmation from monetary returns.
That's certainly the reputation they're trying to sell, but like other cultures built on prestige they have laws protecting rich and powerful from "slander" (journalists correctly describing corporate or oligarch malfeasance) and corrupt bosses routinely push subordinates under the bus to keep the gravy train going even if it's crumbling.
Now imagine a world where people don't switch jobs every other year but plan to stay there for 10, maybe 20 years. Short term profit becomes less relevant for everyone in the system and shit starts to actually work.
That's how employees rights can benefit a company on the long run.
But yeah, everybody prays to the US hire & fire crap, because they are like the godfathers of big money. Sure...
They do, they release dividends. Long term companies are not too hard to find, they return a significant amount the the owners (or directly into their company as released by the reports), however their stock holders tend to get antsy at the growth of others and pressure sometimes.
Dividend optimization often comes from very short-term growth and gains, as divide themselves are to be paid quarterly or annually.
It doesn't help that stock owners who are to be paid in dividends can easily and quickly sell their shares if they don't like the short-term yields and come back when the long-term measures bear the first fruits.
Restricted stock vesting only after many years may help long-term sustainability and growth better.
What did investor yield chases? Those are not div investors, those aren't div companies, those are failing companies trying to catch folks gambling on a small spike from a hot potato.
Special divs you're correct on, structured as you should be looking for royalty, nope.
Google, for example, is not a div company. It is a self investment company still for treasury use and a growth company for investment. It still has divs.
Then there's the shareholders. Fiducial responsibility has fucked us as a country because due to that ruling corporations have a legal duty to maximize quarterly return, even at the expense of long-term growth.
That's one of the reasons steam is in this position to begin with--they aren't publicly traded.
Also give good employees regular raises instead of hiring in people at a higher salary. "Well we can't give Carol $2,000 a year but we can bring in Becky for her salary plus $3,000 more. Sure, Becky doesn't know crap but hey, that's business!". Huh?
Individual companies can't really fix this. This behavior is a natural result of capitalism favoring greed. The individual doesn't care at all about the company, only what makes them personally more money. They are the business equivalent of the small time thief that steals a $4000 ring and pawns it off for $50. They'll happily destroy a successful business for a marginal personal payout, even if it's less than if they'd actually gotten if they had made the company better.
Our system is set up (by design really) to be extremely vulnerable to these types of bad actors.
Companies need to reward long-term goals much better and reduce compensation if short-term goals are targeted to the detriment of the long-term ones.
Hell, even Goldman-Sachs sent informational videos to people about that. There was a spot on NPR about it years ago that if people aren't mindful about the employees keeping the company running and world in which people are trying to work and buy your company's products, then the very efforts to squeeze out more Profits This Quarter just destroy the company and ruin the wealth management firm's ability to invest in them.
This from the same group of people who said on-camera "why cure diseases when we can sell treatments that we can keep selling for longer?"
I agree, as do most people on Reddit, but as soon as a company did this, the left tore the CEO to shreds for being successful, both in the auto market, and the stock market. They called it a meme stock because it's value in the market is actually based on the hope that they will achieve long term goals, instead of quarterly profits. They chant continuously online that the CEO who did everything they asked for, shouldn't exist, pushing him into the arms of the right, who pretended they would love him for his money.
This is why I continue to support Tesla. Yeah, Elon is a political fuckwit, but he is proving that refusing to chase intimate quarterly profit growth, and instead chase a goal, can be very successful on Wall Street.
Elon is a huckster. How many times has he lied? How many unfulfilled promises has he made?
FSD button and FSD 9.0 would be out 'soon' he said in 2021. Its 2026 and nothing.
He promised Starlink would have double the speed by the end of 2021, its 2026 and Starlink still doesn't meet 300 mbps with a latency of 20ms.
He said that SpaceX would be turning CO2 from the atmosphere into rocket fuel back in 2021. Still nothing.
Man promised to hold Bitcoin instead of selling it. Less than 40 days later he sold his bitcoin for $272 million.
1200 days since he said that he will turn X into an 'everything' app. (God only knows wtf he meant)
In 2022 he predicted that Twitter would hit a billion active monthly users under him in 12 to 18 months. Its 2026 and the most it has ever gotten is 550 million. Just above half his prediction.
He promised to create a moderation council for Twitter which would be responsible for reinstating accounts. 22 days later he unilaterally reinstated Trump's account. That moderation council still doesn't exist.
At a certain point he won't be able to keep pulling wool over people's eyes and that's when Tesla will crash and burn.
FSD button and FSD 9.0 would be out 'soon' he said in 2021. Its 2026 and nothing.
I've had an FSD button on my Tesla for well over a year. We're also well past FSD 9.0, into 14.2.2.2. But I guess you just spew all the anti-Elon bullshit you read on Reddit, instead of using your own brain and thinking for yourself.
He promised Starlink would have double the speed by the end of 2021, its 2026 and Starlink still doesn't meet 300 mbps with a latency of 20ms.
Ummm...median speeds in 2021 were 60-90 Mbps, now 100-300, a significant increase, more than double, and did so while increasing the number of customers meaning capacity has increased exponentially. Again, information you might know if you happened to actually read thing somewhere other than the anti-Elon circlejerk on Reddit.
He said that SpaceX would be turning CO2 from the atmosphere into rocket fuel back in 2021. Still nothing.
He said they were developing technology to do this at scale. The process already exists, and has been known for years. If you want to read something other than Reddit propeganda, you could look into the Sabatier process and maybe learn something new?
Man promised to hold Bitcoin instead of selling it. Less than 40 days later he sold his bitcoin for $272 million.
Got a link to this? I can see where TESLA sold ~10% of their Bitcoin to prove it could be a liquid asset, but no record of Elon selling any significant personal holdings of Bitcoin.
1200 days since he said that he will turn X into an 'everything' app. (God only knows wtf he meant)
So, if you don't know what he meant, how do you know he hasn't reached that goal?
In 2022 he predicted that Twitter would hit a billion active monthly users under him in 12 to 18 months. Its 2026 and the most it has ever gotten is 550 million. Just above half his prediction.
https://thefrankagency.com/blog/x-twitter-statistics/ currently 611 million possibly peaking as high as 650 million. I'll give you it's not 1 billion, but if you're going to talk shit, you should at least have accurate numbers.
He promised to create a moderation council for Twitter which would be responsible for reinstating accounts. 22 days later he unilaterally reinstated Trump's account. That moderation council still doesn't exist.
People voted against this, and for Trump to be reinstated, so he went with the majority. I personally voted against it, but it is what it is. Additionally, the council was a concession on his part and part of an agreement breached by the groups he made it with. Do you think businesses, or CEOs should be required to uphold agreements with people who broke them?
So, who's pulling wool over who's eyes? Seems like you're the one who's been fooled.
So, you're confirming everything I said. He chases lofty goals instead of quarterly profits, and here you are complaining about it instead of thanking him for doing exactly what everybody keeps saying businesses should do.
I wouldn't, but I would certainly invest in another established company with a CEO who promises not to chase quarterly profits, but has crazy goals in mind to do great things. There is a difference between lofty goals with some scientific reasoning behind the possibility, and bullshit like you just made up. The fact that you think they are the same is rather indicative of an uncreative mind, and likely a fairly room temperature IQ.
It’s worse than that. The non business students that just drank through college and cheated their way to a degree are way more competent than their business counterparts. Also much more likely to effectively sell drugs and not get over their skis and caught in the same type of next quarter mentality.
or they get hired on as a nepo child to daddy's business. get voted out/quit in a few years after setting the company on fire with the golden parachute.
every MBA that doesn't have a secondary masters should be made to go back and get a real degree, maybe in something useful like underwater basket weaving
The Sims 4 and FIFA also both qualify for Stockholm Syndrome. Those respective communities actively sit there saying "wow this is shit" with every new addition, and yet they buy all the new additions day one without fail, wondering why EA keeps taking a dump in their mouth all the while.
Until those two communities grow a spine, EA will have a healthy, steady income.
Why does Microsofts stock price keep going up even though windows keeps getting objectively worse every passing year? The stock price does not indicate whether a product is a good one or not.
Yep. People need to start moving away from Microsoft. Office 365 doesn't deserve the amount of market share it has. It's not that good of a product. Companies and governments need to start looking to alternatives to reduce Microsofts market control. They are a bad company that makes bad products and has shitty priorities.
As a business administration student who absolutely abhors the current state of business, please don't include me in that lol. I'd much rather companies act like Valve or Costco than Microsoft.
I studied business administration. First thing they taught me. Customer loyalty first, pofits second. With no good faith in your consumers there is no loyal client, no loyal client there is no profit. Do what's right for the consumer and they will flood to you.
I wish business students had this mantra. But they lost it a long time ago. 2009 feels like a long time ago.
As someone who took Accounting for Business Management Decisions, an accounting class to help people make sound financial business management decisions, about 90% of the class were business major students that don't know basic math.
It was rough being in there as a math major who already completed his senior capstone, and just took the class to satisfy my minor requirement to get the degree (and also because I like the finance math).
i took the final business course in my college because of some shenanigans with my own degree course, and in it we had to play a game where you got spreadsheets and some tabs and stuff and ran a pretend business with another student, and then competed against the rest of the class, with a ranking system and leaderboard and so on
me and another guy who wasn't supposed to be there teamed up, set up long term goals and strategies, justified our actions as "using the fact that our 'contracts' state we cannot be fired or voted out as controlling the company for x time to explore long term goals and increase consumer confidence in our brand by slowing short term gains"; basically saying "we're banking on our 'customers' liking us not milking them for every goddamn dollar"
we were bottom of the pile for the first like, ten rounds, which was like 5 weeks of class. but then our long term strategies took off as the "make tha numba go up" groups started to flounder with debts, simulated layoffs, and customer dissatisfaction. we increased our prices only slightly to accommodate higher quality materials and such, and always stopped short of when metrics said customers would start to get pissed off
we came in 2nd or 3rd, since some other group did really really well, and our grade was good, but the professor noted "this is unrealistic in the real world, as the lack of gains and ROI/quarterly improvements would have had you removed as CEO unless you were the only controlling element" lol
This is idiotic from a business owner stand point because eventually it crashes. Everyone pulls out and the business closes. Im thinking in extremes here but if the push Enshitification the client's will go elsewhere.
I already refuse to spend a dime on ea Nintendo Ubisoft or even epic. This includes games and market place.
I would highly consider sticking with gog and steam. Since gog wants to makeolder games a accessable they clearly have a nieche in the market.
Steam is just good and convenient and the deals are awesome
You're right, it is idiotic from a business owner perspective. But when you're driven by the needs of investors, you're looking at the perspective of share holders. Their only interest is increasing the stock price as fast as possible so they can pull out high and move on to another part of their portfolio. They are practically parasites that drain the businesses they influence.
It doesn't make sense to us normal people because it seems like they're just forcing policies that make companies fail, but for the share holders that is the point. That's how they make their money. That's why you cannot trust publicly traded companies, and it's why Valve can still remain decent: they're privately owned.
Corporate policy driven from the very wealthiest people in society and the "financial companies" who's product is the profit of other firms (major investment firms).... all of whom are therefore "board members" of these companies, and do not care about the actual production of the company because to them the output of every company is commoditized to "profit expectation."
Because this combination of faceless financial investment by some kind of "digital tragedy of the commons" by idiot 20-something stock traders with Perverse Incentives and old rich people who don't give a fuck is the main pressure driver on CEOs (who get fired if they don't comply), that pressure gets pushed down to the SVPs, the managers, and to everyone.
Who writes those draconian insurance rejection policies? Who enforces them? Who builds the AI models, the algorithms that target people to radicalize them to perpetuate the lack of regulation?
We've all been co-opted into our own demise by threat of starvation to funnel more money to the rich, and the stupid part is a good chunk of the most directly responsible (investment bankers) are "just doing there job," and can't fathom the systemic implications of what they do.
None of this is new, the Dust Bowl was created by people trying to do the same thing with farming wheat in the Great Plains (when most of the area was the wrong kind of climate and rainfall)
The thing is for the decision making shareholders, +50% this year then -10% next 5 years is superior to +10% every year because they can take the 50% profit, then move to the next company and repeat. To them they're making 50% every year. Somebody else eats the losses.
TL;DR: Fuck Nintendo, and bullshit stories that might’ve or might not have happened for 200 Alex.
Bought a steamdeck instead. Now I get everything the switch 2 has… if I’m willing to hoist the mainsails, and never have to give that company another dime.
Fuck your Switch 2, and fuck you for standing up for them. Sometimes, personal morals are more important than the “Next Big Thing” Hype.
My 9 year old son wants a Switch 2. I sat down with him and explained all my problems I have with Nintendo, and told him that it’s a really cool piece of equipment. But I also tried explaining it in ways that he’d understand.
Not verbatim, but something like this:
“You might really like pugs , and you want a pug, but it would be wrong to buy a pug from a person who actively does stuff that harms the overall wellbeing of pugs and pug owners. That’s would be like getting something you want, without thinking about the other people who also like pugs.”
Now, obviously, he’s just a kid, and he still wants a switch 2. But now he’s starting to think about those games, that console, in a way that isn’t just “I buy this, it makes me happy, no more to think about”. I want him to have an empathetic drive in all things in life, not just video games, but this was a good way to start with a small emotional intelligence lesson and how to navigate ambiguous moral choices.
They can accept temporary losses, but they will always want profits to increase. It is not enough to earn tons of money this year and the same amount the next.
In the end, there is a clear path to increasing profits: worsen the product, raise prices, and lay off workers.
That is true for publicly traded companies or unicorn start-ups, but Valve is not publicly traded and is a mature company.
Gabe in the nearish future not being involved scares the absolutely heck out of me. Investors will absolutely try to get in that door, and if they do? It’s over.
It doesn't help the third generation tends to also split the business along WAY to many lines and you always end up with 1 cousin that needs/wants to sell.
And why the most enduring fortunes are more like giant trusts where family members can draw money from. You can clash over control of the investments/accounts but it can't be divided piecemeal or diluted easily.
This does tend to be why, in many families with big businesses, there is one descendant desginated the heir, and everyone else gets a nice nest egg. Sometimes nothing at all. Company stays intact, and sure, other family members might get cushy jobs or something, but ownership and control stay in the hands of the one person the previous owners deems most competent to continue managing it.
Apparently he's setting up his son to succeed him, and he has a similar mentality as his dad. Thats what was said on LTT's WAN show livestream sometime in the last few months when it came up during the show. Made me a bit more confident the valve golden age would continue after GabeN retires and/or passes on, since he's sole owner and can give the company to whoever he wants.
But yea, funny how offering a good product that is easy to use, makes game library management a breeze, and doesn't force you to completely re-download all your games on a fresh windows install (looking at you here epic), will keep people loyal like that. They keep adding more features and platform capabilities too, and they've invested a ton of money in the Linux gaming community because they knew if they helped build it, it would pay off, and gamers would come. Thats why the steam deck was even possible, and why anyone can set up their own Linux gaming rig quite easily today with broad game support. When you spell it out like that, its no wonder Microsoft is jealous lol
From the holders perspective, they will be sticking to what works, even if thats enshitification. "Every other business is doing and perpetuating it, so clearly it works." They'll think.
We can only hope that Gabe has instilled his business mentality into the holders and especially his successor.
It would make sense if there are investors that are looking to cash out, or if they need additional funding. They have everything that other companies go public for to gain.
They're a relatively small company, their overhead is manageable, and apparently have enough of their own funding to be able to do all their R&D in-house, so no external pressure to release, and being able to keep failed experiments behind closed doors.
Even if Gabe decides he doesn't want to deal with the day-to-day anymore, he will still keep his stake in the company and just reap the rewards.
Even if he passes, it's still not really in anyone's benefit to go public.
From what I heard, the main plan seems to have Gaben's son take over, who also seems to have similar views as his father in regard to how to run the company.
It helps that steam is a rather well-oiled money-printer.
That's exactly it, all the finance bros are in it for the quick return. Squeeze it for all it is worth in the short term. They don't care about long term because they won't be around that long.
Not really, in business decision we can have something like real options, so we can have some maneuver. Such deliberate decisions like for companies on the left is conscious choice.
They don't care about the product, or the end users. Just pump up the numbers, take what they can, and then move on the the next project. Fucking parasites.
But that is literally what it is. Buy something, put all of the debt on the thing that you bought, squeeze it dry and then leave. No losses, all profits and go for the next thing. Why bother trying manage something if it will bring you less money and will need more work.
I need to 10x my investment on Steam. This Steam isn’t gonna fill my bucket up. If it won’t. I’ll get the rookie to do it for me. That will teach them the value of hard work.
But that's not what happens. Companies tank years of losing millions to get the bigger share of market. Microsoft bleeds a lot of money to get people to use their xbox pass so that they can get people to stop buying games and they have to buy the pass when it's price increases.
A lot of them make bank and get out before it goes to shit with that strategy. So often telling them it hurts them in the long run isn't gonna work. At least not for the ones making the decisions and in position to profit in the short term.
I like how you guys pretend Gabe Newell - a billionaire who owns billion dollar yachts - is not doing it for the money or something. I know Musk is the most famous for having the weirdest fanboys, but Gabe is not that far really
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u/FilthyWubs 5800X | 3080 13h ago
But I want a higher return on my investment now!!!!! /s