My hottest of hot takes: the only people who should run companies that make things are people who deeply give a fuck about those things.

[renardboy@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan heresy.

[evanwolf@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan seems less measurable than "the only people who should run companies that make money are people who deeply give a fuck about money. Only people who love money and love making money should run companies that make money." I keep thinking of the corruption of idealistic young Andreesen to Oligarch Andreesen.

[aburka@hachyderm.io]

@Daojoan the problem is that when you run the company you don't have any time to enjoy cheeseburgers/games/etc anymore, so those people don't want to do it

[plantagolabs@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan Agreed. CEO used to be a position that was obtained after 30 years carrier in the company, starting at the bottom. Now one starts CEO by being a lawyer with an MBA and go from company to company, hoping the next company is bigger. I think companies were better run back then.

[clickymcticker@hachyderm.io]

@aburka @Daojoan Also you’ve lived the product so deeply during development that you can never view it the same way as someone else who sees it for the first time. There’s a reason some actors never watch their own films.

Being a video editor is psychological torture depending on your relationship to the media. All of the magic is ruined when you watched every scene a hundred times. Bonus: You thought you liked that song? Now you’ve heard it a hundred times in this one scene and it is permanently linked to that moment. The song could come on the radio for the first time in fifteen years and it will trigger that one scene in your brain. You can’t forget it.

[psychoticscroodlebum@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan Indeed. My sons' preschool was taken over by a franchise, and the new owner was very nice. But, when I asked her what her vision for the children was, she said, "Ummm ... I don't have one". We were sacrificing to fork out for private pre schooling, so no vision was not acceptable.

[borisschapira@framapiaf.org]

@Daojoan "fortunately", a lot of people deeply give a fuck about hurting other people.

[gimulnautti@mastodon.green]

@Daojoan Yes, would be great. And those kind of people do usually start the companies up.

But when the people who care do get successful, the greedy start showing up.

The greedy are excellent liars: They chameleon themselves as if they care. But along the way, the greedy start hiring more of themselves.

There are a lot of people who make careers to suck up to the greedy, a lot more than you think!

Finally, the greedy push the originals out. This happens to every company.

[davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan

This.

If you love the products a company makes, it's not hard to pinpoint the moment the company went from the We Love Games people running things, to the We Love Money And Nothing Else people ruining things.

[1337@techhub.social]

@Daojoan It's a shame worker cooperatives aren't more common. Many successful tech companies even have/had a flat structure that kind of mirrors worker coops; except they have parasites sucking up the profits.

[davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social]

@Uair @Daojoan

Know about the industry?

I used to work at an international airport.

The following is a conversation a work colleague told me about.

Very Senior Manager At The Airport: "Where does Qatar Airlines fly from?'

Colleague: "Qatar."

Manager: "Yes, that's their name. But what country do they fly from?"

Colleague: "Qatar."

Manager: "Yes, but what country do they fly from?"

Colleague: "Qatar."

Manager: "Yes, I know the airline's name, but what country do they fly from?"

[metacosm@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan the problem (or is it really one if you take an anti-capitalistic view?) is that the Venn diagram of « people who love the thing » and « people who understand economics well enough and are willing to apply the concepts to run a company successfully » is mostly two disconnected circles…
Alternatively, if you love the thing you’re making, stay small and never go public or take on investments from people who don’t love the thing.

[luc0x61@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Daojoan A good proposal, even though impractical. The people who "run companies", any successful billionary company, are always the ones who care making a stash of money out of it. Any product their company makes looses any meaning to them.
I think it's related to greed as much as to the complexity of managing finances, which drives away even the idealists.
Maybe would be safe only who is limited to managing incomes up to few millions or tens, depending on the country.

[praetor@mstdn.social]

@gimulnautti @Daojoan Sometimes not being greedy enough can be a problem. Like me. I'm a massive Open Source hippy. I don't want to "sell" my software. I want people to honestly like my work, get some use out of it, and if they enjoy it enough maybe contribute financially. I struggle at business because I won't promote, and I will NOT use a blood sucking marketer. So...I iz poor

[rubinjoni@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan The problem is the first derivative of this take: any profitable activity in capitalism will eventually be taken over by people who only deeply give a fuck about making money. Doesn't matter if it's cheeseburgers or software - it will go through several layers of financial abstraction until it's distilled into pure grift.

[elfburgerman@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan
If we abolish all advertising except word-of-mouth, companies will have to excel at what they do to survive...
(A good example is the expensive, maybe the most expensive vodka, which tastes worse than most other vodkas. The creator put more care into the bottle than the drink, and sold his company ten years after creating it, making a ten-million-dollar profit, according to his goal. He would've kept it if he loved it.)
#AdvertisingOurselvesToDeath

[cnx@awkward.place]

so @Daojoan@mastodon.social, since the purpose of corporations is to make money for the shareholders, the board should be who deeply give a fuck about money?

[nindelofocho@mastodon.social]

@Daojoan Abso-lutely. I’ve had this exact ideal for the past several years. You should make a product because you want to make the product not to just make money.

People will say “A business’s only goal is to make money” as if it’s some sort of valid excuse? Even if it was completely true it does not detract from the fact that its not a good thing.

[elfburgerman@mastodon.social]

@evanwolf @Daojoan
The mint makes money. Other companies should create value.

[gimulnautti@mastodon.green]

@praetor @Daojoan That problem sounds structural to me.

It would be the job of the state to build incentive structures for people like you to succeed.

Recognising the critical role Open Source plays in digital infrastructure would be a start.

Traditionally people like you would have been public servants. But that role has been completely shat on and wiped the floor with by neoliberal reaganite/thatcherite ideology.