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.
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
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.
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@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.
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Hell, just requiring them to know about the industry would be a huge step up. The old expression about a boss who wants 9 women to have a baby in 1 month comes to mind.
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?"
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@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. -
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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@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. -
@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.
@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
![😕](https://board.circlewithadot.net/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f615.png?v=28325c671da ":\")
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@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.
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@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 -
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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
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?
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@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.
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@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.
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@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
@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.
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@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.
@gimulnautti @Daojoan oh very much so. Government IT is all outsourced now.
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@gimulnautti @Daojoan oh very much so. Government IT is all outsourced now.
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@gimulnautti @Daojoan very very much so. Cisco is the worst with it.
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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?"
We really are in the dumbest timeline.
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@Daojoan Exactly.... passion beats spreadsheets , if you don’t love the craft, you shouldn’t own the factory
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@Daojoan yes, but those people LOVE making the thing and they are AWESOME at that, and you want them to stop doing that and start negotiating salaries, planning quarterly procurements, signing things, dealing with co-worker personal emergencies, and doing many, many other things that they HATE, and SUCK at, right? I would sing off on companies should be product driven, not profit, and most definitely not chasing quarterly growth of at least 3% - but for that we need to change the paradigm…
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Star Trek has been flarging this up for years. We get good Trek in spite of who's controlling it, not because of them.
Abrams and Kurtzman don't even like Star Trek while Seth McFarland went out and made his own loving homage show because he loves Trek so much. Paramount hates Trek.
@jrdepriest @Daojoan Greedy neoliberalism reduces everything to a balance sheet.
The problem is that a huge amount of authoritarians are very comfortable sucking up to them, and even feel safe & secure while making careers out of it!
We went through an evolutionary squeeze where being obedient guaranteed you offspring, and this is the result.
(Is that a Tron bit in your profile pic btw?!!🤩)
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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. Only people who love games and love playing games should run companies that make games. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheeseburgers or software.
@Daojoan I agree but fear it's not economically sustainable.
There's this show on public television where they help struggling business owners. They often have a big passion for what they do, but risk burnout and bankruptcy because they don't pay attention to less charming things like operational efficiency and cashflow.
For example, a construction company might have to stop making their product from scratch because they work crazy hours and run a loss on everything they sell.
