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Yep. A lot of software companies are suffering from this short-term-ism that results in incentive structures that value things that move the stock price rather than make for a strong long term company.

It may eventually blow up in faces, but a lot of the people making money on it today won't be around to see it.




Indeed. It's a Tragedy of the Commons type of issue with the way most corps are run nowadays. When you're just starting out it's understandable to be very short-term focused as next year doesn't really matter much if you go belly up next week. But once companies have some establishment, it's insane to me how little thought goes into long-term planning. That is, until you realize the incentive structure they've built essentially penalizes executives/management for sacrificing short-term opps for long-term health. For example, but slicing R&D to the bare minimum (and often below that level) and driving revenue high up and to the right by pumping up sales/marketing efforts, you can look like a business genius, and just as it starts to really hurt the company you're moving on to the next gig, and often with an exit bonus of some kind.


I don't even know if it's stock price or just human hubris. "I joined the team, implemented "amazing" feature, got promoted/got hired at x".

Google is by far the worst of this. It seems 75% of their products are pet-projects turned abandonware.




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