bassim5d ago
CM Harrington

Jesus fuck, this hit like a tonne of bricks.

from https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/

The Era Of The Business Idiot

Fair warning: this is the longest thing I've written on this newsletter. I do apologize. Soundtrack: EL-P - $4 Vic Listen to my podcast Better Offline. We have merch. Last week, Bloomberg profiled Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, revealing that he's either a liar or a specific kind of idiot. The

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
May 22 at 2:38amWeb
Show threadLisPi6d ago
@octothorpe @froge Their role is that of conmen.

Shareholders are happy, fraud is profitable.
Show threadMensch, Marina6d ago
@octothorpe or short, the age without any ethics
Show threadMichael6d ago
No lies detected.
Show threadstephen ryner jr. 🦉6d ago
@octothorpe he’s too depressing
Show threadCM Harrington6d ago

@nuthatch Totally. And I generally don’t read him because I already know most of what he’s on about, if not some of the specifics he mentions, but I will skim stuff occasionally if put in front of me.

But at some point I need to stop for self preservation reasons.

Show threadLioh6d ago
@octothorpe is good that it comes with a Soundtrack.
Show threadOverwhelmed6d ago

@octothorpe sadly, absolutely true

More than 20 years in my company, and the number of people in key roles without any competence has progressively increased, and it has skyrocketed since a "wanna-be-elon" bought us a few years ago

Show threadCM Harrington6d ago

@Overwhelmed Ugh. But yeah. TBH, one of the ways I self-sabotage is not being able to work well with idiots. I’m not saying I need to be the smartest bloke (on the contrary), but don’t be a fucking muppet and bullshit everyone in front of me, because I will absolutely call you the fuck out in front of everyone.

It’s career limiting, but raise the fucking bar, eh??

Show threadOverwhelmed5d ago
@octothorpe for many reasons, I never had a real career: among them, never supported liars pretending they were the ones doing the job.
But we are approaching an important timeline (regulations, so we have to comply without excuses) and everyday we find something that was declared as "done" in the checklist but in fact it's completely missing. And these a**holes are in very high positions.
But I'm really tired of all of them, so I'm not sure if I'll help repair to their mess.
Show threadKent Pitman6d ago

@octothorpe @KatS

You might "enjoy" reading my 2009 essay Fiduciary Duty vs. The Three Laws of Robotics, which explains why "legal people" (corporations) are almost by definition "legal sociopaths".

https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/fiduciary-duty-vs-three-laws-of-robotics.html

Fiduciary Duty vs. The Three Laws of Robotics

An essay on how rules of Shareholder Capitalism veritably require that corporations, so-called "legal people", behave like "legal sociopaths".

Show threadGinevraCat6d ago
@octothorpe and I would stress that the problem is even worse in education management and possibly also care work. I thought that I had had some shit managers in tech, but hoo boy - the educational "leadership" I have been subjected to as a teacher is some next level toxic bullshit!
Show threadNot🐧A🐧Convicted🐧Felon5d ago
@GinevraCat @octothorpe That is why I left education for tech.
Tech may be bad, but...
Show threadGinevraCat3d ago
@sleepyfox @octothorpe Exactly. I have found better managers and far more caring cultures in tech companies. (In teaching because it was the first job I got here - but I did software for a long time!)
Show threadLéon van Kammen6d ago
@octothorpe when selling nonprofitable companies becomes the goal, yes-man-workers are essential assets.
Show threadGeorg Arne Spenden6d ago
@octothorpe So basically you're saying business is a LLM, catering for expectations not reality.
Which is probably why AI junk sounds so eerily familiar to anyone having worked in a large corporation..
Show threadWolf480pl5d ago

@Daseinsappeal @octothorpe

So they've become aristocracy?
Thoroughly useless at anything other than keeping up appearances, but somehow making decisions that people trying to accomplish something in the real world are supposed to follow?

Show threadNini6d ago
@octothorpe Yep, AI exists to provide the veneer of competence where none exists. They got to the post-scarcity society and they're not letting anyone else in.
Show threadJulien Avérous – 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦5d ago
@octothorpe @bert_hubert Ah yes, he is always straight to the point. I wanted to read https://www.wheresyoured.at/tss/ too, apparently on the same topic.
The Shareholder Supremacy

I promise you, everything that's happening makes sense. It all feels so chaotic, so utterly, offensively stupid, so disconnected from reality that it's hard to understand how Meta can run a terrible company with decaying services that's also wildly profitable, or how Meta, Microsoft and Google can proliferate unprofitable, unsustainable

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Show threadRichard de Waard5d ago
@octothorpe Shareholder value instead of stakeholder value
Show threadradekcrlik5d ago
@octothorpe fraud made legal.
Show threadThe Penguin of Evil5d ago
@octothorpe And this is why they are all obsessed with AI. AI is a reimplementation of those executives and also consultants. It's a bullshit machine that looks like it's making shit happen.
They can't see the problem because they don't see why they are the problem, nor have enough contact with actual workers to realise that it doesn't work like that
Show threadGeert Uytterhoeven4d ago
@etchedpixels @octothorpe So the world can still be saved (or at least keep the status quo) by replacing the right persons by AI?
Show threadTomek Gieorgijewski5d ago
@octothorpe I like especially the part of complete disjoint between the interest of the customer and shareholder. This is especially true in economy of my country which is limited to the scale 7x smaller then US and also not able to colonize other countries (which I don't really want to). I sometimes really feel as I have little to say/choose on products and services I buy. Happy to be in EU which is under constant critique of "overregulation" but this is also far from my sphere of impact.