Maximilian
JA WestenbergMy 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.
Viss
Seine Angst ist Meine Angst@Daojoan can I extend that with "in an ethical and equitable manner".
Seen too many times when folks who genuinely care about the thing they do become awful people in the process - with for profit and non-profit operations alike.
James Endres Howell@Daojoan I have got some bad news about higher education in the United States
Adam Collins@Daojoan the other people (don’t have to name them) first convince these people that they don’t know how to do business properly, then start making the product bad, then fight the customer, then ask for a bailout
Robotistry@m104 @Daojoan Terry Pratchett (#GNUTerryPratchett ) explained this process in a very easily digestible way in Going Postal. And it has a happy ending where the passionate person gets to keep the company!
@Robotistry Yes! Going Postal is literally one of my book recs for people who either haven’t read Pratchett or who have lost their passion for reading altogether 😊
KevinFlynn 
@Daojoan
A Bobby Kotick quote comes to mind
A Bobby Kotick quote comes to mind
PoloniousmonkHell, 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.
D. G. MarshallKnow 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.
John Smith@Daojoan also extend this to politics.
J. R. DePriest 
:EA DATA. SF: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.
Toni Aittoniemi@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?!!🤩)
YES YES YES YES
an actual bus@Daojoan heresy.
Phil Wolff@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.
Elf Burgerman
aburka 🫣@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
@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.
PlantagoLabs@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.
Charlotte@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.
Hibou Chachara@Daojoan "fortunately", a lot of people deeply give a fuck about hurting other people.
@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.
Knut 🏳️🌈 🇳🇴🧸@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.
@gimulnautti @Daojoan oh very much so. Government IT is all outsourced now.
@gimulnautti @Daojoan very very much so. Cisco is the worst with it.
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.
Chris Laprun ⏚@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.
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.
@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.
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.
Luka Rubinjoni@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.
@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
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
meek cynicsso @Daojoan, since the purpose of corporations is to make money for the shareholders, the board should be who deeply give a fuck about money?
Nindelofocho@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.
DMTom@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…
S.Tori
Piotr Kotnis@Daojoan sounds like Blizzard story before and after Activision acquisition
Metafísica rococó@Daojoan Not even in the most remote kumbaya corners of silicon valley is this true anymore. The mantra today is: Whatever you do, if you dont make quasillions, you are not a genius. No matter who gets bombed
Kaspar (allegedly not haunted)@Daojoan Come on. Does no one think of the career paths of management consultants?
·J Mopp
Jon Roach
Laurent Bercot@Daojoan what a way to tell me I should own a burger restaurant more than a software company
adzuki "toes" bean ch. 🇨🇳 
-dsr- (minifigurally literate)
Alexandra Jusino@Daojoan People who make are not so great at managing.
Trent Shell@Daojoan turns out to be a good rule for companies that make money, too!
Avocado Toast@Daojoan watching the CEO of framework laptop upgrade a laptop on camera kinda proves your point.