> It’s a cynical way to view the C-staff of a company. I think it’s also inaccurate: from my limited experience, the people who run large tech companies really do want to deliver good software to users.

People who run large tech companies want one thing: to increase shareholder value. Delivering "good software" (a very, very squishy term) is secondary.

I don't even think "good" is a quantifiable or effective measure here. C-level executives are deviating from reality in terms of what they say that their products are capable of versus how their products actually perform. If you're a CEO shipping a frontier model that adds some value in terms of performing basic technical tasks while simultaneously saying that AI is gonna be writing all code in 3-6 months, you're only doing good by your shareholders.

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phantasmish a day ago | parent | next [-]

I can tell you that everyone I’ve met whose job it has been to communicate with and guide C-suiters across many companies has regarded them as basically super-powerful young children, as far as their reasoning capacity, ability to understand things, and ability to focus. Never met more cynical people about the c-suite than the ones who spend a lot of time around lots of them, without being one of them or trying to become one of them (any time soon, anyway). Like they truly talk about them like they’re kindergarteners, and insist that if you want to reach them and be understood you have to do the same.

A lot of very cosplay/play-pretend (and sometimes expensive!) tactics I’ve seen in high level enterprise sales made a lot more sense after being exposed to these views. Lots of money spent on entire rooms that are basically playsets for high level execs to feel cool and serve no other purpose. Entire software projects executed for that purpose. I didn’t get it until those folks clued me in.

	▲	makeitdouble a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There's exceptions to this. Usuallly founders who've made it past many mergers and kept a central role in the company. Insulting their intelligence will bite you back very quick. But otherwise I think it's spot on. Especially for Cxx specialized in keeping the ball running, they'll have no interest in understanding most of the business in the first place, they seem themselves as fixers who just need to say yay or nay based on their gut feelings.
	▲	mschuster91 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Like they truly talk about them like they’re kindergarteners Well, a bunch of them are. From what one can hear about Elon Musk for example, at each of his companies there is an "Elon handler" team making sure that his bullshit doesn't endanger the mission and stuff keeps running [1], Steve Jobs was particularly infamous among employees [2] and family [3], Bill Gates has a host of allegations [4] even before getting into the Epstein allegations [5], and Trump... well, I don't think the infamous toddler blimp is too far off of reality. > and insist that if you want to reach them and be understood you have to do the same. That makes sense even for those who aren't emotional toddlers. At large companies it is simply impossible for any human to dive deep into technical details, so decisions have to be thoroughly researched and dumbed down - and it's the same in the military. The fact that people are allowed to hold positions across multiple companies makes this even worse - how is a board of directors supposed to protect the interests of the shareholders when each board member has ten, twenty or more other companies to "control"? IMHO, companies should simply be broken up when they get too large. Corporate inertia, "too big to fail", impossibility to compete against virtually infinite cash coffers and lawyers - too large companies are a fundamental threat against our societies. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34012719 [2] https://qz.com/984174/silicon-valley-has-idolized-steve-jobs... [3] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/memoir-steve-jobs-apos-daught... [4] https://www.amglaw.com/blog/2021/07/both-microsoft-and-its-f... [5] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...

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swiftcoder 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> People who run large tech companies want one thing: to increase shareholder value. Delivering "good software" (a very, very squishy term) is secondary.

Delivering shareholder value happens to be a consistent way to maintain the power and payouts a successful executive demands, but I'm not sure it's the motivation per se.

Delivering good software is so far down the hierarchy of motivations I'm not sure they can even see it from up there

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ludicity a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh, I glossed over that in my response. I've had people at the C-level admit that they don't care about ethics to me, and I especially see startup CEOs lie a lot, or otherwise be so self-deluded to make sales easier that it's hard to tell if they know they're lying.

I think Sean is right that, in the abstract, they prefer good software to bad software, but they won't make any sacrifices if those sacrifices require losing money or status. It's the same "do your what your manager wants" playbook, but run up to board level.

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jaggederest a day ago | parent [-]

> they won't make any sacrifices if those sacrifices require losing money or status

That's not preferring good software to bad software, though. In order for a value to be meaningful when expressed, it has to result in some kind of trade off. If you value honesty over safety but never are put in a situation where you have to choose between honesty and safety, then that value is fairly meaningless.

	▲	ludicity a day ago \| parent [-]
		That's fair. I overstated my point a bit -- if a project was on schedule and it could be delayed by one day to improve something nebulous, many would agree. It's just that the tradeoffs are never that small, so you never actually see it happen, i.e, the preference is extremely minor.

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therobots927 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Meritocracy at work.

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librish a day ago | parent | prev [-]

This is the type of cynicism the post is talking about and it's just trivially untrue.

It's like saying that employees only want one thing: to get their paycheck.

	▲	asadotzler a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is a terrible take. The people who have sacrificed their ethics/morals/souls to reach the top absolutely optimize for different things than the people who passed an interview and put in their 40-80 hours knowing they'll never be in the c-suite. Suggesting otherwise is naive or intentionally deceptive.
	▲	CodingJeebus 21 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> This is the type of cynicism the post is talking about and it's just trivially untrue. It's a fundamental truth of capitalism, deeply interwoven in the history of markets and modern capitalism. It began when the Dutch East India Company sailed to the Banda Islands and committed genocide in order to harvest nutmeg for trade. Money is and has always been the prime directive of capitalism. To quote Tom Stoppard: War is capitalism with the gloves off.