rubber_chicken [he/him]

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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: February 9th, 2025

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  • Even if that happens, it’s not the win one might think it is. The capitalist economy serves capital, not CEOs. CEOs are just the best-paid servants of capital. They, especially founders, get a lot of capital themselves but conflating the two is an error and, in our era, largely a consequence of the rise of tech. A generation or so in, we’re seeing that the incredibly rich CEOs can step down without pausing the harm their companies cause. Nadella owns 0.01% of Microsoft. That’s $339 million, so not paltry by any means unless you’re comparing it to Gates’ or even Ballmer’s stakes. Still, we haven’t seen Microsoft shift into non-shittiness and won’t see that under a pivot to AICEOs that survive on electricity and newsfeeds alone. The problem will still be capitalism, even if it doesn’t have a head to cut off.


















  • I suspect but don’t know how to validate that it’s the Indian firms overselling the savings. They could get extremely competent people by charging 60% of a western salary, paying 40% and pocketing the difference. Instead, they lowball those numbers to the point where their teams are stretched thin and don’t know what they’re doing, yielding bad results that are on par with all the other Indian firms doing the same thing. If capitalism worked as advertised, somebody could found NonGarbageCorp, set more realistic expectations around cost savings, attract the most competent technical remote workers, deliver great things and become immensely rich. But it would take a serious investment of capital and time to establish a reputation while western firms suspect them of secretly being GarbageCorp32849327, so the people who could pull off NonGarbageCorp just launch GarbageCorp32849327 instead.