As Steve Jobs once put it, the product people had the original vision and drive to create the product eventually get replaced by sales/marketing people and bean counters. By picking an upstart,...
As Steve Jobs once put it, the product people had the original vision and drive to create the product eventually get replaced by sales/marketing people and bean counters.
By picking an upstart, you’re not just choosing software, you’re choosing culture. You’re choosing a younger company that has to care about what they’re building and are responsive and eager to solve your problems.
The old legacy companies are full of people hired after the product became a mature money printer and are now just there to make incremental improvements, shuffle the deck chairs around, and collect their paychecks and go home.
The young eventually become old and the cycle begins anew.
I think that simplifies things too if I am being honest. If it was that simple we wouldn't have Windows as the majority OS from a company that is now 50 years old. Or, sticking to your example,...
I think that simplifies things too if I am being honest. If it was that simple we wouldn't have Windows as the majority OS from a company that is now 50 years old. Or, sticking to your example, Apple which is at the same ripe old age. Or even if we count from Steve Jobs coming back to Apple we are still talking about 28 years. Google is also 27 years old at this point.
To be clear, I firmly agree with this part.
The old legacy companies are full of people hired after the product became a mature money printer and are now just there to make incremental improvements, shuffle the deck chairs around, and collect their paychecks and go home.
I am just not so optimistic about them going down eventually. At least not the way the market these days seems to operate.
It is a big simplification. I think that established players are very aware of this phenomenon, which afflicted companies of yesteryear (IBM, etc.) and try to mitigate it. Organizations within...
It is a big simplification. I think that established players are very aware of this phenomenon, which afflicted companies of yesteryear (IBM, etc.) and try to mitigate it.
Organizations within companies are basically mini companies with their own culture. Sometimes companies set up a new org to be culturally separate.
Sometimes companies will acquire a startup or company and give them some autonomy. Microsoft didn't acquire OpenAI, but they did invest in them for access to their AI products because their own in-house AI product people were very meh.
Steve Jobs and Tim Cook both did a very good job of keeping Apple motivated and focused on making great hardware and software, though there is some slippage lately. From what I hear from my friends at Apple:
Apple gives them lots of responsibility and resources to get things done. They have Directly Responsible Individuals, so people know their heads will roll if they neglect their responsibilities. Usually when companies get super big, responsibilities become diffused, so no one is singularly responsible for X or Y, and therefore no one feels responsible and motivated to make sure they do a good job with X or Y.
Apple hires and fires carefully. They didn't go on a pandemic hiring spree, and they're the only big tech company that hasn't joined the current wave of layoffs, which is killing morale at other companies. Apple has relatively loyal employees genuinely committed to their mission, compared to other big tech companies like Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon, where employees often job hop around.
As Steve Jobs once put it, the product people had the original vision and drive to create the product eventually get replaced by sales/marketing people and bean counters.
By picking an upstart, you’re not just choosing software, you’re choosing culture. You’re choosing a younger company that has to care about what they’re building and are responsive and eager to solve your problems.
The old legacy companies are full of people hired after the product became a mature money printer and are now just there to make incremental improvements, shuffle the deck chairs around, and collect their paychecks and go home.
The young eventually become old and the cycle begins anew.
I think that simplifies things too if I am being honest. If it was that simple we wouldn't have Windows as the majority OS from a company that is now 50 years old. Or, sticking to your example, Apple which is at the same ripe old age. Or even if we count from Steve Jobs coming back to Apple we are still talking about 28 years. Google is also 27 years old at this point.
To be clear, I firmly agree with this part.
I am just not so optimistic about them going down eventually. At least not the way the market these days seems to operate.
It is a big simplification. I think that established players are very aware of this phenomenon, which afflicted companies of yesteryear (IBM, etc.) and try to mitigate it.
Organizations within companies are basically mini companies with their own culture. Sometimes companies set up a new org to be culturally separate.
Sometimes companies will acquire a startup or company and give them some autonomy. Microsoft didn't acquire OpenAI, but they did invest in them for access to their AI products because their own in-house AI product people were very meh.
Steve Jobs and Tim Cook both did a very good job of keeping Apple motivated and focused on making great hardware and software, though there is some slippage lately. From what I hear from my friends at Apple:
Well, not anymore. Now the old become an all-consuming lovcraftian horror that devour the new before they can grow old.
Need some demonslayers.