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0 pointsscaramanga4y ago0 comments

They do not go bust, they just find ways to bilk their employees, or customers, or the general public, or they find a way to make the government nanny them by shredding regulations or what not.

You seem to think that people cannot escape the consequences of their actions, and that consequences arrive swiftly and fairly. But I should think a quick look around the world we actually live in will disabuse you of that notion in short order. Especially when it comes to gigantic centres of power with vast reserves of cash and well protected revenue streams.

And if you've worked in any tech company, you've probably already seen that the people who coast do not "hide in corners" they make up an entire class, called "management", especially "middle management", they're front and centre because they have no productive work to do so they can devote the majority of their time to extravagant displays justifying their existence and their elevated positions and compensation.

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hnick4y ago

One place I worked, was a Big Company providing overpriced services to other Big Companies. There were loads of low skilled IT workers, taking too long, making mistakes. Adding a BA and/or PM to drive every project when a competent dev could've done it solo a few years ago. But when you keep getting issues, you keep adding process and now every job is 1000+ hours.

But eventually the work got done and we kept getting work because Big Companies buy from other Big Companies. You're not going to risk tendering to a 3 man office who gets it done faster, cheaper, better because if it doesn't happen questions will be asked. Unfortunately there are a lot of talented small businesses out there but they just don't get the work due to this.

WalterBright4y ago

Do that enough, and Big Corp gets overtaken by a smaller, nimbler company that does better. See the book "The Innovators Dilemma" for one aspect of this.

hnick4y ago

Which Big Corp though? The provider or the consumer? The dilemma is, this all feels like a bit of a Boy's Club where they all agree to just help each other and ignore the little people. Not always formally, it's just how things work out. They have an interest in maintaining the status quo and ignoring upstart-startups.

Of course, eventually yes it's impossible to ignore the value gap. But I've seen companies threaten to leave but keep paying the bills for many years because in a big company, it's not really anyone's problem in particular and it's easier to just keep going along to get along. One example we had was B2C email communications, there are so many cheaper more capable players out there but they just got us to do it because we did other stuff for them.

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scaramangaOP4y ago

Not if they are competent at building moats.

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WalterBright4y ago

Companies go bust all the time. One of the corporations I've worked for simply disappeared (Data I/O). Corporations disappear all the time. Remember RCA? No? How about Kmart? Sears? Kodak? Tektronix? Novell? Lotus? Wordstar? AOL? Zilog? Myspace? Zenith? Curtis-Mathis? RCA was once the biggest corp in the world.

I've known people in every corporation I've worked for who accomplished nothing and were not managers. I was often given the job of trying to turn whatever they did into something useful. Everybody knew who they were. I remember one person, we'll call "Smith". "Smith" would check in code, and it was always so bad that someone else would have to redo the whole thing. After a while, the term "smith-code" became a generic term for code that was worse than nothing.

How bad can you be that your name becomes a generic term for useless work?

"Smith" eventually got laid off. The team was relieved.

scaramangaOP4y ago

Sure, I was imprecise, I mean, they do not necessarily go bust. And even if they do, it can be delayed by decades, even centuries, by techniques that are too numerous and well known to list here.

I've known a few Smith's in my time, one thing they all had in common was the protection of a manager who had no interest in the quality of Smith's work, as long as Smith would take his side in any disputes. When the consequences became too great, the manager would suddenly understand the problem and approve the minimum of changes to fix it, while taking credit for the work. Smith would not complain about this slight because he understood the nature of the transaction.

Edit: btw. congrats getting rid of your Smith, these people can be very difficult to dislodge. Presumably your guy did not have the protection of a manager.

rfrec0n4y ago

None of those companies have gone bust though. RCA got purchased and integrated by/into GE, Kodak filed bankruptcy but still exists with a significant number of employees, Tektronix is currently a fortune 500 company, Novell is now owned by Micro Focus, Lotus was never that big of a company, but they still exist and are doing pretty poor but still sell cars, AOL still exists and is owned by Yahoo, MySpace still exists and is owned by an advertising company and the other 2 or 3 I've never heard of.

camtarn4y ago

The Lotus that the GP refers to is probably Lotus Development Corporation / Lotus Software, the makers of the hugely popular Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet from the 80s. It's still around-ish: it was owned by IBM until 2017 then was sold to the Indian company HCL Technologies for $1.8 billion. Pretty good for a company thought to be two decades obsolete!

Zilog was the maker of the Z80 microprocessor that powered a huge number of games consoles and simple computers in the 80s. Also still around - its parent company was acquired for $750 million.

I had to look up Curtis-Mathis because it wasn't a thing in the UK.

And MicroPro / WordStar International does seem to be legitimately dead: acquired by SoftKey who were acquired by Mattel who have since gotten rid of all the associated brands.

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WalterBright4y ago

Yeah, I know they didn't literally go bust, some company always winds up buying the remaining value in the company, as its trademarks and IP have value.

But in any practical sense, they ceased to exist. (I meant Lotus of 1-2-3 fame, not car fame.)

Nick876334y ago

Tektronix didn't go bust. It was acquired for $2.8b in 2007 with 4,000 employees and is now part of an umbrella corporation that trades as NYSE:FTV.

Their scopes are still for sale and still good.

WalterBright4y ago

You're right, I thought I'd remembered they'd gone bust.

> part of an umbrella corporation

meaning their former glory is gone. When I was starting out Tektronix was a very big deal in computers and electronics. I haven't even heard their name in 20-30 years.

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hnick4y ago

WalterBright4y ago

Do that enough, and Big Corp gets overtaken by a smaller, nimbler company that does better. See the book "The Innovators Dilemma" for one aspect of this.

hnick4y ago

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scaramangaOP4y ago

Not if they are competent at building moats.

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WalterBright4y ago

How bad can you be that your name becomes a generic term for useless work?

"Smith" eventually got laid off. The team was relieved.

scaramangaOP4y ago

Sure, I was imprecise, I mean, they do not necessarily go bust. And even if they do, it can be delayed by decades, even centuries, by techniques that are too numerous and well known to list here.

Edit: btw. congrats getting rid of your Smith, these people can be very difficult to dislodge. Presumably your guy did not have the protection of a manager.

rfrec0n4y ago

camtarn4y ago

Zilog was the maker of the Z80 microprocessor that powered a huge number of games consoles and simple computers in the 80s. Also still around - its parent company was acquired for $750 million.

I had to look up Curtis-Mathis because it wasn't a thing in the UK.

And MicroPro / WordStar International does seem to be legitimately dead: acquired by SoftKey who were acquired by Mattel who have since gotten rid of all the associated brands.

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WalterBright4y ago

Yeah, I know they didn't literally go bust, some company always winds up buying the remaining value in the company, as its trademarks and IP have value.

But in any practical sense, they ceased to exist. (I meant Lotus of 1-2-3 fame, not car fame.)

Nick876334y ago

Tektronix didn't go bust. It was acquired for $2.8b in 2007 with 4,000 employees and is now part of an umbrella corporation that trades as NYSE:FTV.

Their scopes are still for sale and still good.

WalterBright4y ago

You're right, I thought I'd remembered they'd gone bust.

> part of an umbrella corporation

meaning their former glory is gone. When I was starting out Tektronix was a very big deal in computers and electronics. I haven't even heard their name in 20-30 years.

1 more reply

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