this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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This is kind of true. But the leadership often answers to the board of directors, which have often been shareholders that buy into control of the company after it goes public. At this point, you have shareholders who own no personal stake in a company. Often their only goal is to make a profit, sometimes they're "serial entrepreneurs" who make their millions getting on boards and "flipping" the company to make a huge profit in a short amount of time.
So it's kind of management, but it's also management brought on by the presence of public investment in a company.
Combine this with the fact that the law has come down more than once on the side of choosing options that make the company money over maintaining company policy and you get a really terrible culture of publicly traded companies gouging themselves for short term profit (or even long term profit done in a shitty way.)
Oh, I realize I repeated some of what you said. But you did say "it's not about shareholders" to be contrarian, then went on to explain (like I did) how it's actually exactly because of shareholders.
Edit: what the fuck I literally can't comment on the comment below.
I wasn't actually trying to be contrarian, but okay.
I'm pretty sure I didn't explain how it's actually shareholders, because the board of directors isn't "the shareholders", but leadership of the company.
Valve isn't publicly traded, but it's still a corporation with shareholders, a board of directors, and the usual trappings of corporate leadership. They tend to operate in a not shitty way because their leadership isn't interested in sacrificing greater long term profit for lesser short term profits.
A private, family owned partnership style business can operate with a focus on short term profits over long term profits.
The safest way to ensure that the leadership of both of those businesses out as much money in their pockets as possible is to continuously maximize short term profits. "The shareholders" aren't the cause for that mindset.