Comment on How working for Big Tech lost 'dream job' status
magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 6 months agoEspecially considering most fun innovations get scrapped either way.
Comment on How working for Big Tech lost 'dream job' status
magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 6 months agoEspecially considering most fun innovations get scrapped either way.
dhork@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Most of the “fun innovations” are awesome ideas that would get a small startup a ton of business and make them widely successful. But the problem is that these companies are so large, that even those successful innovations barely make an impact on the company. So many initiatives at these companies is have to be billed as huge and game-changing in order to be funded in the first place. Which means they need to hire huge staffs, to justify their importance.
The managers make extremely optimistic forecasts: they have to, to get the project funded in the first place. Then, when the project is successful (but not as successful as promised) the bean counters scale it back to the size it should have been in the first place. So the headline is all these layoffs, when the real problem is that these companies are too darn big to operate efficiently.
magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 6 months ago
I believe it also is for creating hype among investors. “Look at this new amazing product lineup we got! Self driving cars! Invest in us before those huge things turn into reality!”
And to get on the more conspiratorial side, it might also be to dry up the market of talent. It’s hard for competitors to make a product if all talent is already doing cool stuff elsewhere.