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Comment by bryananderson | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that we often think of a company as a single abstract decision-maker.

It isn’t, of course. It’s made up of managers who want to look like they’re doing something big so that they gain status and get a pay raise (“I led the company’s first blockchain initiative!”). It’s made up of employees who want to cover their own asses by recommending that a brand-name consultancy be added to their project. And so on.

Each individual in a corporation acts in accordance with her or his own incentives, which may or may not be well aligned with those of the company’s shareholders.

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Not disagreeing but there isn't only the negative side (self-promotion, ass-covering). There are people trying and failing. Life happen: acquisition (you or some of your provider), restructuring, negotiation, strategic changes, key person leaving, new people coming, ... all of that produces little bit of inefficiencies in large organisation.

That's not dissimilar to the food you buy and throw away, the antique furniture you bought planning to restore but never got to it, the stack of book you wanted to read but other things occupy your time.

Similarly, a lot of employees don't really know what the global mission of the company is or what their strategic interests are. I've definitely seen leaders fail to clearly communicate this. When that happens, people fall back to optimizing their local environment or department and that can definitely lead to useless shit or actions which while locally beneficial, actually impede the mission of the company.

Most employees don't really care what the global mission of the company or their strategic interests are. It's whether you can get a decent paycheck with some stability while having a semblance of control and balance. The more you work the more this becomes true.

I will say, as an employee myself, I don't feel like my company cares about me and how well I do as a person. So why should I care about the company and how well it does for its shareholders? It's just an economic transaction between me and the organization; I do whatever they tell me to do for 8 hours, and that's that. If what they're telling me to do hurts them, then that's not really my problem.

I will say, as an employee myself, I don't feel like my company cares about me and how well I do as a person. So why should I care about the company and how well it does for its shareholders?

When you as an individual don't feel any sense of doing better for your organisation. How can an organisation composed of diverse set of people think of your cause?

I care about the individuals I work with. They're good people. I definitely try to help my coworkers out with their personal goals, if and when I can.

But the organization itself? Nah. Corporations aren't people, no matter what the courts say.

> managers who want to look like they’re doing something big so that they gain status.

So much this!

I've seen many outsourced multi-million-pound projects that would have been quicker, cheaper, and better as in-house projects for a few hundred thousand.

A senior manager doesn't want "In charge of a £100,000 3-month project" on their CV. They want to be able to write "In charge of a £20,000,000 2-year project". It doesn't matter that the cheap one works and the expensive one doesn't.

> managers who want to look like they’re doing something big so that they gain status.

The true currency in the work world isn't money it's status.

Money is only important as a proxy for status.

Having a lot of people reporting to you confers status.

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