Ask HN: Why company should increase profit every year?

They will lose to those that are profit focused as those companies will attract more investment and better quality employees. Not immediately, but they lose long term.

Same reason you can’t have a career without continuing to learn new stuff and upgrade credentials. Everyone else is doing it, so when it comes time to inevitably find a job again, it is easy to be behind.

Because !profit == loss.

Since execs have most of their compensation tied to performance, they want to maximize that as much as possible without sinking the company.

There's also cycles throughout year, so some profitable quarters are there to offset quarters with losses. Take the retail industry, for example. They make most of their money at the end of the year, so any profit should cover expenses for the first three quarters of their fiscal year.

So, when you say normal, you actually mean profitable.

Many companies do this, but those companies don't get as much attention

As long as you can convince the investors that the current capital is better off redeployed, you don't have to. Case in point - AMZN for the first decade (or two).