• Lightor@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    You seem to be basing how the entire industry works on some people you’ve encountered who want to climb the ladder. Again, when you stand in front of a board and have to justify your EBITDA, it doesn’t matter how good your PowerPoint slide was. They don’t have to walk it back, the P&L is numbers, they have to justify those numbers or deal with not hitting budget. A company runs off numbers not initiatives people want to push.

    You seem to be ignoring the fact that you have to report metrics to investors. Spend, rev, output, etc. And a poor SaaS solution that has poor quality negatively impacts those numbers. Numbers don’t lie, no matter how much spin you put on them. You say you have 30 years of experience both consuming and delivering SaaS solutions but seem to ignore that you have defended your P&L and your performance, all numbers, not office politics. Investors only care about money, dollars and cents, numbers. So what happens when solution X that Bob pushed and no one can talk bad about tanks your topline, or your EBITDA? Then what? You tell the board not to say anything bad about it? That just doesn’t make sense.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I haven’t been in the board room, but I have seen the department heads deflect by focusing on different numbers that do look good for unrelated reasons. Then blame the poor performance that was the result of a bad decision as an expected outcome of a long term decision. These people at those levels are pros at this. And the board cares about the stock price. Guess what, the stock price is not based on numbers, it is based on speculation. If the ceo can spin it, it doesn’t matter what it is. Like how layoffs often make the stock price go up. “We are reducing expenses to accelerate progress and be more nimble…” no they are firing people because they can’t manage to use those people to make money.
      And I wish it was just me who has encountered these people… but sadly it isn’t. If you want an example. Look at Google, and read up on how the culture changed over time as it got bigger. It probably staved off the change longer than most and grew faster, so the number of employees that triggered the change is a lot higher than average, but it’s easy to read about.

      • Lightor@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        So you’ve seen dept heads, not been one, and that’s make you confident is saying how all businesses operate?

        The stock price is not just based on speculation, Jesus dude. Your revenue massively impacts stock price, saying it doesn’t is just straight stupid.

        You seem to be giving a lot of options that on their face make no sense while never having been in a position where you would actually have to understand and manage these things.

        • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Stock price is all speculation. Revenue yesterday doesn’t mean revenue today. And you don’t buy stock in a company that stays the same, you buy stock in a company that you speculate will go up in value. Revenue can be going up, and the stock price down because people think the price will go down. How do layoffs make revenue go up? Yet they often make the stock price go up. If the stock prices was super dependent on metrics, algorithms would be making soo much money we wouldn’t have anything else picking stocks. But the algorithm traders can’t predict human speculation. So they tend to work much better on smaller companies where there is less attention and less speculation.
          And not all companies by any means just the big ones. And I am sure there are some exceptions, there always are.