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Comment by gerardnll | Hacker News Reader

Capitalism. Need for money and results. I don't think that anybody wants to burnout anybody, it's just the pressure of the whole system I guess. Money pushes to do things fast. Shareholders and clients to keep happy.

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> Shareholders [..] to keep happy.

In my opinion, this is the biggest flaw of the system. For many investors, a company is less about what it makes and more like a process to grow their money. Even when a company becomes profitable, there's always pressure to make it even more profitable quarter after quarter.

> Even when a company becomes profitable, there's always pressure to make it even more profitable quarter after quarter.

Would you keep your retirement funds in a company that doesn't grow?

Sure, as long as it pays good dividends.

Not everything needs to grow into the sky.

You do get the fact that a company with no growth but paying dividends will be worth (including the dividends you extracted) exactly what you paid for?

It would be worse than buying a bond: you'll get the risk of equity with the returns of a bond.

Not an economist, but I have tried to keep informed and what you say doesn't seem like it should follow.

(Then again English is not my first language.)

The question of course is whether the high turnover actually is the most efficient way—you're spending far more employee time training them (both learning the company's approaches at a high level, the problem space, and their way around the code base) than you would if you had higher retention.

While you might need to pay more and improve working conditions, would you be more efficient given the individual staff would spend more time being productive?

Burning out people at large rate is not effective and persistent crunch is contraproductie. It is less of capitalism and more of wishfull thinking combined with wish to be seen as tough manager.

I'd say it's the pace in which modern capitalism operates at, particularly in tech. When the rate of production goes higher and higher due to automation and a global outsource-able workforce, the shareholders chase after higher and higher profits.

Nothing has changed, and ironically, this whole part of the question - is it better to burn people out and rehire - is a capitalist question, and answered with capitalist goals.

Tesla can't outsource globaly and does not have profits yet. Effectivity is about whether burnout brings higher profits, not whether people unable to gain them burnout themselves or those under them due to wishful thinking.

I really don't care if they "don't really want to", they're still actively choosing paths that lead to that, and don't really care.

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