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Comment by _hypx | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley has been hiding a dirty secret for years: Many companies, if not the majority of them, are badly mismanaged.

This is really going to be the start of the next big shift in who will be the leaders in tech. Many companies that are seen as leaders today will eventually join the group of companies that are no longer seen as leaders.

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It was easy to look good when the money printer was churning out negative rates and you could rely on investors to pump money in you instead of actually turning a profit. A couple of years ago you could literary close your eyes, put your finger randomly on some no-name company and if you invested in that company you'd get great returns because everything was going to the moon.

Now we're gonna see which companies are actually sustainable and which were coasting on dreams and cheap money.

IMHO such a correction was long overdue, but the central banks kept negative rates for far too long while everyone cheered them one because they saw their crypto, stonks and housing portfolios go to the moon and though this was great and nothing bad could happen because "line always goes up".

> Silicon Valley has been hiding a dirty secret for years: Many companies, if not the majority of them, are badly mismanaged.

to be fair, this is likely the case for most large companies even outside SV.

You just have to talk to anyone in any industry to hear crazy stories.

I imagine it's worse in industries where a firehose of profits papers over all manner of mistake, and where many founder/CEOs skipped business school.

That’s probably true. But I’m not sure that fact has been reflected in stock prices. During the last hype cycle I would say that, in general, tech has been hyped a lot more than other industries.

In my experience, it's a miracle anything works.

This is why I have always laughed at people suggesting that private enterprise can do things more efficiently than big government. Have you worked for what passes as private enterprise these days? There is zero forcing function in the corporate space anymore. Everything is owned by the same like 100 people, and there is no competition, so even if it worked in theory, it should be clear and obvious it hasn't "worked" in the US for decades.

Except SV companies are not valued like those other companies. You are paying a premium to buy stock in a mismanaged mess in a lot of cases.

Like Google.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

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