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Comment by solumunus | Hacker News Reader

Are they trying to gaslight people or are they really this stupid? If you don’t have any viable ways to reinvest then invest profits in bonds and index funds, that would truly be financially responsible and reduce risk for the company. The reality is they ARE reinvesting the money, in their personal accounts... What complete nonsense.

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The point of a company should be to benefit the people who work for it. Reinvesting money into a company can help with growth, but as they say, it's a risk. The point of the company is the workers, so there's nothing lost by just ... giving the money to the workers. If it's time to look for growth, they can reinvest it. Being profitable gives that flexibility. But if you're not an investor driven or publicly traded company, contrary to popular wisdom, the line doesn't always have to go up. Sometimes sustained customer base or just slight growth is enough.

That's... the entire point of a for profit company. Why on earth would they put company money in an index fund? What an absurd idea.

Evidently my original comment wasn’t clear enough.

First of all plenty of companies do invest money into equities, bonds, real estate, etc. That’s completely standard and in no way absurd.

I have no problems with companies taking profit, I have a company and I take profit. I would just find it incredibly embarrassing to attempt to convince my customers that me taking profit is for their benefit, and somehow the optimal way for me to increase my reliability as supplier, against the alternative of investing in product improvement.

It’s not that they’re taking profit, it’s that they’re advertising it as if it’s some kind of noble deed they’re performing on behalf of their customers. It absolutely does not remove risk from the company, that’s complete nonsense. The whole post is just strange.

I swear HN is like peak satire at this point.

Do you not understand why one starts a business?]

It ain't to work 90 hours a week until you drop dead from a coronary at 48 with nothing to show for but an obituary that says you created lots of shareholder value.

When did the West Coast tech scene utterly lose the plot?

What ever happened to starting a good company that makes a good product that fills a need, and provides a stable and comfortable life for the employees?

We need more public benefit corporations and way less VC bullshit.

I do agree that we need more public benefit companies; not every company needs to be a multi-billion dollar enterprise. However, I disagree that Silicon Valley “lost the plot.” In fact, I believe this has been the plot of Silicon Valley since at least the 1970s. While there were companies that focused on good products, sustainable business markets, and great business-employee relations (Hewlett-Packard when The HP Way ruled is a fine example), there’s also a very long history where companies and businesspeople focused on growth and profit over other concerns, and where employees had the potential for a big upside (through some combination of high salaries, big bonuses, stock options, RSU grants) if they were willing to sacrifice work-life balance. The Macintosh team circa 1983 had “90 hours a week and loving it!” T-shirts. This led to many innovative products, but these companies were clearly about growth and profits, with innovation being a means to an end (Scrooge McDuck piles of money) instead of the end itself, even if these companies did employ dreamers who cared less about money and more about their technical visions.

After having worked in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade, the area to me isn’t about building future Hewlett-Packards or In-n-Outs or Costcos, as wonderful as this would be for our society since we definitely need companies that are rooted in serving their customers and society. It’s about building future Apples, Microsofts, Googles, Facebooks, etc., where they went for the gold and ended up with tons of it as a result of their success.

It ins't doing it though. It's splashing huge amounts of cash on performative BS like flashy SF office space (that's now sitting mostly unused) and not actually making products, even.

The goal stopped being about building a company and started being about building an acquisition target. Actually producing a product or innovating is secondary, if even considered.

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