Comment by alecco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alecco | Hacker News Reader

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What I've seen many, many times.

1. business people sold themselves as the best to manage companies and took over companies (just like lawyers do in governments), changing the norm from decades ago when it was more likely for engineers to run companies than some kind of McKinsey guy

2. but they have no idea besides business/money metrics so they quickly become overwhelmed and decide based on who makes the most compelling argument ("don't bring me more problems, give me solutions")

3. sociopaths exploit this by telling the execs what they want to hear

4. only after a while, after significant investment of resources in the decisions/projects proposed by the sociopaths it comes up to light it's complete nonsense

5. the sociopaths are aware of this, so they usually pivot before SHTF or they even exploit the situation to ask for more to "fix" the problems

6. the execs who backed the sociopaths want to cover their own asses so they hide the problems from higher ups for as long as possible (CEO, board, investors, shareholders, clients, authorities, public)

7. competent people are pulled out of productive work and thrown to solve impossible or even contradicting situations; some burn out, some leave, and the ones who stay are often stained forever like they were the cause of the problem

Sometimes the sociopaths are external consulting companies or companies offering some magic huge system that they promise will solve all the problems.

Sociopaths exploit information asymmetry.

Classic: https://web.archive.org/web/20051013062258/http://www.kuro5h...

This is really ableist. Sociopaths? Most people in charge of running companies from top to mid-level are average people, even if some dark-triad coded people exist. What you're angry at is what capitalism is supposed to do: maximize value for the the capital owning class, that is to say ownership. There was never some engineer owned utopia. Business culture has always been this way, in fact, its only been worse in the past pre-socialist/labor movement times, not just with labor (child labor, long hours, dangerous conditions, etc) but also product (poison put in bread to make it cheaper, etc.) There is no way out of this dynamic in capitalism because this is all fundamental to capitalism.

In case you are serious, engineers were most likely to lead companies until the 70s. In some countries they still are. The negotiated middle ground was engineer + MBA. But even those are kind of going out of fashion and instead there are marketing/HR/accounting + MBA filling up boards and leadership.

It's also a function of young ambitious people just following the money over time. Finance has grown and grown and grown because it's the easiest place to skim the cream. Combine that with the fact that it's transferable from company to company and it's clear why the trend. Obviously the only innovation these people are capable of is financial innovation (repackaging derivatives, ever-more-convoluted deal structures to snow people, etc), but that doesn't much matter as long as there is a sufficient base of enough new companies with actual innovations sprouting up that it provides enough grist for the finance mill.

What's the ableist angle here..?

Blaming the failings of capitalism on the mentally ill. This is just capitalism, it cannot be any different, this is fundamental to it.

That's absurd. First because nobody uses the word 'sociopath' to mean 'mentally ill', they are using it as a moral judgment / to describe a type of amoral person. Second because the reason one negatively characterized the mechanisms of capitalism is because they are not, like, immutable laws of the universe, but rather things that society has quite a bit of control over (whether or not it currently knows how to exercise that control).

(incidentally I disagree with the sociopath characterization anyway; I'm just contesting the weird use of the word ableist)

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