[game_the0ry]

> The only reason these companies are successful is that the top execs are friends with the other execs at fortune 500 companies so they mostly figure out a way to spin it as a success so everyone gets their bonuses even if no value was created.

It is so bizarre that blowing $20M on a large, complex project that obviously fails can be rebranded as success. Its harder to pull that off with smaller projects and less stakeholders, but if a project is big enough, you can obfuscate the details and make it look like a win.

[eternalban]

>> a very ambitious app for one of the biggest oil companies in the world

An oil major probably makes $20MM in profit every few minutes or at most in an hour. (Apple makes ~1700.00 per second ..)

[eadmund]

> An oil major probably makes $20MM in profit every few minutes or at most in an hour.

ExxonMobil made $23 billion in profit in 2021; that works out to just over three days and three hours to get to $20 million.

Shell made $20.6 billion in profit in 2021; it would take them even longer.

The other majors made even less.

A project which wastes over three days of profits is hugely expensive.

[lossolo]

23 billion / 365 = ~63 mil so it's 1/3 of a day, basically 8 hours of profit, not 3 days.

[eadmund]

You’re completely right, and I apparently cannot use units(1) to save my life. I have no idea how I screwed that one up so badly. I was more wrong than the original poster.

[zhte415]

Motivation and constraint is completely driven by what budget or cost centre one's in. These can be schizophrenically distant, and work to the detriment of the organisation, in organisations that still insist they're one team.

Another perspective on the 20M is the salaries and total running cost of an office of 1500 in Southeast Asia for ayear (or potentially Latin America, or Africa, but I'm less familiar with pricing there than in EA/SEA).