Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by phpisthebest 1110 days ago
MBA programs almost exclusively teach short term gains over long term stability.

The business world has been forever changed by the creation of the institutional investor, which was largely created by pensions, 401k's and other such funds where by the actual people putting in the money is several steps removed from the people investing that money.

So now the business world, for public companies, lives and dies on the quartely report.

2 comments

It’s insane though. Just about any company can show higher quarterlies by doing shortsighted things that deeply undermine their long term value proposition.

Apple could license off a bunch of crap. Boeing could sell assets and designs. Toyota could just rebadge cheaper vehicles and sell all of their factories.. all of those could make record “profits”.

Are we doomed to everything just being a pump and dump scheme from here on out because why shouldn’t everything just be speculation?

Dont worry, BlackRock is trying their best to ensure profitability plays no role at all in investment choices. Not sure their plan is better, but it a change
Not every company runs like this. It's pretty common among tech companies that needed a lot of bootstrapping, but there are plenty of stodgy old producers who do not and who do plan more long term. Value investing is a long-standing philosophy and it has a dedicated "cult" but you don't hear a lot about those companies because they don't need a reality distortion field to make money, because they've basically already got a good concept.

Reddit is none of those things. It's a VC Frankenstein at this point and it's probably never going to make real money, so it makes sense that they're trying to change the recipe to at least get something back.