[FridgeSeal]

> it seems like software companies start noticeably going downhill about 1.5 years after they go public.

I firmly believe this is a fact too.

One place I recently worked, I joined as it was going public and it went downhill quickly. The friends I’d made there talked about the fun perks, holidays and benefits the company was known for. Over the space of less than a year most of the culture atrophied, people left in droves and there were exactly zero holidays or perks given out.

[klardotsh]

I hate to say it but this feels inevitable. We've accepted that the requirement (legally!) of a public company is to deliver the maximum possible returns to investors, and as such, employees become a cost center to optimize away, and just generally, anything that negatively impacts the quarterly report must be eliminated, even if that thing is the only thing that will keep the next quarterly report in the black.

Quarterly scope for fiscal data is one of the most short-sighted decisions humans have ever done. Expecting quarterly up-and-to-the-right, where simple sustenance is not enough, but profit must grow quarterly, on a planet with finite resources in an economy with finite money, is a guaranteed, zero-exceptions, recipe for failure, by definition.

[scarby2]

Fiduciary responsibility isn't entirely about returns, it's about the best interests of the investors. And if you've invested in a company with a certain mission it would be said to be in your interests for that mission to continue.

If I were starting a business these days I'd be tempted to found it on the basis that 60% must be owned by employees of the company until the last living descendant of king Charles dies.

[p_l]

It's not a legal requirement. Fiduciary duty doesn't even mean you have to act in best interests of the investors, just that you're honest and not trying to swindle them.

Making it seem like it's a legal requirement however is a very good thing for all the corporate raiders out there.